Sexy poetry for your reading pleasure

So this past Wednesday I went to a poetry reading by Billy Collins, who opened the Sunken Garden poetry series at the Hillstead Museum in Farmington, CT. They do it every summer and I highly recommend it if you live nearby and like summer and poetry and picnics. Or even two out of the three.

Before I turned to writing romances I wrote poetry, and one day I discovered Billy Collins in a literary journal I was reading. I was working at Border's Books (the defunct brick and mortar bookstore of yore), and I marched right over to the poetry section and plucked him off the shelves. I bought several more of his books over the years and would often re-read my favorites. 

But I haven't read him in years and I'd forgotten there was a poem called "Japan," until Wednesday night when Billy Collins read it. I fell in love all over again.

JAPAN

Today I pass the time reading 

a favorite haiku

saying the few words over and over.

It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.

I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.

I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.

I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.

And when the dog looks up at me,
I kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.

It's the one about the one-ton temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,

and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.

When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.

When I say it at the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.

And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,

and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed. 

And now I'll share a poem I wrote during that same timeframe. I make no claim to greatness, but perhaps my kindred romance readers will appreciate the sentiment. 

Reasons for ROmances

                

At the bookstore we strip the covers

off mass market books

and send them to the publishers.

The rest gets thrown in the trash,

but one woman has papered her office

with the rescued inner flaps
of romance novels, the dim white paint

now a froth of pleated pastels and tousled hair.

We laugh and point to our favorite men,

our taste for hairless chests

and tight breeches revealed.

But when no one's around,

I gaze seriously at those lovers

on prairies and in coaches.

My desire is equally absurd

and sure to remain unrequited.

Oh, to be seduced like a virgin

in a world without consequences.