"virginities" poems
So it is eighteen years,
Helena, since we met!
A season so endears,
Nor you nor I forget
The fresh young faces that once clove
In that most fiery dawn of love.
We wandered to and fro,
Who knew not how to woo,
Those eighteen years ago,
Sweetheart, when I and you
Exchanged high vows in heaven's sight
That scarce survived a summer's night.
What scourge smote from the stars
What madness from the moon?
That night we broke the bars
Was quintessential June,
When you and I beneath the trees
Bartered our bold virginities.
Eighteen -years, months, or hours?
Time is a tyrant's toy!
Eternal are the flowers!
We are but girl and boy
Yet -since love leapt as swift to-night
As it had never left the light!
For fiercer from the South
Still flames your cruel hair,
And Trojan Helen's mouth
Still not so ripe and rare
As Helena's -nor love nor youth
So leaps with lust or thrills with truth.
Helena, still we hold
Flesh firmer, still we mix
Black hair with hair as gold.
Life has but served to fix
Our hearts; love lingers on the tongue,
And who loves once is always young.
The stars are still the same;
The changeful moon endures;
Come without fear or shame,
And draw my mouth to yours!
Youth fails, however flesh be fain;
Manhood and womanhood attain.
Life is a string of pearls,
And you the first I strung.
You left -first flower of girls! -
Life lyric on my tongue,
An indefatigable dance,
An inexhaustible romance!
Blush of love's dawn, bright bud
That bloomed for my delight,
First blossom of my blood,
Burn in that blood to-night!
Helena, Helena, fiercely fresh,
Your flesh flies fervent to my flesh.
What sage can dare impugn
Man's immortality?
Our godhead swims, immune
From death and destiny.
Ignored the bubble in the flow
Of love eighteen short years ago!
Time -I embrace all time
As my arm rings your waist.
Space -you surpass, sublime,
As, taking me, we taste
Omnipotence, sense slaying sense,
Soul slaying soul, omniscience.
4.4k
Pale summer bodies
Hairless, like fish
***** for one another, lost in the blind sea.
They shed their virginities like dead skin,
They call out to me,
Winter is over!
Take off your wool coat.
But my mother told me not to and I’m afraid.
So I watch them come to shore
With childhood running down their legs,
And into the ground like melt-water
Jun 25, 2010
Jun 25, 2010 at 7:41 PM UTC
How would their lives be? Would new houses be like newly weds? Maybe there is a history, like a new house on old ground is just a new regeneration of that house, even if it looks nothing like the old one. What if houses you seen in the “sketchy” neighborhoods are houses just like the owners? Maybe they looked beautiful and their surroundings blinded them and slowly let the paint rot away. What would it feel to be demolished? What if old beautiful houses were so wise? Or would they be false like the botox seen today? Would you remember it in your new form? What if the footprints of every person who ever walked upon the floor stayed there? Imprinted deep into the wood, always to be hidden? Man, what if houses could remember everyone who ever lived there? I wounder if houses loved or hated their families, like pets do with owners? Would the New York apartments have the personalities of the poor families, struggling art students, and free lance actors? Would the houses in L.A. always be singing a song? Would boarded houses just sit, projecting it’s past lives. Living it in order over and over cause it is better than being alone? You wait for those kids down the street to meddle in your backyard; losing their virginities in your dusty attic. What would houses think about right before wrecking ball?
Apr 3, 2013
Apr 3, 2013 at 1:51 AM UTC
Grace moves in these structures
Virginities undersold
Saving familiar breaths
Tissue restraint
I head away and leave my name
A kinder morning than we've shared before
Finding Jesus in a Subaru
Unable to create from ashes
Stained glass
This glass is stained
Oct 4, 2015
Oct 4, 2015 at 12:47 PM UTC
why are virginities this huge thing?
like, have my ***** and along with it you can take all of my innocence and every ounce of purity???
and after that every other man holds no significance?
but why is my virginity such a big thing?
Nov 28, 2013
Nov 28, 2013 at 2:29 AM UTC
My body is a beach house
And by the study room
with the view of the sea,
There is a coffee table.
All mornings have been made here.
It's a tiny piece of furniture that makes a huge part of life.
The match to the candle, and lighter to the veld fire.
There are doodles engraved on it.
They look like they could mean something,
Like how we are told not to recognize color but they turn around and tell us to tick in boxes.
Like how I'm a holy heathen who listens to the likes of Hopsin and Tech N9ne,
Like how I believe slavery is still alive but simply rephrased and concealed.
But then again, they are just doodles, who cares what they mean.
They smell the like the sunrise and bacon
Like broken hearts and virginities .
Like a shower washing off the previous night.
Like the disappointment my parents will feel when they find out who I really am.
A little girl angry at religion,
Angry at them for forcing it on me,
A little girl, angry at life.
Despite the meaninglessness of this old scared coffee table, the devil and the angel in me sit in loving peace sipping this deadly caffeine.
Sep 30, 2017
Sep 30, 2017 at 9:16 AM UTC
What we do in June
as the days stretch into sunsets,
gold stains our ***** skin,
What we do in June
as nights fill the shells that winter shaped,
we become reborn in the lake down the hill,
until we are ready to confess the secrets we will hide all summer,
What we do in June,
after laughter and drinks,
probably a few too many,
is create stories that some day we will lose,
and have to try to recreate in a series of words that
don't come close to the fun we had,
every night,
laughing until we ached,
thanking God for every day we have here,
where dirt gets under our nails and
our hair never had the time to dry in between
the pools we hopped,
What we do in June
is thaw
from a cold winter,
and warm our frozen bones,
and begin once again,
with a life full of things worth writing about,
What we do in June,
love, *** trees, drugs,
our memories will fade,
but softly like the sunset into that one lake
where we all lost our virginities.
What we do in June is ours to keep,
it's ours to make
Jun 8, 2016
Jun 8, 2016 at 10:03 AM UTC
*Buried deep within teenage romance
And wit and strife and philosophical musings and --*
He'd nudged my foot,
His face is a gorgeous grin over these pages.
I glance back to them.
*The love interest rose up now
Handsome and beautiful
Charming, clever, humorous, and deep
(But did he have to be oh so middle class American??
And did she? Or I, first person as it is?) --*
He's started to stroke my toes now,
Gently, just how I like it.
I'm not kidding when I say
"If you touch my feet I'll fall in love with you"
It's almost instantaneous.
*A heroic act of selfless love:
Amsterdam snows confetti
Virginities are lost or traded or gifted
Heroes are demoted --*
He kisses my head now,
My cheek, my temple
Interrupts with a story,
Hilarious I am sure
"What was that? Sorry, I'm distracted"
I giggle
Engrossed in the 'other land'
*Love blooms on the wings of angels
(And all those other cliches)
He is perfect, yet flawed, as they all are.
As we all are.
They click and rebound and discuss
They laugh, they cry:
They try to fill a part of themselves with
The Other --*
I glance up, spying on my own lover
His soft glance on the laptop
Beautiful lips
Gorgeous style
Our own joking, rebounding, enthused exchanges.
Our own supporting, caring, deep meaningfuls.
And I'm not jealous. Not of them. Or anyone. Not one bit.
*Yet tragedy is ever present!
And our handsome and perfect lover
Is tossed into Oblivion:
Or to a Something's Somewhere --*
"He's dying!" I cry to beautiful brown eyes
Framed with long wavy black.
The darkness holds amusement and affection.
*Their perfect and tragic love is ever more so
For its fleeting 'forever'
Its lessened 'infinity':
Beautiful and fragile --*
His arms are around me tight
Why am I affected so?
Too easily invested?
But it's not that.
The emotions are too close.
It had been described so well.
Loss.
So accurate.
And these feelings not completely healed
- But healing. Slowly.
Time heals all wounds,
But maybe some are forgotten, sealed away
This one. This one slowly eases.
Some infinities are larger than others.
And his love surrounds me
As emotions leak from some deep place
Let out to the Universe
Hopefully to never return.
Jan 10, 2015
Jan 10, 2015 at 10:37 PM UTC
It's not fair.
It's not fair that you can take advantage of my vulnerability for so long and expect to fix it all with an "I'm sorry."
As if "sorry" was the immediate cure for all mistakes mankind has ever made.
It's not fair that you get to move on with your life while I sit here wallowing in my sadness for two more years.
You expect me to be "friends" as if friendship could silently erase all of the touching, sweating, and tears you so long ago put me through.
It's not fair that you use the excuse "I was ***** to make up for the anger I now express; for the memories you've left me with of those nights still reside in the darkest parts of my brain.
It's not fair that I get to watch you feel up your new girlfriend in her car parked in front of my house. Because a new girlfriend and two lost virginities is the best way to get over a potential "friend."
Because you've made it clear that's all we ever were.
It't not fair that you ask me to delete the messages we exchanged discussing our past so she doesn't ever find out that you fell in love with a sad girl once.
Sadness is wrong but **** is wrong too, but not for us because we were just "friends."
It's not fair that you're in bed sleeping soundly while I sit here,
pulling smoke from a cigarette that burns the back of my throat, praying to a god I don't believe in,
trying to rid my mind of the one person who swore he wouldn't leave.
My one "friend" who never truly existed to anyone except myself.
I hope one day you can see, too, that this "friendship" was never truly there.
May 18, 2015
May 18, 2015 at 4:35 PM UTC
We've been in several sleeping places.
Hotel rooms, apartelles, condotels,
cheap, dilapidated motels.
Would often wonder
who were the last occupants before we came.
Were they a couple?
A paid ********** and her customer?
(or maybe it's the other pronoun)
Two friends, lonely
and sexually craving for a warm body,
any familiar body?
(at the risk of being strangers the morning after)
Some rooms we've been in reeked
of loneliness and secrecy.
Some had crisp, clean sheets,
all traces of body fluids
laundered and bleached.
Ready to absorb our own.
I look at the walls.
Plastered white.
Crumbling green.
Peeling beige.
How many moans of pleasure
(faked or authentic) tried to seep into them
against the solid cement towards another room?
Were they all moans, those sounds?
What if some were howling,
of force, of "first-time" pains,
of lost virginities?
The creaking of bed posts is the musical score of a three-hour narrative.
could be longer, could be shorter. Only
they can tell. There could be
cuddling (if they are lucky)
or turned backs (if they are ******
Worse,
one could be sobbing.
Soundless, inconspicuous sobs
even the body beside her
cannot hear.
Mar 19, 2017
Mar 19, 2017 at 3:18 AM UTC
maybe i'm missing out on something
but i can't seem to associate myself with these characters
who have fallen in and out of love
i feel like an unwritten persona who's buried underneath
all of these repetitive girls shown on screen
i read books to search for truth and meaning
maybe something a little more realistic
but i find myself speaking such words like
"who am i really?"
i try to search for that one person
to prove if there are things as meant to be's
but it feels as if i'm looking at the wrong directions
or maybe i haven't even started searching to begin with
so here's to everyone who's ever felt lonely
and can't put themselves in their shoes
here's to unrelatable first kisses
and missed opportunities,
secluded activities and muttered words
you and i are worth more than wasted virginities,
frustrating in betweens and cluttered beings
we are made separately for reasons
that make us question our existence
our worth surpasses those of fairy tales
and unrealistic love stories
we are definitions of life itself
we are our own characters
who seek for unconventional journeys
and unscripted settings
maybe we won't fall in love today or tomorrow
or the weeks to come
maybe we will stop to consider that what we have
is not equivalent to heartfelt experiences
maybe we look for something more profound and complex
a cathartic release worth feeling
maybe we are lost at the thought of love
and can't seem to find our way back into it
what i know for sure is that
i am not that girl you will hear from books
i am nothing like them nor the movies
that everyone's gullible enough to believe in
and so are you
we are what's unique and true
and no one can force us to fall in love
no one can tell us when or where
because they will never have the privilege,
to compile and secure mediocre scenes
we will eventually fall into place with our own stories
but i guess for now we're just missing out
n.j.
Dec 28, 2015
Dec 28, 2015 at 10:26 PM UTC
i've been in my bed, which will always be the bed,
as in, the bed,
where we spent the last of our virginities
in the push of hips and hands and two-note gasps,
and i've been thinking.
i've been thinking of
all the firsts i gave you and
all the things you meant to me
and how
you will always be the boy who
sat on a table and sang me my favorite song in front of everyone and
didn't give a **** that his guitar was out of tune.
now that
is a ******* gesture.
i've been thinking that i need to learn to look you in the eye again.
i've been thinking of how
all i've done for the past three weeks is walk away from you.
and how just because you walked away from me first
in the biggest way possible,
that isn't fair.
you deserve more than that
for how hard you've tried.
i've been thinking that i haven't let myself see that very well.
i've been thinking of how
right now
i'm beginning to feel like i could talk to you, and make myself stay,
and look you in the eye, and not hurt,
or like i could never talk to you again, and still be okay.
i've been thinking that that's a start
to something friendship-shaped and okay.
i've been thinking that maybe i'll take a break from you for awhile,
maybe patch up the sore places in my heart, talk to some new people.
learn some things, you know?
i've been thinking that maybe i'll talk to you tonight,
and for the first time i won't be bitter. there will not be underlying pain in my words.
there will be no accusations. no corners to back you into. no hidden hatred. no left-over love.
there will be just you. and just me. and we'll be fine, one of these days. i'll be fine.
i've been thinking that that can start
as soon as i let it.
Mar 23, 2013
Mar 23, 2013 at 4:38 PM UTC
1. Virginities, well
we could have waited longer
guess we were just bored
2. Loving you softly,
Two years seems awful short now
Gave it all away
3. Wine coolers and shots
drunk kisses and some *******
needy rebounding
4. Told each other secrets,
friendship turned to more, quickly,
then back to sadness
May 29, 2013
May 29, 2013 at 12:19 AM UTC
You said I'm a stranger.
That's selective.
We swapped virginities.
I painted your home,
And sat, and sipped
With your RFC Nandad;
Carried he and his Lady to the mausoleum;
Listened to her stories about Eleanor and Henry.
Bubba (a name you gave your Grandmother)
Sold me her car for a dollar.
I couselled your mother back into your heart;
At peril, tried to sneak your nephew back to your sister.
Your great-uncle gave us his Florida condo for a week,
I drank tea from a saucer at your Thanksgiving dinner.
I took the gun out of your father's mouth.
A stranger!
Tell the girls that.
Tell the grandkids Granda is a stranger.
Truth is strange.
Fiction estranges.
Nov 27, 2016
Nov 27, 2016 at 9:49 PM UTC
you are 12 when your sister first explains what happens between older boys and girls
she tells you not to think about it too much yet
you are years from understanding
you are 13 and you are having your first boyfriend over
your mother tells you not to kiss him yet because you are too young
because boys like girls that respect themselves
you sit in the living room next to him but not too close
your thighs are three inches of innocence away from one another
you keep that distance
you are 14 and you have your first high school boyfriend
your mom and dad sit you down for the talk
they remind you to respect yourself
they tell you how important it is to save yourself for someone that really matters
you remember boys like girls that respect themselves
you are 15 and virginities are dropping like flies all around you
boys don't like girls that sleep around
he tells you he loves you and you believe him
so you sleep with one boy
you are 16 and you fall in love hard
your stomach turns at the thought of confessing you did not save yourself for him
its okay
hes on number 10
you are 17 and past buzzed
its the first party of the summer
the boy you have had your eyes on since the beginning of the night
charms you underneath his arm
he leads you to his truck as you giggle
the alcohol and the excitement are tempting
you pull your hand away and head back to the party
save yourself for someone who matters
you are 18 and this is your second boyfriend in two months
your mother warns you to be careful
she says one day your husband will ask you your number
and you don't want to be embarrassed by that
you keep your number low and your head high
you are 19 and hookups out number first dates
you are 19 when you wonder
why you ever respected yourself
when no one else did the same
you are 19 when sleeping around seems less embarrassing
than respecting yourself for a boy who never did the same
Apr 26, 2017
Apr 26, 2017 at 5:08 AM UTC