"proscenium" poems - Hello Poetry

People wish to be settled. Only as long as they are unsettled is there any hope for them. -- Thoreau My life has been the instrument for a mouth I have never seen, breathing wind which comes from I know not where, arranging and changing my moods, so as to make an opening for his voice. Or hers. Muse, White Goddess mother with invisible milk, androgynous god in whose grip I struggle, turning this way and that, believing that I chart my life, my loves, when in fact it is she, he, who charts them-- all for the sake of some as yet unwritten poem. Twisting in the wind, twisting like a pirate dangling in a cage from a high seawall, the wind whips through my bones making an instrument, my back a xylophone, my *** a triangle chiming, my lips stretched tight as drumskins, I no longer care who is playing me, but fear makes the hairs stand up on the backs of my hands when I think that she may stop. And yet I long for peace as fervently as you do-- the sweet connubial bliss that admits no turbulence, the settled life that defeats poetry, the hearth before which children play-- not poets' children, ragtag, neurotic, demon-ridden, but the apple-cheeked children of the bourgeoisie. My daughter dreams of peace as I do: marriage, proper house, proper husband, nourishing dreamless *** love like a hot toddy, or an apple pie. But the muse has other plans for me and you. Puppet mistress, dangling us on this dark proscenium, pulling our strings, blowing us toward Cornwall, toward Venice, toward Delphi, toward some lurching counterpane, a tent upheld by one throbbing blood-drenched pole-- her pen, her pencil, the monolith we worship, underneath the gleaming moon.

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Erica Jong

To My Brother Poet, Seeking Peace

People wish to be settled. Only as long as they are unsettled is there any hope for them. -- Thoreau My life has been the instrument for a mouth I have never seen, breathing wind which comes from I know not where, arranging and changing my moods, so as to make an opening for his voice. Or hers. Muse, White Goddess mother with invisible milk, androgynous god in whose grip I struggle, turning this way and that, believing that I chart my life, my loves, when in fact it is she, he, who charts them-- all for the sake of some as yet unwritten poem. Twisting in the wind, twisting like a pirate dangling in a cage from a high seawall, the wind whips through my bones making an instrument, my back a xylophone, my *** a triangle chiming, my lips stretched tight as drumskins, I no longer care who is playing me, but fear makes the hairs stand up on the backs of my hands when I think that she may stop. And yet I long for peace as fervently as you do-- the sweet connubial bliss that admits no turbulence, the settled life that defeats poetry, the hearth before which children play-- not poets' children, ragtag, neurotic, demon-ridden, but the apple-cheeked children of the bourgeoisie. My daughter dreams of peace as I do: marriage, proper house, proper husband, nourishing dreamless *** love like a hot toddy, or an apple pie. But the muse has other plans for me and you. Puppet mistress, dangling us on this dark proscenium, pulling our strings, blowing us toward Cornwall, toward Venice, toward Delphi, toward some lurching counterpane, a tent upheld by one throbbing blood-drenched pole-- her pen, her pencil, the monolith we worship, underneath the gleaming moon.