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this is a sun
and also simultaneously a black hole
and all we ever do is pretend to make metaphors out of astronomy
When really the only person who was really original when he talked about the stars was some scientists thousands of years ago
i am jealous of him because he could probably grow a beard
and was a male
and had original ideas
and did i mention the ****** hair
The last time I remembered what the sun was like was last Sunday
and you were eating an ice cream
and wearing those shoes that remind me of fish
Everyone I know is scared of fish.
I feel sorry for the poor fish.
Your eyes can swim better than any fish ever will.
your skin is full of volcanoes and lava
and it burns me like nothing else will ever burn.
but your eyes are fish, who live in the ocean.
they know the blue
and that's why i always forgive you.
Because your skin may burn
and your fingers may act like falling trees
and your voice may constantly be crying to the night
But your eyes are the silver fish who guide me to the seafloor.
And in the ocean, your voice is silent and your fingers are still.
 Apr 2014 Sam Clemens
r
As water is to cleansing rain
and heat as to burning flame,
so are you to me; the same.
My fiery rain.

Fill the gutter of my mind.
Fire the coal your heart has mined.
Burn me to the end of time.
Your fire does reign.

r ~ 4/1/14
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.
And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating planations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesmal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke free on the open sky.
 Mar 2014 Sam Clemens
Margaryta
make me a gramophone – sew
it from the scraps of our shattered past,
the vinyl  our memories that play
‘round on repeat. to them
we’ll dance around in animal masks like
the beasts we are.
a lion purrs,
a walrus roars,
a seahorse crushes bone,
and when we’re done we’ll rip apart
our fickle gramophone.
music, gramophone, whimsical, vintage, vinyl, dance, memories
 Mar 2014 Sam Clemens
r
For me, it's not courage
or a lack of it
that keeps me hanging
'round. When I boil it
down, it's love in the bottom
of the kettle that keeps me
breathing. I don't think it is
possible to love too much,
but man, I feel like I've been
breathing for a long **** time.

r ~ 16Mar14
 Mar 2014 Sam Clemens
r
Earth in Me
 Mar 2014 Sam Clemens
r
So much water, so much iron
Alas, no gold, but copper by the ion
Glows in my skin late summer days
And tastes of blood and flint and maize

******* salt, my spit, my hair
Breathe my tender air, my mollis aer
Anoint me with a cloak of sweat
And with my sword I will beget

The earthy side of me, you see
Nickel, zinc, ah, yet no mercury
Take my dirt, my earth, my stones
Build a castle with my bones.

r ~ 21Mar14
 Mar 2014 Sam Clemens
r
Read to me
while I lie here with eyes closed against the sky.
  Read to me with passion
of the smell of lemon
  and musk wrapped in silk and satin.

  I rest here in your voice and drink
your very words.
  Read to me with lilt of breath.
Breathe me to the brink
  of lasting
as I sink into your sighs.

Read to me gently,
  read softly into the night.

r ~ 27Mar14
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