Gwen Whitmoore

Gwen Whitmoore Nov 2013

jesus, are you my savior?
you're so light on my tongue,
I've sacrificed things I didn't even know
I'd attached to.

I plan on this becoming a longer poem

Gwen Whitmoore Nov 2013

I wanted to once more
return on Home; to stand
upon the front-porch, hand-crafted
by a Supreme knowledge of your skin.
To ignite the necessary ember to fuel
the fire behind your eyes; to linger
in the door frame as a way to embolden
that birthmark I always encouraged upon
your, half-swollen heart.

I wanted to Unconsciously return again to a singular
dependence on your five-o-clock laugh
or upon the fact that my ******* always saluted the
way your *** got zipped up in those Levi's, all the
way up, to your Blue Collar.

I haven't been able to
shake off your Novelty; travelling
the World and devouring boys
like you, in stale rooms and motionless autos,
where their skin made me Itch, and left nothing but
bed bug souvenirs to nestle in my brain. *(It's not their
fault that lavender and cotton, never
smelled as good on a girl like me)

ever, as always, would love some commentary :)

Gwen Whitmoore Nov 2013

Old Man.

I called you the Old Man, but I
was always the one in bed
before nine. You've got an
aching back from pragmatic
dreams and antique sympathy for
the Civil War. Old Man, you’re
an idealist capitalizing on a far
too consumed past, I thought you
knew repetition is no means
of production. Old Man, I heard
you when you said “I’ll change if,
I ever get around to it” and I thought
it was the saddest thing this World
has ever whispered. Old Man, your
pockets are pinched, tighter than
an anorexic’s waist, saving up for
a future a century’s past with a
loaf of stale bread. Old Man, you
told me it was only okay to envy
laugh lines and stolen glances, on
drives out West, with sweat, Nature’s
air conditioner. Old Man, I see you
travelling over hills, knowing you've
always got to see whats on the other side;
Old Man, I wish you'd just explore
your own.

work still to be done.

Gwen Whitmoore Nov 2013

Hmpf.

I'd like to butter you up, but
I'm on a diet and
You're vegan.

Gwen Whitmoore Nov 2013

Blind Post Script.

I've got eyes on every planet
weeping like watering holes, out of El Dorado.
only they're not golden nor heralding,
these eyes are wide and dilated
before a nameless, naked mistress with lipstick,
smeared between her inner thighs.

You thought that I was your special Siren,
a blind post script for your middle-class suburban soul,
with a girlish laugh and perfect teeth.
But, honey, I've eaten too many men alive in darker alleys
and I gave that up years ago because emptiness
only fuels the dead and I got sick of people
who never changed and always took the same way to work.

So please- dismiss those touching thoughts,
like some small school boy tardy to class
in the 1950s with knee socks covering scabs
and a case of fresh milk in glass.

Alas,- call off your self-designed verbal troops
for I am not your revolutionary cry, nothing you try
can protest the things I've been, willingly.
I should confide to you now that
Sisyphus, himself, already walked away,
with his head in between his shoulders and tears upon his cheeks.

Listen to me child,
I am no myth to be tempted,
Pandora opened my own box.

Gwen Whitmoore Oct 2013

Cigarette Packs, Eggs and Hard Bread

across the pond,

I lived off the diet of
some 55 year old bachelor
racing towards the past
only, I looked forward to
so much more than
my mother's improved health.

I would find books and read them
laying them vulnerable and bare
to my devouring mind. (I swear
to god, there's an approachable
Minotaur among my grey matter.)

I skipped Barcelona with an alcoholic
to research gay fascists and history's
slaughter benches. I hand-wrote that paper
just so I could feel something at work besides
strong coffee and false anxieties about projected moments.

I raised my hand, countless times
in foreign classes with tobacco residue
creased to my sheet paper. While others
slept or day-dreamed about the pigeon **** outside
but I smiled at the professor, & mommy and daddy sent them
capitalist notes with the appearance of life.

I met a girl, who got to know me through
all five senses, at once. Speaking more languages
than half this world is aware of, I danced til my flight
departed and I knew which city was my favorite, because
I knew nothing of it going in and having no expectations
opens me like an oyster whose made multiple pearls.

I lost my scarf there, in Italy,
a beautiful one with conversational brilliance
falling to disappearance on my final night, after the rains
of Tuscany had drenched away my need for movement
and the winds of Ventotene had me sailing with
men, I knew nothing of. After I cried on the floor
over the beauty of Hegel and Marx and fell into
Nebulae of epiphanies.

across the pond, my life had verve.

Gwen Whitmoore Oct 2013

Ceramic Self.

“I can’t make bricks without clay,” you said
but you had me walking into walls
with eyes wide open,
unbuttoning my pants in public to some
maenad beat in the foreground of your chest.

(You know, I've felt your calloused hands
Decades of times, molding my bone-dried shape.)

more than once I saw my looking-glass self
reflected in your hundred yard stare onyx eyes
ones made from medieval, fire-forged steel
bent back on itself thousands of times.

To me, you’re living proof that it’s not just the depths
of some ocean, where darkness can create.

we love each other like we don’t exist,
so I’m not sure if I do.