My Not a Love Poem 4/24/98
If this were just a love poem,
it'd mean I loved you less.
For you are love and more, my dear,
you are the feast, you are the guest.
You're everything a heart could bring,
you are my sex, you are my soul.
The are the man, woman, and child of me,
for you are me and more.
You know the silent need in me,
you are my wanderlust, my home.
For you are more than love, beloved,
you are the poet, you are the poem.
Thunderstorm Poems August 24, 1999
I
Summer night lighting
over phone line crackles
you whispered good night
and left me staring into
strobe light, sky-ripping wonder
at the fury of the night sky
the storm in my heart.
Cool now,
and a little spent sadness
after.
A still expected siren, far off in the night.
II
If
you were
coming
here
into the storm
I'd
have the
covers turned down
waiting
to share
the rain
with you.
No.
If
you were
here,
coming
into me
while the storm
crashed
over us
I'd
wrap my
legs closer
around
and let you
watch
the lightning
dance
in my eyes.
III
This
is my
not-so-nice
drive off the road
daydream poem.
Let anyone read it,
I don't care
what they think, 'cause
with you on my mind
I'm way past the
brink of sanity.
Sitting in traffic and
think, think, think,
of your hands
sliding past buttons
plink, plink, plink,
and undoing things-
parts of me quiver
and parts of me sing
and you're well past
the point of
undoing me.
Then I sink, sink, sink,
to the part
with your lips on my neck
I'm shuddering now,
what the heck
if I'm wet. You
start to mount, one leg is in
one is out of
my pants and I
give a spontaneous shout
my body is taut and
I'm ready to pop
when I notice
that traffic
has come to a stop.
Tuesday, January 7, 2020
Sunday, January 5, 2020
Perfect
Perfect
In another life
I'd be perfect for you.
Be your off-beat girlfriend,
who'd impress your parents
and tease your friends.
And only argue with you
about politics and other
topics of no consequence, til
we'd settle it all with a wrestling
match. I'd let you win.
I'd understand your need
to protect me and why sometimes
you're still a little boy.
I'd dare to run my hands
up your thigh under the table
why you do multiplication tables in your head.
And never get jealous when you look at other women.
And spend my days happy
to have found you, my nights
finding your ear with my lips
and whisper I love you.
And never worry if it was enough.
In another life
you'd be perfect for me.
Be my strong, sensitive boyfriend,
who'd shoot pool with my brother,
drink beer with my dad.
And think it perfectly
natural for a woman
to keep a wallet in her
back pocket. I'd let you pay.
You'd understand that sometimes I need to be the strong one, too
and why sometimes I need
to bury my head in your chest and forget.
You'd dare to run you hands
over my nipples while I talk
on the phone with my mom.
And never get jealous when I look at other women.
And spend your days always
discovering another side to me, your nights
showing me how many ways there are
to say I love you.
And never worry if it was enough.
In another life
I'd be perfect for you.
Be your off-beat girlfriend,
who'd impress your parents
and tease your friends.
And only argue with you
about politics and other
topics of no consequence, til
we'd settle it all with a wrestling
match. I'd let you win.
I'd understand your need
to protect me and why sometimes
you're still a little boy.
I'd dare to run my hands
up your thigh under the table
why you do multiplication tables in your head.
And never get jealous when you look at other women.
And spend my days happy
to have found you, my nights
finding your ear with my lips
and whisper I love you.
And never worry if it was enough.
In another life
you'd be perfect for me.
Be my strong, sensitive boyfriend,
who'd shoot pool with my brother,
drink beer with my dad.
And think it perfectly
natural for a woman
to keep a wallet in her
back pocket. I'd let you pay.
You'd understand that sometimes I need to be the strong one, too
and why sometimes I need
to bury my head in your chest and forget.
You'd dare to run you hands
over my nipples while I talk
on the phone with my mom.
And never get jealous when I look at other women.
And spend your days always
discovering another side to me, your nights
showing me how many ways there are
to say I love you.
And never worry if it was enough.
Some new, old poems
Sunrise in Asbury Park 11/16/99
Fall's light flooding
on an ambition
of empty streets.
A black girl's beat.
And loneliness-
a black-top, boarded window sunrise
bleaches the city
clean as a new day.
And for one long minute
the carousel house is
alight again
with sunbeams and twinkling dust.
But the beach at the end of Second Avenue
is still full of crushed butts
and empty works.
And the burnt out buildings
whisper a whore's promise
of a good time, boys, a good time.
New Brunswick Sunset 11/10/99
Finish the day at sunset, molten-pink
as the slash of coral on an old woman's mouth,
a bright ring on a crushed cigarette butt.
New Brunswick sunset-a gaudy scene
to rival the Mexican girls on hot Summer nights
click-clacking their impossibly high heels
down the street, arm in arm with their
toughtender boyfriends in tight, black jeans, swaggering
past downardly-mobile college kids
who wear their poverty
like a preacher, righteous and proud.
And the Mexican girls would laugh
if they knew
that poverty is a noble cause.
The sun sets on bodegas and beat kids,
the black men swigging from paper bags,
Catholic schoolgirls, running home with the threat of Fall up their skirts.
A smudge washed, pastel display smeared across the sky
and settles into deep purple and crimson thumbprints.
A long figure stands outside the ER and bums a cigarette.
And the New Brunswick night comes up quick, like a bruise.
Provincetown 1998
I thought of my love
on the Saginaw bridge
and the wind blew ten degrees colder.
I thought of my love
in the Shawnee forest,
black trunks stark against the sky.
Ten thousand twisted pine reaching
reaching for something that never was mine.
I thought of my love
on the docks off Commercial,
where, wondering where, is my home?
Fall's light flooding
on an ambition
of empty streets.
A black girl's beat.
And loneliness-
a black-top, boarded window sunrise
bleaches the city
clean as a new day.
And for one long minute
the carousel house is
alight again
with sunbeams and twinkling dust.
But the beach at the end of Second Avenue
is still full of crushed butts
and empty works.
And the burnt out buildings
whisper a whore's promise
of a good time, boys, a good time.
New Brunswick Sunset 11/10/99
Finish the day at sunset, molten-pink
as the slash of coral on an old woman's mouth,
a bright ring on a crushed cigarette butt.
New Brunswick sunset-a gaudy scene
to rival the Mexican girls on hot Summer nights
click-clacking their impossibly high heels
down the street, arm in arm with their
toughtender boyfriends in tight, black jeans, swaggering
past downardly-mobile college kids
who wear their poverty
like a preacher, righteous and proud.
And the Mexican girls would laugh
if they knew
that poverty is a noble cause.
The sun sets on bodegas and beat kids,
the black men swigging from paper bags,
Catholic schoolgirls, running home with the threat of Fall up their skirts.
A smudge washed, pastel display smeared across the sky
and settles into deep purple and crimson thumbprints.
A long figure stands outside the ER and bums a cigarette.
And the New Brunswick night comes up quick, like a bruise.
Provincetown 1998
I thought of my love
on the Saginaw bridge
and the wind blew ten degrees colder.
I thought of my love
in the Shawnee forest,
black trunks stark against the sky.
Ten thousand twisted pine reaching
reaching for something that never was mine.
I thought of my love
on the docks off Commercial,
where, wondering where, is my home?
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