Loveroot

After the fire, I never quite got around to replacing all of my beloved books of poetry. Many times, I have gone to the shelf looking for Loveroot, book of poems by Erica Jong, and found that it was gone. I finally went to Amazon.com and bought a used hardback copy, and it arrived yesterday! This book of poetry is probably one of the most touching, life changing books of my life. I am going to share the first poem here, just as a lovesong to Erica Jong and her writing. I guess it is more a series of poems, and its quite long, but I love it and want to share it here.

Testament (or, Homage to Walk Whitman)
loveroot, silkthread, crotch and vine…
–WALT WHITMAN

I trust all joy.
–THEODORE ROETHKE

I, Erica Jong, in the midst of my life,
having had two parents, two sisters,
two husbands, two books of poems
& three decades of pain,

having cried for those who did not love me
& those who loved me – but not enough
& those whom I did not love –
declare myself now for joy.

There is pain enough to nourish us everywhere
it is joy that is scarce.

There are corpses piled up to the mountains,
& tears to drown in,
& bile eough to swallow all day long.

Rage is a common weed.
Anger is cheap.

Righteous indignation
is the religion of the dead
in the house of the dead
where the dead speak to each other
in creaking voices,
each arguing a more unhappy childhood
than the other.

Unhappiness is cheap.
Childhood is a universal affliction.
I say to hell with the analysts of minus & plus,
the life-shrinkers, the diminishers of joy.

I say to hell with anyone
who would suck on misery
like a pacifier
in a toothless mouth.
I say to hell with gloom.

Gloom is cheap.
Every night the earth resolves for darkness
& then breaks its resolve
in the morning.

Every night the demon lovers
come with their black penises like tongues,
with their double faces,
& their cheating mouths
& their glum religions of doom.

Doom is cheap.
If the apocalypse is coming,
let us wait for it in joy.

Let us not gnash our teeth
on the molars of corpses –
though the molars of corpses
are plentiful enough.

Let us not scorn laughter
though scorn is plentiful enough.

Let us laugh & bring plenty to the scorners –
for they scorn themselves.

I myself have been a scorner
& have chosen scornful men,
men to echo all that was narrow in myself,
men to hurt me as I hurt myself.

In my stinginess,
my friends have been stingy.
In my narrowness,
my men have been mean.

I resolve now for joy.

If that resolve means I must live alone,
I accept aloneness.

If the joy house I inhabit must be
a house of my own making,
I accept that making.

No doom-saying, death-dealing, fucker of cunts
can undo me now.

No joy-denyer can deny me now.
For what I have is undeniable.
I inhabit my own house,
the house of my joy.

~~~~~~

“Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!”

~~~~~~

Dear Walt Whitman,
horny old nurse to pain,
speaker of “passwords primeval,”
merit-refuser,poet of body & soul —
I scorned you at twenty
but turn to you now
in the fourth decade of my life,
having grown straight enough
to praise your straightness,
& plain enough
to speak to you plain
& simple enough
to praise your simplicity.

The doors open.
The metaphors themselves swing open wide!

Papers fall from my desk,
my desk teeters on the edge of the cosmos,
& I commit each word to fire.

I burn!
All night I write in suns across the page.
I fuel the “body electric” with midnight oil.
I write in neon sperm across the air.

~~~~~~

You were “hankering, gross, mystical, nude.”
You astonished with the odor of your armpits.
You cocked your hat as you chose;
you cocked your cock –
but you knew “the Me myself.”

You believed in your soul
& believing, you made others
believe in theirs.

The soul is contagious.
One man catches another’s
like the plague;
& we are all patient spiders
to each other.

If we can spin the joythread
& also catch it-

if we can be sufficient to ourselves,
we need fear no entangling webs.

The loveroot will germinate.
The crotch will be a trellis for the vine,
& our threads will all be intermingled silk.

How to spin joy out of an empty heart?
The joy-egg germinates even in despair.

Orgasms of gloom convulse the world;
& the joy-seekers huddle together.

We meet on the pages of books & by beachwood fires.
We meet scrawled blackly in many-folded letters.
We know each other by free & generous hands.
We swing like spiders on each other’s souls.

~~~~~~ Erica Jong