SPICY LIT NIGHT CAP! POETRY PLAY: "As It Is."

AS IT IS BY: Edith Nesbit

If you and I
Had wings to fly -
Great wings like seagulls' wings -
How would we soar
Above the roar
Of loud unneeded things!

We two would rise
Through changing skies
To blue unclouded space,
And undismayed
And unafraid
Meet the sun face to face.

But wings we know not;
The feathers grow not
To carry us so high;
And low in the gloom
Of a little room
We weep and say good-bye.

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

SPICY LIT NIGHT CAP! POETRY PLAY: "Nature" Is What We See!

"NATURE" IS WHAT WE SEE BY: Emily Dickineson

Nature" is what we see—
The Hill—the Afternoon—
Squirrel—Eclipse—the Bumble bee—
Nay—Nature is Heaven—
Nature is what we hear—
The Bobolink—the Sea—
Thunder—the Cricket—
Nay—Nature is Harmony—
Nature is what we know—
Yet have no art to say—
So impotent Our Wisdom is
To her Simplicity.


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

SPICY LIT NIGHT CAP! POETRY PLAY: Dying Their Wings!

DYING THEIR WINGS BY: Vachel Lindsay

The moon's a cottage with a door.
Some folks can see it plain.
Look, you may catch a glint of light,
A sparkle through the pane,
Showing the place is brighter still
Within, though bright without.
There, at a cosy open fire
Strange babes are grouped about.
The children of the wind and tide--
The urchins of the sky,
Drying their wings from storms and things
So they again can fly.


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

SPICY LIT NIGHT CAP! POETRY PLAY: To A Stranger!

TO A STRANGER BY: Walt Whitman

PASSING stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me, as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me, or a girl with me,
I ate with you, and slept with you—your body has become not yours only, nor left my body
mine
only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass—you take of my beard,
breast,
hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you—I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at night alone,
I am to wait—I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.


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

SPICY LIT NIGHT CAP! POETRY PLAY: Each Ecstastic Instant!

EACH ECSTATIC INSTANT BY: Emily Dickinson

For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.

For each beloved hour
Sharp pittances of years,
Bitter contested farthings
And coffers heaped with tears.


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

SPICY LIT NIGHT CAP! Poetry Play: A Precious-mouldering pleasure!

A PRECIOUS-MOULDERING PLEASURE BY: Emily Dickinson

A precious—mouldering pleasure—'tis—
To meet an Antique Book—
In just the Dress his Century wore—
A privilege—I think—

His venerable Hand to take—
And warming in our own—
A passage back—or two—to make—
To Times when he—was young—

His quaint opinions—to inspect—
His thought to ascertain
On Themes concern our mutual mind—
The Literature of Man—

What interested Scholars—most—
What Competitions ran—
When Plato—was a Certainty—
And Sophocles—a Man—

When Sappho—was a living Girl—
And Beatrice wore
The Gown that Dante—deified—
Facts Centuries before

He traverses—familiar—
As One should come to Town—
And tell you all your Dreams—were true—
He lived—where Dreams were born—

His presence is Enchantment—
You beg him not to go—
Old Volume shake their Vellum Heads
And tantalize—just so—

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

SPICY LIT NIGHT CAP! Poetry Play: "Why Do I Love" You, Sir?

"WHY DO I LOVE" YOU, SIR? BY: Emily Dickinson

"Why do I love" You, Sir?
Because—
The Wind does not require the Grass
To answer—Wherefore when He pass
She cannot keep Her place.

Because He knows—and
Do not You—
And We know not—
Enough for Us
The Wisdom it be so—

The Lightning—never asked an Eye
Wherefore it shut—when He was by—
Because He knows it cannot speak—
And reasons not contained—
—Of Talk—
There be—preferred by Daintier Folk—

The Sunrise—Sire—compelleth Me—
Because He's Sunrise—and I see—
Therefore—Then—
I love Thee—

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: Risk!

RISK BY: Anais Nin

And then came the day,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to blossom.

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

SPICY LIT NIGHT CAP! Poetry Play: Rain Drops On My Tongue!

Rain Drops On My Tongue (Diva's House Of Literay Coffee)

I coo little breaths as the free bird in me spins around in the moment of tragedy. Time goes on and I stand still thinking; will I remain here as me. Not easily broken I feel tight but whimsical as I close my eyes and feel the cloud pass over me as I coo soft little breaths in my soul.

As rain-drops drop on my tongue my mind takes over and burst with helplessness and freedom as the bubbles burst like a fresh drop of lemon on my tongue. Freedom feels good as I feel the rain drops explode in my mouth; as I think of all the tiny bubbles finding its way to my soul. Feelings of living and dying run rampart in me as my tongue collects rain-drops to cleanse the depths of the deepest part of me.

I swirl in the midst of time as tragedies and moments of glory are current, but fading. It hits me like bad news as I try to make it in my mind. As it hurts it touches softly and keeps me present for time to pass by. As I stand still I coo and taste all the good, tragedies, and hopeful moments of the future. It’s time to go in, but not before I get one last rain-drop on my tongue. Momentum is building as I wait for the last drop to fall and burst on my tongue.

Seeing is believing and as I close my eyes, and taste it for the last time, I coo deep but little breaths as the free bird in me spins around in the moment of tragedy. I stand still and taste bursting wet rain-drops on my tongue.

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

SPICY LIT NIGHT CAP! Poetry Play: Touch!

TOUCH BY: Octavio Paz

My hands
Open the curtains of your being
Clothe you in a further nudity
Uncover the bodies of your body
My hands
Invent another body for your body
 

By: Cherries and Strawberries
*Literary Spice That's Oh So Nice*

SPICY LIT NIGHT CAP! Poetry Play: A Thing Of Beauty!

A THING OF BEAUTY BY: John Keats

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleepFull of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old, and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

Nor do we merely feel these essences
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite,
Haunt us till they become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast
That, whether there be shine or gloom o'ercast,
They always must be with us, or we die.
Therefore, 'tis with full happiness that I
Will trace the story of Endymion.
The very music of the name has gone
Into my being, and each pleasant scene
Is growing fresh before me as the green
Of our own valleys: so I will begin
Now while I cannot hear the city's din;
Now while the early budders are just new,
And run in mazes of the youngest hue
About old forests; while the willow trails
Its delicate amber; and the dairy pails
Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year
Grows lush in juicy stalks, I'll smoothly steer
My little boat, for many quiet hours,
With streams that deepen freshly into bowers.
Many and many a verse I hope to write,
Before the daisies, vermeil rimmed and white,
Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees
Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,
I must be near the middle of my story.
O may no wintry season, bare and hoary,
See it half finished: but let Autumn bold,
With universal tinge of sober gold,
Be all about me when I make an end!
And now at once, adventuresome, I send
My herald thought into a wilderness:
There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress
My uncertain path with green, that I may speed
Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed.

By: Cherries and Strawberries
*Literary Spice That's Oh So Nice*

SPICY LIT NIGHT CAP! Poetry Play: Your Feet!

"YOUR FEET" By: Pablo Neruda

When I cannot look at your face
I look at your feet.
Your feet of arched bone,
your hard little feet.
I know that they support you,
and that your sweet weight
rises upon them.
Your waist and your breasts,
the doubled purple
of your nipples,
the sockets of your eyes
that have just flown away,
your wide fruit mouth,
your red tresses,
my little tower.
But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.

By: Cherries and Strawberries
*Literary Spice That's Oh So Nice*

SPICY LIT NIGHT CAP! Poetry Play: Lunar Baedeker!

LUNAR BAEDEKER BY: Mina Loy!

A silver Lucifer
serves
cocaine in cornucopia

To some somnambulists
of adolescent thighs
draped
in satirical draperies

Peris in livery
prepare
Lethe
for posthumous parvenues

Delirious Avenues
lit
with the chandelier souls
of infusoria
from Pharoah's tombstones

lead
to mercurial doomsdays
Odious oasis
in furrowed phosphorous---

the eye-white sky-light
white-light district
of lunar lusts

---Stellectric signs
"Wing shows on Starway"
"Zodiac carrousel

Cyclones
of ecstatic dust
and ashes whirl
crusaders
from hallucinatory citadels
of shattered glass
into evacuate craters

A flock of dreams
browse on Necropolis

From the shores
of oval oceans
in the oxidized Orient

Onyx-eyed Odalisques
and ornithologists
observe
the flight
of Eros obsolete

And "Immortality"
mildews...
in the museums of the moon

"Nocturnal cyclops"
"Crystal concubine"
-------
Pocked with personification
the fossil virgin of the skies
waxes and wanes----

 

By: Cherries and Strawberries
*Literary Spice That's Oh So Nice*

SPICY LIT NIGHT CAP! Poety Play: Ode To A Naked Beauty!

ODE TO A NAKED BEAUTY BY: Pablo Neruda

With chaste heart, and pure
eyes
I celebrate you, my beauty,
restraining my blood
so that the line
surges and follows
your contour,
and you bed yourself in my verse,
as in woodland, or wave-spume:
earth's perfume,
sea's music.

Nakedly beautiful,
whether it is your feet, arching
at a primal touch
of sound or breeze,
or your ears,
tiny spiral shells
from the splendour of America's oceans.
Your breasts also,
of equal fullness, overflowing
with the living light
and, yes,
winged
your eyelids of silken corn
that disclose
or enclose
the deep twin landscapes of your eyes.

Nakedly beautiful,
whether it is your feet, arching
at a primal touch
of sound or breeze,
or your ears,
tiny spiral shells
from the splendour of America's oceans.
Your breasts also,
of equal fullness, overflowing
with the living light
and, yes,
winged
your eyelids of silken corn
that disclose
or enclose
the deep twin landscapes of your eyes.

Your body - from what substances
agate, quartz, ears of wheat,
did it flow, was it gathered,
rising like bread
in the warmth,
and signalling hills
silvered,
valleys of a single petal, sweetnesses
of velvet depth,
until the pure, fine, form of woman
thickened
and rested there?

It is not so much light that falls
over the world
extended by your body
its suffocating snow,
as brightness, pouring itself out of you,
as if you were
burning inside.

Under your skin the moon is alive.

  





By: Cherries and Strawberries
*Literary Spice That's Oh So Nice*