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Robert Brunner Dec 2019
Wondering what comes
next, if I don’t kiss you
again.
Wear cufflinks made
Of pearl shell
An elbow on
the tavern bar
Until off the snowy
highway
you come back again.
If I belong to you
no longer
I won’t know what
to want at sunset
Except a scarf
across my heart
until from some
abandoned lover
you pull me in
and laugh
about its color.
When all that's left
are dreams and
night or day don’t matter
From the last lace shop
In the universe
You wind your way
around me
A ring around a planet
Robert Brunner Dec 2019
It’ll be midnight
in an hour.
Meet me by the bookshelves.
We can slip
between the people
and their thoughts
un-muddled
by desire.
It’ll soon be past
the hour.
Meet me near the
fountain.
Never mind the lovers.
They don’t let go.
As how the air holds
jasmine.
It will be eternity when
another hour passes.
Meet me by the lantern.
As I wonder
if that light
leads you  
toward another,
love there.
The chime, the bell, the chord
The time has passed without
an answer.
Meet me by the track
as the shade
is let down
by the station master.
Robert Brunner Feb 2017
Someday. Not that it would
be hung, no one else could
illustrate my life.
With no care for it at all.
To pull the struggling,
you give and give
what you have, to
free someone from their
mud.  Without repayment
only your attachments
are worth a fight.
There is an argument
you could write about
my life, as though anything
might change or matter. Like
terracotta, it starts from
dust and so it is done.
Your life much more
to say, without the
tarnish, will slip as
too many do, unappropriated.
Though with only
two sides and given
away, your gifts were,
to others, seeming to have
been too precious, while
of no meaning, or these
coins were probably
much less to you.
Robert Brunner Jan 2017
Someday you may
paint me.  Not
in a scramble
to remember.
because not everyone must
feel they will miss
another point or
appointment.  Maybe
not a portrait, sitting
slickly attired.  Not
everyone must
think that what they
wanted, they misconstrued.
Just a picture of a wrist
with a monogram on an
eighteen carat chain.
Since you would
rather transform
than trade away.
You’ll buff up this
image with a palette
that does not give
away any secrets.
Robert Brunner Dec 2016
Not so much
A pull on the
cigarette as
letting a drift
Of smoke be
A quiet companion.
Not so much
an indulgence
held as it is
lightly
felt in the hand.
My only baccarat
Around a few sips
Of lagavulin
Not so much
a vice as a
way to pass
some days
of sun on
the deck
alone with
pretty lucie.
Robert Brunner Oct 2016
Though I don’t myself
it is good to me to know
somewhere in a smoky
basement
poker is played
on the hex
oak surface
of the suburb.
Though I don’t like
them myself
next to cornfield stubble
german cars
are shown
off the highway
by a young man
gambling on the
wheels and that
a car’ll earn
more than roulette
took
from the neighbor
kids.
Though there is
no difference
between them anymore,
being driven,
on an exhilarated
saturday,
hanging out
with an older girl
on a cold mid
morning.
Robert Brunner Oct 2016
I love your smile.
It says bless me honey.
We live in abandon
For just one moment’s summer.
Like a bloom that knows
the end is coming.
We read plays and
act the parts.
God the nights are
wet and hot.
With segovia on the
phonograph while
the crows and grackles
take their rest
in osage trees
or what the years
have left of them.
From lightning in the
night.
It is like you said
of love, that’s the
way it is, you’re
learning. Only
as we are upon
them, our bridges
may be burning.
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