“In a situation of oppression, there are no choices beyond didactic writing: either you are a tool of oppression or an instrument of liberation.” -Keorapetse William Kgositsile
Love Jam by Everett Hoagland
It was that rainy summer night
when Brother B. was playin
at The Pub. He took out his horn,
did his thang,
and poured blue
milk into her ear.
She leaned near
and whispered to me.
It was the vaporous voice
of sax.
We picked up on the jam
and danced home
to do it to death:
a duet to life.
We sang all songs.
We danced all dances
until dawn came
up like song
on Sunday.
Dawn had a rainbow
wrapped around its waist
and the pot
at the end of the rainbow
spilled over with
an also rain of sax
and the baritone love-moan
of a saxophone:
sweet baked apple dappled
cinnamon speckled
nutmeg freckled peach brandy
and amber wine woman
WOW
with your piping hot finger
popping black African pepper pot
not slopping steam coffee flowing
creaming brown sugar growing cane candy
coming cocoa going crazy about
brown sugar teases
GOOD GOD
and pleases
SWEET JESUS
that honey stained soul trained
slow molasses ass
HOTDAM
candied yam and sweet potato pie thighs
and raisin-tipped coconuts raising cane sugar
stone ground brown sugar bowl belly
to the bone to the bone
Miranda, 1 of Uranus’s 27 moons.
Portrait
Strong women
know the taste
of their own hatred
I must always be
building nests
in a windy place
I want the safety of oblique numbers
that do not include me
a beautiful woman
with ugly moments
secret and patient
as the amused and ponderous elephants
catering to Hannibal’s ambition
as they swayed on their own way
home.
-Audre Lorde, from The Black Unicorn
sexy balaclava
I tried to rent the movie
about the protest,
but the store didn’t have it.
In the film, the underdog wins.
That’s how you know
it’s a movie.
They are passing a law here
to keep people from sitting
on the sidewalk. Poverty
is still a crime in America
and I am looking more and more
criminal, by which I mean
broke, by which
I mean beautiful.
Holy. Revolution
is not pretty,
but it can be
beautiful, I’m told.
The protest was dull.
There was no tear gas
and there were no riot cops.
Nothing got broken
and nothing got gassed
and nothing got smashed.
There was no blood
and the world was not saved
so we went to the movies.
In the film,
people kissed
at the end.
The underdog won.
That’s how we knew
it was a movie,
a pretty lie.
Revolution
is not pretty
but I don’t care
about looks.
Set the dumpster
on fire. Break
the windows.
Don’t kiss me
like they do
in the movies.
Kiss me
like they do
on the emergency
broadcast news.
-Daphne Gottlieb
twelve love words and two words of despair after pablo neruda
I want to do with you
what george washington did
to the cherry tree
Daphne Gottlien, from Kissing Dead Girls.
you are what is female
you shall be called Eve.
and what is masculine shall be called God.
And from your name Eve we shall take
the word Evil.
and from God’s, the word Good.
now you understand patriarchal morality.
-Judy Grahn, from Confrontations with the Devil in the Form of Love
So she thoroughly taught him that one cannot take pleasure without giving pleasure, and that every gesture, every caress, every touch, every glance, every last bit of the body has its secret, which brings happiness to the person who knows how to wake it. She taught him that after a celebration of love the lovers should not part without admiring each other, without being conquered or having conquered, so that neither is bleak or glutted or has the bad feeling of being used or misused.
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
(Source: philphys, via intenselyclever)
(Source: waybad, via alisonelizabeth)




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