DIVERSITY POET

Well, i got many poems which tells about a diversity and disorder, maybe this's right for you and i hope people would accept diversity as a usual people in the world. "don't judge us as like a animal : we have a reason to life and to be different" The Hug
by Thom Gunn
It was your birthday, we had drunk and dined     Half of the night with our old friend         Who'd showed us in the end     To a bed I reached in one drunk stride.         Already I lay snug, And drowsy with the wine dozed on one side. I dozed, I slept. My sleep broke on a hug,         Suddenly, from behind, In which the full lengths of our bodies pressed:         Your instep to my heel,     My shoulder-blades against your chest.     It was not sex, but I could feel     The whole strength of your body set,            Or braced, to mine,         And locking me to you     As if we were still twenty-two     When our grand passion had not yet         Become familial.     My quick sleep had deleted all     Of intervening time and place.         I only knew The stay of your secure firm dry embrace.

Remember, Body ...
by C. P. Cavafy translated by Aliki Barnstone
Body, remember not only how much you were loved, not only the beds where you lay, but also those desires for you, shining clearly in eyes and trembling in a voice—and some chance obstacle thwarted them. Now when everything is the past, it almost looks as if you gave yourself to those desires as well—how they shone— remember—in the eyes that looked at you, how they trembled for you in the voice—remember, body.

Such Is the Sickness of Many a Good Thing
by Robert Duncan
Was he then Adam of the Burning Way? hid away in the heat like wrath         conceald in Love’s face, or the seed, Eris in Eros,         key and lock of what I was?        I could not speak         the releasing word.        For into a dark         matter he came and askt me to say what         I could not say.        "I .." All the flame in me stopt         against my tongue. My heart was a stone, a dumb         unmanageable thing in me, a darkness that stood athwart         his need for the enlightening, the         "I love you" that has only this one quick in time,         this one start when its moment is true. Such is the sickness of many a good thing that now into my life from long ago this refusing to say I love you has bound the weeping, the yielding, the         yearning to be taken again, into a knot, a waiting, a string so taut it taunts the song, it resists the touch. It grows dark to draw down the lover’s hand from its lightness to what’s         underground.
Love Incarnate
by Frank Bidart
(Dante, Vita Nuova) To all those driven berserk or humanized by love this is offered, for I need help deciphering my dream. When we love our lord is LOVE. When I recall that at the fourth hour of the night, watched by shining stars, LOVE at last became incarnate, the memory is horror. In his hands smiling LOVE held my burning heart, and in his arms, the body whose greeting pierces my soul, now wrapped in bloodred, sleeping. He made him wake. He ordered him to eat my heart. He ate my burning heart. He ate it submissively, as if afraid, as LOVE wept.

Untitled [You did say, need me less and I'll want you more]
by Marilyn Hacker
You did say, need me less and I'll want you more. I'm still shellshocked at needing anyone, used to being used to it on my own. It won't be me out on the tiles till four- thirty, while you're in bed, willing the door open with your need. You wanted her then, more. Because you need to, I woke alone in what's not yet our room, strewn, though, with your guitar, shoes, notebook, socks, trousers enjambed with mine. Half the world was sleeping it off in every other bed under my roof. I wish I had a roof over my bed to pull down on my head when I feel damned by wanting you so much it looks like need.

Lullaby
by W. H. Auden
Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm; Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral: But in my arms till break of day Let the living creature lie, Mortal, guilty, but to me The entirely beautiful. Soul and body have no bounds: To lovers as they lie upon Her tolerant enchanted slope In their ordinary swoon, Grave the vision Venus sends Of supernatural sympathy, Universal love and hope; While an abstract insight wakes Among the glaciers and the rocks The hermit's carnal ecstasy. Certainty, fidelity On the stroke of midnight pass Like vibrations of a bell, And fashionable madmen raise Their pedantic boring cry: Every farthing of the cost, All the dreaded cards foretell, Shall be paid, but from this night Not a whisper, not a thought, Not a kiss nor look be lost. Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find the mortal world enough; Noons of dryness find you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love.

Little Lion Face
by May Swenson
Little lion face I stopped to pick among the mass of thick succulent blooms, the twice streaked flanges of your silk sunwheel relaxed in wide dilation, I brought inside, placed in a vase.  Milk of your shaggy stem sticky on my fingers, and your barbs hooked to my hand, sudden stings from them were sweet.  Now I'm bold to touch your swollen neck, put careful lips to slick petals, snuff up gold pollen in your navel cup. Still fresh before night I leave you, dawn's appetite to renew our glide and suck. An hour ahead of sun I come to find you.  You're twisted shut as a burr, neck drooped unconscious, an inert, limp bundle, a furled cocoon, your sun-streaked aureole eclipsed and dun. Strange feral flower asleep with flame-ruff wilted, all magic halted, a drink I pour, steep in the glass for your undulant stem to suck. Oh, lift your young neck, open and expand to your lover, hot light. Gold corona, widen to sky. I hold you lion in my eye sunup until night.

He would not stay for me, and who can wonder
by A. E. Housman
He would not stay for me, and who can wonder?   He would not stay for me to stand and gaze. I shook his hand, and tore my heart in sunder,   And went with half my life about my ways.
Novel
by Arthur Rimbaud translated by Wyatt Mason
I. No one's serious at seventeen. --On beautiful nights when beer and lemonade And loud, blinding cafés are the last thing you need --You stroll beneath green lindens on the promenade. Lindens smell fine on fine June nights! Sometimes the air is so sweet that you close your eyes; The wind brings sounds--the town is near-- And carries scents of vineyards and beer. . . II. --Over there, framed by a branch You can see a little patch of dark blue Stung by a sinister star that fades With faint quiverings, so small and white. . . June nights! Seventeen!--Drink it in. Sap is champagne, it goes to your head. . . The mind wanders, you feel a kiss On your lips, quivering like a living thing. . . III. The wild heart Crusoes through a thousand novels --And when a young girl walks alluringly Through a streetlamp's pale light, beneath the ominous shadow Of her father's starched collar. . . Because as she passes by, boot heels tapping, She turns on a dime, eyes wide, Finding you too sweet to resist. . . --And cavatinas die on your lips. IV. You're in love. Off the market till August. You're in love.--Your sonnets make Her laugh. Your friends are gone, you're bad news. --Then, one night, your beloved, writes. . .! That night. . .you return to the blinding cafés; You order beer or lemonade. . . --No one's serious at seventeen When lindens line the promenade. 29 September 1870

The Distant Moon
by Rafael Campo
I Admitted to the hospital again. The second bout of pneumocystis back In January almost killed him; then, He'd sworn to us he'd die at home.  He baked Us cookies, which the student wouldn't eat, Before he left--the kitchen on 5A Is small, but serviceable and neat. He told me stories: Richard Gere was gay And sleeping with a friend if his, and AIDS Was an elaborate conspiracy Effected by the government.  He stayed Four months. He lost his sight to CMV.          II One day, I drew his blood, and while I did He laughed, and said I was his girlfriend now, His blood-brother.  "Vampire-slut," he cried, "You'll make me live forever!" Wrinkled brows Were all I managed in reply.  I know I'm drowning in his blood, his purple blood. I filled my seven tubes; the warmth was slow To leave them, pressed inside my palm.  I'm sad Because he doesn't see my face.  Because I can't identify with him.  I hate The fact that he's my age, and that across My skin he's there, my blood-brother, my mate.          III He said I was too nice, and after all If Jodie Foster was a lesbian, Then doctors could be queer.  Residual Guilts tingled down my spine.  "OK, I'm done," I said as I withdrew the needle from His back, and pressed.  The CSF was clear; I never answered him.  That spot was framed In sterile, paper drapes.  He was so near Death, telling him seemed pointless.  Then, he died. Unrecognizable to anyone But me, he left my needles deep inside His joking heart.  An autopsy was done.          IV I'd read to him at night. His horoscope, The New York Times, The Advocate; Some lines by Richard Howard gave us hope. A quiet hospital is infinite, The polished, ice-white floors, the darkened halls That lead to almost anywhere, to death Or ghostly, lighted Coke machines.  I call To him one night, at home, asleep.  His breath, I dreamed, had filled my lungs--his lips, my lips Had touched.  I felt as though I'd touched a shrine. Not disrespectfully, but in some lapse Of concentration.  In a mirror shines The distant moon.
The Embrace
by Mark Doty
You weren't well or really ill yet either; just a little tired, your handsomeness tinged by grief or anticipation, which brought to your face a thoughtful, deepening grace. I didn't for a moment doubt you were dead. I knew that to be true still, even in the dream. You'd been out--at work maybe?-- having a good day, almost energetic. We seemed to be moving from some old house where we'd lived, boxes everywhere, things in disarray: that was the story of my dream, but even asleep I was shocked out of the narrative by your face, the physical fact of your face: inches from mine, smooth-shaven, loving, alert. Why so difficult, remembering the actual look of you? Without a photograph, without strain? So when I saw your unguarded, reliable face, your unmistakable gaze opening all the warmth and clarity of you--warm brown tea--we held each other for the time the dream allowed. Bless you. You came back, so I could see you once more, plainly, so I could rest against you without thinking this happiness lessened anything, without thinking you were alive again.

It's a Queer Time
from
 OVER THE BRAZIER
Robert Graves

It's hard to know if you're alive or dead
When steel and fire go roaring through your head.

One moment you'll be crouching at your gun
Traversing, mowing heaps down half in fun :
The next, you choke and clutch at your right breast
No time to think leave all and off you go . . .
To Treasure Island where the Spice winds blow,
To lovely groves of mango, quince and lime
Breathe no good-bye, but ho, for the Rest West!
It's a queer time.

You're charging madly at them yeling 'Fag!'
When somehow something gives and your feet drag.
You fall and strike your head; yet feel no pain
And find . . . You're digging tunnels through the hay
In the Big Barn, 'cause it's a rainy day.
O springy hay, and lovely beams to climb!
You're back in the old sailor suit again.
It's a queer time.

Or you'll be dozing safe in your dug-out
A great roar the trench shakes and falls about
You're struggling, gasping, struggling, then . . . hullo!
Elsie comes tripping gaily down the trench,
Hanky to nose -- theat lyddite makes a stench
Getting her pinafore all over grime.
Funny! because she died ten years ago!
It's a queer time.

The trouble is, things happen much too quick;
Up jump the Boshes, rifles thump and click,
You stagger, and the whole scene fades away:
Even good Christians don't like passing straight
From Tipperary or their Hymn of Hate
To Alleluiah-chanting, and the chime
Of golden harps . . . and . . . I'm not well today . . .
It's a queer time.

You Cannot Kill Me

I am not only I

but a multiplicity of souls

I have always been here

i will always be back

I was your uncle, your 5th grade teracher, your cousin

I will be your grandson, your niece, the boy next door

you can erase my words

and a new Sappho, Eumi, Whitman, Stein, Lorde, Lorca

will emerge and write what I wrote

even more beautifully

you can shatter my statues

and a new Michelangelo

with a sharper chisel and a stronger arm

will make grander statues

you can silence my singing

and a new Bessie Smith

will sound a bluer note

I have always been here

indivisible, essential

to the human spirit

firebird I am

feathered serpent

in every opposition

I am the tender collapse

that always happens

before a song

rises up

to heaven

you see

I cannot die

you cannot

kill me

Franklin Abbott

c 2009