poetry – Poétique

Sweatshirt

In the ages yet to come
Long from 1931
When December’s meadows
Begin to freeze
And frost over
Following the tracks
Of wildlife
Like the breadcrumbs
We would feed
To hidden creatures
In the black green forest
On a wintry opaque night
Disheveled golden leaves
Left over from the fall
Orange autumn’s breeze
Ripped open wide
With pure delight
In the mystery of night
My eyes are drawn
To floating cotton
In the sky
Frozen waterfalls
Like wind chimes
Sparkling clouds
All father round
The coldest moon
Ever to shine in beams and bands
I’m sewing you a sweatshirt
Velvet crushed in royal blue
I thought perhaps that I
Could place it over you
Underneath your new hood meets
Our lips might soon commence
If you agree
In a somnolent pace
How slow can this kiss be
How drowsy are your lips for me
We could take the rest
Of winter off
This way

Nothing Better

Before we met
We said not to regret
Anything we asked
Anything we did
Discovered in a lovely shroud
There are no monsters
In the headlights of our love
Nothing pending that
We cannot keep
No snowstorms that
Could make us weak
Rolling round in twigs
And branches sticks
Bundled up like notes of love
Ready to be cast away
Like a message in a bottle
To inspire some other lovers
On some distant shore
To find each other
Unwrapping one another
Piece by piece
Like some intimate gift
I’m having distant memories
Before we’ve lived them
Like an awakening of what
We’ve planned on living
In a village or at the end
Of Scheveningen Pier
Exhumed like riches
Buried for centuries upon years
Sung with the wisdom of a song
Near to the dreams of
Canyon wren calls
From the west of rocky cliffs
Among the words lulled
We will hear
There’s nothing better
Than to be with you my dear
There’s nothing better
Than to be with you my dear

Sleepwalking

If I told you everything
Would you leave
If I am honest
And say how much
I love you
Will it scare you
Would you retreat
If you knew
Everything about me
Would it be enough
For you to want
To turn your back on me
Would this be the end
Or would we simply
Start beginning
I would walk
Through walls for you
Telling all the truths
I find myself trusting
You so much it’s like
Sleepwalking into you
One eye opened
One eye closed
Both eyes burning
With pure love
Wherever you’ve come from
Whatever you’ve done
If you can love me as I am
I will love you as the one
Nighttime awakenings
Drowsy with your lust
Parasomnia divine
Deprivation of you
Is like an empty bed
Without you
I would walk
Through walls for you
Telling all my truths
I find myself trusting
You so much it’s like
Sleepwalking into you

Late 1880’s

Have you seen terror
In ones eyes the way
I’ve seen terror and demise
Like something could be pried
Open and ripped away
Without ever knowing
Where it went
Or where it could go
I find myself
Chasing you down the stairs
Into the fortress of your heart
Inking up all the paper
In near sight
By candlelight
With poetry both day and night
Just to quill the words
With cursed delight
To tell you how I feel
Fumbling into a kingdom
With you after
Falling all over myself
To champion our thrones
I find our crowns
A little bit slanted
Crowded with jewels
And heavy stones
That tell the story of our robes
Where they’ve been and
Where we’re going
Intricately sewn
The fairytale of every thread
I cannot stop
I will not stop
As Gypsy Vanner’s tread
For any chariot
Acceptably shaken
Thundering by
Clatter the windows
Open to breaking
Moments for taking before dawn
Rolling across the mud
Drenched in the oasis
Of every grasshopping creature
Multiple dark tones
Once trapped between the panes
Thankful hats are tipped
To singing crickets in the rain
Flying off
In melodic warm refrains
Cold rocks pressed beneath our backs
If the mattresses are stacked
I’ll meet you in the tower
Of our love
Where chastened limbs exposed
Retract their vows to be abstained
And making love with you
Is emanating every day

Lost Displays

Freedom from forgiveness
Freer yet from selfishness
Anger hatred fighting rising
Always mindful of a kindness
Truly wise never disguising
A hurricane flung free from blame
This is why we are amazing
This is why we are terrified
Impressed with imminent disbelief
Better to do than to have not done
So many sides to each of us
You see the things that even I
Refuse to show
Refuse to know
Refuse to
Question anymore
Truly wiser than before
Truly better than the absence
Of an old abandoned shore
Dried up is what once was
Crammed with tantalized
Beach goers
And flocks of seaside birds
Forget these words
Forget me not
I will forget thee ever caught
In nets for fish
Or butterflies
Far away from what
We thought
No salty rock
Can hold the strongest
Wave when sun can soon
Evaporate the water
Like the truth
Much like our youth
Much like the hillside sifting
Down down down
In disrepute
The end is quickly swept away
In careless
Public space displays
Of lost affection

Wide Open

There’s so many things
That I could be
But with you I am
The only thing
I want to be
Because I am with you

The hurt and pain
The past and drought
Of all the emptiness
That I’ve allowed
To keep me
From falling in love
Forgets itself
When I’m with you

Love is great and beautiful
But this means more
Than even what
Love has in store

The feelings that
Your eyes arouse within me
To make the sweetest sounds
In the echo of your voice
Saying…

Whatever makes this real
Is everything I need
You love me unlike
Any love I’ve ever seen
I want to run
From a heart that feels
Unmistakably broken
But you hold me down
And force the doors of love
Wide open

Beyond the Bedroom

Abundantly beautiful
A force of timeless desire
Overcoming
Unlike the old paint on the walls
That just sits there
And looks back at us
Whether we’re watching or not
We remark on each other
In everything that we do
Away from one another
The greatest debt would be
To miss the opportunity
Not to tell me
Not to tell you
How I love you
Beyond the bedroom
A kind committed virtue
That compliments the things we do
In the garden
In the home
In the whites of your eyes
I see all the ways
That we can live with each other
Intimately beyond the bedroom
Outside of chambers
Letters from the keys
Of my mind
To the mailbox of your heart
Sweating through our shirts
In passion or in work
My lips are joyous for yours
Even when we’re not
Wrapped up in sheets
My heart beats and
My chest blooms deeply for you
Far beyond the bedroom

Don’t Look Back

Anything
If this could be a
Love like us
Just a drop as
Sensory sounds repeat
Rattling our bones
We could
Lie about where we’re going
To everyone
Written on the back of
Abandoned sheet music
A wild goose chase
An ignorant map
Laments for the stuff
We have yet to do
That’s between us
Brightest lights
On the broken bridge
Hung loosely
Count them with me
Shattered ground
Beneath our feet
Let’s just take it slow
Flashlights to find our way
At the end of the line
Heads will roll
If we take it too seriously
Find your heart
Underneath the blanket
I wonder
Where are you now
My dreams are inquiring
Seaside birds calling all
Demons to the bottom of the ocean
Burned by love
Signary archaic messages
Ready for us to decipher
Let it go like the sand
Releasing the symbols we carved
Into the beach yesterday
Waking up underneath you
Like a gift to the waves
After too much
Pomegranate sugar
It’s easy to
Imagine someone like you
With me forever
Don’t look back

Unexpected Ways

So then
Just as you received
My telegram to meet me
At the motel
I found myself overflowing
At the mere thought
Of our reception
Enduring love is
One of those things
Like calling out your name
In the middle of a field
Sometime after midnight
Hidden in the grass
Regarded twice as tall as me
Not quite as tall
As how I felt when I saw your lips
Mouth the words

‘I think I love you’

Like nightly dreams
Painted on plaster
Across the ceiling
Like morning light
Creeping across
Your body one ray at a time
You can always counsel me
On the way that I should reach out
To get closer to you
To understand your maze
To walk your labyrinth
In any way you most prefer
There’s a fire waiting for us
In the living room
There’s a fire waiting for us
In my heart
There’s a fire waiting for us
In every corner of the world
Your love bursts through me
In countless unexpected ways

Climb

A star shall arise
Up out of me
As a cub shall rise
Up from her mother
In sands of dune
To follow and to guide
For which to seek out
And to find you
As dark as the sun
As bright as the moon
If Egypt should lay down
The first horizon
The stones of pyramids
Made square and not
Bruised round
Extant ashes
As the soil breathes
Acacias like savory records
Eaten whole at the ends of mouths
Licked up by gold giraffes
Watch this thing
Inside my heart
As honey drips
From wings of bees
As did the mouths of those
In cribs of ancient Greek philosophy
And as then Ra should cry
The tears of years gone by
Watch as the pinkless night
Turns into twinkling sky
And wipe the lipstick off
Before the morning light
Centuries of lust catapulted
On the back of pale blue Sphinx
Through the grains and
Scarab shells of endless time
Regard me as I walk the line
The span of every distance
It would take for me to find
Yes just to find you
I would climb
To the other end of
Every manifested vine
I would climb
Yes I would climb
And climb and climb
To get to you