for the singer with the cyanide eyes
Maybe this
winter
will be easier;
maybe there is hope beyond frost;
maybe our breath will jut
in steamy tomorrows
across a river that never
freezes; maybe your dreams will dream yet
tachycardic, wild and blue,
like the pulse of the ocean,
muffling the deaths that lie spread-
eagled across decades,
hissing obscenities
under the bedspread, the deaths
that smell ever-so-softly
of overripe promises,
understated like
magnolia blossoms
at the end of summer…
like secrets for a December
no man has seen.
reflecting as we turn from the water
there was such hope
in this morning.
there were springs
and summers all
jumbled up in our eyes.
there were poems
scrawled in neon, winding
between our fingers:
binding, not bound. now
they slog through wet
descent, flailing, &
here we are at the back
of the notebook, a single
leaf remaining
before october ends.
cold settles in
like a low fog,
like tequila hung-
over, like
responsibility.
the river keeps rising,
and i will miss it.
there was such hope
in this morning.
& i am waiting still.
waiting (outside the same cafe where i wrote my mother’s funeral poem)
across the street, two men
argue over the ubermensch,
and a cricket hops brokenly
cross paving stones. from
the corner, scrying: how long
have we sung summer songs
and dreamt of october? running
yellows as they slip to fall,
sometimes it feels
like putting a bandaid
on a bleeder, not tying it off
with knots-in-silk. surgeons
would know these things,
but it is too late
to catch the sun heading
already south, and south
again. across the street,
two women argue
over love & champagne.
the cricket is gone. a maple
tree sighs sickening
as it sleeps in an ocean
breeze, and finally
october yawns & stretches.
day-dreaming in stolen words
children chase the shadows
of butterflies round a fountain
of stone; pink
blooms of crepe myrtle drift in
the august breeze to land
teasingly on skin, clothes, hair.
she finds it strange
how every man who has ever said
he loves her has also said
you deserve better;
hikes up her skirt to let
the late afternoon sun
kiss knees, thighs;
wonders. the moon
will be small and orange
tonight, a plaything
for summer’s dying gods.
who will kiss
her noon-shadow,
chase the butterfly wings down
the arch of her back, crown
her summer-glow
like a prom queen in pink crepe,
carry her home when
august has ended?
prayers in rough wood
My prayers in rough wood
are strung up with twine and hope,
spiral like incense
to an unhearing heaven,
float back to the ears of men
Who with gentle hands
unfold my finger-petals,
suck out from cupped palm
the splinters of unborn dreams,
catch the bleeding dew of faith.
…
…
This poem has been re-posted from its original appearance in Poets for Tsunami Relief, a blog-zine by twitter-friend and colleague Heather Grace Stewart. In keeping with the original intent of the poem, and the publication, I ask that you please consider contributing to relief funds through the Red Cross by clicking on this link or texting (details here). Peace and love, —jsl
metaphor for the middle of May
although near sunset i walk
the same barefoot circles
round the same gravel despair,
morning finds me
prying last autumn’s leaf fall
from the damp spring earth,
letting the soil breathe a
chance for the emergence of
new green.
hope
maybe
when this still-beating thing
underneath my ribcage grows
roots enough to grab
onto something worth
grabbing; when those roots
turn tough enough to send
their snaking fibers back
up into its sagging walls; when
those slips of fiber become
ropes to bind and hold and
hang, then,
maybe,
a single bubble squeezed
from the microscopic cracks
between serum and soul will rise free
and from the depths of this chest
go whistling through windpipes and
saliva to form a solitary
syllable on tongue-whet lips:
……..
