Two is not as bad as one...

I am tired. Tired from really good, productive hard work. My eyes are about close and my fingers can hardly lift from individual keyyysssssssssssss. Sseeeeeeeeeeeeeee???????

Anyway. I feel good. For the first time, perhaps in a long time, I feel good about myself. I woke up early. I had a list of things to do, and I finished every single one of them. And I have plans for tomorrow that go beyond the TV guide.

For a lazy bastard, it does me proud.

And if this particular post is disjointed, fuck you. I'm brain dead.

*****

Here are two poems, not mine:

1.

The Unsaid
Stephen Dunn

One night they both needed different things
of a similar kind; she, solace; he, to be consoled.
So after a wine-deepened dinner
when they arrived at their house seperately
in the same car, each already had been failing
the other with what seemed
an unbearable delay of what felt due.
What solace meant to her was being understood
so well you'd give it to her before she asked.
To him, consolation was a network
of agreements: say what you will
as long as you acknowledge what I mean.
In the bedroom they undressed and dressed
and got into bed. The silence was what fills
a tunnel after a locomotive passes through.
Days later the one most needy finally spoke.
"What's on TV tonight?" he said this time,
and she answered, and they were okay again.
Each, forever, would remember the failure
to give solace, the failure to be consoled.
And many, many future nights
would find them turning to their respective sides
of the bed, terribly awake and twisting up
the covers, or, just as likely, moving closer
and sleeping forgetfully the night long.


2.

The Sheets
Erica Jong

We used to meet
on this corner
in the same wind.
It fought us up the hill
to your house,
blew us in the door.
The elevator rose
on gusts of stale air
fed on ancient dinners.
Your room smelled
of roach spray and roses.

In those days
we went to bed with Marvell.
The wind ruffled the sheets and pages,
spoke to us through walls.
For hours I used to lie
with my ear to your bare chest,
listening for the sea.

Now the wind is tearing
the building down.
The sheets are rising.

They billow through the air like sails.

White with your semen,
holding invisible prints
of the people we were,
the people we might have been,
they sail across the country
disguised as clouds.

Momentarily they snag
on the Rocky Mountains,
then rise
shredded into streamers.

Now they are bannering westward
over California
where your existence
is rumored.

*****

Why? Because. I like them. I'm tired. I wrote a poem, but couldn't re-write two. I read one poem, pored over two. I was doing one thing whole day: writing. Writing poetry, and writing letters. I helped my sister with science today: Chemistry and Math. It may not make sense but it's clear everything comes in pairs today. So there you go, two poems.