Poem of the Week
This Bed Called Failure
You are still in my bed.
No. It is your bed.
You decided to end this excursion and
It feels like my bed now.
Even so, it is yours.
You are still here,
Breathing on me,
Rolling dust from your mouth,
Pouring fire from your brow.
You do not move as you sleep.
You are a fallen statue in this bed.
This bed.
This bed is no longer our friend,
No longer our valley of rivers,
Our peaked mountains conquered,
Our treehouse.
You no longer dream of me.
Even if I wake in the morning with you
Spidered around me
Your fireworks are exposed
With someone else in that bloodstream,
That gremlin that crawls
With his hands across the floor,
His tongue out like a tranquilized dog,
His neck limp and bent down-
Yet you still surround me
Here in this bed called failure.
Your morning surprise- my mouth,
Wondering if this will be the last-
The last time like the final lap around the lake,
Feet dangling from the pontoon.
The final spin of the merry-go-round,
Eyes wide with excitement.
The final gin and tonic before last call
When the lights turn up,
When I fasten the belt you bought me,
Watching you sleep before I go to work.
Watching you dream of that boy
In this bed.
- Saturday, August 30, 2003 Too Many Arms
See that each of these arms surround you
And I swim in the moon's glory
Around these boys-
These turbulent days are hard for me
To think of you with so many arms.
And with poison I kiss you once a day
And twice with alabaster lips
And three times with sugar
So sweet
That I see yellow jackets on their way.
When you awoke me at nine a.m.
To have breakfast and coffee with you
I was dreaming of swimming around them again,
Treading water around so many arms
Not my own.
In any love there are mad scientists
That remind us of pheromones
And white viruses that float like seaweed
Across all those arms that surround us
In dreams or in the past.
My pumpkin seeds are sprouting dear,
They push through the potted soil
Searching the escape of dark
And the pull of stars as punctuated
As the Styrofoam in the soil.
And you, you just lay there
With a remote control at your side
And congress in your right hand,
The shades down to watch all those
Arms around each other,
Not around you.
- Friday, August 22, 2003 Driving Home Without You.
There was a major accident at Tidwell and 290.
I saw the bodies in pieces,
The way they were torn apart like the dolls of
An angry little girl.
I was smiling moments ago having
Dropped you home,
Thinking of us last night,
How our two bodies,
Our two pieces merged-
Came together like clouds.
Your tattoos on mine, ink smearing,
Mouth becoming mouth,
Lips becoming lips
And now I see
Steel around bodies
And flashing lights
And the sun sitting in my convertible
Burning my smiling face
As I rubberneck burned victims,
Radio turned down,
A love song,
And an ambulance
Racing down the shoulder.
- Friday, August 15, 2003 poem of the week archives