Grow your hair out
let me see you without the makeup of optimism
<welcome, cliche> you will say.
My feet shuffle across your cold floor
<thank you, temptation>
You appeared in my dream last night,
with a million new tattoos for me to find.
Long hair,
scruffy face.
I almost didn’t recognize you today,
your eyes are sadder than in my dreams.
<I am not the one with the guard up, cliche.
Insecurity runs your life.
Who are you without your vulnerabilities?>
<I am yours>
Request to go out for dinner
A woman sent me a text when I
never expected I would ever
get a message from her again and
every sensitive feeling I once felt, returned, a
mystery,
For LHR, on your birthday
You choose the wrong news, but
you carried me home
when I was too little or too tired
to take each step myself.
You follow the fear evangelists, but
you pitched your high tenor
into every family harmony,
and stored the funny stories.
You vote for harmful people, but
you saw the hungry girl in me and
gave me a beauty tool
when I was peak of awkward.
You want what I can’t stand, but
you eased my way.
You took my side in all the battles
for more freedom and a larger life.
You are an arm-chair inside
a sky high younger driver;
boots go on like black soap.
Smuggle me on the next
flight path to you.
You are a comforter atop
a jump of Arkansas rock;
shoes go on like a sponge.
Wring me out of the latest
switchyard to you.
You are an open campfire in
a dedicated October wind;
sandals go on like iron.
Float me over yesterday’s
series of locks to you.
Tell me about your poems and writing time.
Could it be anything like my verse and line?
One day there is just one phrase with a beat
That really works, but you send it, deadline heat.
Pain might shoot out words too prosy,
Filled with hurts and sadness in long rows.
Poems of ardor, hate, anger, spin,
Do they too spring alive from your ken?
Songs to birds in flight, wind in your hair,
Mushrooms hiding behind fairy lair.
Poems to fill the project, hand on the plow,
Can’t quit until we feed the mow.
I ask myself what do others think.
Did we take too big a bite, are sure to sink?
July looms and not a minute too soon.
My plow hides the block, words all pruned.
Only a few more days are left,
My brain is empty, silent, bereft.
Perhaps the muse will seek and rescue
But when we depend on her help so much
Her words come sparse and way too few.
How do you fare? Tell me about your verse
As I sit here and nurse my crushed ego,
And tell Brons and Chris of this poet’s woe.
i wonder
would i have been better off
never seeing you
in magazines
and on nature shows on PBS
sure,
my balcony looks out onto the lake
and i appreciate the
dog-paddling red eared sliders
really i do
but the ghosts
of you and your brothers surfing
the east australian current
haunt me
and i feel tugged to see you
She had what people called
Olive skin
Not just from where the sun
Had licked
A child once asked her mom
If she was a white baby
Or a colored baby
It darkened with summer
And stayed throughout
The winter sun
In Mexico and Italy
The inhabitants thought
She was a native
There were compliments
When she was a young woman
In time
Chemicals would dull
And spot it.
It’s a place of bright prospect.
Why am I locked in jail?
Live anywhere you’d like.
Did I do something wrong?
Make your dreams come true.
I’ve not eaten in two days.
See how our furrows flow
with milk and honey.
