Yeats

A bit on butchgirlcat's engaging meme blog reminded me of how much I love Yeats, and unlike Leo, I read a lot of poetry. Here's a poem that's a favorite:

He Wishes For The Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and half-light,
I would spread these cloths under your feet;
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

William Butler Yeats, 1899

Poetry is my solace, my joy, my life blood. I started reading Yeats in high school, after a girl I had a mad crush on started reciting him to me (sigh, what a crush!). The girl disappeared from my life but poetry and Yeats remained.

One thing I especially love in this Yeats poem, besides the wonderful music of it, is that beautiful triplet pair: "blue, dim, dark" that is followed by "night, light, half-light". It's a marvelous poem to recite because of the consonant sounds and the pacing. It's also a good way to impress a girl, apparently (worked on me!), you should try it with a poem you love, and a girl you (want to) love.

There are few things as surprising and delightful, in my view, than to hear someone, unbidden, reciting a poem simply for the love of the poem and maybe for the love of you. My dear mother used to recite poems while she hung up the laundry, clothes pins in hands, warm sun, and a gentle wind flapping at the sheets. Perhaps this is where I learned to love the music of words.

To Mend and Heal and Begin Again

And now it is done. And I can breathe. Twas both a sad day to grieve the end of a long relationship and a day of relief; and now starts the healing, the mending, and the beginning of a new life.

I noticed that I have a little bit of fear of the unknown, the risk of the new, the change that I have chosen. I told M that I felt afraid for the first time in a long time, that sense of being alone, apart, on my own. She said, quite gently, "You're not alone, I am here for you." And this is true, and I am grateful that we are there for each other, despite the geographic distance. She is my anchor.

And it is also true that I just changed my first overhead light bulb in decades by myself. I am both embarrassed and proud of myself - I had to carry the six foot ladder up from the basement and unscrew the glass globe. I had a small audience of the dogs and the cat who all seemed quite intrigued by my behavior. I am ready to be a self-sufficient femme, a strong woman who can take care of a house by myself, change furnace filters (yes, it's still cold here, it flurried last night), drain hot water heaters, mow the lawn, use the gas-powered weed whacker, and run the snow blower when I need to.

A femme friend (and previously straight woman) told me to "find a man"; I laughed as she explained that she meant "find a man to hire" to do all the things your butch can't do, or haven't a butch to do. Since this divorce has hit my finances pretty hard, I plan to learn to do all the things I can't afford to hire a man to do, and do my best. I look forward to M coming to visit me in early May and forever, and teaching me a butch thing or two about how to be handy in the home (she is very handy in her own home). This might be a really great thing for me, to learn to be more confident about fixing things and navigating through the running of the physical aspects of homeownership. I want to be more of an equal contributor in the future to the owning and running of a house. I can be a macho girl!

Any advice on good websites or how-to books or things I should be aware of are all gratefully accepted and appreciated.

Wish me luck!

Only Here

It starts to rain
as the heat from the water and my body
meets the biting cold spring air

A small disturbance in the natural order
it is raining, but only here
just in these four inches above this five foot square
as the water swirls and bubbles
at 102 degrees

Just one discrete micro-disturbance
A single micro-storm
in this quiet New England atmosphere
as I sit alone and watch these hills
turn from blue to purple to grey
and then vanish,
swallowed whole
into the stark moonless dark

RunningawaywiththeSpoon (c)2009

All rights reserved. This poem may not be reproduced or copied in whole or in part without the expressed written permission of the author.

Duet

I face her, and slide my hand up the inside of her thigh. She is hard, her cock pushing against the skin of her jeans, as I trace her desire with my fingers. She is pleased knowing that I cannot resist her relentless need or my own overwhelming desire for her.

We both know where this will end, the two of us, exhausted and thrilled in this continuous discovery and surprise at our compatibility, this shared happy expression of the growing depths of our emotional commitment and love for each other.

I have oft heard that sex is a form of communication, and for us it is both the bell and the echo, not just the bell or just the echo. When I stroke her cock with my lips, feeling her palm pressing softly on my head, knowing how much she loves to see her cock slip glistening from my mouth before she groans and pushes back in, again and again, it is just the start of this wordless hymn, this poem that I sing for her.

She answers my song as she pulls out and lifts my mouth to hers, and we kiss, mouths wide open trying to take as much of each other in as is physically possible. Her hands squeezing my tits, my erect nipples, my ass, grazing every inch of my skin, as she presses me back onto the bed. She dips her fingers into my pussy, as I moan, and she feels me slick and wet for her.

She watches my face and my body as I lift my hips to urge her in, groaning, begging. I like to feel the weight of her body on mine, to look up and see her smile at me. Her smile is an intense mix of cocky and hungry and loving, and tells me that in a few moments, she will enter me, getting closer to me than I allow anyone else, joined to me physically, as we are joined emotionally.

When she fucks me, it's her song, her music, her rhythm and pacing that we dance to. She leads, and I follow. And it is effortless. Sometimes she fucks me hard and fast, her rigid thick cock pounding and pounding my dripping cunt, and sometimes she fucks me slowly and gently, my pussy aching for her, trying desperately to keep her in deep, I never know which it will be, but I am always transported, freed from the bounds of gravity, to go willingly wherever her body takes me. Sometimes she just teases me with her fingers and her cock and her mouth, until I am on the excruciating brink of orgasm, wet and slick, suffering in the agony of pleasure, until she releases me and allows me come for her, again and again and again.

This is our duet, our paean of love and adoration, a poem of joyous exultation.

The Salamander's Path

Tonight is the first night of Spring that is rainy and over 40 degrees, and thus the night when salamanders wake from their winter burrows driven by lust to travel great distances to bright vernal pools to fuck.

Thursday night the spring peepers and the wood frogs were out, the cacophony of spring in sudden shouting orgy in the vernal pools in the hills. Joined tonight by the salamanders. All driven by lust, by the need to fuck, to mate, and more importantly, the cause to live.

I know what it feels like. To have lived in hibernation, in stasis, in my own deep burrow, going nowhere for 12 years. And then, suddenly, awake, driven by inexplicable desire to do what seems natural, what seems essential, in order to live. To travel far through the mud and the muck, across uncertain terrain, under the threat of predation, to find that clear spring pool, to find that other creature, also driven inexplicably to that same place, to be the end to each others journey, and mate. To be gloriously alive, together.

M is, however, unhappy with me, tonight. She hates G, who inventively and sneakily tries to find ways to engage me, even negative ways, her own form of continuous low-level torture. I told M that G likes to fight like M likes to fuck. Each has her own language of intimacy. Unfortunately for one, I don't like to fight, and fortunately for the other, I do love to fuck.

But M is frustrated with me because I don't stand up to G in ways that M would. M literally threw her last gf out, changed the locks, and got a court order of protection. But I am not M. Perhaps I am just weaker, perhaps I am full of mistakes, perhaps if righteousness required that I simply and unceremoniously tossed G and her things out I would opt for half-righteousness (a cruel joke in my mind between being assed and half-assed, perhaps) - even as I angrily and desperately want G to stop trying to engage me and wish she would let it go. Perhaps I am not hard enough or strong enough to be abrupt, though G would aver that I have been as bitterly abrupt as ending a 12 year relationship is wont to be. I am clearly a disappointment to G, as I see I am now clearly a disappointment to M as well, in this regard. And now I feel as if I have failed twice.

This is hard, this working out how to create a new relationship that is not tainted by the poison of the last. And perhaps this is that great caveat about not starting a new relationship until the last is dead and gone. But like all things in my life, I apparently need to do things in my own way, driven at times by an inexplicable urging, the desire to follow a path that may not be the shortest or the surest, but is my path. I hope M does not give up on me, but I understand if she does. The world, like this night, is filled with hundreds of thousand of salamanders who have found their way to bright vernal pools, and with hundreds of thousands, lost and broken, who have not.

I've Been Tagged

Queer Rose tagged me. This is the first time I have actually been tagged in any form since I was 10, I believe. Thank you for the nudge to write another post, QR, very happy to do so - I appreciate the tag! (If you roll over the title of this post, it is a link to QR's original post.)

Five names you go by Baby Girl, Holly (not my name but what the painters, for some odd reason, think is my name, and to which I have been answering), Ma'am (since I've gotten older, I have gotten used to this surprising name), "...Current Resident at this Address", and P.

Three things you are wearing right now Wish I knew I was going to be tagged, I would have dressed better, oh well: M's longsleeve tshirt, light grey sweat pants, and crocs. I wish they had had that black lace garter and stockings in a smaller size at the store today, that would have been so much nicer (and nonchalantly sexy) to have written that that was what I was wearing now.

Three things you want very badly at the moment To be in my own drama-less home with M, for my kittie to be well, and to find a great writing job

Two people who will probably fill this out: Fimg, Jess (both very responsible types)

Two things you did last night Had a long and serious phone conversation with M (for which I love her even more), organized my closet

Two things you ate today lovely couscous, a pear

Two people you last talked to on the phone M, and an unintelligible man who was selling something equally unintelligible, I hope I didn't buy anything, hard to tell, though.

Two things you are doing tomorrow Practicing with my beloved dog on the correct heel position (we walk and train for 2 miles) so we can pretend that she is less unruly, work on editing my poetry

Two longest car rides A trip from Ohio to Colorado in college with a straight woman I barely knew and never saw again...we had a great time and stopped to eat ice cream in lots of small towns in each of the many states, we slept in the car in cornfields, pulled into a small diner in Nebraska with a huge sign that read "EAT BEEF" whilst we were both vegetarians - we had grilled cheese sandwiches and a bowl each of more ice cream; Northern California to Vancouver BC with my parents during the summer when I was 6. The ride was a blur, but I do remember I met a steam radiator for the first time in my life in Vancouver. I thought it was an oddly cold and bumpily uncomfortable cast iron window seat.

Two of your favourite beverages Caffeine-filled diet soda pop (my terrible vice) and delicious and refreshing cold cold spring water from my own spring.

Should I be tagging someone else?