my imperfections i place in your hands.
with you, i can’t idealize myself –
for what i am, i open up to you,
and strip away far more than simple clothes
connection & acceptance are my hope;
to feel you’ve brought your whole life here with you,
and that you may, on knowing who i am,
move off, in finding me not to your taste
but here, withal that may be put at risk
i ask your imperfections show, as well
We buried them along this ridge when time Was our to spend as one among the clouds; We ran and rode and swam and loved and died The way our mothers, and our fathers, had. The sun a friend, the moon a guide, the stars Just like the wind, companions in our quest: For we were children of the soil who grew And bled and wandered day on sacred day. We never lost the land; it wasn't ours. We never lost the sun, it stayed our friend. We only lost the time to tell our tale And sing the songs that won't be heard again.
The way I work is pointlessly obsessed,
Extracting detail from the commonplace –
To see the outline of what isn’t there:
Projecting, pushing, prodding, putting on —
Do you, friend, find reality too much?
I must have my imaginings at times;
I do believe that signs and stains are one,
And we break habits, or find they break us.
It’s like a type of fit, to be this way –
To sing when no one’s there to hear the tune,
To fly a flag that none can recognize
To long to touch eruptions of the sun…
I found a rental car, and took a drive
Back to the place where you and I, as teens
Explored the water’s edge along the lake
And touched our lips together for the taste
Of what life had that we had not yet known.
There was a perfect stillness in your eyes
As you looked past where I was to the man
You’d love one day, hoping that I was him.
And now? I’m old and vain, and portly gray;
I sit here by a lake from long ago
And ask a passing duck if he would like
To hear this poem – he does not reply.
The way I work is pointlessly obtuse:
Extracting nothing, leaving good for good,
To see the outline of the man I am
Projecting onto all
What’s only
Mine
you took your camera out into the snow
with joy upon your face of twenty-three,
and laughter swelled upon the fields in drifts
and rang across the hollow through the smoke
from chimneys up and down the backyard way,
as images of icicles and frost
and crystalline embodiments you shot,
in days before you’d ever know how good
a picture was, until developing
the film, you’d see if any was worth much
of anything worth keeping then for viewing,
it all was feel, and happenstance, and chance,
just like a snowfall in a southern winter,
just like a day of laughter in the snow,
just like a memory that’s slowly fading,
your words, your face, your laughter, and your voice
Photo credit : ID 49849775 Talashow | Dreamstime.com
your sunset was my sunrise. all the same,
you laughed to see the joy you thought i felt.
there was a bit of irony in this:
but i was in my taking phase, and so,
took you for granted, and your grace as due.
i know, because our roles are now reversed:
not times of life, but just how free you are;
although you’re rapidly approaching night,
you’ve found your grace again, and i can’t help
but glory in the wonder of it all.
for you were my first heroine; behold,
a time beside the waters, when you were
a dark young woman, with a tiny child;
whose life was stretched before her, like the sea —
as fathomless as any distant sea.
but now, our conversation breaks into
a strange, disjointed type of décollage;
like sunlight dancing on the waters edge:
a fading into something more than light,
and something less that turns into a song.
There was a final time: the stall set out,
With jewelry and fabrics in a line —
The next day, and thereafter then, no more;
No more, and soon, no one with memory
To paint in images or words the scene
That once was daily, year on year on year.
The mundane, the quotidian: our lives,
Not big events, but habits of our days,
They soon lie empty on a sandy waste —
The firebird heads into the unknown,
High o’er the mountains, just past where we see,
To leave behind our stalls for someone else
I’d ask you once again, but Lord, I know
How everything arrays itself on you:
That’s friends, and troubles, dynamite, and dust,
That’s beauty, glory, gratitude, and grief,
A multitude, a plethora of all
That makes the world seem bigger than our hearts.
So by the painted water sit awhile:
There is a smear, a smudge, a drip, a stain,
And many other patterns for the soul
That’s come unmoored, that feels itself adrift.
So think of how the music sounded when
The truck rolled by in summers as a child,
And feel how kind can be delivery,
And why the chasing’s worth it, after all.
If I could bring you gusts of winter stars,
And Christmas lights across a frozen lake,
Then soon to warm and blanket we would go,
And love would be the only thing we’d need.
For though the nights grow long, and heart unsure,
I think, together, we could find some peace,
And build our fire out of simple things,
Like paw prints, and like crayons wrapped in string,
The gentle lights would blink as we’d draw close,
And love would be the only thing we’d need.
the queens of meritocracy, who sing of shortness in the lifespan, and the fall of capillaries once encumbered flush, the way that halls for Kostelanetz filled, when everyone who knew was frozen red. hereby the wind, afraid it might be late, takes bits of snow with it, to reassign a crinoline escape to stalk and stem, a baritonal escapade in frost, and caravan of jesters in the snow.
