I wrote this to take the sharp edges off my poem: You Ruined My America...



     "What does love look like? ...It has ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men."
            St. Augustine of Hippo

I love you even tho you resist me.
I love you even tho you sometimes
       forget who I am.

I love you even tho I'm hard and you
       prefer soft .

I love you even tho I get angry.
I love you even tho you get angry.

I love you even tho you don't see what
       I see.

I love you even tho I don’t  give in
       or give up.
I love you even tho you don't either .

I love you even tho you disagree with me
        and the way I express myself
        and how I respond to the world.

I love you even tho you don't always
        understand.

I love you even tho I am tired.  
I love you even tho I am hungry.
I love you even tho I am lonely .

I love you even tho you prefer my silence.
I love you even tho tomorrow is
          our mystery.

I love you even tho I have said
          all there is to say:

I love you.

(For Michael and Cornellia)


The postcard he would never send

found its way into the child’s sand pail

after he had carefully selected it

from a rack in the souvenir shop

cautiously carrying it tucked inside

the folds of his red, white and

blue striped towel to the seaside.

Then he penned the words:

Wish you were here…

on its field of white,

scratching  a black “x”  

where her body might lie

alongside his body  

in the perfectly coiffed sand—

in the picturesque seascape

on the face of the charming,

little card...when  a hot wind,  

filled with love’s urgency,  came

over  the water ( it would not wait)

and up onto the beach

as if  to herald his message to her.

The postcard lifted up like a kite

swirled past a sour, snoring

centenarian,   beyond a  father

and son—  oyster rakes in hand

despite the spelling of the month--

then alighted in the lovely  lap

of  a small ginger-haired girl who

looked curiously up after squinting

hard  at the card and at its letters...

sounding out the “www” and “ssshhh”.  

She pressed the invitation to her lips

and would forever search for  its sender.

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

"Amor Vincit Omnia
                      (Love conquers all)"
                                  M. Caravaggio

He said:   Turn back the drapes,
                  this requires an early
                  morning light....
He said:   How rare...that pervasive
                  primary color.
He said:   There was dew left on the
                  skin from the bath.
He said:    I have painted holy men!
He said:    The brush wasn't wet
                   enough.
He said:    Notice that triangle of sable
                   below the navel?  A difficult
                   color...
He said:    I never saw Matthew and
                   Paul like this.
He said:    There's no mistaking his
                   aura.
He said:    Turn more to the right.
He said:    If I were a woman--
                   I would love him too.

I wasn't  made with
an ambidextrous
spirit.  No, nor skilled
in simultaneously
gripping and letting go--
not trained, since
childhood, to do that
which my heart resists.

It's hard to hold on.

And when my chest
rattled like a
diamond snake--
and I was uncertain
of what was at stake.

I learned:
I am the bull's eye.
I am the stop sign.
I am the excuse
for his violence--
I am the story nobody
wants to hear or
change.

I am no longer me

but only that
gun shot
right here
to my middle.

By:  Evelyn Augusto. 2017

“Give up trying to do anything.  
            nothing works works.”  
            From a note written by
            Scott Allen Ostrem


If only you came to buy
another cell phone, a pen and
note card, some crayons &
paper.  Anything.  Anything
that would give you a voice.

If only you bought the
fixings for a satisfying supper,
or a gift for a lost lover.
Anything. Anything to help
you express your distress.

Anything to free your
words from the prison of
your maddness, anything
to thaw your frozen tongue,
anything to return your
manhood,  other than that gun!

Anything.  Anything.   If only . . .

By:  Evelyn Augusto
For GUNS DON'T SAVE PEOPLE POETS DO 2017

“Give up trying to do anything.  
                      nothing works works.”  
                From a note written by
                     Scott Allen Ostrem

If only you came to buy
another cell phone, a pen and
note card, some crayons &
paper.  Anything.  Anything
that would give you a voice.

If only you bought the
fixings for a satisfying supper,
or a gift for a lost lover.
Anything. Anything to help
you express your distress.

Anything to free your
words from the prison of
your maddness, anything
to melt your frozen tongue,
anything to return your
manhood,  other than that gun!

Anything.  Anything.   If only . . .

By:  Evelyn Augusto
For GUNS DON'T SAVE PEOPLE POETS DO 2017

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

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

Oh! anniversary of loss
I grieve--
like a child-less-mother,
whose breast knows
the phantom itch
of need:  
the pinch of teeth, the
weight of life filling her--
the regret of not savoring
the tug and pull of love
a little longer.

And so our last night
together, for me,
came too soon.  
And now the eleventh
day of every
month passing--
I die a little more to you.

Oh! anniversary of loss
I grieve--
like a child-less-mother,
whose breast knows
the phantom itch
of need:  
the pinch of teeth, the
weight of life filling her--
the regret of not savoring
the tug and pull of love
a little longer.

And so our last night
together, for me,
came too soon.  
And now the eleventh
day of every
month passing--
I die a little more to you.

Why must we refuse what is divine
in each other?  
Why must we nail our lips shut
using our own teeth as though they were wooden pegs?

Instead, let us take each other in our mouths as though we were blind.  Savor and feel you in me and I…in you.   Taste and see.

Celebrate the salt of our labor, of my tears, of your love—
Recognize how silky desire is--
Know how thick loneliness is.  

Bring my hands to you and with your tongue trace their roughness, study the old wounds: read chapters of  my story.

Press the diamond of flesh at my hip to your lips and remember that once your own  hand rested there as I dreamed.   Feel how sharp that bone can be.

Now, let me chew on your despair. Wear it thin, spit out.

Let me navigate with this same mouth those parts of your body that you command to feel  when your heart can not.

We can be good and not be hungry.

We can swallow each other tonight, fall asleep full and satisfied like favored guests at a banquet, then sit down at the table again, tomorrow.


By:  Evelyn Augusto
        2017

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.

“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

"David Cassidy moved to the ICU
         on Sunday as his condition began
         deteriorating..."    The Daily News

Go figure:
David Cassidy lies dying as
Charlie Manson laughs
into the hollow cough of truth.

And we children of the 70's,
no longer innocent spectators,
wonder:  Who was right afterall?
The Lover?  The Hater?
Who was right? 

And "I think I love you...
but what am I so afraid of?"
I'm afraid WE ARE helter-skelter--
that's what!

And madder than Alice's Hatter,
madder than an Oracle--
ignored, good ol' Charlie laughs
along with the voices in his head
at us, because he knew more in
those few days in Hollywood
than the Partridge boy would
ever understand:  Fame is fleeting,
unless it is fear based.
Then, then... it lasts a life time.
Amen.

“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

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.

"The act of molting or shedding an
                      outer cuticular layer."

I knew coming into blue,
recognized that
love colored my eyes too.
For days I was blind,
ached,
starved for loves sake--

Convinced that so
much was at stake!
I wrestled with desire
and hate,  
denied longing,
feared fate,
fought the need to mate,
then would compensate.

Irritable, I'd agitate.

I knew coming into blue
& embraced the devil too.
Writhed and wrestled
then shed you--
becoming something new.

By:  Evelyn Augusto

And you filled your mouth
with me, coated your words
with the savory flavor of us,  
then wore your tongue smooth  
against the stone of my pleasure.

And you taught our bodies
their purpose too,
drove the meaning of love
deep inside me until we both

understood the difference

between the rhythm
of our hearts beating...
and their singing.

By: Evelyn Augusto
2017

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

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. And read on.

These are the hands that will not lie to you.
These are the hands that you will return to.

“Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroke its sum, You did not come….”  
                                    Thomas Hardy            


I stole a jelly jar
of wishbones
once from a dead man—
they sang like a rattle,
those ten conjoined
clavicles, and I spent
the day dreamily
shaking them
like a cup of dice—

wondering
if I could harvest hope;
wondering if
one day
you would return;
wondering if
un-granted wishes
arrived like
a still-born?

I buried the forked
bones in the yard.

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

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.

I like dimly lit bars and beer.

I like how you walk purposefully
to me.  I like smelling need in
your swet.   I like your reserve.

And I like how you stand when you ***.
I like the shape of your feet
and how you touch me here
and there with them.
I like how you never go directly for me.

I like when we  rub our bodies
together like two sticks, then
warm ourselves
on the heat we generate.  

I like how you saved me from my despair.

I liked you--
but  now there is only
this dimly lit bar and the beer.

By:  Evelyn Augusto

“Now that you’ve said you love me…”  
                                           BJ  Ward

Let us do nothing together but conjoin,
effortlessly...as theory and method.

Let us lean into each other,
press against each other,
become the other…  wordlessly.

And let our nothingness
become a playground for our need.  

Let our minds roam about
each other’s bodies,
the way our hands and
our mouths cannot.

Let us feel each other’s heat
hear each other’s heart beat—
and let that be enough.

Let our thoughts start
in your head
and finish on my lips.  

Let your strength carry us
and my imaginings  fuel us.

Then let us get out of the way
and do nothing  to stop us.

By:  Evelyn Augusto

Late night and the bed sheet is a noose
and I haven’t slept since November
and I toss and turn in the grey hum of grief--counting votes like sheep
and the nightmare won’t let go of me
and I don’t know who to trust
cause even the un-trustworthy don’t
know who they are
or recognize themselves in each other
and I like fewer and fewer people
in this rural town
and my PTSD is back
and I can attest to that.  

And I think:  This is how those folks in Dallas felt the day evil grew legs and walked along
Elm Street.

And what weighs more:  A hundred votes or a hundred bullets?

And you ruined my America and,
no…I won’t forgive you.                      

By:  evelyn augusto                               November 15th 2016

Excuse me, I can't hear you--
your gun is speaking louder  
than you do and yes,
you scare me, it isn't how
it ought to be--we are more
like each other than you can see.

I can't hear you
I can't hear you
your gun is speaking
louder than you do
and yes, it saddens me
because all I see--is a woman who
doesn't know who she could be.

I can't hear you
I can't hear you
your gun is speaking louder
speaking louder

There's no more you.

Written by Evelyn Augusto for Guns Don't Save People Poets Do.  October 21, 2017