Let me introduce Diana Raab.
Diana is a poet who lives in Santa Barbara. She is also an essayist, memoirist, and teaches at UCLA Writers' Program, frequently lectures on journaling and memoir around the country. Her memoir Regina's Closet: Finding My Grandmother's Secret Journal won the 2008 National Indie Excellence Award for Memoir and the 2009 Mom's Choice Award for Adult Nonfiction, as well as other high honors. She has two poetry collections, My Muse Undresses Me (2007), and Dear Anaïs: My Life in Poems for You(2008), winner of the 2009 Next Generation Book Award for Poetry, Reader Views Book Award, and the Allbooks Book Award for Poetry. She is a regular blogger for The Huffington Post, writes a weekly blog called, "Literary Musings," and her monthly column in the Santa Barbara Sentinel, “The Mindful Word."
Diana’s fourth book of poetry is entitled Lust (CW Books, February 2014).
I have included poems from Lust below as well as more info on the book.
ABOUT LUST
A passionate journey through private emotional moments, Diana Raab's Lust voices the pain of loneliness and the heart's yearning for love while transcending the depths of human desire.
In her fourth book of poetry, Raab employs narrative verse that is alive, titillating, and seductive. Lust examines the emotional and physical complexity of love, helping readers navigate the risks of intimacy as we move toward the realization that every experience enriches our lives, whether we perceive it as joy, pain, or out of the ordinary. Yet for all their psychological richness, the poems' simplicity and accessibility will resonate with women and men across all walks of life. Lust is a book you won't put down and won't soon forget.
****
LUST
If you know lust like I know lust
you know how it grabs you
in places that feel so good,
in a way that trumps tomorrow.
It snatches and strangles our pasts away
and forges forbidden futures,
while injecting needles of pure pleasure
into any artery receptive to its dose.
The more you get the more you want
as you climb the hill to survival
to the job which pays
the bills and fills your dinner plate.
When not gasping for pleasure,
the door swings open
on your far side of town
where the bores reside
in boxes stacked upon splintered shelves
their parents have created,
as your independent spirit
branches out to seek
life’s rare erotic pleasures
found inside the scrotum
and fallopian tubes
of hidden channels of love
buried in blissful tunnels
until the cell phone rings
and snaps you both back into the reality
which you crave to leave
in a giant step back into the
timeless lustful tunnel of pleasure.
****
OUR INSOMNIA
Drips from me
slithering its way
up and down both sides
of my exhausted body
in ways I do not understand
inside dreams never actualized
while tears drip into bottomless buckets
pondering of pasts
and dreaming of futures
empty of fun to be had
next to divine wanderings
and lonely hearts.
****
THE END
How is it that a premonition
slips under the layers of my tentacles
waving a signal that tomorrow
is the end of something
which I do not know,
while I try to whisper
and grasp my desires
as temptation tries to whisk
me from the moment.
I cannot, because
one more slippage of disaster
will send me six feet under
without ever tasting the sweet
juice of change and the
euphoria of saying good-bye.
I am sorry.
****
Diana was the editor of Writers on the Edge: 22 Writers Speak About Addiction and Dependency (Loving Healing Press, March 2012), a finalist for Foreword's 2012 Book of the Year Award, as well as the author of Healing With Words: A Writer's Cancer Journey, an award-winning finalist of the USA News Book Awards, Dear Anaïs: My Life in Poems For You (Plain View Press, September 2008), and several other works. Check out Diana's latest Rare Bird Radio discussion with bestselling author of Permanent Midnight, Happy Mutant Baby Pills, and Bad Sex On Speed, Jerry Stahl: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/rarebirdradio.
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