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124.2k · Jul 2011
An inadequate poem
Marsha Singh Jul 2011
A poem falls short; I'd like, instead
to draw a single line from me to you
and watch it curl into a word
so beautiful it's still unsaid –
or press paper to the window pane
so that the day might saturate
a note that brightly warms your hands,
spills birdsong from imagined trees
and buzzes like fat bumblebees,
but I am bound by language, love; I can't.
Marsha Singh Mar 2011
I lie in bed, a lazy girl
dreamy smiled and and sleepy eyed,
your latest sonnet on my pillow –
my latest heartbeat, amplified.
10.5k · Mar 2018
Revival
Marsha Singh Mar 2018
Next time I wake from sleep
for keeps – from deepest, darkest
slumber – I may come back a little
bird to visit in the summer; my
quetzal pomp, green feathered
grace, singing through my hunger –
when I am gone, I may come back
your pretty bird, a wonder.
9.7k · Dec 2010
Crush
Marsha Singh Dec 2010
If an easy rain
would make the rocks slippery,
he would hold my hand.
6.2k · Dec 2010
Your poems love my poems
Marsha Singh Dec 2010
I pretend that your poems and 
my poems go
slumming in disguise;
carrying on in dark doorways
of riverfront bars—
tipsy, telling secrets,
spilling out into the sweet-smelling
night,
libertines 
more in love 
than they were before.
5.3k · Dec 2010
Cherries
Marsha Singh Dec 2010
Fresh cherries, just washed— 
beads of ruby strewn across
white bowl's shiny gloss—

dainty stems crisscrossed.
5.1k · Aug 2011
Housekeeping
Marsha Singh Aug 2011
When you are over me,
I'll pluck my poems from your hair
and shake them from your sheets;
I'll take longer than I should.
4.5k · Jan 2011
Night is a river.
Marsha Singh Jan 2011
We drift along through moss and moon,
the currents swift from love's typhoons,

skim fingertips through stirred up sins;
we never speak of daybreak things.
3.5k · Dec 2010
Bonfire
Marsha Singh Dec 2010
This is how we love:
First with fire, then without.
Who was tending the embers?
3.3k · Sep 2011
Homesick
Marsha Singh Sep 2011
This is a lonely poem,
a half an hour before dawn poem,
a poem like an empty kitchen –
a godforsaken (god, I'm shaking)
feeling like I just want to go home
poem. (and I am home)
3.3k · Dec 2010
Swamp Mambo
Marsha Singh Dec 2010
Stay away from the voodoo, love.

Resist

the swamp music
the bells on her ankles
her feathered fan

and when she sways
at the hip—

goddess of sudden changes
patroness of prostitutes
and abandoned lovers—

chanting Mambo, terrible beauty.

Say nothing

when she leans close
(cinnamon, tree bark and, faintly, smoke)
and breathes

If you have no altar,
I am your altar.


Stay away from the voodoo, love—

her drumbeats and cypress trees,
her hocus pocus
honeylocust.
Marsha Singh Mar 2011
is not a kiss of measured bliss,
perfect in its timeliness;
it's the one that leaves your heart undone,
a far from perfect hit-and-run
that isn't great until redone.
:)
3.2k · Mar 2012
Space-time Paradox
Marsha Singh Mar 2012
If time is a convincing illusion, then as I am writing this,
you are reading it; you are remembering me years after
we have spoken last, and I am noticing you for the first time.

I'm a young woman waking up in an apartment in Albany,
New York, realizing that I am finally broken enough to fix,
and an East Boston moppet in ***** pink overalls, riding
Big Wheels through the sprinklers with a boy named John Henry.

You're delivering newspapers on a cold New Hampshire morning.
I am falling asleep wondering if you could possibly love me.
You are saying that you do. You are stardust, and I am long gone.
3.1k · Dec 2010
On Europa and Ripe Peaches
Marsha Singh Dec 2010
What a burning, broken universe—
incalculable, devastating,
things we can't imagine.
We attach names familiar to us
                    Titan, Europa, Calypso
but they are still mighty and immeasurable, terrifying—

but don't think of all that.
It's too big.
It's too sad.

Think of this:

It's sublime and impossible that we even exist
with our
soft flesh and our wet eyes,
our music, our sins, 
our jealous lovers,
our moments of bliss, 
and love— god, love…
more immeasurable
more incalculable
than the universe, 
than whatever it is
that the universe wonders about.

Our smallness shouldn't humble us.
We are tiny demigods
watching the universe expand
from our lawn chairs
while we eat ripe peaches
with sticky hands and smiling mouths.
2.9k · Apr 2011
It was that good
Marsha Singh Apr 2011
I wrote a poem you'll never see –
a masterpiece; it took me weeks.
I love you and I wanted you to know.
I achingly described your lips
with tender, breathless craftsmanship;
it was a soulful, sinful epic wracked with lust.
Poetry herself, intrigued,
shook her head in disbelief;
no mortal girl could ever love so much –
and so, enamored by my words,
she decided to ****** you first.
I'm sorry, lover, but she had to go.
2.9k · Dec 2010
Tangent
Marsha Singh Dec 2010
Tangent: touching
along a curve,
a surface,
without intersecting.

We are acquainted.
Contours quietly agree.
What I cannot guess
with my hands
I will consider
with my lips—

count the places 
I kiss you,
forget where I am,
start over.
2.9k · Mar 2012
I keep an appetite.
Marsha Singh Mar 2012
For the same reasons that I stay hungry
for dinner and tired for bed, I keep my
heart a little lonely for poetry; that way,
I can imagine your weathered hands against
my pale thighs as clinging starfish – my
fingernails, bleached cockleshells washed up
on the barely evening beach of your back.
2.8k · Dec 2010
Bitter Botany
Marsha Singh Dec 2010
I entered through your garden gate;

a summer hush
no sign of us

just the grove of 
words
you grew
for her.

I returned home
a silhouette,
to tend my hothouse
of regret.
2.7k · Feb 2011
I'm your problem now, Venus
Marsha Singh Feb 2011
I blamed it all on Scorpius—
my secret self, the sting, the lust,
my conditional approach to trust.

I shrugged at Mars when jealousy
and suspicion got the best of me;
I was just his astral devotee.

And my vengeful hate for all unjust?
It all went back to Scorpius,
but, alas, I hovered on the cusp;

I'm Libra now. I'll readjust.
2.7k · Aug 2011
a misanthropic episode:
Marsha Singh Aug 2011
stupid poetry.
stupid hope.
2.5k · Feb 2011
We were still hungry
Marsha Singh Feb 2011
Amid the fig and quince,
the bright pomegranate orchards,
the black mulberry and wild olives,
we were still hungry.
He called it the Tree of Knowledge.
How were we to resist?
2.5k · Oct 2011
In your absence
Marsha Singh Oct 2011
It's been a week; I know you said
sometimes it may be hard to write.
I understand, I really do –
I've been very busy, too,
learning how to sleep at night
and falling out of love with you.
2.4k · Jul 2011
Venus Observa
Marsha Singh Jul 2011
The lotus calls another time;
right now, just bring your lips to mine—
a congress of the simplest kind,
yet steeped in fever, still divine,
this tangled frame of skin and breath 
urged onward to its little death
on rolling seas of hands and hips;
the synthesis of fingertips—
my shaking legs, a testament
to a winter's afternoon well spent.
Marsha Singh Jan 2011
If I wrote you the shortest poem,
a word, or less
that said as much as any
poem, or more;

worked through this night, and the next;
by sunlight,  lamp light
head bent over every word I've ever written
and all the words I haven't learned;

if sometimes I cried, and thought I'd never stop,
and sometimes I found a word
that was not the right word
but it was a good word,
a perfectly sweet word
so I held it to my chest for a while;
curled up in bed with it,
stood there, waving
long after it was gone;

if I wrote you the shortest poem
and rode my bike to your house
because I wanted to give it to you
while it was still warm,

would your door be open?
Would you smile for days?
2.4k · Sep 2011
The barn, your hands
Marsha Singh Sep 2011
An old barn shrill with crickets' trill
(we snuck away to meet like spies)
tomatoes on the windowsill
(the car was hot against my thighs)
clover growing through the floor
(there was little time to spare)
summer here had grown indoors
(your hands were strong, and everywhere).
2.3k · Dec 2010
Don't trust girls like me
Marsha Singh Dec 2010
Don't trust charming thieves, love;
don't trust girls like me.
Girls like me, we leave, love;

we steal your heart and leave.

Girls like me, we know, love,
when it's time to go.
We're prettier as ghosts, love;

we flicker out, then go.
2.3k · Dec 2010
Steamy little tanka
Marsha Singh Dec 2010
Towel clutched loosely
warm, blushing skin, damp with steam
cool condensation
distillation of lust, his
fingers wrapped in her wet hair.
2.3k · May 2013
The beekeeper's mistress
Marsha Singh May 2013
woke every morning and
dressed in the sun, then
dreamt in the breezeway
where the day's laundry
hung. She listened for
him in the summery hum;
sometimes she was honey,
sometimes she was stung.
2.2k · Jan 2016
Glory, glory
Marsha Singh Jan 2016
At night we were a fresco 
painted by an astronaut, our 
messy bed the chapel of a
voyeuristic God, where glory 
worked with hurried hands
in frenzied fellowship and
hallelujah was a sigh that
quivered on my lips, then we
nodded off like angels of our
own apocalypse; it was made-up
love, when we woke up,
the dreamed up stuff of kids.
A refurbished oldie. Feeling nostalgic.
Marsha Singh Jan 2011
I'm still like a child
with love—

wanting more than my share,
impatient, reckless.

An unruly student,
I have learned nothing

except this:

Love is indefinite and
ill-defined,

but we should study
together
sometime.
Marsha Singh Jul 2011
now I'm a shipwreck in a sundress,
an aimless, shameless coquette –
a first kiss, a second guess,
a weak and wobbly pirouette.
2.1k · Aug 2011
typography: the romance
Marsha Singh Aug 2011
without you, i am sans serif –
unfinished still, a half-etched glyph.
you are my pitch; i write for this –

each arc and shoulder loops and dips
towards the softest landing of your lips.
2.1k · Jan 2012
Sorry, kid.
Marsha Singh Jan 2012
My precious sweet potato pie, my darling little damselfly,
your life is still a lullaby, and I love you more than life so I
kiss chubby fingers pinched in play, make root beer floats,
chase bees away, but even I might break your heart someday.
2.1k · Jan 2011
Scout, you were a good girl
Marsha Singh Jan 2011
The crickets abandoned the yard
not long after you.
The evenings are too quiet now—

no big, dumb you exploring every 
bush and branch,
snapping and snuffling
through the thicket,
coming home 
with dirt on your nose
and covered in burrs,

goofy faced.

Just grass
and a sleeping garden.

The squirrels fear nothing.
2.1k · Feb 2011
Shy girl tanka
Marsha Singh Feb 2011
I was a shy girl.
Some boys found my quiet ways
as inviting as
dappled groves in shady woods
(where each one ached to take me).
Marsha Singh Feb 2011
By accepting the terms of this agreement, you represent and warrant that you have the capacity to love.

Any similarity to a previous love is circumstantial; this love is not affiliated with other loves.
We assume no responsibility for for the shortcomings of prior loves;
we do, however, assume all responsibility for any loss, error, or communication failure incurred while in possession of this love.
It is, after all, love.

Love is available as is; no specific results are promised.
If you are at all unhappy, you are encouraged to return love.
If you find love to be damaged or defective, well, it's love.
Slight imperfections are to be expected, and add to the character of love.

Love may occasionally send you poems, letters, or declarations of its continuance. If you wish to opt out of this correspondence, you may cancel your account at any time.

The service may be temporarily unavailable from time to time; this may be due to maintenance, or periods of reflection. It in no way implies or forecasts termination of love, unless specifically stated so.

By accepting this agreement, you agree not to abuse love by acting in a manner inconsistent with the provisions listed above.

(please say yes)
2.1k · Jan 2011
We draw hearts
Marsha Singh Jan 2011
We draw hearts to say 
     I am in love with you

when love disappoints, we say
     I am heartsick

when we fall deeply, we say
     My heart did a slow somersault

when we know that the heart 
is a drum, a pendulum, a clock.
On good days, it is a sundial

but it is always
just a timekeeper, the 
tick 
tick 
tick
of minutes and seasons,
but never
forevers.
2.1k · Jan 2011
but neither was Cleopatra
Marsha Singh Jan 2011
I'm not beautiful—

no scandalous, empyrean beauty;
not the beauty
of long legs and sleepless nights,
not transcendental, not diaphanous; 
no ambrosia, no absinthe;
no earthly Aphrodite
to crush your heart 
with slender hands.
No,

not the kind of beauty
that makes disciple 
out of man;

but

our secrets, they rhyme darkly
and your heart is beating sharply,
and tonight I'll make you love me
while I can.
2.0k · May 2013
Make that one eighty two.
Marsha Singh May 2013
I have written you one
hundred and eighty
one poems about stars
and blackberries fat
as thumbs, and your
hands and sweet
plums, because that's
what I do:
word play, cabaret –
but if these are just myths
I perpetuate because I'm
a perpetual liar, believe me
                                            anyway.
2.0k · Dec 2013
Things I Can't Forget
Marsha Singh Dec 2013
You were hard
like sun-warmed
stone, your
eyelashes were
feathers – these
are things I can't
forget; I'll write
you poems forever.
2.0k · Feb 2011
It's like this:
Marsha Singh Feb 2011
You're a solar system,
and I'm a rogue cosmonaut who
(having fallen in love with you  through a telescope)
has built a ship from the salvage
of lesser explorations;
now I spend my days
(or nights— hard to tell)
looking at you, chin in hand,
waiting for a place to land.
Marsha Singh Jan 2011
Your advice is appreciated,
but I think that instead of
the 'three shining coins
and a lonely crossroads' thing,
I'll just write him a poem.
Marsha Singh Jan 2011
Monsieur Polti wrote of
thirty-six dramatic situations
that you and I
as pro- and ant- agonist
may find ourselves in.

I think we could survive
all but two or three.
1.8k · Mar 2012
Regenesis
Marsha Singh Mar 2012
No Garden, but this stand of
pines, and no serpents just this
side of night, but a sleepy,
startled porcupine; I'll offer you
some apple wine. You'll kiss
me in the fading light; I'll love
you without shame this time.
1.8k · Oct 2011
Fireworks
Marsha Singh Oct 2011
If this poem is like our love
(and the sky as
clear)

then it will rise like a rocket
and stop short,
here.
1.8k · Jan 2011
Because my love cannot be
Marsha Singh Jan 2011
Because my love cannot be the orchestra,
I have hidden it in the glissandos;
do not listen for it when the music swells,
but in the resonance of in betweens.


Because my love cannot be the whole summer,
I have strapped it to the legs of bees;
do not look for it in flowered fields,
but in the pollen stuck to window screens.
1.8k · Feb 2011
Ex
Marsha Singh Feb 2011
Ex
I existed for you, mister;
I extolled your  complex nature.
I was intoxicated, briefly; you were good.
You excelled at smart seduction;
you outfoxed me with your hoaxes.
I didn't watch my heart the way I should;

but by the flux of your affections,
it meant approximately nothing.
Any buxom minx could have you if she tried.
It was a lonely anticlimax,
but I kicked my sad fixation
and nixed your plans to decimate my pride.
just playing
1.8k · Jan 2011
Attachment theory
Marsha Singh Jan 2011
You are the outpost
which I explore from
and return to.
Marsha Singh Feb 2012
Be reckless with your words to me;
incite, provoke, use words as lips
and teeth and hands and silk restraints.
Press them deep into my skin –
leave marks, leave late, and come again.
1.7k · Feb 2016
Songbird
Marsha Singh Feb 2016
I called to you 
softly when I 
was young; my
voice bounced off 
the bricks of a 
suburban slum,
sauntered down 
side streets and 
stirred piles of 
leaves, then snagged 
in the branches till 
the wind tore it free 

to collapse at your 
window like a 
weary songbird
that had been 
singing for decades 
and finally, you heard.
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