Our Piece of Sky

Your belly could bounce a quarter,
your hips could tease the drummer
to burlesque rhythms and smiles.

Betty Grable had your legs,
Jolie had your lips,
but I had your heart and your eye.

We never saw Evita
or the Macy’s Day parade.
You never saw the SUV.
You never saw the Doctor cry.

I miss the woman that cried
when the angel got his wings.
The girl that cheers
when Yentil belts A Piece of Sky.

I miss the press against the wall.
I miss your eyes as they’d fire.
I miss the arm around our future
Your clench of my desire.

I miss our patch of sweet life.
I miss your belly, your hips
your eyes and your lips.
Most of all I miss our piece of sky.

 

Nosh

‘Nosh!’, you said.
‘Be a glutton tonight.
For tomorrow we diet on the sky.’

How you loved the sky, the desert,
the open - single colored things
that had nuance
color and textures
beyond the scope of our fledgling tongues.

Nosh!, I said.
Eat the sky!
Feed on each morsel of light.
Let it fill your eyes
with the frail bones of man,
the paltry things he pursues.

Nosh!
Chew the water’s tongue.
Pierce the river’s throat.
Savor the gravy,
Cum in the light of these stars.

Nosh, you said.
Take me deep into your cells.
This feast may be our last.
Be sure you savor its time.

I Just Remember

I don’t remember
when I knew it was over
when that last heartbeat
stopped a doctor on the street,
how it called a priest,
or arrested the dark soul of a lawyer.

I don’t remember falling
or the sudden clack or your heels,
nor the last whispers
that fell from the cold of your hips.

I just remember
when you touched me
and how the rain stopped.

I just remember
when you looked at me
and gravity dissolved,
and when the color resolved
locked in your Leica’s precious eye.

I just remember
when your lips
tasted like strawberries,
and how our lives entwined
like ivy fed with a baby’s breath.

Fecund Wind

The wind curled its tongue
as if sipping the day
savoring its biscuit yellow light,
its Bimini blues.

I hold you tight before me
your bright face to its velvety bluster
your liquorice locks buffeting my cheeks.
I feel you grinning through my fingertips.

April sneezes on days like this,
sudden spritzes then gone
as winds clench you tighter
in their sun warmed snares,
as if probing for the roots of your seeds.

Bliss Before there was Thunder

The wind pules,
whining and querulous,
your voice rings
like a ghost on the wire
told me sos’
swirling in my head
all my words burning on a funeral pyre.

Cloud scuds like a time-lapse
in jet fueled lanes
while lunatics lunge through the wood.
Birch dance like clergy
elbows knocking
amidst mangrove knees too frail to pray.

You should see this night,
as it races like a whippet
round its frenzied track.
You should see my smiles,
my glee, my open wonder
I remember your face like that,
a silent elation,
like stars scream,
bliss before there was thunder.

RIP Laurie - welcome home.

Spring Blood

A sadness let - freed.
a haunting vein of flute
spilling through the skins of my ears.
It is as the wind soughing,
the red hawk crying,
Lakota tears as they spill on the rock.

Backhoes whining,
churning the loam
split wooden lips
losing decades of light.
the lawyers drone on
the old forests bleed.

The earth is raw,
scabbing, and sore.
the sadness let
a saxophone pining
pleading, bleeding for March
coaxing each blossom to rise up and roar.

Courtesy of Jackson Katz @Venitism


The Tears of Their Chattel

They dry tears at their church.
A good deed.
Heads lay against worsted shoulders,
the breast of other women
who also cry,
who also leave their blood
the fears of their men.
The righteous nails are driven deep.
The ‘harlot’ must pay.

They dry tears at this church.
A good deed.
Yet swollen eyes lay on shoulder pads,
split lips kiss their Linebackers good luck.
Praise be the god of the NFL.
Praise be Football.
“It’s the Packers this Sunday Sister Yvonne!
Praise be to our silence,
Bow your head now, let us play!”

They dry tears at this church.
A good deed.
“Cowboy up Sargent Suzi.
It was the booze… your skirt.
there’s no rape here, just duty.
There’s no foul, just morale.
As you were Sargent Suzi,
we are all God’s chosen.
The Marine’s finest.
An officer’s Corp. Let us bray.”

Ever My Love

I held you freckled and hot,
burnished to rose gold
by a Trinidad sun.
I held you fevered and playful,
devilish with tease,
an articulate temptress
my ego’s disease.

I held you sultry and powder cool,
an alabaster idol,
ever my love, in this Caribbean moon.
I held you in a day of offshore blues,
azures and tourmalines
prancing in the ocean's lights
in malachite and larimar greens.

Oral Strokes

Words
strewn,
splashing their bright passion
dashed to canvas,
a silver - a blue
for a puddle
for the rain
with daub and dash of white
for the winter’s sky,
for crystal service at tea.

Words
spitting,
heated syllables splitting
a forest of infinitives,
a verdant furnace of green.
Metaphors crashing,
slipping from our lips
as if we craved a savory roast,
Illiterate to color,
ravenous for the verbs of the sun,
the sentience of meat.

Words
tumbling,
like curling maws of crystalline teeth,
carving these grains,
these skins from granite,
spoken from a brush,
its thousand quills,
speaking every dialect,
each fragrant silence,
every flagrant saturnine tongue.