Explore "Girl" by Maxwell Bodenheim on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ The words of men are not conjectures / Lunging toward your soul: / They do not wish you to leave / The fawning thefts of flesh. / When with covered formality / They tramp from actual pulpits, / They merely bring celestial nonsense / For one, uncurious, sanctified bed. / Ah, girl, the soul that they give you / Is a clumsy, white / Concert-master rebuking / The first-violin of your body. / Again they brand a word, / Sacredness, upon your breast, / Claiming that your soul is tied / To the pliant riot of your limbs.
/ Girl, I can forget for a moment / That hairs upon the bulge of my chest / Must be praised or censured, / And I have no desire / To belittle you with one, / Hopeless, cynical, sententious / Group of words, while intellect, / Flavoring its tea-cup with a sneer, / Watches you from shaded balconies. / When you win the torpid illness / Known as virtue you are less important / Than a quest for daisies in the moon, / And when you merely ask / For one blow and inertness, / An old dream yells and ends / With the quietness of sprawling pity. / Girl, avoid the plentiful / Drugs of seriousness and spend / Pieces of your heart on every whim. / Give your flesh the light and sharp / Contacts of a thistle blown / Across the wincing cheeks of rogues.