Tag: love poem

my paranoia is up
which helps me to
instruct myself better,
instructing them but
what I tell you is inconsequential.
merely I am pressure of depth
and that I believe it so,
having told you first
with conviction, I begin
to frame it.

legs crossed on the carpet,
hands out in imposition.
the wood mantle lit
and rearranged, objects
of sentimentality removed
so any backhand can’t
sweep it.
it’s important that my personal items
are kept away from the circle,
and maybe once I didn’t believe
but falling victim to your
own enchantment, you begin
to care about which stones
are set and things like that.
hands out:

first, you will be looking
up to notice
the sky dark but glittering
with stars
so the whole place
around you is lit up
and there are friends nearby. 

I say this directly to the
picture jasper draped in the
thread of my necklace,
the glyph of Lilith.
and hopefully,
as in with a little
upward inflection.

1.

0

“what do you do when something loves
you? do you love it back?

I’m volatile.”

I’ve got nothing,
 I show him,
but notes like this;
each one parched out
later, gutted
by time travel,
tornado worship,
something called “the
myth becomes” and
I get nothing done.

 

they don’t believe me
but I amounted to nothing
and I show them
sweeping my hand over
an obscured history
but no real success
I laugh, undaunted
usually and also
breezy. I like smiling.
composition open
pointing to one sentence
I like watching time.

I’m obsessed with unproducing,
or burning a process as you
 watch it unfurl. it’s like
setting the bottom of each trunk
on slow fire and then you
climb to the top of
the pine watching it
engulf you then eviscerate
whatever you were.
I am up by dawn, or close
to it,  thinking this is what
 true love is doing
and I’ve done this before;
proving habit,
and the deep deep
null of feeling
that I really possess
daily, filled with
plotting and idle time,
a rumination of these
invidious encounters.
something always in my hand.
something always tinctured,
distilling and then
wanting you to see it:
my nullness and
overreaction and courting
 that must be
facade or instinct or
vexing but
mold it into something
better than the ice cold
well I am.
palms open in please.
that’s where people fall.
in the snow bank
in the bottom of the frozen
hole trying to help
the little
girl.

I think a lot,
I say softly.
and I like learning
 words.
point to one:

duplicity


“the act of naming things”

0

to seek me, meant
pleasure in ineffability,
already a loss for words
and to remain hidden
from some parts of the depth
of me and from the world with
me; I prefer the furtive
curl against another.
the unutterable and silent
worship
drives this chasm
I keep deeper between us
and the others and
you and me
like rifts adrift
like that, the moment
I turn my head.
I like to live,
eat, sleep alone
and move the country
this way; home
 a solitary war
between impulse and
deep, deep reflection
upon impulse
 control.

I’m so sensitive
that if I settle into
think and spread
the cards like a fan,
I’d feel it out
in five seconds
eyes closed.
show me,
she said.
show me one year
show me two years
show me three years.

“King of Cups”

0

 

don’t you ever take away my joys,
my labor organizing or autonomy.
i’m speaking liberally,
predictive and
coded with demands.
I haven’t shaved in days,
developed musk and am
running fingers down my legs
to watch them in the mirror
creep like Daddy Longlegs.
calling ghosts, I say
but like a broken record
and starting with
don’t you take away
my joys, make me
deferential.
I’ll cut my hair clean off,
you’ll see

but there’s only three feet
between us and I’m leaning.
 wait for me
to throw my locks all over
your kitchen table.
rest my skinned skull
on your knee, Venus is
obsessed but well,
I begin to get up fast
 just as happily.
it always starts with a well.

walk by the little girl
in the well.
don’t fall down the well.
watch out for the well.

“the well” (for Pluto in my third house)

0

normally
I just open the door
and walk right in
but this time I decide
I should be invited.
founded on repetition as the old adage
of classical conditioning,
some things work best in saturation,
a vacuum
and unrevealed to the participants.
this is an examination of ethics.
no, an examination of motive.
same thing, the query being:
is it stronger when stated?
as the querant believes,
it is stronger with want
regardless of
palpable confirmation.
want is hope in modern language
and the most consensual
exchange of felt.

either way,  it is
best to have some controls.
I arrive, same fashion,
dramatically.
you have been out in
the snow with your friends
and enjoying the view
of the constellations above
when you hear the twig snap.
you will see their yellow eyes to
your right as you react
and you will be alone
suddenly like that compelled
to walk right in
before you see me cloaked,
walk right out.
you say I am the coldest, darkest
thing you’ve ever met but
my two dogs are
licking your frozen cheek
as you lie beneath my feet,
a sturdy boot on top
of your face, me baring down
without much weight but
pressure of depth.
but you seem colder than that.

you are face down
becoming the tracks.
I am taller than you expected,
yes?

2.

0

I am up by dawn, or close
to it, again.
thinking this is what true love
is doing; proving habit,
demanding morning study.
this has happened before and
every time it happens,
it is strengthened so much so
that what has woken me is
an old phrase you said to me.
I could hear you fumbling with it;
an act of reflection while in stalemate.
how long can obstinacy maintain the
buoyancy of flight?
I am learning to stay fresh and put
and you are summarizing yourself
with an inaccuracy that doesn’t
need me yet.

I heard you rereading it one morning
to yourself, no doubt
questioning your word choice
as I stretch, be careful what you
say.
but I know what you meant.
and I know what you like.

there are rules to this though.

“the act of naming things”

0

information is power so
I ask the time and place
and day and I hold
back some ecstatic clapping
for the willfully delivered
 emblem that I now braid back
into me.
I feel most secure in holding
someone by their neck and
forward and possibly in
creeks of ice asking
are you pious, son?

but never believing,
I strum my chords at night,
fanatical.
once missing, now
draped in beads of
declamation, afloat.
I’m white like creeks of ice
you lay your head upon and
cough the yes, I am devout.
I become the pew for them.
I become the papacy.

you become the tether tight
laid across my city bench,
suddenly engrossed in rosary
again.
as I begin to watch the men
dig holes into my
ground like clocks to measure
the dagger of a willful
mind devoted to one outcome,
you press your hands into
the ice to feel water
rise up.

“the pupil”

0

sometime late January
you spent the night with a woman
watching the moon grow.
come take me in my own abattoir,
my thesaurus.
I unrolled my tongue
ready for our first kiss
 and out spilled
someone else’s lung.
how did these things
ever get here?
I wonder aloud.

I had created a dalliant
stockyard in my bed
 to occupy us:
red-hot,
full of other people.
you were outside in a corduroy jacket
counting her freckles
as I was slicing the outside of
someone’s arm
to crawl inside
for warmth.
wait for us to duel it out
 in the morning
biting the inside of my cheek
 to taste victory
 and she was on top of you,
crowning.
well.

well,
I had been waiting to show you
self immolation and I know
some fun phrases like
vous aimez l’intensité.
you had been waiting with kerosene
and some promises to hold
 my pretty ashes
hostage; replete
with scathe,
a few words.

“fidelity”

0

 

myself I receded
into the carpet maybe.
I don’t know what I did
some days. I was  hard pressed
to prove I could be
both a dehydrated kind
of  thirsty and
objective
in my pursuits
but both my hard-wired
illusion and my precocity,
my seduction were
suddenly a bit
of a crucifix
needing some tempering,
some rectifying,
maybe a mirror.
I began to practice my
southern accent,
my Irish accent,
my English accent,
my New Orleans accent.
“Fine,” was all I could
muster. and I tried not to look
at any age lines.

I went forward
with an earnest attempt
to gain access to the mind
of someone else.
I remember just staring at birds
for minutes at a time
with no other thought
but a swirl of energy
 swarm me.
and how I could once hear a
woman chewing potato chips
across a coffee shop.
it was a million
little things like that
where I stopped
and realized I could
probably walk through
walls if I was careful.

“the lullaby”

0

there is a peace in exposure
and a peace in silence.
and I still can’t discern
 where I fit completely.
sometimes i flit about town
 with my paper point tongue
 and become the trap for them.
other days I sit quietly
and rearrange my stones
to surround pieces of paper
with words scribbled
as a representation of a symptom
of superstition.

 

when people say they are superstitious,
they usually mean they
don’t walk under ladders
or keep broken mirrors,
or if you’re Russian,
put your purse or keys on
the table.
when I say I’m superstitious,
I mean that if I think
about something too long
it begins to grow legs
and walk out so I can
see it better.

I begin to line the doors
with salt and brick
dust. I begin to line the
tub with black tourmaline
and smoky quartz. I
begin to line the bed with
kitchen knives and then
I begin to chant the
names.

“1/1/2017”

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑