Saturday, December 26, 2009

Three Meditations on a Lamp

I.
At night the sky is dusty with too much snow falling.

The deer come up to the birdfeeder to eat. There is never enough food.

This is not a metaphor for the cold snap of missing you.

II.
Knowing you wait up nights under the same sky, working by a single lamp, straining your eyes--
Knowing you want sex, take airplanes, wonder about god--
it is not enough.

III.
Your tongue in my ear, transmitted over telephone wires, you read me children's books.

I meditate on cranberries, gratitude.

I fall wordlessly, lovingly, into your being, into being you, into nonsense raucous iridescent love.

Friday, December 4, 2009

Addendum

It is entirely possible that you could grow disinterested

stalk past me on my way to class and not utter a word

never raise your eye when I enter a room

and for weeks I would not know I had lost your favor

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

For Aaron

For Aaron

I would not hesitate to call you my friend.

Today you waved in a most undignified manner as you sped past me on your bicycle.

There is something baffling in you.

Once I went to your dorm to borrow your clothing, and found it amusing and disconcerting that we wear the same size, in women's and men's.

I consider it quite likely that I weigh more than you do.

Sometimes I see you and cannot speak for minutes.

I wouldn't hesitate to call you a friend.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Untitled 97

The poem that was more like the Jackson Pollock painting I made with my eyes shut while I listened to the CD for the boy who will never hear it.

The poem that was more like the wall keeping everything from crashing down on me, keeping my eyes from closing while I slouch deeper into this chair.

The poem that was more like the sound of the television blaring, imposing upon me with its clamor and racket, the poem that wouldn't stop and refused to obey etiquette.

The poem that was more like my bed where I couldn't rest, not yet, because somehow the night is young. The poem that understood me and all my longings.

The poem that was more than a poem, the poem that was my life and then just the sensation, only, of this laptop resting on my body, my fingers stroking this keypad, these keys, and striving to send some message out to the stars. The poem that was this.

The poem of today, yesterday, and the day I go back home. The poem of returning, of journeys and of newness. The poem of summer and wonder. The poem of bread and popsicles, the poem of free verse association, and the poem of India, the poem of home, the poem of my hands are shaking, the poem of will someone know that I was here, the poem of will I have any impact. The poem.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Daytrips

I want to be free, and dumb
In a flapping vintage old dress that doesn't reach my knees,
And tights. Black, or blue maybe tights that you wore
Under the purple dress I lent you. You
Said you would not be taken for a girl.

Let's go to St. Armand's.
On a pier we will lick ice creams,
Pale twig legs radiating sunlight, and toes
Curled above the blue-green surface.
Let's go back and forth all day on the ferry.


Dumbly.
Youngly.

Love Song of A. Simone Rose

Once our little dance has ended,
Young romance begun to gray,
And the visions that I harbored
Show their frailty and give way-

There will still be your lips.
There will still be that loose curl of hair that, even now, you are brushing back into place.
There will still be your eyes. Dark like a wooden bracelet,
Like the edge of the sea where seeing stops.
There is nothing more, here.
There is nothing left for me to take.

Untitled

Nothing happens. No one says anything.

Three beds are in the room and one orange
tiger rug is in the room and a healthy
pink orchid is in the room and you sat
in the room and yr long dangling legs were
in the room and I was perched on my
bed across from you in the room and I
thought about running my tongue up yr
leg in the room and then you'd stop
talking about yr fucking ex-boyfriend
in the room and you'd stop getting
drunk and singing badly off yr balcony
and I'd figured out what the hell it is
I'm doing in the room but we just look
at each other in the room and the walls
are white in the room and the floor
is dirty in the room and my broken
lamp is in the room.

No one happens. Nothing says anything.