Linguistic Compadre

Small changes really.
The envelope tightens
the sun rises
the eyelids close.

Are you forty-some now?
It seems so familiar.
I have to smile,
at the leap of such distance
at your coming of age.

Small changes really.
The wrinkles loosen,
the children grow
the lust falls closer
to our lips than our knees.

 

Tender Threads

Scarves
cover the bruises,
wrap the truth with chic,
tucked away quietly
like nothings
in the shadows of a drawer.

Panties
hide the sins,
wrap the desperate pleas,
the implicit permissions for another assault.
Little satin nothings,
rent gussets
in the shadows of a drawer.

Ray Bans
harbor the swollen,
Wrap-arounds
that shelter the glare - the yellow-plum
Temporary plastic
like the credit cards,
his ‘come on baby’ smiles,
like the love pats
those sutures mending in your jaw.

Know Me To Be

Know me to be
a kind man,
human, a man of faults
who loved you with all of his heart.

Know me
to be a poet,
a word whore,
a lover - nurturing,
a purveyor of words.

Know me to be
earnest, always reaching,
Perhaps not the best
at the helm of business,
at a churn of commerce.

Know me
to be a dreamer,
a painter of words
amongst the scream of stars,
our final days at Hellas Planitia
on the cratered plains of Mars

Know me to be
the arms, the vise around your dreams,
sighting your goals
always craving I’d be
your dream come true.

Heavy Feet

a blue-black white
shit-splitting
shattering light
slitting the wrist of the sky.

what was clotted,
loosed
from its bowel of scarlet and coal,
from this wound of oncoming night.

I sat empty,
suckling the last of the day,
sipping air from this glass of cabernet.
I sat wanting,
my bones craving,
my melody deep in the bones of you.

I watched from the corner
as the sky writ large
from tender levers of my heart.

I watched inured,
reduced,
as the sanguineous tide
of time trampled upon.

Lady Blossoms

Daughters bloom,
the most delicate flowers
in fits of pollen spat into bulletproof glass.
Little darlings of Barbie,
Hello Kittle and Smurfs,
raging on death metal,
on Bjork, cutting and piercings
to their eleven year old hinterlands.

We distract them with soccer
with iPhones and pony glam.
Little kittens on mid-drifts
that say “I’m lickable”
that say “Try Pink”?

It’s only eight years,
you can do it,
you can sacrifice the prime of your life,
for a hormone riddled bitch
spitting pea soup
at the slightest whiff of rules.


Snapdragons

Fuse

It is their tangent touch,
that brief glance from other lives
that deliver us from the dust,
from the dead
from the cusp of inanity,
to the hiss of insanity.

It is their parallel
the mirrors that follows us,
haunting corner thoughts,
dancing with our shadows,
scalding our blood
beguiling us - our wings to fly too high.

Destin

It was a day of pewter blessings,
heavy, but malleable,
like rum balls or dough soaked in wine.

77 and sunny
in that bleak weak light of the solstice
and on through the next afternoon.

Wind snarled in tempests,
great billowing gusts,
purrrling growls for show,
like alley cats - two bitches posturing
for one Tom’s bone.

Preferences

I’d rather have you
than this ham for Christmas,
and I loves me a ham,
its sweet cured pork, it’s tangy saltine.
But when it comes to good shanks
nothing tops yours - but mine.

I’d rather have you
than this sham of Christmas.
I’ve watched you eat an apple,
and this hog’s got it wrong…
you toy with the stem,
spread your lips along the core
and sever my mind from the…

I’d much rather have you
than this lamb of Christmas.
The wise men came.
The myrrh was second rate,
but the cranberry risotto
was best in show.

Nightbreed

Crawl across my skin
as smoke
clinging,
smoldering from the high in my eyes.

Linger
as the sheen on my brow,
the glistening
from the heat of you.

Sip the starlight with me
the shadows filled with neon,
our lips flush with sin,
the naughty whispers on summer night streets.