School: Day 1
Sep. 22nd, 2003 12:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timepiececlockWell, I'm in the De Anza media lab, waiting an hour before my next class. I have a break from 11:30 to 1:30, and spent the first one watching the drummers from San Jose Taiko perform out in the quad. It was nice, very entertaining. Hopefully I'll get the Poli Sci class I want an my break will be down to two. So far, they're no taking add-ins.
Getting up to go to an 8:30 class sucks, I'd just like to say. However, that morning poetry class will be fun. Our first poem was a sex poem, which makes me think I'm going to like this teacher already-- she's not going to give us all PG-rated stuff like they do in high school. Some middle-aged guy complained and said "I don't know if this material is appropriate to this class; some of these students seem kinda young." I had to hide my snicker. This poem was fairly tame to what I've read in books and fanfiction, and I'm a freakin' virgin and I understood it.
Anyway, here's the poem. It's short and I liked it, so I'll share it with you. I don't know that I agree with the all themes presented in the poem, but the descriptive language is strong and lovely, especially near the end.
Sex Without Love
Sharon Olds
How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.
Getting up to go to an 8:30 class sucks, I'd just like to say. However, that morning poetry class will be fun. Our first poem was a sex poem, which makes me think I'm going to like this teacher already-- she's not going to give us all PG-rated stuff like they do in high school. Some middle-aged guy complained and said "I don't know if this material is appropriate to this class; some of these students seem kinda young." I had to hide my snicker. This poem was fairly tame to what I've read in books and fanfiction, and I'm a freakin' virgin and I understood it.
Anyway, here's the poem. It's short and I liked it, so I'll share it with you. I don't know that I agree with the all themes presented in the poem, but the descriptive language is strong and lovely, especially near the end.
Sex Without Love
Sharon Olds
How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
oh, i love sharon olds!
Date: 2003-09-22 06:51 pm (UTC)it's one of my favorite love poems - Blood, Tin and Straw is one of my favorite poetry collections...ever.
Re: oh, i love sharon olds!
Date: 2003-09-22 09:56 pm (UTC)the promise...
Date: 2003-09-22 10:03 pm (UTC)The Promise
With the second drink, at the restaurant,
holding hands on the bare table,
we are at it again, renewing our promise
to kill each other. You are drinking gin,
night-blue juniper berry
dissolving in your body, I am drinking Fume,
chewing its fragrant dirt and smoke, we are
taking on earth, we are part soil already,
and wherever we are, we are also in our
bed, fitted, naked, closely
along each other, half passed out,
after love, drifting back
and forth across the border of consciousness,
our bodies buoyant, clasped. Your hand
tightens on the table. You're a little afraid
I'll chicken out. What you do not want
is to lie in a hospital bed for a year
after a stroke, without being able
to think or die, you do not want
to be tied to a chair like your prim grandmother,
cursing. The room is dim around us,
ivory globes, pink curtains
bound at the waist----and outside,
a weightless, luminous, lifted-up
summer twilight. I tell you you do not
know me if you think I will not
kill you. Think how we have floated together
eye to eye, nipple to nipple,
sex to sex, the halves of a creature
drifting up to the lip of matter
and over it--you know me from the bright, blood-
flecked delivery room, if a lion
had you in its jaws I would attack it, if the ropes
binding your soul are your own wrists, I will cut them.
Re: the promise...
Date: 2003-09-22 10:12 pm (UTC)Stupid LJ ate my reply!
Date: 2003-09-22 10:12 pm (UTC)Re: the promise...oops
Date: 2003-09-22 10:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-22 07:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-22 10:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-23 12:17 am (UTC)Honestly! These modest types!
Date: 2003-09-23 04:11 pm (UTC)