Tonight, you cling to my nakedness
with the perfect gratitude of a nearly
drowned man. And I think:
I am the shore he has washed up on.
And I ask: Who is really the one saved?
So much doesn’t matter.
There are no questions about where
you have been or where we will go.
There is only now.
There is only your cheek pressed
against the inside of my thigh,
the feeling of your skin becoming my
skin, the sound of you drawing me in
as you inhale the sweet, spicy heat of me that rises up from a dark,
warm place you want to return to.
And there are these hands.
Hands that you have given a purpose.
Hands that have read the electric petition of your body and understood.
These are the hands that will not lie to you. These are the hands that you will return to.
By: Evelyn Augusto
#poetsout @evelynaugusto2012
Apr 24, 2019
Apr 24, 2019 at 9:26 PM UTC
“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."
William Shakespeare
They know time is the greatest
of thieves, stealing their
oneness until she no longer
recognizes herself in his face
and he no longer remembers
her voice as music,
her steps as a dance.
When he was a boy…
he loved as a boy--
believing she created his universe.
Now as a man, he in turn, is her
sun and moon and stars.
So much depends on the landscape
of a life, so much of what
we get. . . we give.
By: Evelyn Augusto
Jan 11, 2018
Jan 11, 2018 at 3:45 PM UTC
they make my husband feel
like a man and help him bond with our sons.
I don't like them or how he
describes the way they feel in his hand: "Better than a *** I heard him confide to his pal, Joey...
but something has to protect us. I mean it's our right to be on guard.
It's our right.
My husband spends all his
time with his guns: cleaning them,
polishing the barrels, studying their details. And talking...talking about
his gun rights, about his next NRA meeting or what happened at the last or that he can't believe how
good the right gun in his hand feels.
I don't like guns...they made me disappear.
By: Evelyn Augusto
Jan 9, 2018
Jan 9, 2018 at 8:25 AM UTC
I knew all along
you were the rail spike,
I was the sleeper
and in my old life
I was deader
than dead anyway...
so I jumped.
Jumped from the platform--
of my mediocre existence
to risk the tracks
I didn't trip on to them,
carelessly, like
some might think
no
I flashed my stoplight
green eyes in consent,
gave the 3rd rail a nod,
perched myself right
over the vibrating steel
and waited
I knew without knowing
what I was doing
its primordial
older than the cave itself
this instinct to follow
certain men anywhere.
Dec 9, 2017
Dec 9, 2017 at 9:30 PM UTC
I Don't Like Guns...But
they make my husband feel
like a man and help him bond
with our sons.
I don't like them or how he
describes the way they feel in
his hand: "Better than a ***
I heard him confide to his pal, Joey...
but something has to protect us.
I mean it's our right to be on guard.
It's our right.
My husband spends all his
time with his guns: cleaning them,
polishing the barrels, studying their
details. And talking...talking about
his gun rights, about his next NRA
meeting or what happened at the
last or that he can't believe how
good the right gun in his hand feels.
I don't like guns...they made me disappear.
Written for GUNS DON'T SAVE PEOPLE POETS DO: DUELING WITH WORDS TO STOP GUN VIOLENCE. ..a Facebook group
Dec 9, 2017
Dec 9, 2017 at 6:54 AM UTC
In this summer light, your face startles
Much like the sudden unveiling
Of Baroque Oil On Canvas
Your face becomes illuminated
Like an entire Universe
And I will study the threshold
Of your mouth, admiring its clear brightness
(Chiaro)...before moving up
To consider the invitation
Of your eyes, reclining into
Their obscure mellow darkness
(Oscuro)...and soon I will recall
The arrangement of light and shade.
That is you. Forever reliving
What you have revealed to me:
Your hunger is my pleasure, your words
My truth, your song, my delight, and you,
(Chiaroscuro)...
By: Evelyn Augusto
Dec 3, 2017
Dec 3, 2017 at 1:02 PM UTC
“I think he’ll be to Rome as is the Osprey to the fish...." Shakespeare
And from above the timberline
the pond lay open like a hand
to offer all it had.
And patterns in the silt baked
by the sun, became coarse rope knotted into a net, then draped
along the shore line.
And returning to this place
of the towering pine,
whose reservoir of color
had drained back into the earth,
the air was different with promise.
And I, for once, no longer carried sorrow beneath my arched wing.
And the two, together, at the water’s edge hopeful like children, cast all they were into the trembling water--
needing to gather something into themselves, something other than what they had.
And I ask this: Were we there for the fish or something more?
By: Evelyn Augusto
Dec 2, 2017
Dec 2, 2017 at 11:57 AM UTC
In my sleep I
chew on the
laces of the gloves,
trace the eyelets
with my tongue,
memorize the leather
the way an animal will
lick a wound. Hour
after hour, while you
dream, I gnaw
and pull,
to work my fists
free.
Betrayal is bone
on bone, is
the long, vacant scream
of the dying, is
what pardons the soul
leaving these words
and this mouth
weapons.
Dec 1, 2017
Dec 1, 2017 at 8:03 PM UTC
I don’t like tuna fish.
I don't like it the way
I don't like
men who study
little girls
I don't like it the way
I don't like
bullies
and
rich people
who won't share
or poor
people who are
cruel to
their own kind
because they have
to put their
pain somewhere.
I don’t like tuna fish
because my mother
told me, "eat it--
it's good for you" the way
she insisted I accept
the rest of
her distasteful
lies.
I dont like how the taste
of canned tuna finds
its way back into
my mouth long
after its been swallowed
and **** out.
It reminds me of the
unbearable
that I thought I survived--
that I thought I left behind
but didn't.
By: Evelyn Augusto
Nov 30, 2017
Nov 30, 2017 at 6:33 PM UTC
The headline of the morning paper
read: Woman's Life is Taken.
They found no body.
No need for an obituary,
all the details of her story fit
in a two by three inch column.
They didn't know about you.
And the man reading the paper over
his bowl of oatmeal, for once
would miss count the raisins
that he, for fifty years,
carefully dropped in a pyramid
pattern atop the soupy bowl of grain.
He couldn't imagine what possessed her.
He thought: This is why I never married.
He thought. This is why
I'm glad I'm a man.
He didn't know about you.
And the woman who's eyes filled with
tears that stained her face black,
wished she hadn't bought the paper
for the coupons, wished she
didn't understand exactly
what happened, wished there
was a cure for love. She thought:
No body...no heart to donate to science....
She once knew someone like you.
Nov 28, 2017
Nov 28, 2017 at 5:26 PM UTC