TOOK ME
Jay Braddock
18 poems for 18 years
1. There are sounds
2. Sonnet: the lover's song
3. It was so cold
that day, and we could
4. The difference, I think,
5. The night the
ocean slung me far
6. Oxen of my heart;
7. It rained today,
8. I
guess it just hurts
9. Song of Someone
10. Now
11. I
left the radio on that night
12. The peace I felt that night
13.
Irises
14. Spanish Rice
15. Olive poem
16.
Chang's Wife
17. Love poem for a star
18. Took Me
******************
Dedications
To JC.....this
is for you, everything in my life is for you.
To LB.....thank you, a
thousand times!
To DT.....because you make me smile. :)
To A......baby
sister, I miss you, even so.
******************
There are sounds
like the waves that break on the
rocks
and wash out of the caves
that tell me who my love is.
There are sounds
like the wings of the cranes
returning in the dusky
half-light
that tell me who my love is.
There are days
like
today
when I know.
5/96
Sonnet: The Lover's Song
I stood with you before the grave
and looked upon the mossy
stone
and felt our palms together groan
at sights of sour death it gave;
The fear that takes your gentle head
is born of fears that all
possess;
but if you fear not saying yes,
it's not so awful to be dead;
The grave shall hold you close as me
as August died on golden
crests,
and the peace with which you rest
will not so unfamiliar be;
Then if you fear not love's domain,
Then fear not death; it is the
same.
"Dance like nobody's watching and love like it's
never going to hurt." --unknown
It was so cold that day, and we
could
feel snow on the
air, holding back,
waiting for the freeze of night to
fall, and we
walked
together, not touching, clouds of
breath before our faces,
and I thought of the cold nights when
we lay together, and I could feel
you
breathing on my bare arms. And the
snow still wouldn't fall when
we
reached our door, and I remember you
looked at me, so guilty, so
sorry.
And I remember being surprised
that the tears didn't freeze my
eyes
shut, but not too surprised, because
after all it wasn't quite
cold enough
to snow. And if my face was red that
day, and my eyes
watered, it had
nothing to do with the silent still
air which chilled
our skin
and made me long for the warmth of
your arm on my shoulder,
and your
face so close to mine. That night,
alone, I saw through the
curtains the
snow begin to fall, softly, as it
fell all night, covering
the house
with a lambswool blanket, covering me
as gently as the way
you used to
stroke my hair and breathe on my
shoulder in your sleep.
11/97
The difference, I think,
is that for so
long
we fled at the sight of wild water;
and now, we dig out our little
canoe
and we fly; oh, God!
And the pines on the shore can only gape
and cry, "Look at them go!"
But we don't hear them-- now.
Too busy
flying.
8/97
"Love is so short, forgetting is so
long." --Pablo Neruda
The night the ocean slung me far
could not be dreamed
or done to please my father
But because I loved the
rip of the waves
and the tides turning me into the sound;
Face down, I
saw the mudsuckers and eels
curling out of dark stone mounds
evil little
faces grinning--
A second later, my back to the waves,
I saw the faces
of billions of stars
and feathered strands of clouds scraping the moon.
And in joy, in jaw-dropping joy,
I cried over, into, under the water
Crying Is there any joy
done by men to please me so?
1/98
Oxen of my heart;
Carry, O love, to the fields
Of devotion
My arms
My hands
Selflessly till this soil
For your selfish body,
Which takes and takes
And reaps and rapes;
The blood of my hands
For
our selfish bodies.
Honesty falls
As you kiss my neck,
My back,
Honesty falls
And makes my face look wet;
Strange,
The crops we plant,
Strange
As earth
And dirt and love.
10/97
"There are only three things which make life worth living: to be writing a
tolerably good book, to be in a dinner party of six, and to be traveling south
with someone whom your conscience permits you to love." --Cyril Connolly
It rained today,
and I thought of you.
And how it never
rains in the
smoky country of your eyes.
How the gray clouds never
gather
on the bronze of your face;
And how I am never sad
when I'm
with you.
This evening,
when it rains on the maple
beside the
house,
(and I long to lean into
the warmth of your body)
and I close
the windows
so the candles won't blow out,
I will think of you again.
8/97
I guess it just hurts
Because deep down I
always think
I'm going to be the one,
But there's always someone
Just
a little prettier,
With blue eyes
Or blonder
Or darker;
"She's
just like you, only her thighs don't touch;"
with a small delicate nose
and little hands.
I guess it hurts
Because deep down I always think
I might be the one.
10/97
"Indeed, I am nothing
but a wanderer and a pilgrim on this earth! And what more are you?" --Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
Song of Someone
I paid a high price
for one bowl
of rice
this morning on the pier.
I thought it was worth
every penny
on earth,
but I never thought it so dear!
I clamored and cried
until nearly high tide
for that rice down on the quay.
I bought it with
gold
and barnacles rolled
in rubies from longest days.
Do you sing,
my love,
of the barnacled dove
that flies from ship to shore?
Pray
take my life now
before I can drown
and I know I shall never be poor.
But if lucre's the thing,
and cupidity's king,
where's the harm
in a little deceit?
Do your tears taste of salt
and sour barley malt?
Well, lie then, and say they are sweet.
If the parson is found
so far underground,
they will know that it wasn't by chance!
Is the smell
of death
still on my breath?
Did the guilt wash off my pants?
Come and dance with me
by the light of the sea
and show me the magic
you've found.
Turn trees to silk
and flowers to milk
spilled and
spoiled on the ground.
The pigs have come
and brought the rum,
so you won't feel a thing.
If you don't eat fast,
it will not last
and large will grow the king.
So choke it down
without a sound
eat everything, don't waste!
Would you sell your soul
for a buttered
roll--
or is rice more to your taste?
Now
Oh my God! what year is this?
Did I sleep through Apocalypse?
Why
didn't my alarm clock ring?
Why didn't I hear the angels sing?
Those trumpets must have made a thundering sound
that shook the trees down
to the ground!
They've already passed the communion cup,
and I still
wasn't even up!
I must sleep like a mother to have missed
the summit
of the earth by Heaven kissed!
The horsemen must have made a deafening
roar;
I didn't even wake at the shrills of war.
The battles raged
while I snored on,
and when the dragons came at dawn,
I burrowed down
deeper into my bed
and pulled the covers up over my head.
I raise
the blinds and see the world
still in disorder, and the banners still furled.
I lay back down; will you please come
and wake me for the Millenium?
"You'll know that in these things I see you here again, planting
our gardens behind the house, and us lazily gathering what we've grown. It's
no small thing." --Li Po, "To Send Far Away"
I left the
radio on that night
all night
a little by accident
a little by love.
It was not loud enough to sting
or make any dull impression on our ears
Sometimes I couldn't hear it, then
the music would rise a little, and
leave me
thinking yes, what composer is this
I deny nothing, and yet
to push is to deny,
and so pushing I deny you nothing.
My
my, love,
how strange it was
to feel two pairs of arms on my back
how
beautiful
and that is why
I left the radio on
all night
all night
quietly.
2/98
The peace I felt that night
was wrapped in your arms
and whimpered to never be let go;
now, when I
remember, it seems
too long ago to have existed
in any real scope;
Does
memory last this long? Doesn't love
go stale, or at least wrinkle at the
edges?
The answer, I think,
could not be found in any
brown traces of
dying nature;
nothing natural holds what I felt for you.
"I always knew I'd look back on the times I cried and laugh......but I
never thought I'd look back on the times I laughed and cry." --unknown
Irises
I picked you some flowers today
They are irises
They are my favorite flowers
But since you're so far
away
I guess I'll have to
keep them
5/98
Spanish Rice
Sometimes I see you
walking in the streets, or
sitting at a table
by yourself, and we say hello, and grasp
hands a
moment, and talk if we
aren't too busy. But someday,
we will have so
much time for each other; we
will live on a side street in Sevilla, and
sleep not alone anymore, in the cold of our separate beds.
I do not
know how long those days
will last; maybe you will still lean your face
into my hair when we are eighty and more, or maybe
the week after I
will walk in sun-stained Toledo
with someone else, our hands folded together
like my heart was with yours. But for now,
I'll not dream of the days
when I'll
remember my time with you; instead,
I will think and long for
an apartment in Sevilla, and you
making Spanish rice for us; our
cat sleeping on the radio,
and our shoes lined up together under the
bed.
3/98
"But Charlie, don't forget what happened to the man who
suddenly got everything he always wanted......he lived happily ever after."--from
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Olive poem
O see
here,
beneath the trees,
where so filled with olives
lay our baskets
and
the branches above us
send swallows of light down
to the grass, so cool
and sweet
beneath my hands.
All week we've been in Cordoba
on the hot
streets,
ducking vendors and pickpockets
buying oranges
and sidestepping
stray dogs;
now, as if we had feathers,
we've flown, O Lord! and Spain
is like the sky.
I want to stay here with you,
until fast Cordoba
grinds to a halt; until these
trees wake up and dance;
until we have
eaten all these olives,
and you know I don't like olives.
6/98
Chang's Wife
(a love song for the disillusioned)
(Born connected from the shoulder to the hip, Chang and Eng Bunker were
the first recorded set of conjoined twins. They married sisters, Adelaide and
Sarah. The Bunkers lived well into their sixties, and between them fathered
a total of 22 children. --information from the 1997 Guinness Book of World
Records)
I've stood on rocks
I've been so busy
I've noticed
everyone,
and it's just my luck, to find this love
that can only be so
weirdly consummated.
Alone, dear,
would take some stonger scissors.
Dissection; vivisection; I have cross sectioned
scanned my emotions
for signs of disease;
I've found none, or I've found too
many. My love
has walked in sandals
on the beach, and before me
his footprints are
soft and permanent.
But then that night I dreamed I
suddenly got
what I wanted:
I had you here, only you, and
never mind what we did. (Oh,
the glorious
sunlight of your arms!) Then I woke up
and realized, you
were what you
had always been.....a face in a freak book.
They say they
married sisters;
and to think I'd thought it
would be awkward to be
naked with
a stranger! Always compared to her,
that's who I'd be married
by; the one
I'd be ashamed to be naked beside.
My love, you'd look at
her body, and
forget whose name to call out. You
promise me you wouldn't,
but it would happen
so fast your head would spin; I'd try to
stop it,
and you would think I'd slapped you.
Would you leave, then? And why?
And how? Still attached
are we.
But questioning changes nothing;
still you leave,
and now, now, I am again alone. Alone.....
the glory
and the groaning of the word.
Yes, I am alone,
and dog-like, I am still
searching;
for a pair of jeans that fit, or
a sunny spot; for a belly
rub
or a cheap dinner; for a bird that
doesn't fly when I approach.
For love? I hadn't thought that
far ahead. But maybe if I find
a pair
of jeans that fit, maybe
there will be some love in the pockets.
Hypothermia doesn't wait for caves;
it can swallow you or fill you as it
wants,
wriggling into your sleeves with your careful wrists.
First
comes drowsiness, then the shivering,
then the blue floods your lips and
fingers,
then your churning blood begins to
thicken, and your eyes will
turn upward
as your marrow shakes and packs more tightly to the bone;
loneliness doesn't wait until you are alone.
And that cold cancer of emotions
won't
let you be; five years you will try
but you'll never lose it; it
can't be done.
To Chang and Eng, my blessings. To my
own siamese twin,
I give you
the bluest of hands, and my terrified icy eyes.
My debts
are paid through you, my bastard brother.
Stand up; it's winter, and you
are so cold.
6/98
Love poem for a
star
out of this sky of billions
you
out of a sea of angels
one feather
swift dance from nowhere
laugh
light
swing me
wild, bring me near
close
close your eyes, lean your head
back
don't worry, my hands are
tight
in yours
why would I let you fall
why would I let you fall
my star?
6/98
"I love
true things. Even when they hurt." --John Steinbeck, from Sweet Thursday
Took Me
Out of buds and half-grown eels
From
vases cracked and thrown away
A bullet stain, a broken wing,
I loved
you then; you said the same.
Now these infant days of mine
are full
of sand, and heavy drag.
Too long I've kept my breathing soft,
Too low
I've let my dead heart sag.
If you had loved me just one day
and
bent the stars to fit your sight,
this ghost could find her way behind;
but specter you, forgot that night,
though long I waited in your bowers,
took me, and left me holding flowers.
7/98
all poems copyright Jay Braddock 1998
The Raven and the Writing Desk
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