Tonight’s poem comes to us from Paula Billups, an artist who (other than my children) is responsible for most of the paintings hanging in my house.  She’s a very dear friend of mine, too, and when we were in our 20s, she wrote a novel and let me read it, and it was the first novel I’d ever read that wasn’t published yet.  (It was also quite enjoyable to read, if I remember correctly!)  Paula can do most, if not all, artistic things well and even writes poetry sometimes.  Here’s a link to her Tumblr.

Here’s her official bio:

Paula Billups is an artist living and working between Boston and Berlin. Her focus is painting the portrait and the still life and interior and developing paintings in conceptual series, as well as collaborating on contemporary projects with her peers. Most recently Ms. Billups has exhibited in Berlin, worked with the Tunisian Collaborative Painters in the United States, and collaborated with fire performers in the Boston area.

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Die Schöne Lebende

That was your skeleton
your blood and veins
your muscle and guts
Beside me, pushing through your skin
Your hands like bony machines
blind grasping
We
two
pressing to find
Eyes wide staring under lids
and lashes sweep
You lightly drunk and wasted with sleep

That was my skeleton
Shining wet with life
Pushing back too
Pushing into you
The wet red presence
The mistake of our being
The urgency of breath below leagues
our lungs confounded
Voiceless in the relays
Your hands talked instead
Muscle bone machines grasped
And pressed
Grappled me as my breath failed
As you broke and drifted
Soundlessly alone
The gap of hope entails
Demands its due
I sink fast down
Lastly look up to the sapphire light
and ascending You

— October 2013