One day she arrived
like a scab dragged across a ballad
of iodine,
a sequin of stars
stitched to a dormant volcano’s lapel
I like to reach a hand
into the unknown.
I like to rise early and predict
The patterns of the clouds.
“All the particles in the world Are in love and looking for lovers…” – Rumi Poetry is the last refuge of the can’t-be-said, the can’t-be done, so here I am, at midnight, not-saying I want you, not-puckering my lips at […]
Were you in my embrace when I watched the footage of Mars,
heard that alien wind and felt, somehow, at home;
Were our lips wet with one another’s saliva when I read
A Brief History of Time, considered places even light can’t escape from;
The pen is mightier than the sword—but not today.
When bombs explode, words turn to shrapnel
Like a lover’s demands left to the dead to obey,
A kiss carried off in death’s putrid satchel.
Dogs know how to live and die with grace.
I don’t.
In my hands are wet grapes fit to burst
And beyond my reach
A glass of wine
I’ll never swallow,
Like a sticky creek
That catches in the earth’s muddy maw.
For all that I wish to put to my lips tonight,
wine is but a poor substitute. Ersatz,
I think, as I swallow in the manner of one
unaccustomed to drink…
I saw the words, their threads.
Saw them weave a blanket in thin air,
Saw the pews filled with naked souls,
Saw the people swaddled
Despite the heat and humid tears.
I’ve sent him into the bowels of the earth, the miner.
I, with my appetite for the shiny and the new.
I, with the luxury to look away.
His dusty lungs are a hacking rebuke:
How much does a thousand-dollar computer cost?
How do I decide: essay or letter,
free verse or sonnet; what it is I want
to say to myself, to you; if it’s better
to have or to hold. Alone, I go gaunt