Dearest

i call you this, for no other so fits the word,
and because no word suits you so, my other.

i am glad to have found you
words are easy by you, and for you.

we'll pass a streetlamp twilight
true in the brace of each others whispers

let us trade like dusty camel riders
waiting out speckled blurs of storm

i offer you the crux of my arm,
the murmur of my good company and will

and of you? what would i have from you?
only a corner of your heart to warm

i am glad to be beside you, for then,
my heart is right, and will right you.

and what other word suits you so?
because as no other, i call you this,

dearest

- 1999

Day's Ellipis

Petite white parasols stroll on the night,
What elegant patterns they weave.
Like a chatter on the breeze,
Sensing, a spider's leg in the air,

Always blown past your fingers.
Taunting faeries unveil the night,
Dancing out the warm summer.

When dandelions bloom from new seeds,
Katydids cease their nightly serenades,
And my fireflies expire in a jar.


- 1998

Did a few tweaks. Take that, past-self!

518,400 + Seconds

Sage and hickory sprout in my lungs,
As weariness crowds both flesh and heart,
Settle me, let me dream a breath,
Silence be warmed on memory's hearth,

Treading on daydreams with dandeli-umbrellas,
Let me one duet with my dove.
Seemingly, drippling on leaf, and dreaming me,
Hoping a twilight, doubting a dawn.

Clinging to a plume, a sane chord,
Heart dying to a darkening pulse,
Fearful forever of holding and being,
And losing to the endless distances,
Dreams . . .


- Definitely 1994

One of my favorites (I hope that's understandable). I absolutely dread the reality that I cannot equal these earlier efforts. I know for a fact this was not long after I started the Leonard Cohen drip-bag through a clutch of mixed tapes that would rattle around in my bookbag, all day and most nights.

I remember being very fond of the scents of pre-dawn summer days in that edge of suburbia where the dark woods are within view, gardens are English by necessity rather than design, and the scents bitterly overwhelm all other senses, as I started the long walks back.

A Twittanova of Metroplexing, West to East

The Magic Castle, plantation, heroin hostel, and now a rehabilitated house of illusions. Doogie Howser is the trapezy chairman of the board.

The spirit of beans cut a wide circle in the water, as we merrily toast farewell. A precipitous fall, cut bright by purple webs in the wake.

A lounge, terraced in the sky, great ivy trellises and flowing blue dresses. The hammock was easily the best part; the $20 beers, the worst.

The vintage, posh, and smokey floor - a platinum card caught briefly on snippets of conversation floated on great poise, unrelenting rhythm.

Fled the gracefully skirted fray by earliest train, a citrus rose crown on New London, and a stray carousel resident in blue South Station.

L’esprit de l’Escalier

Stairs - 
eventual instruments 
of our declivity
for conveyance

drawing out 
validation
from body 
and will 

at each 
plane,
until 

the dangerous collapse 
  of one
 on to the other


L’esprit de l’Escalier - "stairway wit," a phrase describing the witticisms which arise after their window for delivery have expired (i.e. as you're going down a set of stairs).

May I call you, John?

Strange comfort in the idea of whores
 attendants at the great feast of needs
half naked lunch ladies, 
   breast or thigh?
their endless shifting, 
    pooled to the edges of a brushed metal tray

a whore armed with her ladle
neatly apportioning desire, ennui
distant sirens catch on her hairnet

blues shift, endless in your night
sirens punctuating the hollow clicking of thin heels.

may i?

Crossing

'Inevitable?' said the flutist,
   lips pursuing the apical G;
   a placid finish blowing swirls across the table.
We require, not pipers but a choir,
not Hamelin but Paumanok, -
Distracted, but for a moment.

I buoyantly idle
white caps,
grey gulls,
  forgetful lines
  crossing beneath the centuries idle
the ferry’s chin digging into the shoulders
of costumed crowds
            shuttled through murk, brine,
Where was your future a hundred years hence?

Mr Whitman, I’ve lost your generations of men, women, and oscillating gulls.
I’ve been to Paumanok, your mother’s home, your mall.

A round, another
round, of alms
around whom, with tasseled conscience,
formed a book, forgetful read
never to work
not a crinkle of spine
not the last crisp chapter

A rough noose
a ring, then a coat of arms
a living crowd, I was one of a crowd
in the breathless distance beneath his bridge.

--------------

Written 2011.

New poetry! How. . . odd. This is one of the first to live almost exclusively in the blogger post. I have a draft in an offline file, but it is several revisions behind. This cloud business is a little disconcerting, but highly utilitarian.