shelves crowded with perfumes

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes, 

I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,

The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it. 

From Songs of Myself, Walt Whitman

Link: photo by Tim Walker 

I sit by the window

I said fate plays a game without a score,
and who needs fish if you've got caviar?
The triumph of the Gothic style would come to pass
and turn you on--no need for coke, or grass.
I sit by the window. Outside, an aspen.
When I loved, I loved deeply. It wasn't often.

....

Link: Part of I sit by the window, Joseph Brodsky

Valentine by John Fuller

The things about you I appreciate
may seem indelicate:
I'd like to find you in the shower
and chase the soap for half an hour.
I'd like to have you in my power
and see your eyes dilate.
I'd like to have your back to scour
and other parts to lubricate.
Sometimes I feel it is my fate
to chase you screaming up a tower
or make you cower
by asking you to differentiate
Nietzsche from Schopenhauer.
I'd like successfully to guess your weight
and win you at a fete.
I'd like to offer you a flower.

I like the hair upon your shoulders
falling like water over boulders.
I like the shoulders, too: they are essential.
Your collar-bones have great potential
(I'd like all your particulars in folders
marked Confidential).

I like your cheeks, I like your nose,
I like the way your lips disclose
the neat arrangement of your teeth
(half above and half beneath)
in rows.

I like your eyes, I like their fringes.
The way they focus on me gives me twinges.
Your upper arms drive me berserk
I like the way your elbows work,
on hinges.

I like your wrists, I like your glands,
I like the fingers on your hands.
I'd like to teach them how to count,
and certain things we might exchange,
something familiar for something strange.
I'd like to give you just the right amount
and give some change.

I like it when you tilt your cheek up.
I like the way you hold a teacup.
I like your legs when you unwind them,
even in trousers I don't mind them.
I'd always know, without a recap,
where to find them.

I like the sculpture of your ears.
I like the way your profile disappears
Whenever you decide to turn and face me.
I'd like to cross two hemispheres
and have you chase me.
I'd like to smuggle you across frontiers
or sail with you at night into Tangiers.
I'd like you to embrace me.

I'd like to see you ironing your skirt
and cancelling other dates.
I'd like to button up your shirt.
I like the way your chest inflates.
I'd like to soothe you when you're hurt
or frightened senseless by invertebrates.

I'd like you even if you were malign
and had a yen for sudden homicide.
I'd let you put insecticide
into my wine.
I'd even like you if you were the Bride
of Frankenstein
or something ghoulish out of Mamoulian's
Jekyll and Hyde.
I'd even like you as my Julian
of Norwich or Cathleen ni Houlihan.
How melodramatic
if you were something muttering in attics
like Mrs Rochester or a student of Boolean
Mathematics.

You are the end of self-abuse.
You are the eternal feminine.
I'd like to find a good excuse
to call on you and find you in.
I'd like to put my hand beneath your chin,
and see you grin.
I'd like to taste your Charlotte Russe,
I'd like to feel my lips upon your skin,
I'd like to make you reproduce.

I'd like you in my confidence.
I'd like to be your second look.
I'd like to let you try the French Defence
and mate you with my rook.
I'd like to be your preference
and hence
I'd like to be around when you unhook.
I'd like to be your only audience,
the final name in your appointment book,
your future tense.

Link: John Fuller

you really are beautiful

Today

Oh! Kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas:
You really are beautiful! Pearls,
harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! All
the stuff they’ve always talked about

still makes a poem a surprise!
These things are with us every day
even on beach heads and biers. They
do have meaning. They’re strong as rocks.

Link: Frank O'Hara website

Bladder Song

On a piece of toilet paper
Afloat in the unflushed piss,
The fully printed lips of a woman.

Nathan, cheer up! The sewer
Sends you a big red kiss.
Ah, nothing's wasted, if it's human.

- Leonard Nathan

Link: American life in poetry #7 - Leonard Nathan

La Tâche, a modern love poem

Love poems of old
Used to be descriptions of flesh
They described this and that
For instance eyelashes

And yet redness
Should be described
By greyness the sun by rain
The poppies in November
The lips at night

A modern love poem, by Tadeusz Różewicz

"What wine would you be?" I was asked at a party on Saturday night.

What the hell. "I'd be La Tâche 1990 from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti."

Why not? But I won't lie to you. I have circled this wine for years and years, read about it, heard it mentioned in whispered, reverential tones, yet - I have never tasted it. The 1990 La Tâche sold at auction for $US9000. Only 1200 cases are made a year. All I can tell you is what other people say once they've tasted it, there are even photos of people anticipating, sniffing it, drinking it.

I can only imagine it is what I'm missing in every other wine...

This is fantasy stuff, and all I know is, if I was a wine, I'd love to be drunk in the same escstasy and rapture as La Tâche. Yes, I'd like to be La Tâche.

As Woody Allen toasted, "Here's to an ideal without compromise." Hopefully, one day, you too can meet myself as a wine...

1990 DRC La Tache Domaine Romanée-Conti 1990 1 Magnum Lot $US9000

Stunning, full-on, classic La Tâche nose that displays almost unbelievable complexity so with many different elements that it is impossible to even begin to describe them all; the primary components include ethereal and still fresh pinot fruit, clove, knock out spiciness, anise, hoisin, soy and a trace of earth but these elements only hint at the sheer depth. The flavors are big, rich, refined, classy, penetrating and superbly powerful yet everything is in perfect balance... The finish is intense, pure and so long that it is haunting; I can literally still taste this wine days later after I've had it because it has such a dramatic and emotional impact. This is one of the finest, perhaps even the finest young Burgundy I have ever been privileged to try and it only seems to get better with each passing year. In short, this is absolutely brilliant. 99 POINTS.

Robert Parker Jr's 100 in Langton's Auction magazine:

I cannot think of a more profound, young red Burgundy tasted than DRC's 1990 La Tâche. Although it still requires another 3-4 years of cellaring, it is incredibly endowed, with an extraordinary perfume of Asian spices as well as jammy black raspberries, cherries, and blackberries infused with smoke, toast, and dried herbs. Full-bodied, but ethereal, with layers of flavor, as well as mind-boggling delicacy and complexity, this youthful La Tâche will be at its finest between 2004-2015. 100/100