Cinq (a string)

It gets
most difficult
when even my finger
tips grow tired of missing you.
You would

think it
enough to stand
intact through another
week that passes a month in time,
you might

even
hold the belief
that tomorrow comes with
the innocence of a newborn;
eyes closed

to much
else beyond the
constant flow of life he
suckles at his mother's breast, still
it gets

severe
from time to time,
when even my finger
tips tire of wanting you near
again.

Thirteen

After the anger cooled
a Wedgwood blue
I recognized your terror
.
stranded midway
between marbles
and runway models
.
I do believe you'd
will yourself to fly
in Mustang speed

or maybe travel back
in science fiction fantasy
reverse the wild chaos.
.
Instead you teeter the line
a toe on either side
despising both
.
the marbles
and the models
you crave.

An ex-muse comes calling, (or requests below the belt)

You knew what voice to wear,
calling with "fly to me"
on your lips.

It sung of an old poem
surely writ in feathered glass

touching the page only long enough
to soar it the next.

Upon leaving

With the grief
a quiet comes.

Fleshy minutes
drip the clock.

Mourning herself
perched beneath,

cup in hand,
gorgeous
in her patience.

Untitled

There was nothing fierce
about it, more a gentle
finality that settled
like a slivered rock
might find the river's floor
after flitting about her skin.
Some little boy flinging rocks
from the shore as if her chaos made
not a bit of difference to the days outcome
and did it really?
She'd not fail to smooth out properly
before night fell,
or morning brought another rock.

Some kind of confessional bullshit

I've found I prefer to be hungry.
How odd to rather be empty.
How foolish to hoard the insight.

Like two windows facing one another
reflection and reality folded together
clean as the branch late December
tapping on one, showing the other,
sharing neither.

I've found it becomes agreeable
to only survive; though it makes
for an odd life to examine,
pick apart, staple together
like some fifth year med. student
might slide that weeks course onto the table,
some hope that adaptability won't prove this life's
most striking feature.

I find it most difficult to be both
masochistic and insightful,
though what better evidence of survival?

Perhaps that of children born out of wedlock,
out of doors, out of a drunk night, out of a chance
for anything but, and nothing short of,
survival with an intensity only the truly hungry
can appreciate.

Tonia

I read your letter last evening,
and spent this one figuring
how it is you appreciate women.
Do you hold them in your arms
smell their hair, caress them softly,
read them poetry against a southern sky?
You know they say most
lesbians have no real passion,
no real need to come across
that line we blend so brilliant
it turns orgasmic.
Are you one of those? Feigning
passion with the men, saving the women
your skin, your breath thick in the night;
hoarding the orgasm from them both,
for those moments alone
in the dark where no one can watch
the muscles along your belly twitch
with about as much control
as your first lover had late at night
when the fear of being found out
held as much charm as the idea,
that a real body would take him in.

Silence

With little call for discussion
I passed the day.
The occasional sharp breath;
memory of last night's
celebration of life and death,
brought the most noise
I cared to make.

Mourning

Finally, you give in
. and become wood;
slowly, as you'd imagine
. life seeped the shell
you might hold
. quiet on the log
laid near the shore
. in one last stretch.

Love Letter

Yesterday I drove to the snow,
. thought a bit of you
. a bit of me,
and the clouds, huge,
pressed against the mountain,
seemed to be waiting for the sun
to back down so freely,
they could roam the sky.

I wonder, would you think them cowardly,
sitting on the mountain's edge
like Mother Nature's Cinderella,
alone at the ball
fingering a strand of pearls,
not quite comfortable
in the power of magic?

I prefer to think them polite,
standing down like the step sisters would have
if Cinderella had once, found her voice.

You, my darling, would see yourself
the sun, the hero,
asking only the chance
to share the sky.

Strangely I would agree,
still, hardly oblige.

For Joshua

I once wrote a poem of a fish
gutted on some dock,
rainbows, naturally, glinting off scales;
the odd beauty of its death.

Still you, I can barely
touch with the pen.
Every attempt delivers
the most peculiar picture;

a tiny slip of a girl perched
over a churn, her ladle shaken,
and cream, free of it’s skin,
spilling, pouring,
over her feet.