"sunburned" poems
i love you this morning
it's a come home safe morning
fog on the road
& no seatbelt kind of morning
the sun is over easy
& nothing's on fire
there's punctuation
where i don't want it
and extra love
in the glovebox of my car
been thinking about being honest
how these poems are all me
but they tell the story
how someone else
might believe it happened
within reasonable doubt
no copy & pasted love letters
no 'who ever says hello first gets my attention for the day'
try a little tenderness
in my ears and today
there are instruments
in the back of my head
i think you love me
because i'm sunburned
felt it in a 'come hell or high water' kinda way, that 'touched from far away' kinda way that 'if i touch this piano one more time one of us is going to break' kinda way
and i drove over 17 bridges yesterday and today i'll do it again
and i think nobody gets
what that means except maybe you
i just tell them i love the scenery
that somebody must've made
these trees blush just for me
you know how i love
to change the subject
i bet they'd love the view
i bet you would too
and all these metaphors
for other things are beside the point
this is a metaphor
for why i don't wear my seatbelt
a metaphor for why whiskey
knows me better than you
could ever try to
all the buildings seemed to sag yesterday and all the stars
are doing that cliche thing
where they talk
quiet jet noise
& some lumbering giant
made everything shake
not those hand metaphors
not another one of those
& keep the sea to yourself
i think it was a train
it's sound hugged the embankment
for a moment
and then trailed off into nowhere
and that's kind of like me
how there's a town called 'rescue'
close to my home &
it's no coincidence
that i've never been there
Sep 28, 2014
Sep 28, 2014 at 5:53 PM UTC
Calm breathes in the prairie,
Sunburned in dungarees,
The grasses bow at its presence.
May 4, 2010
May 4, 2010 at 4:01 PM UTC
we are alone.
moonlight's kiss
on sunburned skin
and a poisoned caress from honey dew
we are alone.
silent wings slicing through
thick
dark
we are alone.
a dull point
glimmers
and we hack
and we slash
we are alone.
ruby trickles light the black
and crimson beads
form crimson rivers
i am alone.
Mar 23, 2014
Mar 23, 2014 at 4:50 PM UTC
529
I’m sorry for the Dead—Today—
It’s such congenial times
Old Neighbors have at fences—
It’s time o’ year for Hay.
And Broad—Sunburned Acquaintance
Discourse between the Toil—
And laugh, a homely species
That makes the Fences smile—
It seems so straight to lie away
From all of the noise of Fields—
The Busy Carts—the fragrant *****
The Mower’s Metre—Steals—
A Trouble lest they’re homesick—
Those Farmers—and their Wives—
Set separate from the Farming—
And all the Neighbors’ lives—
A Wonder if the Sepulchre
Don’t feel a lonesome way—
When Men—and Boys—and Carts—and June,
Go down the Fields to “Hay”—
4.1k
Now, moving in, cartons on the floor,
the radio playing to bare walls,
picture hooks left stranded
in the unsoiled squares where paintings were,
and something reminding us
this is like all other moving days;
finding the ***** ends of someone else's life,
hair fallen in the sink, a peach pit,
and burned-out matches in the corner;
things not preserved, yet never swept away
like fragments of disturbing dreams
we stumble on all day. . .
in ordering our lives, we will discard them,
scrub clean the floorboards of this our home
lest refuse from the lives we did not lead
become, in some strange, frightening way, our own.
And we have plans that will not tolerate
our fears-- a year laid out like rooms
in a new house--the dusty wine glasses
rinsed off, the vases filled, and bookshelves
sagging with heavy winter books.
Seeing the room always as it will be,
we are content to dust and wait.
We will return here from the dark and silent
streets, arms full of books and food,
anxious as we always are in winter,
and looking for the Good Life we have made.
I see myself then: tense, solemn,
in high-heeled shoes that pinch,
not basking in the light of goals fulfilled,
but looking back to now and seeing
a lazy, sunburned, sandaled girl
in a bare room, full of promise
and feeling envious.
Now we plan, postponing, pushing our lives forward
into the future--as if, when the room
contains us and all our treasured junk
we will have filled whatever gap it is
that makes us wander, discontented
from ourselves.
The room will not change:
a rug, or armchair, or new coat of paint
won't make much difference;
our eyes are fickle
but we remain the same beneath our suntans,
pale, frightened,
dreaming ourselves backward and forward in time,
dreaming our dreaming selves.
I look forward and see myself looking back.
3.8k
i dreamt once to be swept away
by love like waves; set astray
feelings loose like golden sand
by every sweep of someone's hand
yet when it came---
it felt like troubled waters
chaotic but full of wonders
then I began to ponder,
love is like tidal waves,
larger than shallow tides
nothing like a little light---
but something that gives a sunburned heart.
Jul 10, 2022
Jul 10, 2022 at 9:12 PM UTC
I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.
The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper
sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.
The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes,
new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind,
and the old things go, not one lasts.
3.5k
Words are now
as if
I never wrote
gather as an aching
lump in my throat.
They don't seek paper
only a river
to pour and mingle
in refrains of a dumb sadness
flow away
sunburned and tidewashed
to where the river is widest
deepest with sighs
of life not enough
in once only
and when just begun
ending broken on the shore.
Apr 18, 2017
Apr 18, 2017 at 9:59 AM UTC
I don't want to be a knight in shining armour.
There's dignity in scars and old leather,
The badges of a long campaign.
We are wrinkled, yes, and sunburned,
Full of crows-feet and lines.
These are trophies, my friend.
Wear them with pride.
Our grey hairs emerged in our twenties.
Why? Because we fought!
We still fight the good fight.
Walk tall with your notches and your rust!
This grey is the grey of battle-steel,
The burnish of a well-used blade.
Your life is a tale worth telling, my friend.
Please, do not think you're not beautiful.
Jun 30, 2020
Jun 30, 2020 at 6:21 PM UTC
Brilliant, your fury touches briefly
upon my sunburned shoulders -
one last caress, one last
violent
kiss; and then, in a blaze
of light and color you slip gently
behind the clouds and
I
shiver in the sudden
cold left in
your absence.
(sunkissed)
Mar 30, 2013
Mar 30, 2013 at 5:18 PM UTC
my dreams are boiled
and scorched up
like a fever blister on the lip
of an anarchist
on the seventh consecutive day of
ozzfest
i'm hot and i am bothered
like the knickers of
the old french ***** who lives
upstairs
in every grimy novel
ever published
the lips on my face
are puckered and raw
like the ********
of every ****** in prison
because
we've been kissing
for weeks now,
lying naked and careless
like the bright setting sun
splashing the floor of your room
with sweat
and ***
and primal laughter
now i'm standing on your doorstep
wet from the rain
wanting
one
more
sunburned mosquito bite.
Jun 11, 2012
Jun 11, 2012 at 4:40 PM UTC
heavy air,
a body beside me,
it's face buried in a pillow, resting
the two of us like sprawled starfish
on a sea bed of blanket
here we lie, centered in our narrow room,
a room made bright by the single skylight above,
clouded
the following forming the soundscape of this moment:
- Sam's breath, my breath
- a pair of bluebottles buzzing and bumping into the walls
- an itch every now and then of sunburned skin, a leg brushing itself against the sheets
- a distant Tristan singing songs to his daughter down in the kitchen
there is a bucket with sick in it
there is a ***** laundry pile
there is a red, sun cream stained bikini hanging on the door handle
there are two clean, white towels and
two holiday cameras: the first's film already finished, the second with a little yet to go
Maybe we'll go to the beach
Maybe we'll go to the town or discover
a new town or ride our bikes out again until we find somewhere just right
the day has so much promise and
I have so little I have to do
but lie here and be grateful for time
Jun 14, 2023
Jun 14, 2023 at 7:51 AM UTC
I see your sunburned
knees
your sunburned shoulders
your skin
[it is too smooth]
it's rough.
And you always
smile
at lavender.
And now,
I curse the lavender.
I curse the hills and valleys
flooded with wild flowers.
and every soft sound
I cannot stand to hear
You burned your knees.
Your skin
[it is too smooth]
Aug 23, 2012
Aug 23, 2012 at 3:09 PM UTC
I lay on the ground below
the curved hips of the hills at sunset
The aperture of my eyes, my *** my eyes
and the narrow escape
of mind from body
I am ten again
and they’re calling me falsey
“Big **** No bra!”
Shoving them into the lockers
of Holy Name’s pool
My eyes? Brown. My hair? Brown
My body? Invisible, lean and “Leave me alone!
or I’ll punch your lights out!”
Meanwhile, Mom is mortified
but not cause I’m banned from the stupid pool
All I want— is to run bare to the waist
Ride my bike, maniacal
Be a bird
Swipe ice from the milk truck
Marvel over maggots in garbage
Catch toads, caterpillars, pollywogs in jars
Later, sell lemonade— get rich!
…and pretend…pretend…
till the litany of our names, hollered from the porch
till the street lights come on….
*****
“This is for something you haven’t got yet”
says the matron of the fitting room
Bones in a bathing suit?
What I haven’t got?
or they haven’t got?
will never get—
in their worlds of curtained cubicles
Cause of death:
Strangulation by measuring tape!
*****
In my plaid two-piece
sunburned shoulders, wind-wild hair
By sweat and the afternoon’s imaginings
I built a fortress of sand and stones
to endure forever….
But she— shook the blanket
at the tide’s full reach
Peppered the air with an epoch
Clouds darkening
the wind-torqued sea
Finding my flip-flops, we—
trudged off…
into the changing… changing
Aug 24, 2016
Aug 24, 2016 at 9:45 PM UTC
Brushed-wet tarmac Tomcat
Coat,
Socks pulled up to the knee.
The sand went on for miles
Like pebble dash,
Ground to it’s golden *****
Decimals and
Packed tight between the
Bowed white legs of the cliffs,
Which stood with their feet
In the sea.
My Queen of Bracing Holidays,
Gemstone brooches, wet cafes.
Your face
Cut into coat of armour
Quarter colours,
Pink and white
And red and gold
Like a royal crest of sunburned summers.
Sep 2, 2013
Sep 2, 2013 at 9:52 AM UTC
the waves break like the days that chase them
and our hardened layers fall down around our ankles
and sacrafice themselves to the edges of the shorline
it's the sunshine season
we don our freckled, olive, summer skin
as we slip into our cut-off shorts and boat shoes
the winter blues melt into their tributaries and take off for the sea
leaving us to blush and bloom like budding tulips
work stained hands toss the rule books aside
making room for a cheap can of beer and an ancient dog earred map
let the dusty two-tracks point you back
to your abandoned spirit of adventure
and your neglected hiking boots
let's go
let's run off towards the sunset
and the lake bed
and get to the heart of what matters in the middle of nowhere
let's get lost sunburned
drunk
and young
it's time to be better again
to be happy as children again
i'll meet you out there
somewhere along the edges of where the water fades to mountains
and the mountains pierce the skies
i hope to see you there...
with a smile on your face and your heart on your sleeve
i promise to bookmark a place for you
let's go find what they are all missing
nurse our hearts
and our spirits
and that primitive instinct burried somewhere deep inside us
that begs us to chase the sweetness
to play
climb
dance
and grow
let's go
but first
a toast
here's to you
and to me
and to every skinned knee that eventually led us to learn the ropes
here's to the countless hopes and dreams that we've had to reconstruct
in order to shape our own realities
here's to sunburns
moonshine
and all that we can be
beneath these summer skies.
Mar 20, 2013
Mar 20, 2013 at 5:31 PM UTC
A picture of us
sits next to your bathroom sink.
I saw it as I rummaged
through cabinets
looking for toothpaste:
I was sunburned, wearing braces,
and you held a wooden spoon
with the same smile,
crooked nose,
and bushy eyebrows
in the kitchen.
You would come home early,
I would chop
onion and garlic,
garlic and onion,
to Metallica blaring
on your stereo.
We can stir the ***
until our hands blister,
but something added
cannot be removed.
There was the summer
we built model rockets,
the summer you took me to meet
our family in Greece,
and all those summers
we ate Krispy Kreme and fished.
I didn’t become an astronaut,
I didn’t learn Greek,
I threw up over the side of the boat,
but because you came home early
so many days in a row – just for me –
that was my favorite summer.
Today, over the
chop-chop-sizzle
in a broken-in kitchen
we fill a stained cookbook
with dog-ears,
small adjustments.
The same ingredients
never taste the same way twice.
We reclaim a day
out of years lost.
Then that photo
by your sink.
It was a small
Father’s Day gift,
survivor of four moves
and twelve years
of self-discovery,
still reminding you – and me –
of summers spent
breaking in kitchens
and recipes
we’ve been making for years.
Sep 1, 2014
Sep 1, 2014 at 12:12 AM UTC
When the day is done
the sunburned moon
breaks down on the lonely river.
Glistening in her tears
the river carries her away to the sea.
Oct 24, 2015
Oct 24, 2015 at 9:17 AM UTC
It is me and you,
shuffling in cool dirt above shards
of glass that wait
for naked toes to dance.
A lover’s trance
waltzes towards the edge
of dawn.
Summer never ends
when beating hearts
warm sheets on
cold nights.
Eyes my sea.
Hair my beach.
I stand **** and
unafraid of oceanic
monsters, hidden
deeper than can be explored.
Let us explore and defeat!
Live in paradise!
Swim naked every night
beneath gazing stars which
linger above sunburned scalps,
tender with exotic dreams:
Wish for this to remain
perfect
untouched
more pure than
elements on tables
reminding us we are only
recycled symbols.
Misstep,
draw blood,
warm the soil.
It stings.
I think of bumping into
jellyfish on our beach
and
how to get rid of them
without disturbing
everything else.
Sep 5, 2013
Sep 5, 2013 at 9:18 PM UTC
You who have lifted up your sunburned face,
Long-told of peasant warmth and the forest tableaux.
Barefoot, you brought the book of hours upon dusty roads,
Ungoverned, little flower from Jeanne to Lourdes to Lisieux.
Our Lady, osculum pacis, the kiss of peace in wood and stone.
Burned out to those dusty eyes,
Now-empty look of rosework from the forest-fall of sunlight.
Medieval prayer, earthly-dim to its rafters of oak,
Come un-cinctured in ashen cloud of amice and alb,
And the murine blackness of plague-like smoke.
Birds that sit blinking at the winged fossil of intrados,
Pipe air through your own ribbed vaults, organum pulse.
Let the city rise in your vining voices—and hold the note.
The great ***** intones from the runs and pedal stops,
Along the turbid streets of the rue de la Cité to the empire of catacombs.
Beside his candle, the monk in sadness knows
All loveliness of heaven except his own.
Our Lady, every sunset is your faded candle hour of peace, for us to know.
Holy Father, so passes worldly glory,
Over the roofs of Paris like fire-scorned and leaden wings.
Apr 24, 2019
Apr 24, 2019 at 1:47 PM UTC
These sunburned shoulders
will peel away
eventually matching
once again with my
pale skin
but the day that beheld the
scorching heat
will not be so easily
forgotten
Sep 2, 2013
Sep 2, 2013 at 12:53 AM UTC
xii.
big hips; small hips and long, skinny legs
people and the worlds inside them
pointing at the screen
which movie should we watch?
the last time i watched movie alone
was divergent
it was an insane ride
and my parents picked me up
knowing i had lost a thing
but they didn't ask
and i didn't tell
i was ***** by poetry
-- i am holy
just like lilith, eve, and mary --
watch out i am trying to heal
so what if i am romanticizing
illness! i am not ill
enough
to lose
my eyes see clear
anabelle, tickets sold out
the people; in hijab, in short skirt
in high heels and slippers
their faces
i see them clear
it looks the same like that friday
just feels different
it has been months
a relatively insane ride
so cathartic
my land may well be a big cathedral
or some sweet mosque
with all the gods
praying to each other
with cold soup in their tongue
and stale milk they offer
to the homeless like us, you know
home isn't really the walls and roof
that keep you from rain and sundust
home is the rain and dust and your sunburned hands and the acnes on your face and
the wounds on your knees
you got when you were learning
to bike
Oct 9, 2014
Oct 9, 2014 at 10:39 AM UTC
If everybody were naked
Nobody could make fun of my style
I would never be outdated.
I could go to parties with a smile.
Also when I live naked
Laundry bill can never go high.
I go jump into the shower
Suddenly I am a clean living guy.
Of course your clothing
Never gets sunburned
And nobody laughs at your zipper.
If you are the only
Person who’s naked
You look like a mescaline tripper.
But if everyone got naked
We might do away with all war
Because there would be little
That seems worth arguing for.
With all the women naked
There would be an end to their hose.
And girdles out of the question.
They’d be as natural as a spring rose.
But one must be careful.
A park bench can pinch
And hot car seats can burn.
Living **** has problems
But like everything else
It just more lessons one must learn.
But think about politics naked;
All those liars up on a public stage.
Without their expensive suits
Would they still manage to engage?
Olympians played naked.
Soldiers used to fight naked too.
Not sure what point I am making
But I think it means something, don’t you?
Oct 15, 2015
Oct 15, 2015 at 11:30 PM UTC
A message to the boy minding the pastry,
one finger in each the webs
of cosmic lust and mercy,
waiting to be told it is fine to want
the best for everybody:
It is fine. It is fine.
What are you?
Were you born here?
No, I was born on the banks of the Seine,
beside the boneyard of the nameless,
in the pits of Delhi with
the blood of roosters on my toes,
***** who pecked one another
to their entrails because the
colony of the living sunrise was
shrunk to a pocket of feathers and fire
by some wire, wood, and staples.
I was born in the Academy of Athens,
where Socrates made salsa with hemlock
and danced into a dialogue,
because the grocery habaneros were all too tender,
and St. Augustine could offer no alternative.
Never forget - we were born to unfairness;
unfair as long as our appetites differ,
or we exhaust sooner than one another,
or we grip one another differently and come at different times.
The only person less fair than me is God.
But my justice - that is perfect,
like my voice, which has none of a gavel's
authority. Or my heart: which was manacled by giants
and sentenced to be pecked by a flying poem, a girl
with hair she won't comb, a song about Jerusalem.
Fair. **** fair.
I am fair as long as I can wait, quiet -
silent as the sand, sunburned and happy,
to be drawn into
that kindness, the Atlantic - - -
the flip and twist of the sea.
Oct 24, 2011
Oct 24, 2011 at 4:01 PM UTC
Hands that look sunburned
at first blush
count the silent ticks of a cognitive clock
grasping and releasing in stilted syncopation:
one-two-three-five (must avoid the four)
Did I remember to lock the front door? Out
of bed—again—freezing feet tumble
down
into slippers
awaiting the circular inevitability. Again, again.
Pad, pad, pad:
light shuffling accompanies the one-two-three-five
pounding in the head; that mind ricocheted with worry—
worry about the front door, the evil intentions of four,
insidious germs and subsequent scrubbing-scrubbing-scrubbing
in bleach and Comet. Pad,
pad, pad to the front door.
It’s one hundred and thirty four steps, so take a baby-shuffle:
still avoiding the four.
Cold, unyielding brass **** Locked.
Deadbolt? Check. Creeping black.
Chain lock? Check. Crawling germs. Oh, god.
Pad, pad, pad to the kitchen.
Clorox-fume greetings in the sparkling sink
from twenty-three minutes before. Never twenty-four.
Clorox on the cracked fingers, blistering
out that imperceptible blackness I know it’s there
blackness choking, bleeding in the bleach.
Scrub brushes, pumice, and fingernail files
wear down the nubs where the blackness may hide.
“Shh” the steaming water soothes
as it stings, scalds. “Shh.” Burn it all out;
conclusion so comforting. So predictably round.
This is the last time I can do this tonight. Pad, pad, pad
back to the bedroom. Downey quilt beckons in lover tones,
pleading pillows nudge against that head, that infernal head
still panicking amongst the softness:
Did I remember to lock the front door?
Sep 8, 2010
Sep 8, 2010 at 2:14 AM UTC