poetry

God damn you women get me all
twisted up thinking oohrahrah and lala
about us about our night together you
beg me to hang out you say you want
to get to know me you want to come over
and watch movies with me and meet my dog
you say you’ve never met anyone like me
that I could be the greatest the best
make your eyes melt mama yet
when it comes down to it you’re scared
you don’t know what you want you don’t
want to get all used up and you
leave me you leave this imprint on me
but it’s okay I’ll love you anyway
take you back into my arms and
we’ll celebrate into the night
skin touching eyes dodging bodies
dancing while I fall into you –
can’t ever find my way out.

(This first appeared on Year Zero Writers)

She’s an obese woman whose clothes
don’t fit: shirts that ride up too high
her belly hanging out her pants
suctioned to her strangely pegged legs.
Her ballooned cheeks are always chapped pink
her lips little slivers peeled back over
small beige teeth like riverstones
set in swollen gums. Her hair is
luxurious but she doesn’t seem
to know what to do with it; she often
touches loose strands when people walk by,
a nervous tick perhaps.
Her sister is always visiting and they
gather outside my window
pacing and talking in loud practiced dialogues
about their collective woes.
She’s married to a Mexican man
half her size named Marco whom
she fights with daily, usually about
their daughter, a small wispy thing
that never makes a peep.
She has eyes like wildfires
but you can tell, talking to her even briefly,
that she doesn’t expect to get
to where it is she wishes she was going.

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.

Pink rising floating far and to the bottom back again and
the petals swoop up in a whirlwind, back down again and

they fall

until it is evident they were never rising ever, but rather shooting into the horizon of naught, wandering far and far

and far and far.

Specks of brown filter in front of my eyes, dashes of blues and grays, sparkles of white. I hover dangling

dripping

supreme surprise on the horizon

(oh, the horizon!)

until I fall relentlessly back to earth into the shrub-brush that has held me thus far and I am built to the castle in the sky, thoughts and feelings flutter helplessly up and around and down and back around to my toes…

…the numbness supersedes the pain and I learn (again) to ignore all else in pursuit of the attainable….it is all attainable.

Friends, it is all attainable.

Heatherboard cork screwing and twisting into the breadth of the mysterious blackness. A void of nothing and everything, metal and flesh interconnected as if there is no tomorrow, or even yesterday, and only today (the here and now) matters.

I tell you with all clarity and sincerity that in order for this jigsaw of flotsam and jetsam to incorporate you, the mere player, you must give yourself relentlessly to it (as I have).

Fall down, merry friend, or forever hold your

piece.

She grows old and tires of being restless and, ultimately, with great trepidation, forces herself to settle down. She marries for all the wrong reasons, seeming right at the time, and fakes happiness, as it waxes and wanes with each additional year. Every moment is a nightmare and while most would be truly happy, would be settled and firmly content with what has become, her thoughts drift, as they always have, to turbulent things. To things thoughts should not drift to. Perhaps her childhood has ruined her, strayed her course for good…

I don’t do poetry often, but have been getting back into it recently (for whatever reason).  Here’s one I did a bit ago that I quite like.

Enjoy.

—

her skin the color of honey sugary sweet eyes like long-forgotten pathways to a place I can only just recall her hair in twists and her hands touching it fondling it tucking it back  behind her ears as she rubs her legs against each other crosses them at the thighs dreaming dreaming of my hands on her back on her body touching rubbing feeling measuring and that smile her smile cocked at the ends like she knows of course she knows her hands touching and grazing and moving along the tabletop over her papers and things she looks up to me then down smiling big beautiful knowing then looks up at me again with a glance that doesn’t need words to elaborate and it shakes me cold shakes me to my core her eyes her lips her curves her skin the color of honey