Sunny day picnics on the beach.
Seagulls overhead, trying to catch the wind.
That’s how it felt to me that night,
You were so cool when I saw you.
We were dressed business casual that evening
As the sound of shit-chat resonated loosely
Through half full wine glasses.
I wasn’t, presently, engaged.
We exchanged side glances like adolescent notes
In fourth period biology:
Do you like me? Circle the answer.
Yes
No
I paid you no mind overtly (because that’s how the game gets played)
But stole glances to stash in piggy banks,
Rationed out for rain days, and, for a while.
Nothing.
I had a conversation with my reservations the other day.
Your name came up, mostly in the context of
“I wonder if,” and “what would have been.”
She always knows how to push my buttons when we speak.
I wasn’t looking when I found you, so it’s no surprise that when I fell,
I fell so deep.
So, so deep.
It’s funny, when my conversations idle,
[and what would people say by the way? Would they whisper when they speak?
“He’s not fooling anyone, the way he looks at her,”
“the way he looks at her so deep.”]
And when my conversations idle.
My thoughts return to you like an Escher painting.
Feigning composure when I speak, as settled as a tea cup
In an earthquake.
Waiting for me to take a chance.
Your very thought plays gingerly across my back
Like finger tips along my spine
Strumming each nerve like the strings on a guitar.
You know what you do to me.
The curve of your hips beneath my fingertips
Could be my currency, it’s so precious to me.
Concurrently, these haptics form sketches in my mind.
You are my palette when I finger paint like this.
You lay there by my side for hours counting
Fingers and toes pointed at the sky at
Daydreams while we dream awake.
Meanwhile, time stretches, blinks twice, weary,
And curls back into its sleep.
I might call these days perfect if I didn’t fear finality so fiercely.
So instead, I watch you in front of me
In that way that makes everything appear
Like scenes from an old home movie.
You laugh when we play, you cry when it hurts,
And you tell me you never want to leave.
Just allow me to steal on more touch before the sun sets
And takes another day we’ll never get to see again.
So, this was a little valentine's day challenge to myself, a side project of sorts. I wanted to see if I could write something before vday to share with people, and I did. I wanted this to be three poems stuck together, but I kinda' ran out of time. Either way, I think I like the two I have here. Maybe I'll go back one day and write the third in the series. Happy vday everyone, hope you find all that you're looking for in life.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
Journey's End, Part 6
Click here for part 1
In his last moments, Journey couldn’t help but feel the reality of the fact that all travels must come to an end. His half writ saga had been punctuated for the final time, like a poet lacking the constitution to write in absence of his muse. Given to fits of whimsy, he simply places a period and declares the story concluded. He had spent one too many summers in this house, and he longed for the days when he ran from autumn rains. Rain drops dancing blithely on idle window pains, and his warmth wrapped securely in her arms. She held him tightly, yet gently. He slept. Somewhere inside him, he knew he had never moved passed those autumn days, and that when he left that day his spirit failed to make the trip with him. It had been trapped in a purgatory of his own construction, walled in by the errors of his past. She looked down at him with her impossible green eyes, fallible in their perception. They blinked, but did not shed tears. She did not cry for him. Instead, as she held his head, she sang a song for him, a prayer she had learned, while sirens screamed the songs in keys of dissonance. In his last moments, they both thought the same thing; perhaps the story had been concluded, but finally Journey had been allowed to be free.
Chapter 6: The Song
In his last moments, Journey couldn’t help but feel the reality of the fact that all travels must come to an end. His half writ saga had been punctuated for the final time, like a poet lacking the constitution to write in absence of his muse. Given to fits of whimsy, he simply places a period and declares the story concluded. He had spent one too many summers in this house, and he longed for the days when he ran from autumn rains. Rain drops dancing blithely on idle window pains, and his warmth wrapped securely in her arms. She held him tightly, yet gently. He slept. Somewhere inside him, he knew he had never moved passed those autumn days, and that when he left that day his spirit failed to make the trip with him. It had been trapped in a purgatory of his own construction, walled in by the errors of his past. She looked down at him with her impossible green eyes, fallible in their perception. They blinked, but did not shed tears. She did not cry for him. Instead, as she held his head, she sang a song for him, a prayer she had learned, while sirens screamed the songs in keys of dissonance. In his last moments, they both thought the same thing; perhaps the story had been concluded, but finally Journey had been allowed to be free.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Journey's End, Part 5
Click here for part 1
She never claimed to be anything more than a fucked up girl from the wrong part of Michigan. “We don’t make love,” she would say, “we fuck.” He hated when she talked like that “Really, do you have to do that?” he would ask. “Why are you like this sometimes?” She would shrug and leave the room. “I don’t know. My dad didn’t love me enough I guess.” She would say it like she were joking, but she would feel it like she meant it.
She never looked the same to him any two times that he saw her. He couldn’t tell if it was the mask she wore, or if it was the veil he saw her through. She hated the way he would look near her, but never at her. The way he looked at her like a soul had been trapped in a porcelain doll stashed above the mantel. She wasn’t sure if it was her that he was even looking at anymore. He could feel she sensed this, and now tight ropes spanned the gaps between them, and the spaces below had come to be filled with shards, remnants of something that was never right to begin with. All that was left was to dress his doll in thin layers of fantasy that hung off her shoulders like silk.
She hated when he looked at her like that, because she knew he was not looking at her, but through her. He would pull her close to him, gaze into her eyes, and whisper the sweetest lies she had ever heard, always telling her that he loved her at the end. Always telling her that he loved her… That’s the part she longed to believe the most, and the part that twisted the dagger each time she heard it. She knew it wasn’t her that he was speaking to, but whatever chimera he had conjured in her stead.
She imagined that he would see her as a stranger in some foreign land, France perhaps. That the sensations that hung in the air like dew, would bring them closer, so strong as to be palpable, because mystique was an aphrodisiac. She felt that when he clutched her, it was as if to chase away all that bad things that had ever touched her in the past. Sometimes as he talked to her, she could swear he was speaking to someone else. She could tell by the way he would go to say her name and seemed disappointed that it was not the one his lips wanted to speak, and if she asked him what it was he had to say, he would reply simply, “nothing.”
The walls were streaked a green grey, there was so much tension in that house, and their conversations became fewer and farther between. It couldn’t be said aloud whether or not the love between them had become broken, but they both knew they shared an apartment because neither one of them wanted to be alone. At night, he would dream of her for who he really wanted her to be, and every night he would throw her into the sky, to drift away wistfully, like a balloon. “Go,” he would say to her, “I have set you free.”
Click here for part 6
Chapter 5: Dreams
She never claimed to be anything more than a fucked up girl from the wrong part of Michigan. “We don’t make love,” she would say, “we fuck.” He hated when she talked like that “Really, do you have to do that?” he would ask. “Why are you like this sometimes?” She would shrug and leave the room. “I don’t know. My dad didn’t love me enough I guess.” She would say it like she were joking, but she would feel it like she meant it.
She never looked the same to him any two times that he saw her. He couldn’t tell if it was the mask she wore, or if it was the veil he saw her through. She hated the way he would look near her, but never at her. The way he looked at her like a soul had been trapped in a porcelain doll stashed above the mantel. She wasn’t sure if it was her that he was even looking at anymore. He could feel she sensed this, and now tight ropes spanned the gaps between them, and the spaces below had come to be filled with shards, remnants of something that was never right to begin with. All that was left was to dress his doll in thin layers of fantasy that hung off her shoulders like silk.
She hated when he looked at her like that, because she knew he was not looking at her, but through her. He would pull her close to him, gaze into her eyes, and whisper the sweetest lies she had ever heard, always telling her that he loved her at the end. Always telling her that he loved her… That’s the part she longed to believe the most, and the part that twisted the dagger each time she heard it. She knew it wasn’t her that he was speaking to, but whatever chimera he had conjured in her stead.
She imagined that he would see her as a stranger in some foreign land, France perhaps. That the sensations that hung in the air like dew, would bring them closer, so strong as to be palpable, because mystique was an aphrodisiac. She felt that when he clutched her, it was as if to chase away all that bad things that had ever touched her in the past. Sometimes as he talked to her, she could swear he was speaking to someone else. She could tell by the way he would go to say her name and seemed disappointed that it was not the one his lips wanted to speak, and if she asked him what it was he had to say, he would reply simply, “nothing.”
The walls were streaked a green grey, there was so much tension in that house, and their conversations became fewer and farther between. It couldn’t be said aloud whether or not the love between them had become broken, but they both knew they shared an apartment because neither one of them wanted to be alone. At night, he would dream of her for who he really wanted her to be, and every night he would throw her into the sky, to drift away wistfully, like a balloon. “Go,” he would say to her, “I have set you free.”
Click here for part 6
Monday, October 27, 2008
Muertos
The other day, while sitting by a window
I saw your ghost walk by.
I nearly lost myself, I was so surprised
ready to come over to your side.
Can the dead hear it when I speak?
When I call out your naming in passing?
Your effigy appears to me like a medium
it states we have much left to say
I don't posses the strength to channel your image
but yet and still I await your vision, like a dream
ghosts haunt me when I sleep, and the dead speak to me in the day
If only I could, take back the day you died to me.
I saw your ghost walk by.
I nearly lost myself, I was so surprised
ready to come over to your side.
Can the dead hear it when I speak?
When I call out your naming in passing?
Your effigy appears to me like a medium
it states we have much left to say
I don't posses the strength to channel your image
but yet and still I await your vision, like a dream
ghosts haunt me when I sleep, and the dead speak to me in the day
If only I could, take back the day you died to me.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
This Is Why
As I sit here,
My friend sending me pic after pic of her man
(who she assures me is cute),
I can't help but think
"This is why I'm still single."
I can't put my finger on it,
but I'm sure it's all connected,
like an episode of Heroes.
My friend sending me pic after pic of her man
(who she assures me is cute),
I can't help but think
"This is why I'm still single."
I can't put my finger on it,
but I'm sure it's all connected,
like an episode of Heroes.
Reach
wish you were here now
so that I could hold you until
ther was no doubt
I love you.
So instead,
I will hold you in my mind
and hope...
...that it reaches.
so that I could hold you until
ther was no doubt
I love you.
So instead,
I will hold you in my mind
and hope...
...that it reaches.
Wish
I wish I could feel you,
but like grasping at clouds,
you seem so intangible right now
I wish I could hold you
until you cried it all away, and all that was left,
were the good parts
I wish I could touch you
and undo all that had been said and done
making everything anew
and if that were not enough
I might take off Sundays and write for you
so that Mondays I could see you smile.
patience, my precious, these moments are only temporary
I'll be there soon enough
if ever you should doubt, read this and know,
you deserve my love, and I wish to give it to you.
but like grasping at clouds,
you seem so intangible right now
I wish I could hold you
until you cried it all away, and all that was left,
were the good parts
I wish I could touch you
and undo all that had been said and done
making everything anew
and if that were not enough
I might take off Sundays and write for you
so that Mondays I could see you smile.
patience, my precious, these moments are only temporary
I'll be there soon enough
if ever you should doubt, read this and know,
you deserve my love, and I wish to give it to you.
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