Robert James Russell

like a hundred cracks of thunder

or my brain seizing up, going all floppy on me

little whirlwind dreamscapes brought to life by a single touch

a single look

the look she knows how to throw

perfected since adolescence, perfected since her first crush on that boy, Kevin

her first kiss

but she can take that same look and change it, make it hard and mean

a woman scorned

her look like daggers coming fast and hard

a train barreling toward you

and you wonder what you did

what did I do?

but when its good its good and her body

you have it memorized

you know how it tastes

smells

feels against yours

and even on the worst of days when things are bad

between you two and the world

even on those days it’s pretty damn good and you wonder

how you could have ever lived without her

and during those moments the world is a very beautiful place

and you two, the last survivors of love, make it your own

In her eyes I see the world.

Her laugh like a sunrise her smile says it all the world is hers and she has it
in her hands.

Too beautiful for words,
she sings the song that has no name.

For she is the one they sang of long ago:
She Who Knows How to Make Right Use
of the Heart.

the wind howls speaking in tongues forever singing

to me

and i am here i am right here listlessly dreaming excuses

for you

and you keep sweeping up cleaning up doing his do’s and dids

for who?

you once were it and now you’re not and i can’t stand believing

it ever was

fire and ice twizzle through me i am born again i am born through the burning ice and biting flame lackadaisically floating strawlike on lost cusps of wind that seem to multiply with every

with every single

with every single breath…

spitfire grail and deep black coals she walks among us

relentless in her silence

it hits me hardest.

she comes bearing the gifts of her virtuous body, open to me to me to those who see.  she comes and i come and we come and

she doesn’t know what happened.