good weather
is like
good women-
it doesn't always happen
and when it does
it doesn't
always last.
man is
more stable:
if he's bad
there's more chance
he'll stay that way,
or if he's good
he might hang
on,
but a woman
is changed
by
children
age
diet
conversation
***
the moon
the absence or
presence of sun
or good times.
a woman must be nursed
into subsistence
by love
where a man can become
stronger
by being hated.
I am drinking tonight in Spangler's Bar
and I remember the cows
I once painted in Art class
and they looked good
they looked better than anything
in here. I am drinking in Spangler's Bar
wondering which to love and which
to hate, but the rules are gone:
I love and hate only
myself-
they stand outside me
like an orange dropped from the table
and rolling away; it's what I've got to
decide:
**** myself or
love myself?
which is the treason?
where's the information
coming from?
books...like broken glass:
I wouldn't wipe my *** with 'em
yet, it's getting
darker, see?
(we drink here and speak to
each other and
seem knowing.)
buy the cow with the biggest
****
buy the cow with the biggest
****.
present arms.
the bartender slides me a beer
it runs down the bar
like an Olympic sprinter
and the pair of pliers that is my hand
stops it, lifts it,
golden **** of dull temptation,
I drink and
stand there
the weather bad for cows
but my brush is ready
to stroke up
the green grass straw eye
sadness takes me all over
and I drink the beer straight down
order a shot
fast
to give me the guts and the love to
go
on.
from "poems written before jumping out of an 8 story window" - 1966

I've come by, she says, to tell you
that this is it. I'm not kidding, it's
over. this is it.
I sit on the couch watching her arrange
her long red hair before my bedroom
mirror.
she pulls her hair up and
piles it on top of her head-
she lets her eyes look at
my eyes-
then she drops her hair and
lets it fall down in front of her face.
we go to bed and I hold her
speechlessly from the back
my arm around her neck
I touch her wrists and hands
feel up to
her elbows
no further.
she gets up.
this is it, she says,
this will do. well,
I'm going.
I get up and walk her
to the door
just as she leaves
she says,
I want you to buy me
some high-heeled shoes
with tall thin spikes,
black high-heeled shoes.
no, I want them
red.
I watch her walk down the cement walk
under the trees
she walks all right and
as the pointsettas drip in the sun
I close the door.

new is now old,
my fingers are cold and shaking yet I still grasp at what once was.
it's hard to remember you.
fog-headed, I'll close my eyes to try to see
a piece of the past with clarity
like when your heart would beat for me.

like silence, only the sound of our lips
and the backs of my eyelids painting works of art.
like when your breath would whisper my name
and fill the room with ecstasy.

now only one appendage is flooded for me,
and I only feel you angrily
penetrating with resentment
and a fantasy I can not conceive.

but one day we had love, made love; and this is one memory
that above all else I'll choose to carry
in the hopes that it will re-emerge from the hole that it's been ****** into.
though I'm black and blue,
I won't give up on you
but good lord, I feel like I'm dying...

and sometimes the clouds look like mountains
winter coming to an end

other times, my favorite times,
a lovely field of green
color of your eyes
a summer storm rolling in.
i glimpse the crack of electricity across the canvas
i wait for the roar of it's mate.
each awesome moment upon the stage
a duet, a silent sonnet
the light rain pairs with the falling darkness,
slow soft blows from the moon wake up the stars

my lips to a cigarette
my thumb to the lighter  
my heart to swell lovely contentment
only to break
too much hot air
I need the mountains once again

© 2015 Kate Volk