two poems

by Ran Prieur

written around 1991

Creative Commons License

Under dregs
Drags desire
Bags of mire
Bedrock begs
For a shaking
Shore of aching
Lake of fire

Water weighs
I can bear her
Gonna raise her
Gonna tear her
Out of line
From her sweater's
Sweetest twine
Sweat is sweeter
Knit is tighter
So tonight her
Size to knot her
Night unties her
Someone's daughter

In her head
Flesh of leather
Lash of feather
Flash of aether
From the nether
To the heavens
In her bed
By the heater
I undid her

Like to live her
Life in lather
Like it lifts her
Legs aloft on
Surface river
Surface often
Soften surf of
Silent ocean
Land and island
Hand in my hand
Softly shiver

Ever after
Undiscovered
Love the last en-
Cumbered lovers
I unfasten
I go under


. . .


Powerline pines for the turbine's whine.
Spun-dark sparks spin away in waves.
Turbine turns with a love that burns and saves
The burn-licked black and spins it out in lines.

Satellites sigh to the deepest sky.
Seraphim fair with the depth, the height
To earth-blend end in blaze of star-blank light,
To black-kissed bliss of bottomless decay.

Bullettrain brain says its name, its name.
Wheel-bound, wound from below, above.
The form-blind finds the hate that drives the love,
The wheel-spun oneness, same in same in same.