Words, the blood of poets. Slick, wet, hot, pouring over the page in a curtain of sultry satin red.
there are the little games I play:
“Come here.” and “Go away.”
I think I wait for one to say:
“I’ll game no more, please stay.”
(the unwritten second verse):
but this is not the truth, in truth
because the game makes life divine
and so I lie, and self-deny
to make them all be mine.
for sale:
home-grown stationary pebbles
raised to meet
unstoppable forces
scary, scary, bustle berry
walk the woods but do not tarry
you must go, go, go! and basket carry.
do not wait
or hesitate
but keep real close its familiar weight.
and if you spy his yellow eyes
feel his sharp, sharp teeth
or his smooth, smooth lies
do not look, do not believe
do not listen, he will deceive!
so walk quite fast, and hide your hair
he’s fond of red, like the cape you wear
and if he knows just what you bear
(the secrets in that basket there)
he will follow, follow, follow you most everywhere.
once lost (at the least, slightly misplaced)
red-kissed, moon-touched (her skin, of course) girl
(sometimes a woman)
(unexpected)
last seen in woods
playing
(wolves, bears, nary a scratch)
and painting
(light
on trees)
Words like water flow
down into the toilet bowl
and if with one finger flexed
I could flush them out to sea?
would they join all the rest
and come floating back to me?
mourning morning,
bedfall warning!
can’t escape the blanket shorning
too early to rise, most … concerning.
stay in bed? quite alluring.
I left the sonnets in the cupboard
haikus behind the door
pressed flowers like Alfred Prufrock
and left them on the floor
they said:
you are woven gossamer
silk threads in violent dance
I stole for you the moments
I could not leave to chance
in the downfall of a kiss
a diction soonest made
that all the king’s horses
could not have sweeter laid
but you, you dream inspired
unrequited and unresolved
and in the shadow of your thirst
my self in answer called.
it is fitting
that you be here
now.
that the way you hold yourself
is in length with the way I remember you
kneeling, beside my desk
and how you shiver
is how I hold you
in my mind
it is fitting
that you still fit
so perfectly
a fox ran for the hill
red-tailed, I followed
only to lose
her, at the edge of the wood.
she was too small and I
too much of a thing not meant
for small spaces.
so I let her go
almost. kissed
you made it seem like an inevitable
accident.
a trick on fate
almost. spoken
somewhere between magic
and stuttering photographs
trying so hard to create space
where it shouldn’t be.
almost. sweet
the way you read to sleep.
more real, I think
then anything else you’d said
almost. shared
a phrase or passage
for a moment
the best kind of neighbors
almost. enough