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1.1k · Jun 2015
Sonnet XI by Pablo Neruda
Jeffrey Young Jun 2015
I hunger for your mouth, your voice, your skin,
And through the streets I slide without nutrition,
Silent, without a bite of bread, dawn disquieting me within,
I search the liquid sound of your feet at day’s fruition.

I’m hungry for your voice’s slippery laughter,
For your sunburned hands’ colored clasp,
I hunger for the pale shade of your stony nails, and after
Want to eat your skin as a ripe, sunburned almond’s rasp.

I want to engorge the sunburned rays of your beauty,
Your sovereign nose, up to your arrogant face,
I want to eat the slumberous slip of your lashes…

And hungrily I go to and fro, sniffing the shadows,
In search of you, to make your hot heart race.
I’m a cougar in the quiet of Quitratúe.
San Diego, 2006
936 · Jun 2015
Sonnet XVII by Pablo Neruda
Jeffrey Young Jun 2015
I do not love you as if you were salt rose, topaz,
Or arrow of carnations disseminating fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
In secret, between shadow and soul.

I love you like the plant that does not bloom
But bears hidden within itself those flowers’ light,
And thanks to your love there dwells darkly in my body
The compressed scent arisen from the earth.

I love you, knowing neither how, nor when, nor whence;
I love you directly, without problems or pride:
Thus I love you, for I know no other way,

Unless it be such that there’s no I nor You,
So close that your hand on my chest is my own,
So close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
6/17/15  For A.
790 · Sep 2015
Untitled
Jeffrey Young Sep 2015
Primordial:

In cobalt depths
Once were orchestrated
Movements dark
And full of promise

Earth’s wet womb
Birthed molecular seeds
Which joining, grew
And fighting, died

Light at first a fear
To eyes unformed
And then, the source
Of every move toward

Our progeny then
Mere copies of ourselves
Split in two
Unto similar trillions

Primitive:

The peacock plumage pressed
In gestures choreographed
Through subtle suggestion:
The tilt of the peahen’s head

Acutely perched
An aerie serves
As fortress for
Two soaring hawks

Elephant ears
Hearing footfalls
Cross dusty tundra
Seeking union

The joust of lions
Almost drawing blood
In ***** play
Lolling by twos at dusk


Personal:

My cobalt depths
Brew sinewy music
In senseless synchrony
Striving to see

Beyond the atomy
Of ceaseless repetition
Mistakes made
By blind replication

Fear’s eyes guide
My movements to the light
To orient
My inclination

As peacock and hawk
To preen and soar
As elephant and lion
To listen and lust
502 · Feb 2015
New York Evening
Jeffrey Young Feb 2015
A naked face of alabaster
Brazen at day’s end
In rosy blushing hue
Smiled sunward in a knowing gaze
Stretching all her stony height
To greet her solar lover.
Such is the silent *******
Between eternal elements:
She, brought forth from fiery depths
Where birth’s great press
Makes stone awake and shine;
He, furnace father of all that grows,
Draws a blush long suppressed
Across miles of breathless sky
In recognition of a lover’s glance.
Thus the pair perform their evening dance
In a moment’s motionless silence.
New York, 2004
Jeffrey Young Jun 2015
I left because…

I couldn’t take the beauty anymore
In absence of a soul to share it with:
The park more lovely than I’ve ever seen:
A delicate new moon
Against a veil of sultry clouds,
The blue becoming green
On buildings grander than belief –
A eucalyptus pining for the stars,
A bronze conquistador in dusky hue.

In absence of a thought of what to do
I had to leave,
And my heart burned
At that sad fact –
And yes,  I cursed myself for the courage that I lacked,
But I simply couldn’t take it anymore

Bewitched, beguiled and bothered was the theme
Of a play I left suspended entre-act;
The actors took the stage when I had gone
And played on love’s enchanted tangled weave;
But I dragged on home as one without a goal
A dream –
I left
For I couldn’t take it,
No not now,
Nevermore.

When beauty’s incarnation steals the stage;
When nature robs the breath within my heart,
The simple chore of breathing is just that:
A chore –
And I left:
Couldn’t take it anymore

I was bereft, beaten, broken and no longer
In that solitude no longed-for one can feel.
You might think that walk would only make me stronger,
But I cannot take such beauty anymore –
Yet it’s only with such loveliness I’ll heal.
San Diego, 2007

— The End —