A Poetry Break

[farawayeyes4]

Hey,

I thought I'd take the moment to share a couple poems. I've been adding some poetry to my daily reading diet. This is a poem from another professor of mine, Susan McLean, out of her book Holding Patterns. The title of the poems are "The Demon Lovers," and "Indians."

The Demon Lovers

Even as a teen, I should have known
those long-haired boys who sang so well of sin
were mine to see and hear, but not to own.

Every howl of longing, every moan
that made the small hairs prickle on my skin
thrilled me with danger. But I should have known

that nothing crushes like a rolling stone.
The music's over just when you begin
to feel the beat as if it were your own

ecstatic pulse. Together but alone,
taken outside myself and taken in,
I drowned in moonlight. But I should have known

the wild and hungry face that I was shown:
the stranger in the mirror-pool, my twin.
Those boys were lost in mazes of their own---

trapped in a strutting pose they've long outgrown,
imploding from the emptiness within,
or dead by twenty-eight. I should have known
that demon loves have demons of their own.


Indians

When I was five, I wanted to be an Indian
when I grew up. I didn't covet the feathers
and beads, the tepees, pemmican, or braids.
I wanted to be silent and resourceful,
to make with my own hands everything I needed,
to speak in a language cowboys never bothered
to learn, to be misunderstood when I tried to use
their broken words, to talk with my hands and eyes,
to be unimpressed with the Great White Father,
to own only what I could carry with me,
to leave no visible makr after I passed through.
I am a woman. It has all come true.