I’d like to be your lungs,
a necessity,
forever expanding and contracting
always a place for me
inside of you.
Again I crack,
crumble
and settle at your feet.
Looking up at you,
you’re closer to the sun
than anyone should be.
I dampen my heels
in pools of nostalgia:
elixir of the heart
and a simultaneous poison.
Even the pale tree-leaves,
in a conspiracy
allude to you.
I tell myself
these circumstances
are beyond my control.
Sitting patiently,
I practice not thinking
of you.
Mar 14, 2019
Mar 14, 2019 at 4:37 PM UTC
He had a charm like the forest,
wet and murky
it could pull you under
like quicksand.
And like a simple reed,
I was part of him
not wholly insignificant
but expendable.
I would look on shyly,
as kaleidoscopes of grey-green mist
filtered through his underbrush
and finally encompassed me.
To fill one’s lungs
with his marsh-water
would be foolish,
yet divine.
Mar 14, 2019
Mar 14, 2019 at 4:32 PM UTC
She was the wilderness
in kind, earthy tones
and thick, lavish air
hanging heavy in the white
afternoon.
I was the ocean,
in heaving, sickish hues of green
and soapy, feverish fits
swelling onto the bay,
clumsily.
Her sunkissed stare,
and oleander skin
could bruise the freshest fruit
and so she left me with her
mark.
I spent August nights
dizzied by her spell
but encompassed in my sadness
I became
a ghost.
Even now, I drop apologies
like petals at her feet
and watch mournfully
as the yawning earth
flaunts her
as its bride.
Mar 14, 2019
Mar 14, 2019 at 4:29 PM UTC
My fingers crawl to
the loneliest place when I
want and miss you most.
-m.b
Mar 9, 2019
Mar 9, 2019 at 8:28 AM UTC
your worth is unmeasurable
its value is so high
yet so low
all it takes is
the right person
to determine
how much you’re worth
but
don’t let an unmeasurable soul
measure your worth.
don’t let one with an
unmeasurable worth
determine the value
of yours.
Feb 5, 2019
Feb 5, 2019 at 8:26 AM UTC
most people see me as
a happy person because
i laugh easily,
i smile a lot,
i joke a lot.
but deep down
in my heart,
i am fragile,
i can get hurt easily,
but i choose to not
show it to the world.
instead of being sad,
i choose to laugh to cover it.
maybe you can call me
"the queen of the mask"
by this,
you can tell
that most of the time
when I'm laughing,
I'm not really laughing,
i was trying so hard to hide
my sadness.
Jan 24, 2019
Jan 24, 2019 at 8:38 AM UTC
In the evenings
the deer would emerge
from the edge of the woods
stepping over the tumbledown stones
of walls left untended-
they'd leave tracks through the snow
in a wandering line that led to the last apple tree
in the field by Orchard Street.
I remember that now,
staring at this antler I've found
in the clearing between the cactus
and sun bleached stones.
The lines of the antler
flow into the fractures of my palm-
two thousand miles from snow,
and two thousand miles from
the blue evening glow
of a shivering world
glazed over by twilight…
And the deer-
magnificent, pawing the snow
searching for apples that had fallen below-
emboldened by the frozen sweetness of autumn.
They were graceful even in flight-
when cars with chains
jingling and crunching the ice
rounded the corner
down Orchard Street.
Today I've tracked over two thousand miles
in my own wandering line-
the lines of the antler
flow through the tangles and hollows of time.
Sometimes I stand in a clearing,
sometimes hidden by trees,
sometimes I scratch below the surface,
and I run- but, less gracefully...
There are walls I've left untended
and some I've crafted too well-
it is through forgotten tumbledown walls
that memories come-
I thank grace
it was into this clearing they fell.
Tom Spencer © 2017
Jan 20, 2019
Jan 20, 2019 at 12:45 AM UTC