Several poems from the past four weeks:
I. Door-self
Splintered wood cracks
through layers of paint.
Years of glass ooze
thick at the bottom of the frame.
A torn portal with nowhere to stand
leans against a wall with a knobby hand.
History and facts
are collected by a memory faint.
Fear is the only thing left to lose,
and door-self holds every atom of blame.
II. Fog
Floating down the hillside from the blue to the green,
my thoughts rise to meet her, though my body is trapped.
The gray mist falls kissing everything in between;
I feel jealous of the grass and leaves, my soul's apt
to remember how earth felt, beneath my two feet.
I wriggle my toes and close my eyes to sense her.
She's a fleeting friend, dissolute, and not discreet.
She'll kiss your cheek, but don't entreat her to endure.
I open my eyes, and she's gone the view is changed.
I settle my eyes on my inured, white present.
Between these hopeless walls, I'm beside myself--estranged.
I search my sheets to see if I am relevant.
The fog comes and goes as it pleases her each day.
I won't bind my soul to ephemeral love, I say.
III. Narcissus
The snow laden ground is like a blank canvas--white,
but you are the trumpet of Spring breaking the earth.
I'm congealed as the snow, but by your bloom am bright.
My narcissus; hope re-incarnate; child of mirth...
Yet, you are old, your bulbs know each passing season.
In your garden bed, I laid my heart; I was home.
Call me close to hear your laughter, to feel the sun.
You don't utter a word, not even sweet shalom.
I ingest your silent bulbs beneath the ground,
and they become me, but much less discomforting.
For the homeless, silence is where she'll be found
with a cold, still, pale heart not-not, not-beat-ing.
Organic matter surrounds her body, now cold,
what love was there transcends death, for you to behold.
IV. Fruit Tree Memory
I shake away a memory like fruit from a tree,
whose sweetness bursts in my mouth, pure perfection
I turn green, empty-full; full-empty, I vomit agitation
of the brain, which makes my heart jump to my throat
and fall, nervous-sick, I rock me like a boat.
Then I'm still, but the world spins dizzily.
I lift my fingers in front of my eyes.
I'm too numb to cry, wearily
I want what I cannot have, until sunrise.
There goes another piece of me, will it float?
Or sink? I observe the density like it was a message in a bottle I wrote.
V. Diminishing
I listen to and talk to your silence almost laconically,
it's relative to the way I drink your words to surfeit,
let them fill me until they flood from my eyes in salty drops.
This is not the death of me, just the end of living, love stops.
Intrepid, I forfeit.
Surrender my soul, because only a necrophiliac would desire
who I've become--a passion pariah, at one
with all and none,
I'm an empty nothing.
With a soul.
that seeped through.
my skin.
