Dirty Me: Selected Love Poems and Other Lyrics

Lyric poetry, and especially love lyric poetry, is the perfect expression of the true self of the individual. It is, as T. S. Eliot observed "the language people would speak if they could speak poetry." Or expressed slightly differently, it is what the Mad Hatter from "Alice in Wonderland" means when he exhorts Alice to "say what you mean and mean what you say." It is the self freed from all psychological, social, religious, educational, political, economic, and parental taboos. It is the expression of the "self" as "other" and "other" as the "self" in which all dualities are revealed as illusions. It is expression of the love of "self" and the love of "other, the "other’s" love and the "self’s" love as the same love. It is the unconscious made conscious, the dream of the dreamer experienced as wish fulfillment and the dissolution of all constraints upon the mind. It is the being in the "eternal now" in the "eternal moment." It is the revelation that God is made in man’s image and not man made in God’s image. It is the unfettered expression of pure desire which dispels the need to embrace the delusion of there being either a day of judgment or a heaven or a hell or a life everlasting. It is the ultimate recognition of the power of the mind to make a hell of heaven or a heaven of hell in the only world that is real, the world that exists in time that has a definite beginning and a definite end for each human being, for each leaf, for each grain of sand. It is the affirmation of the inscutible laws of the nature of the physical universe and the confirmation of the non-existence of any metaphysical world by whatsoever name it may be given. Lyric poetry is the spoken word of mankind’s truths that set the whole of the human race free. It is the wish of the nighttime dreamer fulfilled in the fullness of the light of day.

Underware

"True men breathe from their heels."
— Chuang Tzu

His face dropped
out of my suitcase
as I unpacked my underwear.
Somehow, he had slipped
passed my drawers
while I placed them
in between my t-shirts
and my argyle socks.
I looked at my feet
that had carried him with me,
surprised. How comfortably
his soul fits into my shoes!

Revelation and Definition

I used to think my life was his own
for fun and amusement—
a toy, a teddy bear,
not just a tattered coat upon a stick
pitched near the house of excrement.

But now I know differently;
I know that it is borrowed—
not lent—
for revelation and definition.

Queerdom

Jews have the Torah and the Mogen David;
Christians, the Cross and the Crown of Thorns;
Muslims, the Koran, the Jihad, and the Crescent Moon;
Hindus, Karma and the Lotus Blossom;
Buddhists, Nirvana and the Bodhi Tree;
Faggots, Cock, Ass, Chests, and Balls.

Fucked

Open faces
Close spaces
Moaning flutters
Rugged rutters [*]

Together

I was sitting
caressing my face
with his fingers,
staring at my desires
in his eyes,
breathing my smells of paradise
through his nostrils,
licking the honey from my lips
with his tongue, Listening to my heartbeat
in his chest—
when he telephoned.

Dirty Me
(For Emily Dickinson)

Often while reaching for the stars,
I fall into the mud
and worry what they will say
who never get dirty.

But climbing up to heaven
along that dusty, rocky road—
however dirty I may be—
is certainly more Godly than God
than not really being me.

Loneliness

It passes through the window
not to destroy time,
but to number its sensations.

That is why loneliness is
the poet’s faithful companion.
That is how he makes of it
a heaven of hell.

Edward C. Paolella can be reached at epaolella@nyc.rr.com.