A Carrie Retrospective

[champagne1982]

Liar, Liar

is there something in my face
that leaves me open and to take
in good faith this contrivance
of how you work hard and rewards
though frequent and extravagant
have been earned and you deserve
so much more but only take this much?

is there something in my touch
that aids you in my deception
when you're working so fucking hard
at painting a canvas full of pretty
colours and lovely pictures that when
viewed with rosy glasses don't hurt
as much as the ugly lying naked at my feet?

is there something in my pain
that keeps you blind to the agony I see
written in the words you spin into mythologies
and histories we've never lived or never
had engraved on our chromosomes no matter
how fervently we need to believe the truth
that we're guilty of hiding deep inside this lie?

is there something in my life
that can redeem us both as we struggle
to turn the inevitable end of this illness
into something palatable and easier
to swallow than the bitter pill
they've handed us to hold beneath our tongues
until it dissolves into a warmer glow?

is there something in my soul
that can make this fact a fiction
that can make this death a sleep
that can make this pain a pleasure
that can make this mud a garden
that can make this sob a song?
I hope you can lie our way out of this.

 

[champagne1982]

Four Letters To A Dying Man

1. Dear husband

I never figured this ending
to us, we're like a matched
set. I feel that I've lost
the dish for the butter
and I just don't fit over
the saucer I serve it on
now that you're broken.

2. Dear lover

Breathing is never again
going to be a union
of body and mind
without you knitted
to my heart. The breath
is the soul of a person
and without you I
don't think I can breathe.

3. Dear friend

I know my friends will become
more precious as I age. Death
is a mean thief who steals
who is most precious to us
and is irreplaceable. My treasure
is being plundered and I will be
reduced to a pauper at the loss.

4. Dear man

Somehow, the chaos of you
will vacate my hearth
with your departure and fly
up the chimney letting ashes
rest in corners and paper
scraps settle against the wall
to be picked up later. Will
we discover pieces of you
scribbled on those letters
and never forget you were here?

 

[champagne1982]

Sonnet For An Unanswered Dream

Where is this rest that so eludes your heart
to beat a measured throb, until the slow
evening shadow creeps against the sill
and shades the window panes in midnight hues?
They match the brittle leaves of frosted death
crumbled in the untended bed below
where exhaustion falls in troubled sleep
of belaboured breath and fluttered pulse.
What is this if not rest? I dream an end
to these uncertain steps and failing hopes
that mar the polished finish of your smooth brow
and smudge the clarity of your once bright eyes;
now sullied with bruising blue and jaundiced grey,
their red lids puffed with unshed mourning.

 

[champagne1982]

Then There's This

Wrapped and held in a close embrace
and sheltered next to your warm skin
my cheeks flush at remembered rise
and fall of the rhythm of our sighs.
Whispered firm demands that my flesh
sing reply to the hummed tension
of your insistant breaths, exhaled
across the shivering cilia of my ear.
To answer this brings no relief
no finish to the joy of passion tumbled
through my being to land in a heap
here against your heart that beats
this tattoo of fluttered surprise
of the rising of the urgent need again.

 

[champagne1982]

Three Mistakes

i. That first drink

I knew it would taste like another
from the moment I looked at the bottle
and well, it just kept being more.

I made it alright by drinking a litre
of water before I went to bed, thankfully,
that wasn't an error. i beat the hangover.

ii. That lustful conversation

That kept me out past 4 a.m. and had me
squirming in my seat as you whispered
the things that you would do in bed.

When I got into bed, I proved that I
could still climb the magic mountain
and slide down the slippery slope again.

iii. In missing him

I realized that tears are still too near
the rims of my eyelids and have a way
of spilling out and freezing on my cheeks.

There's no way to change that and I sorrow
that it will ever be a harsh reality
that no amount of booze or sex can mute.

 

[champagne1982]

Spring's First Kiss

She holds a pussywillow
next to her cheek
but gravity wins
the battle and draws
it down, along her chin.

The soft seduction
of spring's first sign
on neck and shoulder
lifts the pink buds up,
alert to willow blooms
and hushed hellos.

The stir of response
where nubile blossoms
into fertility
shakes the hand that pulls

the red stem towards
her centre and to tease
ready kisses from lips
touched by the season.

 

[champagne1982]

A Conversation With A Lover

There. Yes, there. It feels right
when you move over my belly
like that. Oh yes! Like that.

Imagine the tone and the timbre
as my moan reflects off your
corn syrupy back.
Your skin shines in amber hue
and flows over your bones
like the golden sugar
drapes across my vanilla
ice cream.

My tongue can hardly wait
to get you open, ready,
so edgy that even one
gentle caress will flaw
the tanned hide
beneath it.

Stay still, oh --

Like that. Just like
that.
Perfect.
_______

 

[champagne1982]

Einstein's Warp

Silly string theory's
not as effective as bubbles
to foam infinity and gather globs
of galaxies clustered around
a milky way.

Keep expanding through
the variable constant, E only
equals M multiplied
by the square of C
when it is convenient
for physicists to think
that way.

If time never slowed,
strings would snap
and bubbles burst
leaving a matter scatter
mess all over the infinite
multiverse.

 

[champagne1982]

Extracted By Feel

When will you come through my dim
recollection of your whispers in my ear?
I want your clarity and sure tone
to shred the mists to tatters.

Blow away that ragged voile
and reveal the outlined
limits of my thighs as they meet
just outside the boundaries

of your touch. I feel your fingers
comb through the threads
that once wove a rose
in lace or painted pretty toile.

What's more, when asked,
I do not know to what my heart
aspires when I want to hear the satin
of your voice against my thoughts.

Seek outside your limitations
chancing that you'll tangle
your touch beyond extrication
and your only escape is to feel.

 

[champagne1982]

IM?

Meet me on Yahoo baby.
You know I long to sit
and click my passion's
lyric out in time signatures
of lust and longing.

First a playful three-four waltz
across the flirting hello
I've missed your conversation
make me smile for just this hour
I can find for you.

Your politics and my love poems
make strange bedfellows
until we samba to a two four
staccato accent on each word
I love you so.

Meet me on Yahoo baby
and I promise that the cha-cha
of those impossible stretches
of six-eight bars
will slow down and drag
me into politics
and love poetry
until you catch your breath.

 

[champagne1982]

Guilt Has No Room Here

Why has this leviathan of time
paused to slow down and allow
me to breathe? Given a moment
to exist as an entity hurtling
toward an instant of suspension
becomes a luxury of days spun
more slowly. Hours spent deep
in wallows of self-pity become
wasteful of life forces and I feel
time shudder at the torment
of having a gift of itself squandered.

Grief must find a proper bed and lay
down to sleep in finer repose
than restless tossing and turning
through the night. This mourning
will pass with time and become
a series of memories time cannot
steal away. These will find honour
in my dreams and I will become
an alchemist to transmute the lead
of death into the gold of a beloved life.

 

[butters]

been reading you this morning, girl... your pieces dissolve on the mind, leave behind their signature aftertaste - the thick cream of vanilla, honeyed tones, a touch of underlying bitter aloes to purge emotions. through them all there is woven a green/rose netting of the nature of things.


i sorrow for your loss but rejoice in your writing... you make good reading.

 

[champagne1982]

Ice Fog

The weather channel shows
forty-seven below
granted the wind pushed
the minus thirty-eight
in that direction when I
stepped over the threshold
and inhaled the drift-building
gusts. The snow
squeaks a frosty protest
with each step and feathered
through the air as I tossed
the fluffy flakes up
unto the bank. Aching fingers
scratched the itchy band around
my forehead, irritated by wool
and exertion. Eyes tear
until I go inside to chocolaty
heat in a mug and cough
the rebound fluid from my
throat and flush away
the scent of copper and ice.
Then I remember the birds
will stir awake from stillness
eventually and need to be fed.

 

[champagne1982]

Calm Before The Storm

The anxious hoppers buzzed
in afternoon heat, harmonic
with the hum of power quenching
the endless thirst of dehumidifiers
in the concrete towers down the line

where cloud-soaked lovers kiss
and taste the salt of rain-
mixed purity on lips and shoulder
slaking the need to swallow

and market garden farmers sniff
the air for rain and ozone as they dig
the last of sweet carrots free
of damp earth and clinging mud

then you turned and I saw the bright
ladder of a stairway to heaven spark
your blonde hair while off in the distance
lightning sparked brilliance in front
of the congregation of crowded nimbus towers.

 

[champagne1982]

Opus 28, Raindrop Prelude

Stretched fingers flex and crack
as teared eyes cloud in the dying
phrase like a storm sighing
a final drop on a breath
of spring thawed gutter.

A bowl sparkles like frozen
drips off the eaves in the sun;
broken through the scattered
nimbus, highlighting the crisp
snap of juicy pear that weeps
a version of sweet nectar
plumping velvet flesh.

She prays it will stay white
like the dress standing
patiently in her room,
her fingers playing the pearl
buttons strung along the graceful
curve of spine like the notes
of the melody she weaves.

A Christmas wedding cake
scents the air with almond
fondant and a thousand
treasures tucked within.
Yet still she plays a song
of a single drop on a journey
toward a great vastness --
a metaphor, perhaps, of steps
she will take on the morrow.

 

[champagne1982]

Yesterday

In the kitchen she kneads
heel of hand
push, roll, fold,
heel of hand
push, a shoosh
broken at the patter
of heavy drops
splattered on the walk

Their talk floats
from the table
broken by the scrape
of chair on floor in haste
to make it to the bedroom
and close windows
and stand to catch a glimpse
of the fall of ice rumbling
on the next door's tin shed roof.

No lights to see the fumbles
Fingers struggle to ignite
a flame to light those hollows
cast in shadows elongated
with the flicker of a candle

As one they tumble
where the push, roll,
fold swaps to a slap
to match the groans
of thunder and trees
moan with sudden gusts

Until they slip together
the taste of butter
spread on fresh baked
bread infusions of morning
forgotten as the shoosh
of exhaled climax
collapses to melt like the fury
of the storm. Cozy in bed
while outside, nature
droops in exhaustion,
pummelled to submission.

 

[champagne1982]

Sensual Meditation

we sat lotus-wise
waiting for the soup
jute fibres sting my thighs
and lemongrass scented broth
fights for dominance
with the painting of a cello
humming over bass notes
you feed me limes
and I kiss you oranges.

 

[HarryHill]

when you get started they just roll out, nice set

 

[champagne1982]

Haying

First cut was good, the hay
landed in long windrows, farm
hands followed the rake,
tying sheaves until the truck
belched exhaust stink and noise
up and down the field. Stacked
so high it seemed the rick
would fall and undo all
that gospel singing gathered
out in the barnyard where new
wine wet the gleaner girls'
lips and took them on daydreams
to the loft and the hired
hand. The yeasty smell reminiscent
of sex and fresh bread, their
tongue licks, the sensation
of skin on skin makes them forget
the barn cat's fleas
as she meowed for her kittens
and they fucked through lunch.

 

[champagne1982]

when you get started they just roll out, nice set

These latest poems are the gems I found on The 5 Senses Poem Challenge thread.

And thank you Harry.

 

[greenmountaineer]

These latest poems are the gems I found on The 5 Senses Poem Challenge thread.

And thank you Harry.

"Yesterday" was my favorite, very sensual; also rhythmic, in the images more than the words IMO, which I also thought made it very original for that reason.

 

[champagne1982]

"Yesterday" was my favorite, very sensual; also rhythmic, in the images more than the words IMO, which I also thought made it very original for that reason.

Thank you, GM. I really like that particular one. It makes me a little wistful since it's a reminder of a day with my late husband. I baked bread and he loved storms - This one recalled here, was a doozie.

 

[champagne1982]

Brittled Candy

mote

Cane Sugar Burn
by Neonurotic©

We move in a slow syrupy motion,
around and through each other.
Eyes are slit, mouths open, whispering.
We speak in the language of lovers
with passion burnt lips until we candy.

glosa

We move in a slow syrupy motion
gravity dictates the direction my mouth
takes to taste the reduction made by flames
we set to simmer since this morning
as you stretched and we sought to breathe

around and through each other's lips and teeth.
To call it a kiss is saying nothing about how
much I wanted to stay in bed instead of leaving.
I seasoned the recipe with a stroke along the sides
of your breasts until pleasure rattled the lid on desire.

Eyes are slit, mouths open, whispering,
good morning the same way you always do
but now I’m home and back against your curves
delving inside your navel until your giggles
turn to demands to follow the recipe again.

We speak in the language of lovers
that needs no method of when to stir.
Mise en place and then boil until soft
ball stage. Let cool with cuddles else
when we grab an early lick of the spoon

with passion burnt lips until we candy.
Forget the butter this isn’t caramel,
this is hard toffee to let sugar
on your tongue until you can’t stop
cracking the wafer between your teeth.

 

[champagne1982]

Summertime's Hot

I got out my watermelon
pink gloss for my lips
but you stopped me

before I tasted the pretty
on my tongue. Undressed
and nude, my spagetti straps
swirled around my sandals

like some lemony pasta
puddle on my fork.
Taste it. What does yellow
taste like? Oh please,

let me sample the pink
tips of your fingers
and the licorice
honey heating up my night.

 

[champagne1982]

Roll Over Me

this want, the need to squeeze
every molecule of sensual
each cell of wanton
flood the urge to take
what you are and feed
it to the lust engine
force it down to stretch
the fibres of driven pelvis
over this imagination of thrust
and roll and pitch until flight
hurls desire right back in the face
passion wears just as soon
as sex becomes more
changed by release into delight.