They said you were gone
Long lips and high cheeks
Longer lipstick and no goodbyes
Your eyes were like tears in the corner
Something I couldn't see
And yet you took me, in the narrow
Told me you'd be there, on hot roads
In the corner, always in the corner
You said it wouldn't hurt but you lied
Like all the times you kissed me
Silver raindrops and a smile that said
You were gone
I learned to love you anyway
Away when you told me you'd hold me
Like all the forgotten things you missed
And just another kiss you said
Ill be gone
And then this song won't matter
None of it will matter like it did
When you kissed me and told me that you're gone
Tried to tell you how much I needed
A silver face like yours
Someone to grace my days and hopes
But nothing really hurts the way you kissed me
For the last time, always in the corner
And now you're gone again forever
Sep 23, 2017
Sep 23, 2017 at 7:13 AM UTC
Smart heart word art and
failed starts don't even begin
To express my best
Jun 2, 2017
Jun 2, 2017 at 9:23 PM UTC
Euology seems a dumb word
Like the dumbfounded therapist
Or clergy, or chaplains who try
In their nature to slip words, tongues
dry and spoken old like dust
of years left to rot in graves.
I no longer want to remember
No, I want to remember the fresh dry markers.
Memorials of the nurses who stopped the erase boards
like so many, who remembed without being reminded the way you
liked your tea.
Slipped warm slippers on feet that'd done so much
The many things that will be remembered
Are on white boards that neither he or I will keep
Oct 19, 2016
Oct 19, 2016 at 12:03 AM UTC
I saw you in the narrow
corner me with brown eyed glee
over the moon, under the barrows
You slipped a worn thorn through old scars
pierced my heart nonetheless
whispering to me undressed
all the secrets you kept hid so well
In the hidden heaven of our hell
And caught me on the line and hook
Buried long before we mistook
Please stay, for goodbye
And left me with the lonely question: why?
Jul 30, 2016
Jul 30, 2016 at 12:10 AM UTC
I called you honey bun
and you gave me ample sample
of what sweet felt like
on heart and tongue
You knew just how to please me
Simple sweat and glaze amaze
smiles and tears and soft elbows in nooks
Sunshined through your dress on days
rattled and shook my pans with a look
You showed me what it meant to want
Honeyed lips and slick with oil
Our hot crossed hours heaven spent
Tender meat and blood boil
Your flaxen strands like peppermint
All of your spices made me weak
You called me bread maker
Working the dough I didn't knead
Sifted and shook me like a Quaker
Swollowing flesh and core and seed
Then slipped on your apron and walked out my door
Jun 10, 2016
Jun 10, 2016 at 9:08 AM UTC
Grandpa Tinker died a few years after I was born. I'm told he met me before he left though I was still asleep then. Lulled in a cradle, in a peace made possible by men like him. A Marine Corp officer stationed at Pearl Harbor who awoke to the sound of shouts on a day the world would never be allowed to forget. Mother said he never spoke a word about the war. Maybe that was his way of forgetting; his gift to my mother's generation was to bury that pain. He let it die inside so the fear, the anguish, the terror could not touch the ones he loved. The world gave him something he could not forget, something so painful he buried it in his heart with the memory of fellow marines and sailors in watery graves.
Grandpa Harry was a gunner on a B-29. The son of orthodox Jews, a first generation American born in New York. When he was stationed in Texas he met a young W.A.V.E. who would become my grandma. They couldn't wait for the war to end before getting married. When Granpa Harry was shot down over the Burma theatre they sent grandma a letter. Heartbroken and desperate she prayed. He and the survivors of his crew were picked up weeks later in the jungle, but not before contracting maleria. They went on to have 8 children, 3 their own and 5 adopted. Grandma always loved children. She became a school teacher. Grandpa Harry died before I was born, the world gave him something he could not forget either.
I do not like to think of the war as a battle between nations of this world. Good and evil do not fight under banners of nations, they have no borders, no anthems, only memories. They fight and die on battlefields of hearts that have buried hate, pain, and terror. My grandparents' hearts are memorials. Gleaming white tombstones on a field I cannot see, and cannot forget.
Jun 3, 2016
Jun 3, 2016 at 4:44 PM UTC
The road hissed under balding black
punched staccato rhythms up your back
Wind whining through the window crack
but you knew:
You knew where you were
Felt the dark spaces between
Here and there
You didn't see the car that swerved
in and out of traffic as if threading
The eyes of unseen needles.
But you knew all about needles
The car pitched upward slowly gaining
like a rollercoaster just before the drop
fighting inertia, trying to build momentum
You knew you'd never use, like your body
You didn't see the man outside the waiting room
sitting silent, motionless
Studying the ceiling with an anguished look
A prayer of supplication written on his still lips
The air was still as we suddenly felt heavy
Lifted through a concrete column in a metal box
you felt the ding as much as heard it
The doors slid open, then cool air and a new smell
Somehow more metallic than the elevator
You didn't see me close my eyes the whole way up
Didn't see the expressions I could not hide from me
Or shift my hands in my pockets, uselessly
Or my face when they told you two months, maybe three
My voice you knew all too well when
A month ago I sang in G, but all I could say now
was in a minor key, we both tired of being weary
The corridor was bright, obscenely lit in false light
not unlike the perfume of the week old roses passed
and in a moment they were threading needles in you
a perfect traffic jam of hopes choked and left
to die on the blacktop
You didn't see the church where we held the service
Or your sister and mother who, though she could barely stand
Stood by you one last time.
And I could not think of anything to say.
Had you been there you would have teased
"But you were always so good with words"
And all I could muster? "I wish you'd stay"
May 24, 2016
May 24, 2016 at 4:31 PM UTC
The night before I killed myself I tried to sleep but couldn't. The mantle clock sounded second ticks long-handed. Loud, long ticks.
I climbed up on the roof. Sat on shingles layered in leaves I'd promised but never got around to blowing off. The neighbor's cat stared at me across the way. A look as empty and weightless as I felt. She meowed one plangent note before she left me there.
Dark mistletoe hung unused from lintels long ago. You and I we stood there not sure of what to do.
The night before I killed myself I built a fire. Fed it the notes you wrote.
Declerations of love turned to ash without protest. Your pleas were next, their ashes floating up in black and white.
Columns of supplication falling cold and grey.
You never want to see me again; I saved that one for last, just as you did.
The night before I killed myself I searched my contacts. Only a few remained and still it felt crowded, filled with intimate strangers who'd stopped calling long ago. I tried to count the people who might care, but I came up empty handed.
The night before I killed myself the moonlight spilled on lawns manicured through quiet dedication only suburbs can posess. I enjoyed it once. Now the silent solitude I sought ran screaming, chased by racing thoughts and guilt I could no longer place.
That night I tried to tell myself to live, while the last lights flickered in my eyes. Ash is what's left when the fire dies.
Sep 23, 2015
Sep 23, 2015 at 9:27 PM UTC
she whispers to me sweetly
sleeping, quiet ecstasy
then tells me what is wrong
she needs another verse or song
I'm her puppet to be sure
I would paint the sky for her
silken strings pulled and release
silken skin bare to me
and all the stars in night's sky see
She comes to me in dreams
and **** to me in screams
but her words are painful strings
tying me to her in verse or song or chat
heads of her fore-strings make me weak
compete with her heart? To what end?
I'll begin again when quiet promise blooms
perhaps in May or March or June
then she will say words echoing from my heart
An ache that smarts might learn
From outwith her tender sorrow
comes blessings disguised
and then I will hurt her though I don't intend
See her smile and laugh again in my arms
look at me with smiles wide open to heaven
then cast a frown down to persevere
against the flow of life thrown carelessly at us both
you will know this verse when you can
understand that it's not a candy land you dropped
laborers placing wooden panels on the walls
and you in the house by the lake, watching it all
Dec 31, 2013
Dec 31, 2013 at 6:34 PM UTC
I don't care anymore what people think
which oddly, I've found, isn't the same
as not caring at all. Now it doesn't really matter
what transpires between you and I
Sure, you've held my head in lap and *****
I think of it often, sweet embrace and tired faces
Your laughs mock strings of heart I'd kept in silent places
Like the one I saved for "us"
Dredging anchors I'd dropped long ago
Though the chains were broken now
I'll never know how you knew
It's one secret I keep for us,though I know you don't know it
Dec 16, 2013
Dec 16, 2013 at 9:04 PM UTC