"coverless" poems
i see technicolour but mostly violet
slopped across the walls in polygon inlays as
the bulb from above casts a glare across bare walls
like a nuclear winter, i huddle beneath the coverless duvet
trying to breathe life into sentence fragments as a
freight train tears up the blackened skyline and
with morning, this will be a memory too
Feb 22, 2010
Feb 22, 2010 at 11:42 AM UTC
I find myself in a coverless Italian summer.
Grass browned. Skin freckled.
I find myself impatient,
no longer willing to entertain
the destinies of the salt and sea.
I edit video of you in a cobbled basement.
There's a knowing look that lasts four seconds.
I split it into six fragments and set it in reverse,
an unknowing, a deletion.
The crook of your neck
and shoulder blade. The red of your hair.
Some nights I hang from the rails. Five minutes.
Ten. And pull myself up.
Tented and mad by August,
stabbing ice with a little
black cocktail straw.
How can I change my
How can I love my
How can I erase my
body?
The rains wet me.
The wind wrings me.
This city we used to walk
under streetlights.
Now I bike through,
pedaling, furious and blind,
toward a place I don't know until
I arrive, and I kiss a young woman
who looks a lot like me. I ask her
to say my name over and over.
I want to fully occupy the moment,
the space, this time. Her lips
remain closed and her
hands linger on my shoulders
and no music plays and
there are voices, loud and
happy, speaking a language
that's completely new.
Jun 2, 2016
Jun 2, 2016 at 1:09 PM UTC
wine stains on the shelf
a flash of irritation ended
coverless on the couch
separateness lingers into morning
politeness papers over open wounds
where repairs could have been made
memory wire refuses to uncoil
we'd overwound the pound-shop threads
of our connection
scraped each filament to fronds
that could part at any moment
but didn't
we argue our differences, forget
to celebrate our samenesses
sensing barriers
where none are
Feb 21, 2014
Feb 21, 2014 at 6:32 AM UTC
When they look at my body,
they giggle between their teeth that are crooked but they call them curved. They perceive how curveless I look
and tell me to perform yoga
so that my curves can be defined,
so that I can shape my convexes and concaves.
I smile as bright as I can because probably those are my only visible curves.
I tell them how every time I sit to write
my pen curves on the pages
that are thumbed on the corners
so they seem curved too.
I begin by writing the first letter of the English language
and make slopes and valleys of this alphabet.
I form serpentines and swirling cyclones of my words,
I curve my 'S' to form into an infinity
so that I can hold on to him for as long.
I stretch my 'K' until the end of the earth
and make it look like a single leg shoulder stand.
And as I take all my alphabets,
I turn them from staff position to the plough position.
I make my words turn into Paschimotasna,
and my noun tries to perform Kundali.
My pronouns sit in vajrasana.
My similies stress themselves and flex,
while my metaphors curl into themselves and hide as Marichyasana.
When I am done,
my poems form themselves into Pindasana.
However,
I remain coverless,
as straight and sharp as the pen I use.
I remain 'Arjuna's' bow
so he directs me into my own self,
my own heritage
and I end up killing my Bhishma,
my self-respect.
Hence while my words perform yogasana,
I stand still in tadasana.
Jun 21, 2020
Jun 21, 2020 at 1:24 AM UTC
Of sleepless summer nights
And lazy days at noon
The sun stays longer
Before rousing the moon
From a frozen sleep
When midnight wanes
Shortly after sunset
But the light outside still
From the sleepless city
Dawn burning till come again
No real darkness to call to sleep
No comfort cold to steal up
On limber haunches
To call the hour
And ***** the lights out
Instead of this
A warmth unfamiliar
That calls for a coverless sleep
And the stillness that holds
For the hazy summer
Jan 17, 2018
Jan 17, 2018 at 1:49 PM UTC
Her coverless-tattered state proved the journeys she had gone through.
Her old purple spine was scratched and bent,
Yet still beautifully intact.
The woman who brought her up filled her with stories,
Delicately placing each powerful word,
Gently building her up page by page,
Giving her a story to call her own.
She told her story to each reader,
Each page turn,
Every emotion.
Her pains in every paragraph,
Her charisma in every character,
Her love in every line,
Her tears in every tear.
She was worn
Yet brand new.
She held a strong font,
Each bold showing her power to change something,
Each italization expressing her importance.
Every time her story was told if affected a new person.
Crinkled and worn pages gave life a new meaning,
Provided a new definition of friendship, gave a new reason to live,
Provided a new reason to love.
She taught everyone something,
Giving away her everything.
She was judged for her looks by many,
But loved for her contents just as much.
Mar 8, 2019
Mar 8, 2019 at 2:19 PM UTC