Dorian’s picture maybe not of oils,
What if it was of flesh and blood,
Waiting in the wings, to bide time?
Time for the eyes to dim,
Years when cheeks will sag,
Skin dull, cells hasten to die.
Without warning the aged you,
Moves to center stage to wrap
Itself around a reluctant victim.
Only then does the Gray story
Reveal its truth to those who see
A different face in the cracked mirror.
I come to camp.
I come for scenery.
Drape your terry cloth moss
over logs.
Open the cavern doors!
Let me in!
Turn that half oak
bourbon barrel
upside down.
Leave chocolates.
Set out chess pieces
made of agate.
I come to post your
photos with my heart.
One day I left you with my mother
and took a sandwich and some water
borrowed a car and drove to a wooded rolling
soil that felt like home more home
than I had felt for years and I walked and looked
walked and listened walked and dangled my feet
in the river sat and listened walked and nested
in an open meadow with the sun on my body
my eyes closed just listening to insects
cows and water tumbling in the river bed
all day by myself but because of you
and this day I knew I could never go back
to who I was before I needed to be this new woman
renewed mother spirited wight unencumbered
so I carried you forward with me//alive
title from “Hours Days Years Unmoor Their Orbits” by Rachel Zucker
Port
I watch all the women,
disembarking from the ship,
laughing noisily, walking
like geese along the dock,
until one swan emerges.
No tide surges,
no distance between her & the flock,
only my eyes walking
on air, an instantaneous clip
cuts to the sultry women
I saw on the French Rivera beach,
nude, proud to be alive while
I, young American tourist,
can only think of writing poetry
on a blank page in the notebook I carried.
When the scene of copper flesh gets buried
into past memories, & the, no hurry,
swan lady disappears, I become less purist,
more rebel, spying you reclined in your bikini. I smile.
In that moment, Billy Collins words reach
out to me from his poem:
Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes.
One time I shot a rabbit.
I’ve shot deer, wild boar, wild goats and sheep.
I never shot another rabbit, ever.
I think it was the only time
I disappointed him. I was young
nine or ten, I cried
when he picked up the carcass.
He didn’t act angry, just quietly said
I don’t need you to act like a girl.
My Uncle Bert was what in those days
would be called a man’s man.
He raised coon hounds, homing pidgins,
and ran a go cart track in back of his house.
At the front of his house was a burger joint.
He and my aunt Gladys had five girls.
On Friday night, he would arrive unannounced
to pick me up and keep me for the weekend
so he had a buddy to do boy stuff.
I loved him.
My Mother disliked him, said he had a foul mouth
and so he did. He also told off color jokes
in fact, he knew more jokes
than anybody I’ve ever seen.
His girls were older than me
and they married young. Every single one of them
had boys. From then on
I didn’t get to see him so much.
I still loved him.
Uncle Bert:
You don’t see guys named Bert any more.
Summer ushers construction –
pavement resurfaced,
new ground excavated,
interchanges manipulated.
Road rage compels me to race
to my next stop,
but a barrier of orange barrels and cones
confine me to this lane.
I attempt to take control
(not New Circle Road, maybe Man O’ War?)
but no matter what route I try,
I find myself at the mercy
of those who alter the path
or drivers who stall and stutter ahead of me.
Constantly praying nothing hits me from behind
and that dodging potholes
saves me from a blowout.
But Does Love Ever Live?
“a woman and a man,
no more, and yet, no less”
– Phantom
Shakespeare wrote, “There are more things
in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of
in your philosophy” but is that true
for you and I, my love?
We have dreamed
and we have felt and we know the energies
that pulse between our spirits, sometimes
with intention, sometimes their own
volition.
Space and time are merely constructs
we mortals maintain, manifesting reality within
theories of terrestrial, scientific minds, but
are those our lines?
Must we submit and obey
mandates not our own? You are not alone—
Not now, not then, not anywhen since we met
(and when was that? First glance? First touch?
First
know?).
We, the pieces; ours, the choice; this
very life the one selected, from myriad options,
when cosmic hands and eyes closed, and began—
were sent spinning, hurtling, across the unseen planes,
set down in stone and soil and transitory flesh, on shores
so distant—and for what reasons
we have to guess,
or disregard entirely. The astral work is complete;
the story is conceived.
We, our love, our actions, are
all that remains
beneath a moonless sky.
you burn, in a bucket, old love notes, journal pages
The words feather, dance, singe, diminish
To a clay mortar you add the paper ash
with dried bloodroot and globe thistle, grind slowly
You loose his portrait from the frame
dark hair, blue eyes, insistent
breathe through love’s swollen roots
commit your self to forgive
When you look out the window, the glass
reflects inward, your face a fogged moon
~ Found poem composed/modified from words in Jean Valentine’s poem, “Waiting”
was it thunderstruck
as much as filthy and tender
bang, shout and pillowed
adventurous and sweet
Yes, all of that body better
from poetry to moral to cuddle
not guess-who-I-am-now
but dominant with a smart thumb
I got some good strange
reeling from it in this old house
no lover’s tryst but visible
whirling stab wounds
I wish I were sorry.
Tremored nerves and delicious ache
Nasty, sweet, electric
Howl like raven, starved like an eye
The last common ancestor
Prufrock’s a pussy
like my zaftig popcorn sweat
his mother’s side lost 54 in the war
and mine lost just as many in this one.
