Posts for June 19, 2024 (page 11)

Brute force, southpaw, takes
no true woman by the hand,
nor will win the day,
for it is a truth well known
ladies need little such play.

Yo, I’ll let you know,
I see like a beagle, see?
You’re the best in town,
and ever since I seen you
it’s been great, absolutely.

What tricks and cold schemes
are these you present to me?
Have you not a wife?
Is she not your everything,
you are her only love, yes?

Do you want to go
skating on the ice in town?
it’s the best time yo—
oh, I won’t let you fall down!
Get a cheesesteak, lots of fun!

You deflect sir, stop.
See the lady Adrian—
her name parts the clouds!
For shame at your age, be tamed!
And what fools you make of maids!

I feel like a bum.
We’re in a fight, she’s tired
and told me to quit
mixing with boxers, training,
and take my shots here at home.

Is it a crime sir,
to hold duties of estate,
with beast, child, and wife?
She received those blows with you,
those you took. O sore battle!

Jesus! Oh god. Mick
said I was a tomato
past my prime and blind!
She was right too! She always
was so good to me, oh god!

Self pity, fighter,
release it like a fire!
She stands with you now,
believed in all things, chose hell
with you, and would die I fear!

Well. I suppose Jane,
if I don’t get up, take hits,
read her book of love,
youse say I’m big time stupid—
I don’t have to be this ways.

This gentle accord
sits smiling in my pen’s verse.
Rocky Balboa,
you’ve well slipped a monster jab—
now stand, moving forward—on!

Even though you have made me
such a broken little thing
it was your hands
that molded me from the dirt
picked the pieces apart
pushed me into the sunlight
forged something new
Rebirthed me

Are we muses or mere fuses?
     I feel like you took a scoop out of my ribs.
     I feel like you’ve been sucking me like ice.
     I feel like you won’t admit you stole.

Fascinator or fear, I’m still under your skin,
      I know the lie under your tongue.
      I spit and carry on like a haunting.
      I don’t wish anything for you except to crack
               Open and puddle out like warm honey.

I don’t wish you love, I wish you forgiveness.
     The type you’ve been looking for in every
         dark feature of every contour
     of every good woman in Kentucky.
I wish for all your hollow caves to converge.
      That the soft wait ends your stalactite pride,
 bumps as it must against your
                                   stubborn stalagmite stoicism. 
That they meet like cold patient fingers and   
      lock into gripped hands. 
                By this, I mean I wish you safe rest
                inside love longer than a naps worth.
                That late in the day type of sleep
       where you wake up okay and defenseless,
    with afternoon gooey sun eyes
and tell someone who looks like me
       how you finally met me
in a memory
      for the first time
          you learned how to pronounce
          my real name.

people love
to hate
for likes

Who am I
To think that I have new words
To state the old truths:
That love endures
And faith and trust are the bedfellows of hope.
Approaching each breath, each strike of key with the arrogance of a poet in spring, assured in
the ramblings of the heart.
How silly to have wasted syllable and sway
when all I had to say was
“Hello”.

I feel bad for my mother
(she didn’t have good parents)
, but I didn’t either
, and I’m still working on myself.
what’s her excuse?

The service was at the veteran’s cemetery in Poplar Bluff. His 
brothers were, as ever, theatrical in their mourning. Tony sobbing 
noticeably. Verbally. Cinematically. His children at arms-length 
uncomfortably morose and bored. Tyke hugging Tim 

tighter than I have seen humans hug anything but life
preservers. Tyler weeping onto the shoulder of a woman 
he did not know. Her blouse fading uncomfortably to a darker black. 
The artillery of thunder, rain making shrapnel 

on the concrete drive and the roof. Rain pattering handgun fire 
on umbrellas held by those who did not fit in the small chapel.    
Our house was 6 hours away and you were racing, but the dead,
despite all evidence to the contrary, don’t like to wait. And so it started 

without you. Veterans lined the room and stood around in the rain 
outside, waiting on something personal that had already arrived. 
The seated crowd, mostly civilians who had never been to war, 
listened to short, too kind speeches, 

whispered almost inaudibly by men gone sensitive for once 
in their cold lives. Many men I knew who sometimes said things so vile 
that were it not for the dead man at the front of the room, and my mother
sitting next to me, would have caused me to stand in the rain 

waiting on you, who had not yet arrived.   

The first notes of Taps startled most of us. The plaintive bugle 
softened by the weather. Tony moaned the first fermata. 
I turned and saw the uniformed old bugler draped in black neoprene.
Backdrop of clouds over a cemetery as if they belonged together.      

The guns startled all of us.

I love you

You love the river

Turn into me

Never bitter

Now I’m a halfway decent swimmer

I want to get caught in the riptide of your eyes

Exhaust myself against the current of my favorite ride

Lover

Touch me

I’ll shimmer

You can glitter