Hey..
What’s in that bag you drag?
I have a box of my own.
It’s well known to me.
So, what do you think is fair?
Rock, paper, scissors,
the loser opens first?
I don’t mind.
I’m tired of its weight,
and long to let the moths loose.
Or, you know,
we could just practice being born.
Category Archives: Love
Happy days are here again
Suppose
you could take me with you.
Into this, your shiny time
of smiling at the sun,
of feeling the quickening
of love’s stirrings.
Of planning without the thought of ending.
Of being adored.
Tag along, I would,
incognito.
Even, I would pay
with what I have left.
In you
In you, I have dreamt
a glowering cloud bank
lowering to feather the fields.
Gloving the lava sun that waits
to cure the purchased rain.
In you.
From memory
Were I able to paint or draw,
and had not seen you,
even for a year,
I would find joy in the task,
and have at it until I was
well and truly spattered
with remembered colours.
As it is, I will dress down.
Take up pencil or crayon.
Something erasable.
Quakers
I know why you couldn’t shave anymore
I used to think that you could
but needed to be touched
I think, now, that something told you
“What’s the use?”
and you agreed
and your hands and knees agreed
and next morning
your shrunken head
could think only of hard rivers of nerves.
A dream Dad, a burning yearn.
Why’d you lead me into corn-stubbled hills? This mind of mine swirls with overthink. Come on, old man. We’re supposed to be waiting by the highway for that Buick to pick us up. It is to take me home. You’re just a distraction.
Suggestibility is a downfall of mine. I’ve followed too many false prophets. And, why do you take the name of my dead Dad? You’re not him. So I’ll turn and defy you. Walk right by you. Screw the corn, it’s without meaning. Highway it is for me.
Hah! I look back and see you following in your rubber boots, making dusty puffs in the dried mud, defeat and aggravation on your puss. Now, over the last rise, there’s the fence by the highway! The beige Buick with the young kid driving it…
He must have been waiting and didn’t see us, ’cause now he’s pulling away.
I shout. Shout No No No! and he sees us, stops. Smiling braces, freckles, ball cap. Say something, Old Man. I done beat you, you couldn’t take me to your false halls.
We start to roll on the smooth road. The young kid is from my nucleus. He’s been sworn not to say much, but he tells me the car has to go in for repairs, and he’s going to drop us in town for some “entertainment”. And, Old Man, I know you’re a lecher, and I do believe that you and Alfred, here, have been talking. Entertainment. Yah. He drops us off in the red light district, and you try your come hither again, but no, not this time. So you shrug, and I watch you descend long long stairs into a floodlit mine.
I know my lot is going to be something better today, and I don’t even care about the Buick no more. I walk slowly, through side streets of old houses. I wonder why I’m so warm, and then I realize I’m holding a cat. Then, through a hedge, I see a house with a picture window.
The living room has a soft glow of orange, and there’s someone in a rocker. And I stand, a voyeur with his cat. Kitty purrs now, and I can feel it through my chest.
A slow hand parts the lace curtains, and I see knitting. And I cry a man’s tears at the rosy cheeked face of Mom.
Something’s missing
Do you miss
Do you want
Something lost
Are you here to look
without telling?
It’s one in a million,
I sadly say.
But, star-crossed as we might be,
the future’s not ours to see.
Que sera, sera.
That’s the spirit
There’s no one to adore it.
Too hard-shelled and prickly,
I guess.
Transgressions bought and paid for.
Still, there are soft surfaces of want.
In the shower,
(hotter, hotter),
there’s that brain stem shiver.
White-eyed,
photogenic as an actor’s orgasm.
The house that Jill built
The house she built
is nested inside
the one they bought together.
It’s been long in its building,
with slow accretions
wrung from unshed tears.
A desperation. A resignation.
It has gift boxes, unwanted.
Empty bowls and jars
on brazen display,
meant to catch a beautiful rain
that never came.
The wanting
In an evening of pine perfume
and soft needle carpets,
we sat in the scout group, fire-entranced.
And laughed,
as neglected marshmallows blackened
and fell into flame.
Outhouse-bound,
I didn’t hear your soft steps behind me.
You ran ahead. Leaned against a tree,
not beckoning, but doing something odd with your fingers.
I stopped by you. How could I not?
With one of the warm mallows,
you made stretchy designs,
like knitting with thumbs and index fingers.
Now an amoeba, now a neuron, a spider web, a ghost with eyeholes.
You said nothing at all,
and turned your freckle face away, enthralling.
And I was silent too,
smiling and trying to catch your eye.
Just as the light failed,
you removed a ring from your finger, pocketing it.
Looked away, tapped your foot.
What a fool I was.
Aremyfeetofftheground 