Poem of the Week
untitled
* i wrote this in 1992 while living in indiana. it's still one of my favourites and was the first poem in my chap book "a piscean nexus". i hope you enjoy it and i appreciate your feedback. *
we were two naked fish-
you surfacing and diving,
me covering up
until you comfort me
and teach me to breathe like you do.
pontoons glide by
with toothless smiles
and wicked girls
as my fins suddenly become
helpless legs-
concrete in water.
and you remain a laughing fish!
red sea hair and aquamarine eyes.
the wake rocks me
like a helpless duckling
and you lift me
one-armed
into the yellow boat,
wrapped in a weekend towel,
watching me with a protective eye.
- Monday, May 16, 2005 The Indecisiveness of Stars
When I am on my back
in black grass
with moving stars and still,
naked branches all married
and divorced together,
I feel the revolution of
this planet:
the immense speed that
conquers a heart,
the whirring that tugs your
head to the soft bed of earth,
the begging soil wanting to
join those distant stars again,
trapped like fireflies in motion
with a sun vomiting
quietly on the other side
of the globe
that I cannot see.
I feel the revolution of
this love:
the first lip-bit discovery
of your hand over mine,
the confessions of time
and place like flowing and
drying lava,
the final argument dangling
from the tip of a dagger,
trapped like a wasp drowning
in the corner of a pool
that I try to ignore.
The stars look at me
through the branches all married
and divorced together.
They talk to me
on my back in black grass.
"Good news," they mutter.
"Bad news," they insist.
- Thursday, May 12, 2005 and even more scratch poetry
* found this in one of my notebooks, dated 04/20/04 *
i'm driving so fast and
the empty branches are
so close and quick they
nearly scratch me and
the air is as crisp as
a morning apple and
my breath is being sucked
away by the cold wind through
the window while
the barren fields are
apparent and moving slowly
through the late winter brush
and it's all i can do
not to think of you
on this country road.
- Friday, May 06, 2005 more scratch papers
* i'm still sharing with you some scratch poems from the last few years- you know, the little poems that swirl around and never get published but keep coming back to you saying, "remember me?" this was scratched out one drunken evening at 10:20pm on Nov. 30, 2004 having wine at onion creek in houston... *
See how I change like a chameleon does
when you smile at me-
when you put your hand
on my leg under the table,
when you kiss my neck just
when i need your touch...
See how I change like a madman does
when someone switches the lights-
I need you smiling like
a birthday photo,
I need you to be bright like
the beaches reflecting the
sun at noon,
I need you to shine like a
newly minted half-dollar,
I need you next to me,
so close that we overlap,
so in love with me that
I feel like I need to
catch up.
- Wednesday, May 04, 2005 poem of the week archives