Sending poetry to the world
i exist differently. i am
the breath between
breaths, the gap. a golden hue
between day and night, your
pause between no and yes, i am
a living rift.
i see a girl at a crowded deck party.
she says “look, that girl is all alone” and
i am both
proclaimer and vision.
Kiss my hip bones if
you want to know me.
Stubborn mouth, a lack
of venture grounds you.
Hip bones are grave lovers.
If you kiss mine, you’ll
taste certain ash and stars
promised again, so soon.
some people say
“the die is cast”
when they should say “I have taken my turn,
I have made my bed,
and must now lie down to rest
with all these decisions.”
each minute my hair greys, I can either
believe the earth spins in dark space alone or
expel hot air into a spring blue sky with purpose.
Soft bed of snow in a dark forest, two bodies breathe.
Inhale –
we feel the cold burden, the dead weight,
it presses for answers as our chests fight to rise, rise, rise …
Exhale–
gratefully, audibly. When it’s over, snow settles
on our eyelids with the lightest touch. We, in ancient silence,
lay breathless.
clock takes a turn with me about the room,
we are shadows, and lights that flicker and dance from passing cars
drive us slowly mad with desire –
clock and I waltz about the room
tracking light movements
with precision of hunters until, suddenly, each is swallowed
whole by us in the darkness –
clock and I laugh, spinning, the world
outside growing older, each star following the same path set,
a quick flicker before our dark tongues close in with a smirk.
i am the loneliest soul.
a shadow moving silent beneath
no one’s hands. Strong
like backs of trees in late November
losing all those leaves
to a hungry season, a cold
as scrappy and conniving as a
starving animal, i
understand these trees, we
stark trunks
in the dark belong to no one
and stand alone under a
moonscape of dreams blown to dust.
the skin of a bumble
bee is 1,000 year old spider web
fuzz, stroke it,
coax it,
“come back”
to this
taut trembling hand.
(was there a time when we
spent all day with flowers and bees?
a time of gentle buzz
yellow sweaters, big sun?)
how to coax him back
how I wish I could stroke his skin
just one more time.
a fox in Clifton Park
crossed a road,
slipped among shadows.
some shadows are happy to be stretched
down long roads of abandonment.
then again some girls are easily bare
long legs thin and tough, scrambling side to side.
absurd, a fox here in a park of burnt out grass
trees choked
shadows stretched too thin
but hey, that’s the city.
around every corner, alley, boarded home, rats find a nibble.
girls slowly pull on their tights.
a fox makes a deal and gets away.
a face
in a mirror
is a naked stranger
washing hair
slowly, slowly,
a mist creeps higher over
a glass door
it swallows up naked legs,
belly,
soapy strands,
clouds over blue eyes
like an evening storm gathering all summer day
clouds over
skin almost remembering how to be skin
[was it me? were we ever even there?]
stranger gone,
water washes soap
contentedly
into a drain
By the bay,
on cement cracked by weeds,
people sit like gulls fishing in dying daylight.
Fish bite, get taken, tossed, have one last
gulp and die.
Watch fish startled by air. Watch weeds bend beneath thin legs.
Watch gull-like people throw another line,
drown another beer,
unfazed.
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