SPICY LIT NIGHT CAP! Poetry Play: In Particular!

IN PARTICULAR BY: Djuna Barnes

WHAT loin-cloth, what rag of wrong
    Unpriced?
What turn of body, what of lust
Undiced?
So we’ve worshipped you a little
More than Christ.






















Cherries And Strawberries
*Literary Spice That's Oh So Nice*

SPICY LIT NIGHT CAP! Poetry Play: To A Cabaret Dancer!

TO A CABARET DANCER BY: Djuna Barnes

A THOUSAND lights had smitten her
       Into this thing;
Life had taken her and given her
        One place to sing.

She came with laughter wide and calm;
        And splendid grace;
And looked between the lights and wine
        For one fine face.

And found life only passion wide
        ’Twixt mouth and wine.
She ceased to search, and growing wise
        Became less fine.

Yet some wondrous thing within the mess
        Was held in check:— Was missing as she groped and clung
        About his neck.

One master chord we couldn't sound
        For lost the keys,
Yet she hinted of it as she sang
        Between our knees.

We watched her come with subtle fire
        And learned feet,
Stumbling among the lustful drunk
        Yet somehow sweet.

We saw the crimson leave her cheeks
        Flame in her eyes;
For when a woman lives in awful haste
        A woman dies.

The jests that lit our hours by night
        And made them gay,
Soiled a sweet and ignorant soul
        And fouled its play.

Barriers and heart both broken—dust
        Beneath her feet.
You've passed her forty times and sneered
        Out in the street.

A thousand jibes had driven her
        To this at last;
Till the ruined crimson of her lips
        Grew vague and vast.

Until her songless soul admits
        Time comes to kill;
You pay her price and wonder why
        You need her still.

Cherries And Strawberries
*Literary Spice That's Oh So Nice*

SPICY LIT NIGHT CAP! Poetry Play: Seen From The "L" !

SEEN FROM THE "L" BY: Djuna Barnes

So she stands—nude—stretching dully
Two amber combs loll through her hair
A vague molested carpet pitches
Down the dusty length of stair.
She does not see, she does not care
It’s always there.

The frail mosaic on her window
Facing starkly toward the street
Is scribbled there by tipsy sparrows—
Etched there with their rocking feet.
Is fashioned too, by every beat
       Of shirt and sheet.

Sill her clothing is less risky
Than her body in its prime,
They are chain-stitched and so is she
Chain-stitched to her soul for time.
Ravelling grandly into vice
Dropping crooked into rhyme.
Slipping through the stitch of virtue,
       Into crime.

Though her lips are vague as fancy
In her youth—
They bloom vivid and repulsive
As the truth.
Even vases in the making
       Are uncouth.

Cherries And Strawberries
*Literary Spice That's Oh So Nice*