not sure how many words

[GuiltyPleasure]

Spiders

All the babies have flown,
each with his (or her) safety net
that has left a silken memory
of the route they took to
their winter home. Shining
threads dance with light as
it streaks from leaf to leaf
on the hydrangea bush.

A walk in the garden, now, will
find you wrapped in a filigree
of the finest threads that are
hard to remove (think of the
hapless fly). Smaller than
a pinhead, these tiny spinners
will grow into a bigger, longer
legged version to frighten the
squeamish at bath time or
catch your eye scurrying for
safety under the sofa. Don’t
kill it, we need them, they
only need re-locating to a
less intrusive place.
​

 

[Piscator]

Nano Expresso Coffee

I put a pinch of nano-expresso coffee

into the hummingbird’s sugar water.

If you thought they were fast before

then you should see them now.

I had to brew a cup for myself

just to follow them.

 

[EllenMore]

Closing Time

I watched you all evening—
shooting pool, ragging
with your mates.

When you finally left,
I snatched up your almost empty glass
and drank the dregs,

because that was as close
as I could get to your lips,
and, oh, how I so wanted to taste them.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

The Reader

I have an enduring love
for books. In libraries,
or bookstores.The old ones with that particular
smell of venerable things
that are begging to be
rejuvenated once more.

Unfolded, they offer more
than the words conceived
by the author or poet.

Cursive comments,
scribbled in the margins or
the occasional folded letter,
an accidental bookmark,
a reminder of a
favourite passage, perhaps.

Once I found a love letter
on soft, rich vellum written
in pen and ink, overflowing
with ardour that never found
the heart it was meant for.

All these treasures, bonuses
in antique volumes, meant to be
found by a lover with a different
desire.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

For Shara and Terence​

Hands like parentheses
holding hope.
Dark eyes looking to distances
beyond the horizon
where love lies,
unexpected and perfect.
Slender arms like vines
open to welcome tomorrow
and it comes, like thunder
rolling down her shoulders,
bringing, too short, years of joy
and inevitable grief.

 

[Angeline]

Good Morning Heartache

Sometimes I can still
conjure a memory: the scent
of his pillow and how I held it,
sniffing the last vestiges
of him, dreaming of the way his skin,
smelled when I nuzzled his neck.

Sometimes I can still
hear how he moaned when I
scratched his back or traced
my tongue along his ear. Oh
the way his eyes glowed, our eyes
locked when we moved as one.
How, I wonder, can all this
feel so present in me even now?

Sometimes I say Good Morning
Heartache because what else
does one do with such blinding sorrow,
wide enough to cloud the skies,
but invite it in and sing the blues?

 

[Angeline]

Forget Me Not

A poem blooms here in the month of flowers: rosemary to remember.

 

[Angeline]

Love Song Number One
(by eagleyez, 8/2005)

She dreams
And Daddy
tiptoes in
omelette kitchens
her rain is jazz
bending webs
across red shingles
in the north of all norths
where rapid eye movement
closes the lid
with 4am showering
and the little one
monologues, head up
as shoes and machinery
turn on the subtle sun

She dreams and
its a long way down
to reach brushing arms
and ears pressed on bellies, heart syncopated as if tympanis
and scentless lips take a daylong taste to carry
out on industrial thruways
in the dumptruck dawn
as my traction carries overland wagons of futures past

grey rooftops
and 5am
coffee girls
at speed limits traveled
under all radar and
arching the hunch of ribs filled with oxygen
and the purposefulness of breathing.

I would tear up the tracks-
level mysterious mountains
and layer the sweetest music
where the conductor rousts
the switchman
in the almighty blanket of love's procession

downfilled and breast shaped on the earliest of days
and the occupation
carries all this, the entire world's more harmonic
volumes and the density of tones
in absolute devotion in tiny
brushfires of votive candles,
the gift of day once again
pulls the Lazarus miracle
as sure of love's engine as will the
begin that spins the clocks-

She dreams and wonders if the
kiss of daybreak
is some history
or my signature
stamped by coffee lips
tasting of joy

in this grand impressionism
to walk when we meet at days end, spinning umbrellas
two by one
and stitched
with the golden thread
of some mighty strand-
She Dreams
in such beauty
as the door quietly clicks,
Sequestered in all her travel
with passion jewels and buttons of gold
wrapping me in her heart.

 

[Angeline]

We left Maine in October,
past leaf-peeping season.
Leaves were dropping away
to dry, curl and skitter
in the wind that sighs
through pines in a world
of deep green needles, fog
and empty ribbons of road.

Even Old Orchard Beach,
that honky tonk town,
was shuttered, only one
stand still open, so we sat
in the car sharing fried shrimp,
watching the Atlantic pulse
in lacy gray waves, listening
to gulls cry.

We never returned nor will I
though I dream of it still
as a haven, my personal Innisfree
where I learned how it feels
to be content.

 

[Angeline]

Devilette

Dexter rolls the night out,
breadcrumbs through a forest
haunted by cats long gone
but streaming for me, steaming
with hues of autumn this spooky

season awakens me
like an undead bride, every part
of me jolted, shaken, spinning
with that bashing hardbop boom
clashing cymbals and upright
bass walking slick as a feline
dark, surefooted, tail a-swish
with the backbeat

so when Freddy swoops down
in pure tones, weaving webs
like fog through spare branches
under a lonesome moon

I melt and melt, liquid bliss
under my witch hat, the joy
that springs from within,
oh so devilish how music
possesses me.

Jazz is my magic. What's yours?

 

[Tzara]

Essence

Sound like a sweat-stained tank top
slipped over a black bra,
the kind of thing that makes you think
about the back of a tour bus late at night
heading for a dive bar in Nacodoches
when you're too wired from the last
show to sleep and her hands wander
along your chest as if searching
for just that one right chord
before the manager cuts the stage lights
and sends all the roughnecks home.

 

[Angeline]

Atonement

We lay facing one another
barely touching, caught
in that hyper awareness
that precedes letting go.

Your eyes are shining,
your face suffused
with want, your obvious
desire strains toward me.

She sings like she's ready,
she sings like she's wet.

You've said this to me before
and I know how the thought
excites you. Your desire ignites
me. We've nothing to reconcile.

There's no sin in this joining,
no greater meaning. So fuck
lyrics, fuck meaning, just fuck,

pounding it home
with that lowdown guitar,
that driving beat, her urgent
voice fairly dripping
with Yes.

 

[Tzara]

Sex (She's Got a Boyfriend Anyway)

It doesn't always feel good
though of course it does
because we're built to mesh
like gears slicked and set
to turn and turn and turn.
But what if I still want more
than just that momentary rush,
that maybe I don't want to be
just an occasional fling, like
a new kind of drink she tries
because it looks good on Instagram?
Maybe I don't want her to cheat
on that other guy, though I'd
happily replace him in a second
if it came to that. But when
it's late and her jeans are tight
over her hips and she shakes out
all that thick red hair, well
it ends up being something
pretty basic, pretty animal,
and I just crank up the stereo
in my head so I can't think
too much and do it even though
in the morning I'll end up sad.
If we're gonna do anything,
we might as well just fuck.

 

[Tzara]

Diva

…glamour clings to her like the smell of Gitanes in wool.
Edmund White: The Beautiful Room Is Empty

The way she wore scarves, for example,
as if they were a lover's long fingers
delicately wringing her throat.
Or how she would lean toward me,
the scent of her perfume drawing
my attention to her breasts, set
as delicately in the low cut of her blouse
as an ivory figure in a vitrine—to be viewed
but not touched, at least until she wished.

In a way I was part of her collection,
a painting to be displayed over the couch
or the bed until other, newer work caught
her promiscuous eye and my visage rehung
in some dark hallway or deaccessioned
as a fake, just another forged Rembrandt.

Yet I still play her recordings, late at night
in a room lit only by firelight, and I remember
those few months where I lived as more
than a mere fan, or even supernumerary—
as an elegant comprimario, dancing
with her on the stage of her bedroom,
careful to always keep the focus on her,
to hand her into the spotlight and thrill
to her beautiful, shimmering voice.