"verdigris" poems
Well when you're Green, I will be your Brown.
Like the earth that loves the flowers,
I'll will be your solid ground.
And I'll be your Azure, when you are Verdigris.
We'll be thee most beautiful ocean
that eyes have ever seen.
And when you're Black, I'll be your White.
Mixing all of the colors … I'll make everything alright.
Now when you're Blue, I'll be your Red.
If something should make you wanna cry,
I will feel your pain instead.
And I'll be your Orange, whenever you are Pink.
We'll be thee most amazing sunset,
that the sky could ever ink.
And when you're Black, I'll be your White.
I'll mix all of your colors … and make everything alright.
Should you be Violet, I will be your Beige.
Like a sleepy moonlit desert,
pastelled in dunes and Sage.
And when you're Gray, I will be your Rainbow.
We'll be thee most soothing rainstorm
the world has ever known.
And when you're Black, I'll be your White.
I'll mix all of your colors … yes, I'll make everything alright.
With love on my palette, painting a glorious sunrise …
I'll color all your mornings with a smile and brighten up your skies.
If you should find yourself in sorrow from someones hate or lies …
I'll take the stars down from the heavens … and paint them in your eyes.
So whenever you are Black, I will always be your White.
I'll mix all your colors with a promise … everything will be alright.
Yes, I'll mix all of your colors with a promise …
Everything's gonna be alright.
Mar 30, 2018
Mar 30, 2018 at 7:51 AM UTC
i have not spoken to you in
four or six years but
the hex code for the color of your eyes
i could determine from:
strawberry-kiwi juice, thumb tacks
CD rainbows
softball (
and kickball, hours of it)
chicago in 2007, white pebbles like teeth, and converse shoes—
Oct 30, 2013
Oct 30, 2013 at 10:04 PM UTC
Two, of course there are two.
It seems perfectly natural now——
The one who never looks up, whose eyes are lidded
And balled¸ like Blake's.
Who exhibits
The birthmarks that are his trademark——
The scald scar of water,
The ****
Verdigris of the condor.
I am red meat. His beak
Claps sidewise: I am not his yet.
He tells me how badly I photograph.
He tells me how sweet
The babies look in their hospital
Icebox, a simple
Frill at the neck
Then the flutings of their Ionian
Death-gowns.
Then two little feet.
He does not smile or smoke.
The other does that
His hair long and plausive
*******
************ a glitter
He wants to be loved.
I do not stir.
The frost makes a flower,
The dew makes a star,
The dead bell,
The dead bell.
Somebody's done for.
6.2k
emerald, olive, viridian
oh how you perplex me
forest, jade, chartreuse
why do you tease me so
cyan, verdigris, moss
such excitement arises
to be a word
to be a meaning
is there such a thing,
to have a feeling
to see a vision,
phthalo, pine, teal
are you the same
mint, myrtle, laurel
you make me envious
to be blooming, to be healthy
to be young, to be clumsy
are you callow, how about credulous?
but such a conservationist
unquestioning, so trustful,
tenderfoot and common
the tree, the lawn, the willow
though ecological and crude
a sage in all but name
apple, spinach, pea
aren't you scrumptious,
lime, kelly, bice
are you nature, how about luck
you're pungently rotten
though with such dark beauty and hope,
love and lust ensues
you're the jolliness of balance
and the creative intelligence;
of evil, and decay of money and safety,
will you resurrect me, are you immortality?
such jealousy arises
high goals and honor
so so allusive
healing and vitality
you're calming though fast
lush spring stability,
abundant generosity,
vert vegetation; witchcraft
an aphrodisiac I hear,
are you youth or fading youth?
sunrise and life, growth and fertility
sacred ideology,
eroticized though shameful
so romantic and humble
I see the third ray
or is the the fifth ray, the third eye
are you truth, are you vision
it's becoming a science,
so much compassion
the fourth chakra, the heart,
the centre of us all
a higher consciousness
such a harmonious aura
a hunter, a nurse, a solider, an outdoorsman
villains and superstition
misfortune and prosperity
with toxicity, sickness and death,
recycle and reuse
oh so powerful
you exude auspiciousness
just a holiday
mystical fairies and spirits
though also devilish,
cancer in the stars
a renewal of paradise,
biliously tranquil
are you refreshingly soothing,
peacefully restful,
a naive novice,
very understanding,
is there truly a term for you?
what do you really convey,
countless representations
a definition of name,
or do you signify the feeling, the specimen
the aspect?
though some have no locution for you
here I am,
stepping around the issue
you are you, in any word
yet with a different meaning
Jul 15, 2012
Jul 15, 2012 at 10:01 PM UTC
i.
the Hibiscus is the paradisiacal
armistice of quagmire and wind:
leave it there anchored to Earth.
ii
when it rains, it bows to no one;
when it genuflects to no bird,
it trills on the red of the moseying hour—
nobody sees the Hibiscus.
only the children of the vandal.
iii.
last summer we had makeshift
bubble machines and in the high-rise
of the twilight's cradle, we ran
viciously against the humdrum town
blowing bushels of laughter at
the dreary populace — the brooms
to a sweeping rustle, unsettled dust
mounting the ether.
we hurtled across the
infantile roads like they owed us something finitely attributed
to our locomotives.
iv.
the Semana Santa had gone by
and the season, no matter how promisingly redolent with emollient brush
of wind and laboring silence, held
no reprise — the Hibiscus,
it is not alone in the quiet verdigris.
v.
somewhere amid the hubbub of city,
there is a pendulum of line biting
the shore of waiting repeatedly.
only steel scaffolds erected and no
flagrant scent aroused. peregrinating
in the haloed hour, the nascent furl of
belch from vociferous iron-clad beasts
in all of EDSA
and when i look at people around me
they look like gumamelas, finally,
yet i am
not coming home.
Nov 4, 2015
Nov 4, 2015 at 3:15 AM UTC
*The man with green hair and green hands.
A long long time ago
When army’s wore uniforms.
We were khaki they were grey.
My grandfather was fire warden
In WW2 he had seven sons
And three daughters .
You could say he was
a bit of a pacifist.
Make love not war
Was his mantra.
He married my Grandma
when she was seventeen.
They were to stay married
for over sixty five years.
And produce tribe of ten children.
He had spent his whole life
Working as a coppersmith
For the same company.
His hair and hands tinted green
From the metals Verdigris.
My father was a baby just born
In the middle of the war.
We lived in Manchester.
Money was always tight.
But we were happy.
Just as Herr ****** invaded Poland
My grandad bought our first house.
We always rented until then.
It was a large town home.
The six older boys
All joined the marines
At the outbreak of the war.
They did one act of preparation
That ultimately saved the family.
They took down an old barn for a farmer
And used the beams to shore up the stone cellar
of the house.
When the air raids came later.
We would all huddle under the stair well
Until the all clear sirens sounded.
When the bad raid came
It was the early hours of the night.
Grandad was out on fire watch.
Six of the sons were on ships
In Europe and the far east.
My aunty told me much later.
When the war was long over.
She heard the bomb falling
It screamed as it fell.
Exploding just outside our house
the house caved in and they
were all buried under the rubble
in total darkness.
She said grandma was
breastfeeding the baby my dad.
Grandad was busy the raid was a hard one.
A friend said Frank your house has been hit
It’s bad.
He dropped everything and ran and ran
Breathless he reached the fallen house.
In his heart he thought we were all dead.
It took ten neighbors four hours to reach us.
They pulled the girls out first
Then the baby my dad.
And finally the dimutive figure of my grandma.
She was weeping.
She said Frank we’ve lost everything.
There’s nothing left.
He held her in his big arms
Tears flowing from the eyes of a man
Who had had a hard life.
Who never cried.
He kisses her full on her lips
A single sign of public affection
That was out of his character.
He whispered to grandma.
That odd Mary
Because I just found
Everything I ever wanted or needed.*
Oct 30, 2015
Oct 30, 2015 at 12:36 AM UTC
five pm, mid-winter
i thank Sky for taking sweet time.
Sky sets her thumb on the light-switch of the land.
she stands still, she waits.
for the hour, she meditates
on her day.
Sky hopes her skin
becomes verdigris the next day, not grey, but
verdigris to clothe **** trees. Or perhaps she will
hurt soon— Sky scars in
rainbows. Her change of thought: the small folks who have traveled
through her this day. She wonders where
they all
go.
Open your eyes,
do you hear Sky’s mute call?
in her meditation, hour of magic, all
wakes.
on the earth, photographers peer from their windows,
then rush through their doors to catch Sky’s dancing gleams,
beams flash through the tip-top’s of the Sugar Maple family,
their shadows splatter onto pot-hole streets.
Sky brushes her grass and her roads with paint of a gold hue,
fresh Rorschach tests while her thoughts try to rest.
i spot a leaf sleeping in the street, deep wine and apricot,
twisted from months away from its Mother
the wind levitates the leaf—lightly—and the sun
creates a squirrel of it, he climbs the tree, and scrambles over
to me. in short squeaks, he explains his political theory,
“why do you let your peep el let a few rich folks control
all others? why don’t you follow me
into the woods?”
he grabs my skirt with his sweet little paws
but i look up and notice the darkness,
i look down and see only a leaf again.
Sky’s savasana has ended,
candles ignite in the houses, Sky and Sun crawl into bed.
i’ll wait now for the selenian Sun, but i can’t rest my eyes. soon
i will escape with my new friend.
bittersweet magic: “the moment” lost in the sock drawer.
five pm, midwinter
the afternoon is reaching an end,
Lady Sky decides when she wants to change for us.
as the sun sets, she meditates.
some call it the “magic hour”
but how can you truly tell magic from reality?
go outside and see.
radiant beams do the tango on the trees
(a leaf in the street becomes a squirrel as my eye blinks)
a squirrel who runs straight up to me.
“get outta the system while you can!”
he squeaks, then nods at me to follow his path, another blink
the sky darkens, the squirrel disappears.
Feb 26, 2012
Feb 26, 2012 at 7:31 PM UTC
it was like waking up to all white fume
or a long washline — masturbatory, feeling something stiff like a hand gliding
over a monsoon of emotions, the affect
jazz and the crunch of fragrance
forever like sandalwood;
on my way to Dumandan, i conjure an inward miasma of thrill, unfurled yesterday, today, or was it before when our eyes were fixated on the passing of things in myriad ways without any relevance to what has died, say wilted,
like a flower going away in closing seasons,
children in hurtling speeds at twilight,
gates welcoming a resounding sound of
rusting hinges,
slow rise of night, its vertical climb,
shadows collapsing on the Hibiscus
and the Poinsettia from the Cordillera,
dreary men taking out ******* throwing
them into metalloid beasts, verdigris
painted, grisly caravan of steel and
worthless scraps —
past neighborhoods thinking about
the simmer of onion and the hustle of
the feral over rooftops, clinking wine bottles undulating full to empty — both
unaware of acumen and only dizzying
ourselves mirroring each other eye
to eye and bridging this unclose-enough
a gap in between,
because you need it,
and i want it, or simply in reverse,
a sidewinding thought through dunes
of afterthought.
because you have to walk my side
of the Earth and I have to meet you
somewhere halfway where we can both
lounge at each other's steady presence
while the flyblown dry air ravishes
the piquant morning, all-telling what
this distance meant from its
peak up to the very last
traceable steps where i found you
and you found me, trilling in the neighborhood like how void
stills itself into all the mood of the Earth:
all moony and
fretting in the disquiet.
Nov 15, 2015
Nov 15, 2015 at 2:38 PM UTC
The green handbag,
Clutched close,
Constant companion,
Matching clothes?
Not always.
Where did you go today?
The green handbag,
Loose change,
And pension book.
Made up?
Take a look!
Where did you go today?
The green handbag,
Memory sac of
Nooks and crannies,
Papa, Grandkids,
Aunts and Grannies.
Where did you go today?
The green handbag,
Held to heart,
Perched on knees,
A medicine chest,
With pain to ease.
Where did you go today?
The green handbag,
Where did you go today?
Pointless question, Usual answer.
As ever ‘Up the Toon!’
Too soon,
Not today.
The green handbag,
Not clutched,
Nor held,
But at the foot of your bed,
A reminder of hope,
Where did you go?
Today,
The Green Handbag,
Sits at my Dad’s feet.
A monument to love,
In fading verdigris.
Feb 20, 2017
Feb 20, 2017 at 6:45 AM UTC
Ferryman, will I rest in the white roses
that can nevermore grow infirm-
where the rivers from the deep blue forest
are joined by currents of blood and ink?
Ferryman, the forest of the sky is beautiful
like blue bitumen, verdigris life moves, expires and is
reborn between the plane of those who do not die
and above the garden of grief
"Come brother, let us sleep" the phantom says
"One-Hundred and Fifty cuts cover me from head to waist-
old and beautiful tears that keep me from sleep
The heat of my lamp is ready to fade"
Ferryman,where in the house of shade shall I finally rest?
The voice of my lord is broken and dried
In the glade of cedar trees, air flushes and suffocates
The blushing of the moonlight fades and the snowy stars elude her
Make me know the ways of righteousness
The ferryman leads me down the tremulous waters
his words have escaped me like the fearful night's eyes
and in the distance the sudden emptiness of the roses
Mar 27, 2013
Mar 27, 2013 at 2:54 AM UTC
Laying naked on the chaise longue
and the artist's taking so long
to get the colours mixed.
I have fixed myself a pose
looking quite good
without wearing any clothes
then Picasso starts to paint.
The lights are strong
I perspire
the artist murmurs
'I'm on fire'
and late so very late Picasso takes a break
and I can stand and stretch
I fetch a cup of water
take one crafty look behind the canvas
and I am slaughtered.
I thought this guy could paint
but that ain't me
he's painted monsters rising from a sea
with blackened eyes
and skin of verdigris.
If this guy could paint by numbers
he wouldn't get past number three.
Look at what he's done to me.
I'm getting dressed and going home.
Tomorrow
I shall have a bone
to pick with him.
Apr 25, 2013
Apr 25, 2013 at 4:10 AM UTC
vast, wide, broad
boundless, limitless
Infinite
aquamarine, turquoise, verdigris
blue sapphire, bondi blue
Exotic
silent, hushed, tranquil
wordless, peaceful,
Secret
It takes two to keep a secret,
the Sea and I
Sep 12, 2014
Sep 12, 2014 at 3:50 AM UTC
The time of the shining of
Wind-summered grasses, has passed,
-To the lark-breast mottle-
The harvested skin of the
Senescent land
The candle-snatch gutter of
Hurrying wing sees
The last of the coin
That was minted in thatches
Of deepwood
Of latticing bramble
Of crumbling eve.
The mourn of the Moorland
Has feathered a will
With the clot of the Ash,
Where a heather of cinnabar
Freckles the splash of
a simmering tarn
As gravelling Easterlies
Peel the cling of
The verdigris fades,
Some twilight of sepia
Musters the pastel
of Wintering calm.
May 25, 2016
May 25, 2016 at 11:08 AM UTC
The winter trees stand unclothed,
branches reaching for each other with woody empathy
craving their lovers touch, naked bodies of passion,
their children lie red and amber,
setting ablaze the verdigris blades,
that hold them kindly,
when their mothers can no longer carry them,
the embrace breaks them down,
allowing their earthy scent to creep to the nostrils of those who come to think a while,
enjoying the fleeting sun on their backs for a time,
on this frosty winter day,
The traffic seems obsolete,
if the whispering birds can learn,
to ignore the engine rumbles as can I,
the obsidian asphalt path carves delicately through this city sanctuary,
like an old english dance,
where courters would not touch their partner,
but embrace the sweet proximity,
and cherish the fire in their beloved's eyes,
and soul.
Water lies abandoned in the path,
reflecting the eternal blue of the afternoon sky,
an embodiment of tranquility,
a connection that can never be consummated,
a longing to be together again,
the water envies the whisp of cloud that has retained the skies clinch,
a ripple destroys the perfect portrayal,
but to give way to two Blue ****
absorbing its love,
and releasing it to one another,
as they speak to each other,
and elope toward the emerging pearl moon.
I brush my feet amongst the wood chip beds,
mere remnants of once great trees,
still huddling together in solidarity,
as though trying to reform what once was,
it makes me ponder of soul mates lost,
clutching at the memories that once were,
and pursuing to reforge a love that refuses to be broken,
adoration manifest as young sapplings reach upward,
sprouting from the shallow chippings,
ready to blossom with memories once more.
May 13, 2015
May 13, 2015 at 12:32 PM UTC
goaded by a stereophonic monotone:
a flumine voice waxes with lovelorn dregs.
i heard the plump word of rescue
dangle from the heady decibel of song,
winterward, blue-veined and stillicide.
no more, shall the wind traverse the impasse of the verdigris. the incertitude
of beginnings sigh ultimately.
o people, your darling children soldered
to your denims. o rosefrail and sightless
bannerets — we mourn such coming.
it sleuths with a tangle of fingers
underneath fringes of flesh-warmed
draperies with a different temperament
as moderate as climates in squandered tropics, flows with a truth wishing it
more of the untruth:
never shall return, in faraway lands,
never shall look back and lay in prairies
attenuated, continue to sing oblivion.
Dec 3, 2015
Dec 3, 2015 at 6:29 AM UTC
Light unloosens itself. Space slackens.
A figure of a shadow I have conjured before
anonymous eyes. Lapping up the waiflike bleakness
of their elliptical faces.
I must teach the trees to let go
of autumn, and relegate spryness to the hearth
of cold without merit, this slow, claiming mutiny
with its face-oval peering through windows multiplying
lovelessly, a crunch of a leaf, suchlike, flourishing
in peerless company. Before me, the sound of footfall
preparing to make sense, a rotunda of bell – that movement
of somebody done for, so ****** the scald welt of ******
the belch of the world like a pore clearing its squalor.
Or the toppled verdigris of gull.
Autumn’s greater extension, the abeyance, smilingly
a facsimile of crowds – its roads adorned with laburnum
singeing through the morning’s cauldron, a waft of bald terrain
inflamed, drawing with absence
a crippled drip of rain back into the world’s dim address.
Feb 7, 2016
Feb 7, 2016 at 1:28 PM UTC
It's been one boring, restless, ***** of a drive through this sunken state. I click the windshield wipers off as they smear verdigris across my polarized vision, the FM stereo crackles and hisses in dissonance
with moaning, squealing brakes. My four cylinder fishtails ever so slightly as tattered tires nick and skid through puddles of *** the cumulus left behind after ******* the sun, which is crying now as it falls to sleep. Driving mechanically, I let my thoughts wander as I meander along I-4.
*You and I, we've never known what it means to perfect our chapters, to get into each little cavity, or between two immaculate ribs. We'd like to simplify all of that to one line, to reduce the dimensions rather than revel in their story. To see with six eyes or live as a termite within the wood grain is really all the same. But you know, we haven't finished yet simply because we are not finished yet. Some of us yet insist they hold on to the rotting shreds of a dying breed, a generation gone gangrene, their fingers in their feces.
But we know how we want it to be. Humanity will be different for you kids, we promise.*
Aug 9, 2013
Aug 9, 2013 at 1:57 PM UTC
It is June. Plaridel is in sepia, or leaden – whichever,
this is the leitmotif.
Soon clouds with jettison a plodding swathe of
water. You will wear the petrichor,
While a ramshackle of a passing tricycle
whelms a throbbing orchestra of junk.
Here is the hearth that rears no fire:
a mother, children in tow – a troika,
on a cart not even close to ease of
a hurtling thing. Trees naked in vulnerable
green – the verdigris carried by a
miniscule Maya.
Here comes again, the neighbor peering through
the nuisance, is alarmed, eyes like a fugitive,
curses my mother – I grab the nearest, sharpest
object available that was my own hand.
Ingrained deep within, a root – or a stone, among many
other stones in me, this salt-well, a savingslight of turning wave
that is almost an approximate oceanview in me.
Gnarled over the longest time. In here we soothe by
gin, passing out in front of our gated homes,
singing whatever was available, close to our pitch.
Somewhere, Windsor has lost the poem / critiqued by
a mirror fecundating a smeared image, a blot.
A Rorschach was it, or just a day dazed they did.
Somewhere, this is scattered. Uncollected. To make remnants
of as evidence, not to investigate if true.
The 6th body of this is what I am speaking of in glossolalia.
A requiem leaves it stark and cold in this consummate weather.
Another piercing salvage of metal cuts the humdrum town
and unlike the sturdy mango tree, this is a collective of secret
encrypted lasting more than a life.
It is June. Plaridel has ripened from the expired summer.
Perchance the exquisite promise is sweet, holding all the bitterness together,
ready to fall, at last.
May 31, 2016
May 31, 2016 at 10:22 PM UTC
Ad infinitum
embroiled in another
waking moment with
a bated breath nothing like
this day inclined only to obfuscate
its meaningless joy of seeing yourself
in a pond swimmingly doubling the inertia
of the koi the day constricting within the verdigris
ready to seal shut in hermetic this vermillion eye
to wake up into a long-held confrontation
of what this system closes in a document
why bother this validation when valedictory
Ad nauseam
why bother this confrontation
when disappearance this space much like a long-held performance
if concert is hermetic in front of a nonchalant audience
laudable with no sound, an untranslatable music
unhinged from the inherent risk of felling
an inert day struggling like koi trapped
in a pond seeking what it is to transcend
or the multiplied joy of seeing yourself meaningless
ready for an eye to be caught in a monotonously
claustrophobic loins of a tremulous middleground
with no possible agreement other than:
this potentially demands an end
when beginning you are lionized
to a fault, repeated, trite: what for?
Jun 3, 2016
Jun 3, 2016 at 1:06 AM UTC
A colour of the spectrum
Located between blue and yellow
Poor, green, not as fresh as blue
Or as pretty and bright as yellow
Yet, it's the colour associated with
Springtime, youth, hope and envy.
Ahh, beware the green eyed monster
Jealousy, verdant grows within.
Green the most important colour of Islam
Celtic Ireland, verdant paradise
Camouflage, hide, conceal, all green
Youth hides it's innocence
Innocence, shaken on the boughs
Malachite, verdant, verdigris
How odd this colour means so much to so many
Europe and the US attributes the colour to the Devil sickness & death
But spring is life
Not death
Green for go, green for environment,for
Death, malaise, poison, British racing green
Such a small colour
Such large meaning
Beware the colour green
It has too many meanings, to many connotations
Apr 18, 2014
Apr 18, 2014 at 12:03 PM UTC
A lead glass sieve. I can’t put my heart into a poem. Emptiness is not an emotion.
Standing alone in the shadow of the house, I wait while he plays, remembering to breath.
The air tonight smells with the bitter sweetness of decaying earth…warm. Pensive wetness clings to the curling vapors, on the coat tails of rogue angels, drifting out into a darkness that beckons lost souls. Threadbare branches cut a deep shadow against a color-drained sky.
If I make it over that vine covered fence I could go on forever. Says the scarecrow, “go back to where you came from”. And I’ll keep walking. Faded pieces of me dropping like stale breadcrumbs among the rotting apples. If the Earth is round, I’ll follow the path you’ve laid, in cracked ruby slippers, down the verdigris brick road. Walk, until I’ve walked back to you.
All living creatures die alone. I don’t want to die alone.
Mar 1, 2012
Mar 1, 2012 at 5:01 PM UTC
air pours alive in stringencies,
fall of tor and expanse.
mazy-eyed,
casts a syncopated hook
amongst tulips beheaded
by the toppling of a leaf
bracing for departures,
something else holds back,
furrow—
the thatched morning's serious mien,
the arrow, whirling in trajectories
one with the dive into red cauldron
of infinite scar of water,
Śiva, sighted footfall of the condor's
verdigris, this simple rustle
of your scourge-gowns
insists cadence of flutings;
i am one with beginnings.
swarming poultice of the inflamed grass,
obscene lines of shore in twilight
unfazed virulence spreads
like an epidemic of kisses against the
pulsing loam, cries like breakwater
lorn the fault of men, death at one's
trembling hand — sound the tribulation
of slender bells to a gather of pallors.
it is a stopping in-placeness
like crests of ******* a beautiful woman,
shiftless weight of light on glazed collarbone, Śiva, the enigmatical paradox
beleaguers a concatenation of
unloose chandeliers of appurtenances,
the unblinking aperture, widening in sky.
Nov 30, 2015
Nov 30, 2015 at 12:22 AM UTC
Where sunset copperplates the sea
With flecks of gold and Verdigris
And down below, the ghosts of ships do battle in the bay
Where in the morning, rising scents of sea salt and of sage
Drift up the hill on gifted wings to greet the kids that come of age
On dry stone walls in olive groves
Beneath the strident sun
Sharp shadows cast by old scrub oaks
Where once young shepherds flung their cloaks
Resist the timeless tug of war of brash Etesian winds
Where goats' bells bounce off whitewashed walls, with each staccato leap
And black-wrapped widows spin their webs to catch what precious dream-filled sleep
They might ‘neath watch of leaning, still
Centurions of stone
To soothe the white heat of the sun
We dived and left our limbs undone
In ocean coolness, born again - and flushed, we struck for shore
With towels held high above our heads
we tiptoed onto land
And broke from canvas rare delights to share upon the sand
The day we lunched on Ithaca
Two thousand orbits turned
Content, we hung in listless sleep
As painted ladies traced our shape
Until the lure of barefoot expeditions brought me round
I picked my steps with casual ease through shade of salt-dried driftwood trees
And swore I’d found the very glade where hung the Golden Fleece
I turned to share my thrill with you
But chose instead to spare your peace
Soon after came the faithful sound
Of bells that haul the Earth around
Each chime remarking loud and clear its moment’s fading grace
And deep within you as you slept, inaudible at first,
The beating of a second drum began to be rehearsed
The day we lunched on Ithaca
Life’s liquor quenched our thirst
Jan 23, 2017
Jan 23, 2017 at 3:41 PM UTC
we're whipping through the backroads
without seat belts, kicking up the dust--
the Sangre De Cristos looming with chalky
crowns above the hills, riddled with fence
posts and battered lean-tos, homes with
green shingles and matching john deere
tractors--the mountains, the mountains.
you go around every corner like it's a straightaway
I still see you smiling at me through locked doors
cradling me like a baby bird and hoping I might
throw caution out when all around your heart
there's these warning signs on big yellow placards
glinting in the night.
there are a dozen thoughts, all equally crippling--
staggered images of you squinting up at me on
the hill above the barn in that wrinkled white t-shirt,
a gray murdoch's hat pushed high up on your forehead,
hip cocked out with your hands twitching at your sides
rubbing brake fluid between your fingers
brooke, it is pointless to you. That's so obvious to me.
they tell you to stay down when shot, play dead when
in danger, but i've been seeking solace in your neck
trying to keep myself from telling you that I love you, feeling
it at the back of my lips ready to spill over, overcome
by your gentleness, asking God *why, why can't I just
love him?*
it's so obvious to you? that i've spent a month telling myself that it's okay, that you're right, that you're harmless, that things can work
out, so pointless goes on ringing in my ears, clattering down the
airways into my heart where i love you still hangs loosely by a
thread, or maybe a rope, maybe an industrial wire ready to bring
the house down with its weight, a marble for each day, a stone, a
boulder.
county road 255 seems a whole lot shorter,
I'm preoccupied with the dry shrubs the color of verdigris, the color
of your laugh, how i can't see through the tangle of my own emotions, how i really do want you to be the one, the one person that just happens to be right--it's so obvious, you said.
so obvious.
Apr 4, 2016
Apr 4, 2016 at 4:15 PM UTC
quand je porte mes chaussures rouges converse
comme si j'étais de nouveau un jeune garçon
à l'école
avec
nos
amis
je veux être dans une aéroplane
au-dessus de chicago
mais
seulement
avec
toi
Nov 1, 2013
Nov 1, 2013 at 8:22 PM UTC