Wednesday, November 26, 2014

JAMES LAUGHLIN ~









EXPERIENCE OF BLOOD




I never knew there was so much blood

in a man until my son killed himself


he did it with a kitchen knife stab-
bing himself all over and cutting his


wrists     then he got into the bathtub
and died there in the water     that's


where we found him     but could he have
changed his mind for a moment     the floor


was a carpet of blood & blood was spat-
tered on the walls the basin was cov-


ered with blood     did he stand there
looking at himself in the mirror still


wondering who he really was and then
went on with it     I had to wipe away the


blood     it took me four hours to do it
but I couldn't have asked anyone else


because after all it was my blood too.





THE CAVE



Leaning over me her hair
makes a cave around her


face a darkness where her
eyes are hardly seen she


tells me she is a cat she
says she hates me because


I make her show her pleas-
ure she makes a cat-hate


sound and then ever so
tenderly hands under my


head raises my mouth into
the dark cave of her love.









The Collected Poems of
James Laughlin
New Directions 2013
edited by Peter Glassgold



THE DAZE OF LOVE



Comes sometimes from

the blaze of light

when an asteroid

passes us too near.



There is also

the softer radiance

when we are separated

and sink into sleep

thinking of each other.




 A LONG NIGHT OF DREAMING



and when I finally awoke
from it we seemed to be


back where we'd left off
some thirty years before


in the compartment of a
wagon-lit somewhere in


Italy loving and arguing
soft words and then hard


words over where we'd go
next to Venice or Rome or


better to split again you
back to him I back to her.




SO MUCH DEPENDS

             For William Carlos Williams


Bill on the way you saw
the way your heart saw


what your your eyes saw not
just the way you saw a


wheelbarrow or the falls
or the blossoms of the


shad tree or Floss in a
rose and 100 other flow-


ers your patients & the
babies and the measure


of your lines in Brueg-
hel's painting of that


dance so many things the
rest of us would never


have seen except for you.




TOUCHING



I want to touch you
in beautiful places


places that no one
else has ever found

places we found to-
gether when we were

in Otherwhere such
beautiful places.


J A M E S   L A U G H L I N






http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/james-laughlin


http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3039/the-art-of-publishing-no-1-part-1-james-laughlin