How to Save Your Own Life (36 page)

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Authors: Erica Jong

BOOK: How to Save Your Own Life
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& so to bed—I lie there until three—
to phone your midnight bed before I sleep.
I dreamily embrace you through the maze
of multicolored continental cables.
 
I'd put the telephone between my thighs
or wrap the cords & wires around my waist
if it would bring you closer
but the time
is wrong, is wrong—
we have to chase the sun
from east to west
before we both come home.
I Sleep With
I sleep with double pillows since you're gone.
Is one of them for you—or
is
it you?
My bed is heaped with books of poetry.
I fall asleep on yellow legal pads.
 
Oh the orgies in stationery stores!
The love of printer's ink & thick new pads!
A poet has to fall in love to write.
Her bed is heaped with papers, or with men.
 
I keep your pillow pressed down with my books.
They leave an indentation like your head.
If I can't have you here, I'll take cold type—
& words: the warmest things there are—
but you.
The Wingless
&
the Winged
the wingless thing man . . .
 
-E. E. CUMMINGS
 
Most men use their cocks
for two things only:
they stand up pissing
& lie down fucking.
The world is full of horizontal men—
or vertical ones—
& really it is all the same disease.
 
But your cock flies
over the earth,
making shadows
on the bodies of women,
making wild bird noises
from its tiny mouth,
making music
& food for thought.
It is not a wingless thing
at all.
 
We could call it Pegasus—
if it didn't make us think
of gas stations.
Or we could call it Icarus—
if it didn't make us think
of falling.
 
But still it dips & dives
through the sky like a glider,
in search of a meadow,
a field,
a sun-dappled swamp
from which (you rightly said)
all life begins.
Her Mouth, His Seed, Her Soul
My mouth seeded
with your sperm,
I talked back
to the interviewer.
 
It may also be this way
with God.
 
Approach with a mouthful
of stones; you will be mute.
But speak semen & seed
& the words will flow.
 
Is heaven
a television show?
Everything points to it:
 
flickering circles of light,
the cloudy dots
that piece the rounded puzzle
of the sky.
 
“What is your soul about?
Describe it for the viewers
who can't read.”
 
My mouth is hot
with your seed.
& so I speak
as freely as
the Delphic oracle
still stoned on laurel leaves.
 
“My soul is about a girl
who finds herself.
My soul is growing up.
My soul is no longer
afraid to fly.”
 
(My soul is mine;
my mouth belongs to you.)
The Cornucopia
Always before
there was the holding back:
 
don't show your love too much
or he will run away.
 
Give the words like little gifts
& never say:
 
I love you
too soon, too soon.
 
Anytime was always
much too soon.
 
But I heaped you with love
& you kept on coming back.
 
& I talked & talked & talked
& you kept on talking back.
 
& I heaped my love on you
& you kept on heaping yours.
 
What did you think we were
holding
by holding back?
 
Why did we think it
safe
to hoard our love?
 
The cornucopia returns
upon itself.
 
The fruits fall out.
We eat them & they grow.
We Learned
the decorum of fire ...
—PABLO NERUDA
 
We learned the decorum of fire,
the flame's curious symmetry,
the blue heat at the center of the thighs,
the flickering red of the hips,
& the tallow gold of the breasts
lit from within
by the lantern in the ribs.
 
You tear yourself out of me
like a branch that longs to be grafted
onto a fruit tree,
peach & pear
crossed with each other,
fig & banana served on one plate,
the leaf & the luminous snail
that clings to it.
 
We learned that the tearing
could be a joining,
that the fire's flickering
could be a kindling,
that the old decorum of love—
to die into the poem,
leaving the lover lonely with her pen—
was all an ancient lie.
 
So we banished the evil eye:
you have to be unhappy to create;
you have to let love die before it writes;
you have to lose the joy to have the poem—
& we re-wrote our lives with fire.
 
See this manuscript covered
with flesh-colored words?
It was written in invisible ink
& held up to our flame.
 
The words darkened on the page
as we sank into each other.
 
We are ink & blood
& all things that make stains.
We turn each other golden as we turn,
browning each other's skins like suns.
 
Hold me up to the light;
you will see poems.
Hold me in the dark;
you will see light.
Doubts before Dreaming
Contending with the demon Doubt
when all of life heaves up into your mouth,
the lies you spat back with your mother's milk,
the men you loved & hated & betrayed,
the husbands who slept on through windy nights,
the rattling at the panes ...
 
Pain, doubt, the ache to love again.
The man you cuddled to your chest
who went away ...
The demon Doubt comes back to haunt your life.
You chose to live, & choosing life meant pain.
Throw out the generalizations!
What you meant—you liar poet—
lyre in your mouth . . .
You meant: I loved him once
& can no more.
You meant: I kept confusing guilt with love.
This is the problem: that we live;
& as we live each body cell must change.
We dream, & as we dream our dreams must change.
We eat, & in devouring life, we change.
We dream we read our lives in some huge book.
Our dreaming eyelids flick the pages past.
The muse writes through our dreams
& dreams our lives.
The book has pages torn & broken type.
& as we dream, some paragraphs are blurred.
& as we read we re-invent the plot.
The eyes are dreaming cells, the eyelids move.
The cells divide as lovers fall apart.
They slide away to sleep, he slips from her.
He sinks into her dream, her dream is filled.
& as she fills with him, her eyes are changed.
He dreams a woman he has never met.
Nothing can stay: the cock grows soft by dawn.
& she seals over like a virgin raped only by dreams.
However much they cling, they drift apart.
Their hands are joined, their dreaming hearts are severed.

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