August poems (5)

autumn came yesterday,
golden dress cloaked.

*

rose song

Sweet flower,
make diamonds of
how yearning cools
on waiting lips.

*

170816

let's dig holes through
the days that wait
for us, nest love there
out of time.

*

19082016

you wait for joy like
the moon's gray spots
to fill; galaxies overflow and

spill, child, blossomed
from that dust.

*

where the river changes

I knew you,
River, you were
a kinder thing -

     what sunless wild tore
     your tongue into
     this spitting froth -

     knotted with your heart,

     what swallowed stone
     made home now
     grates to frantic grit

the song that
held me
gently once?

*

june poems (10)

this hurt
like glass i swallow
shredding my tongue
taking the words

*

big bang

imagine everything pressed tight-
hot exploding. beautiful;
violent:
that's you.

*

This beautiful sun.
This minute before 7.
Notes of hallelujah spilling from the quiet radio.
This memory of you stirring in my heart.
This love, this ache.

*

remember how slow
the world used to move every day a
drop of light caught in beads
of oil remember night's laughter black
and gold tumbling through the tall grass remember
falling?
how heavy it felt bringing me to you

*

you, a mirage that
pooled
in cracked skin, on
bonedry lips,

i lick myself to taste just
a dream of ran

*

06132016

We lock dead eyes, we
love by chance, lungs
plumped on dust. Above us,
satyrs dance.

*

the sea betrays its
deepest wish, to dissipate
and kiss the moon's smile.

*

if i'm a piece of meat

know: you can lick me dry
but the ugly story of your teeth
will be written on my bones.

*

if my heart is a flower,
it's sick
and never opens to the sun,

only daring to love
the rain on its crinkled skin
promising the sky in every dying dance

*

I go

beyond the promises of birds,
where time runs like a stream down
summer's endless throat,
remembering the scent of apples
your golden eyes and tight tongue coiled
only like a chill that recedes, here
where waves lick away my melting eyes,
I wait for you.

042616

line me in blackest graphite, blur 

me into loving you, i choose 

softness.

I carry you with me

I carry you with me
the promise of your bones
the urgent froth of your dreams beating
against the shore roars
always in the scooped
curl of my ear. I carry your fears.

I carry you with me
your stories like
distant stars, reaching,
tickle in my throat, coughing
fire in the gaping gut, burning
me out.

I carry the contradictions
the hate on your tongue tied in
a mouth that smiled and kissed,
the warm crinkle at the edge
of your eyes that sometimes
filled with spite,
the gentle lick, sometimes the bite.

I carry you with me
the promise of your bones
I am the why, I carry this
question and your life
folded over and over itself
in mine.

Cactus

prickly like
a sudden poem
a heart that breaks
a life undone. My fingers
to know the pain of you
reach. And there - the many million stabs - 
I gasp and pull away to find a
tiny thorn trapped in the labyrinth of my fingertip, 
maze of my identity - and now, the pain, too, me.

reminder

i don't want to forget

the precise angle of your shoulders

or the tight curve of your smile

but it has been a while

and the skin forgets its goosebumps

the heart forgets its joys

there is a deepening void, and i cry

I remember! I remember!

pleasing aches and little plummeting delights!

of course! the pain of that jagged edge of satin petals fluttering out of sight!

on a sunny day --

I remember (because i'm terrified

to recall only that i've forgot, 

to know only 

that i loved you once and then i loved you not

as undeniably

as dreadfully

as a dead thing rots).

Spring (a poem from a dream)

All the world has woken finally;
The sun is shining bright - hurray!
Fat clouds amble, smiling lazily;
The wind is soft and sweet today.
And oh, the children, all so beautiful,
running, laughing, off they go!
But here I am cold still and silent
For no friend calls my way "hello,"
and this is as it is, and so.

the art of not giving a shit

You would be something to me, maybe,
(you would be the world)
if I gave a shit
i would weave you into me
like a priceless
thread of gold across the
tapestry of my history
you'd be
the happy twist,
the thin wisp of a subplot
winding through my narrative like
a thirsty stream
only to explode suddenly, gloriously, unexpectedly into the
ocean vast and deep
or maybe you'd just be
my heart's deepest wish
murmured in half-sleeps.
maybe i would love you
more than words could hope
to explain, from a place
limitless in me. maybe I would
love you 'til it hurt. if i could love.
if i could hurt.
you would be something
(you might be everything) 
if i cared at all.
Thankfully,
i don't.
you're nothing
but a pronoun
in a careless poem.

indecisive cursor

poised over
You,
I
haunted the anchor of the
ship, I -

You are wind and water too;
she was driven by You, this ghost-
ship, I

can't won't, but,
don't, I tell
myself: the barrier
reef

but the sea is free
like an arc could never be

to be always incomplete

I go with my ship,
friend,
ship,
wrecked,
i,
w e.