notice how i used "the",
pronounced "thawh" not "thuh"

and you told me words were just
words, like they **** you with
cooing fingertips licking your jaw and...

tap you on the shoulder to
then spin away again.

forgive my tongue, my
jocular indecisiveness
running over my teeth

math smirked at you;
your calculations were timid
so maybe that's why i could
never understand your idea
of "concise".

I can't help that she calls me, love.
You've said yourself, she was a jealous mistress.
I'm well quit of her, and she of me,
though she still calls.

...oh but her body hides sweet pink flesh
and the salt, the salt on my tongue...

I've never regretted a night
Spent here with you, you know that, love.
There are things a mistress can't give,
And you've given them all to me.

...oh but she's wet and in her I'm slick
with me, she didn't crash, but flow...

Why doubt your own gifts?
The bread of your body,
This home made with four hands,
And the children, our love made real?

...oh but we are froth together
and moonlit dancers, fast, slow, bound...

I've never looked back and I'll always come when you call.

*...but I always look back
always come...

Kiss me here, her fingers said
tracing the chalky porcelain
of her woman’s jaw,
light as a water bug
skimming the surface,
over that seam between
flesh and mask,
where the little girl ended
and the doll began, draped in
lace and fragile gossamer
but so very little substance.

I will make a poem of this:
coffee so dark
the cream
is a dull
roiling
grey;
a sink
breathing
mossy fumes
but I won’t notice
for at least another day.

Echoes lurk in
converging angles
linking what is to
what might have been.

If I don’t look
I won’t see
the empty bed,
the empty bed
in the
extra room.

I scrape my forearms as if the hand you have clasped around my wrist is a lion’s jaw.

I don’t do well under social pressures
And I would love nothing more than to lend you my underwear and tell you about my dreams
But my modesty is a jealous ***** and will have none of that

So instead, I put my feet on your lap and touch behind my ears
Positioning them like satellites, prepared to receive any data you let into the atmosphere

I tell you about the boy I loved in high school, you tell me about the book you’re reading

I dress you up to be John Keats
With words of romance swimming through your veins
From your eyes to your hands
The prose you conjure make my eyelashes sweep against my upper cheek

With ***** in your blood and the night still young,
You have the ability to write me a novel crafted out of the moments that have crept through your fingers

I grasp at your memories as if they were butterflies,
Careful not to touch the wings, so that their beauty might be seen by someone else

I sit and watch as your face becomes a sitcom
With all the laughs and pains that a script can hold
I look for places where I might make notes in the margins, trying to make you more cohesive

I glue a penny to my forehead
Face up
In hopes that someone will take it from its place
Looking for the bit of luck it holds and instead grab my hand.

My stomach clenches in knots
Craving an understanding of the words you mumble into your coffee

My toes massage the soles of my shoes
Looking for a foot hold in the song I’m humming

But instead I breathe on my tea and dwell on the kiss we shared in the basement

The way you held
your cigarette,

The way you saw sunrise coming
from the bottom of a whiskey glass;

Only empty bottles,
fallen leaves noticed you;
hint of Winter to
cordial Autumn sun.

Tap tap go the slim, brown shoes
And a snazzy hat bobbing on his head
Tap tap, some like to lick a girl’s toes,
And some collect stamps of people long dead

‘T is what it is, but I reckon that
There are too many poems about love
And too few about fish

I could tell you how the Square looks
sketched in moonlight;
I know the smell of mist fresh off the river,
and night air that parts like tired curtains,
with wet heat that sighs
and slaps the dock when you move on;
I’ve felt what a saxophone does
to the heart
over water,
and how a man’s voice sounds best after smoking,
but a woman’s is best after ***.

There are ghosts in these streets,
but they don’t hunger anymore;
hunger is for the living
not satisfied
with light.