Happy St. Valentine’s Day
Love. True love, is what brings us together, today.
In celebration of all things eros I’m posting some of my love poems. To my lovely of course! She rocketh my worldeth.
IVAN, AGAIN, WINTER 2007
Dark cupping the sides of your cheek
your breast anchored in his mouth,
winter dry heat and days on small sleep.
In a decade we will feast on these small memories,
and in doing so, begin to grow into relief,
the dizzy world about will make us mountains.
THE CITY MAKES YOU BEAUTIFUL
The city makes you beautiful
because when snow comes paling down
the only red will be the arc of your lips
as you light a cigarette, a crow
calling over your shoulder,
the heavy patter of the old school
echoing the falling snow.
The city makes you beautiful because the weight
of your breath is bigger,
heavy, and one must frame herself
as the T rumbles in--a hot and humid exhalation,
and only a busker breathes.
A quarter rings
in her cup
as the subway comes to a stop.
One must quicken
between shadows,
all light sucking up and out
over your shoulder
like a boomcrane swing,
and you look up,
into the dim snow.
The city makes you beautiful
because neon lights add a layer of skin
upon your skin, a skein of light that rolls
over all of us, and none of us
are immune to the light.
The city makes you beautiful
because you walk everywhere and walk everywhere
and are alive in the reflections
that run through this city.
Across deep alleys come the brightest stars
which are not stars but the sodium shield
that cups cement fields and gives
glow to rusty steel. The city makes
you beautiful because
across the iron color
you pause to stroke a pebble out of your shoe
and continue on like a whisper.
BREAD DAYS
Bread days you are bent over so the curve of our life together
exists in your motion
spreading the dough, your breasts swinging
and I imagine they swing towards my open mouth
and your nipples grow large in each sucking pass.
Later warm bread slides over my teeth
the meat of the slice divided by tongue.
The moving backwards of your hips
is in your skin as well as your lips,
flushed with oven work and kneading.
ON SUMMER NIGHTS WHEN
Cocked at an angle, the radio’s antenna frames
the candlelight theatre upon the apartment walls.
The shadows could be anything,
strangled lovers, entangled branches,
but for now they are candle throws
and a woman rolls on her side to watch
and hums the melody ballooning from the salt-box radio,
The sweat on her thighs lifting into an aura
around her body, her lover long in the shower
leans and lurks beyond her sight.
She supposes she should dress
and prepare for dancing, but instead listens
to the lone radio as the music loops and lopes, loops
and lopes, circles back
to bass and strikes drum again.
Desire dilates air,
and the music makes it sound
as if the whole world celebrates in dark alleys,
on a night when one’s body
is more than a body, but an invitation to touch.
The angle of the radio’s antenna looks like the skeletal frame
that rises above the stage floor and into black,
inside the theatre two windows down,
where the music from the radio wavers
Loops and circles
and strikes
and goes unnoticed
because at this point in the rehearsal no one wants to be there,
the director, the actors,
not even the characters.
It’s too much,
the heat and wet night, the tension
of the Loman house.
The stage manager daydreams
of her new lover’s fine mouth,
and casts herself beyond the building, into darkness
where a pair of hands twist her body.
The director, stares into the floor,
waiting for the actors to awaken
among the snack wrappers, coke cans,
ripped hose, and
limp cigarette packs
that appear, in shadow,
to bury themselves into the floor
as if they didn’t want to be found,
to instead become a mosaic
of our appetites
and live on forever like stars
beneath their feet.
Even here the radio lacquers space, the music
beyond the walls,
beyond the curve of her thighs,
beyond the loping satellite passing through
the house of the twins.
The sloppy piano continues its drag
and crawl out of the speakers
as skateboarders rattle
and box their boards,
scrape their wheels,
their cigarettes a jagged line of Christmas lights
that promise soft dark, that wink
behind the beer bottles passing from one hand
to another, to another
as the music loops and lopes, loops
and lopes, circles back to bass,
and strikes drum again.
On a night that’s all about escaping skin,
and learning to live in it
the skein of bedding is pulled tight between her thighs
and her aura settles into a white chocolate glow,
she watches her lover dress and dash cologne about his throat
and next door the neighbors begin their ritual, their voices lap
against the air as they comb their hair, make their tricks,
the radio cutting and fading out, and coming to life again
and it’s like the street lives in a giant mouth, hot, damp, and dark,
the ache for teeth is welcoming
and the urge to be swallowed irresistible.
HOLDING HANDS. SUMMER
But do you not feel them too? The moments our tongues complete
the synaptic gap of our shared mouth,
that a simple touch from your finger
signals inside me a great calm, as if a switch had been flipped.
Would you have believed it possible?
Like the tendrils of the jellyfish who touch and in touch
return to touch, and tangle and grow into one,
we hold hands and walk down the street.
AWAKE. AFTER MIDNIGHT. CIGARETTES.
Can’t you see my bones?
They are the gleaming rails
of lacquered coffins
bearing bodies to seed the fields
beyond the seal skin shack
at the edge of the wood.
I too tramp wastes,
search for me between your fingers
and the rag down t-shirts I slept in
that summer at the cabin,
before Boston and varied streets,
the wild avenue parties.
Oh to become lost in a city
is like feeling your skin
for the first time
the strange doorknobs shaking hands,
the flattened brickyard cheeks,
to shout down the throat of the street
while drunk is to be bigger
than you once were
which was small, like a stone, like a bean.
Love. True love, is what brings us together, today.
In celebration of all things eros I’m posting some of my love poems. To my lovely of course! She rocketh my worldeth.
IVAN, AGAIN, WINTER 2007
Dark cupping the sides of your cheek
your breast anchored in his mouth,
winter dry heat and days on small sleep.
In a decade we will feast on these small memories,
and in doing so, begin to grow into relief,
the dizzy world about will make us mountains.
THE CITY MAKES YOU BEAUTIFUL
The city makes you beautiful
because when snow comes paling down
the only red will be the arc of your lips
as you light a cigarette, a crow
calling over your shoulder,
the heavy patter of the old school
echoing the falling snow.
The city makes you beautiful because the weight
of your breath is bigger,
heavy, and one must frame herself
as the T rumbles in--a hot and humid exhalation,
and only a busker breathes.
A quarter rings
in her cup
as the subway comes to a stop.
One must quicken
between shadows,
all light sucking up and out
over your shoulder
like a boomcrane swing,
and you look up,
into the dim snow.
The city makes you beautiful
because neon lights add a layer of skin
upon your skin, a skein of light that rolls
over all of us, and none of us
are immune to the light.
The city makes you beautiful
because you walk everywhere and walk everywhere
and are alive in the reflections
that run through this city.
Across deep alleys come the brightest stars
which are not stars but the sodium shield
that cups cement fields and gives
glow to rusty steel. The city makes
you beautiful because
across the iron color
you pause to stroke a pebble out of your shoe
and continue on like a whisper.
BREAD DAYS
Bread days you are bent over so the curve of our life together
exists in your motion
spreading the dough, your breasts swinging
and I imagine they swing towards my open mouth
and your nipples grow large in each sucking pass.
Later warm bread slides over my teeth
the meat of the slice divided by tongue.
The moving backwards of your hips
is in your skin as well as your lips,
flushed with oven work and kneading.
ON SUMMER NIGHTS WHEN
Cocked at an angle, the radio’s antenna frames
the candlelight theatre upon the apartment walls.
The shadows could be anything,
strangled lovers, entangled branches,
but for now they are candle throws
and a woman rolls on her side to watch
and hums the melody ballooning from the salt-box radio,
The sweat on her thighs lifting into an aura
around her body, her lover long in the shower
leans and lurks beyond her sight.
She supposes she should dress
and prepare for dancing, but instead listens
to the lone radio as the music loops and lopes, loops
and lopes, circles back
to bass and strikes drum again.
Desire dilates air,
and the music makes it sound
as if the whole world celebrates in dark alleys,
on a night when one’s body
is more than a body, but an invitation to touch.
The angle of the radio’s antenna looks like the skeletal frame
that rises above the stage floor and into black,
inside the theatre two windows down,
where the music from the radio wavers
Loops and circles
and strikes
and goes unnoticed
because at this point in the rehearsal no one wants to be there,
the director, the actors,
not even the characters.
It’s too much,
the heat and wet night, the tension
of the Loman house.
The stage manager daydreams
of her new lover’s fine mouth,
and casts herself beyond the building, into darkness
where a pair of hands twist her body.
The director, stares into the floor,
waiting for the actors to awaken
among the snack wrappers, coke cans,
ripped hose, and
limp cigarette packs
that appear, in shadow,
to bury themselves into the floor
as if they didn’t want to be found,
to instead become a mosaic
of our appetites
and live on forever like stars
beneath their feet.
Even here the radio lacquers space, the music
beyond the walls,
beyond the curve of her thighs,
beyond the loping satellite passing through
the house of the twins.
The sloppy piano continues its drag
and crawl out of the speakers
as skateboarders rattle
and box their boards,
scrape their wheels,
their cigarettes a jagged line of Christmas lights
that promise soft dark, that wink
behind the beer bottles passing from one hand
to another, to another
as the music loops and lopes, loops
and lopes, circles back to bass,
and strikes drum again.
On a night that’s all about escaping skin,
and learning to live in it
the skein of bedding is pulled tight between her thighs
and her aura settles into a white chocolate glow,
she watches her lover dress and dash cologne about his throat
and next door the neighbors begin their ritual, their voices lap
against the air as they comb their hair, make their tricks,
the radio cutting and fading out, and coming to life again
and it’s like the street lives in a giant mouth, hot, damp, and dark,
the ache for teeth is welcoming
and the urge to be swallowed irresistible.
HOLDING HANDS. SUMMER
But do you not feel them too? The moments our tongues complete
the synaptic gap of our shared mouth,
that a simple touch from your finger
signals inside me a great calm, as if a switch had been flipped.
Would you have believed it possible?
Like the tendrils of the jellyfish who touch and in touch
return to touch, and tangle and grow into one,
we hold hands and walk down the street.
AWAKE. AFTER MIDNIGHT. CIGARETTES.
Can’t you see my bones?
They are the gleaming rails
of lacquered coffins
bearing bodies to seed the fields
beyond the seal skin shack
at the edge of the wood.
I too tramp wastes,
search for me between your fingers
and the rag down t-shirts I slept in
that summer at the cabin,
before Boston and varied streets,
the wild avenue parties.
Oh to become lost in a city
is like feeling your skin
for the first time
the strange doorknobs shaking hands,
the flattened brickyard cheeks,
to shout down the throat of the street
while drunk is to be bigger
than you once were
which was small, like a stone, like a bean.
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