I am too much me, tonight
elbows akimbo-
witchy shadows cast in the fading light
Theres a tug in the wind,
a pull in the air
I could fly apart so easily
atoms lost in a swirl upwards
like spark from flame.
I saw the moon, once,
from an angle that made it fill the sky.
If I could, I would go back.
Somewhere on a street
with lowhanging branches and gumball trees
is a man, writing.
My name is in a book,
written a thousand times.
the Superbowl again,he said,
correcting himself absently in the next
sentence, not understanding my grin,
not realizing that these moments,
rife with unintentioned humor,
bubbling with half ignored desire
are when it makes sense-
that it is word as much as deed
speech as much as need
that brought me here and
he goes on a rant about this game
I have no want to understand,
no need to know.
He mistakes my interest in him
for interest in his subject,
but I have no want of games;
what attracts me is the passion and how
the life just jumps from him,
how much intensity he shows.
Its Friday and the clock is ticking.
The bug runs down my arm and then back up-
I am a universe, with no food to be found
a careless God, indifferent. Empty.
Five minutes more.
The bug is gone- the arm, proving unfruitful,
became a launching place for hopes,
for a quest- we must eat. Life as a search
for food. It starts with that.
Five minutes more.
The ice sublimes.
This has less to do with global warming
than it does with the fact
that the ambient temperature in my heaven
is double the temperature of the ice
and there is a balance to maintain
between my glass and the air.
Five minutes more.
Sweeping the porch of debris, I
had this thought that nakedness is viewed as sinful
by those who feel vulnerable,
and this has everything to do with the mind
and nearly nothing to do with skin.
The bug doesnt know it has no clothes.
It merely wants to eat.
Five minutes more.
The bug is back. Hating to disappoint, to be named Devil
and cursed, to fail in the ownership of the small
universe of arm and broom, I set the bug down near
the water ring formed by my sweating glass.
It seems to be drinking, but my eyes are too large
to see that small act.
who see with equal eye, as God of all
a hero perish or a sparrow fall…
Lyres92108
So little as to be overlooked.
Butter wouldn’t melt in that sweet little rosebud mouth
with that pink kitten’s tongue,
a dirty unapproved-by-mother thought
never crossed that mind, no filth ever touched that perfect skin
or so you say.
I could tell you stories of the night
she was nearly sold as a callgirl to a pimp,
who argued price in front of her
like she had no ears or mouth to speak a denial,
like she was only face and tits and cunt,
just a thing to be passed back and forth.
I could tell you about the shotgun
and the busted chinging sound
that shattered glass makes in the overpowering
silence that follows a 30-30 going off in your ear
and describe the green of the getaway truck
as the green that is almost black :
how the only color in the night
was the whiteness of that perfect skin-
someone with more poetry than sense
called her Narcissus, once, for being white,like paper.
But the story she likes least is about the night
she killed the man and how we found her,
drenched and mindless and wild. We couldn’t touch her,
not even to help because she threatened to kill us all,
and the knife was so very large and she was so vicious-
like an ermine starving in an early winter.
Her husband found out, eventually,
because in the night the obscenities
ring like shot gun blasts;
and the subconscious flows like the blood
she never remembers spilling,
whether hers or someone else’s ,
and the underworld is peopled with old crime
and deadly sins, and he has to wonder
about the lion/lamb that he lies with.