Love Is the Risk

Love, the dutiful wheels

of time, the mother’s

milk, the arthritic

fingers rinsing your dish, the words

you can’t remember (to the music

you can never forget). Love is not the rose

but the soil kissing its feet and water

feeding its verdant bones and sun care-

ssing its palms lifted in prayer.

Love is the risk

the sky took, be-

coming, sacrificing,

letting the stars each take

a share of its heart to shimmer

with the generosity of a being

who has known how it feels to be

loved.

Poem as Empty Words of Love

We are dead words equipped with sounds,
like pretty mannequins with guns
propped up against the parapets
fake-protecting a fort called love
and not even knowing it. The
susurrus of silken kisses,
neck on neck, breast caressing breast,
naked, exposed, but not undressed,
dead words touching, promiscuous,
lips feverish—mellifluous
gibberish, beau geste.

The Law of Conservation of Love

My eyes rained upon the sheet last night,

smudged my formula of Xs, Ys.
Emotions make a shameful mess of things,
I thought, exhausted cried myself to sleep.

This morning I upped and killed a lost fly.
I don’t care, I don’t believe in karma.
Life’s unfair, I’ve nothing left to lose.
My heart sleeps, my eyes are red but dry.

Tomorrow I may wake and slowly rise
and desire to, or consciously choose
to believe in the conservation of love,
to trust that love is never truly lost.

And later when my hair is grey and white
I may kiss an adrift fly, apologize
to life at large and my own injured heart,
that I doubted the invisible formula.

Resistance is Fruitless

Apricots, pregnant, hanging low,
the golden drops of blessed sweet.

Be careful! Some have fallen, split

against the concrete. And as though
they're lips and tongues prepared to kiss, 
have flowered open 'round the pits.
They're silky mines below your feet—
It's too late: You are part of it.  
Oh now it's fruitless, why resist?

Feel the Solitude

Whimper, holler, weep; and let burn  
your eyes and turn blood-red. You sob 
at night alone inside your room.... 
There's no moon.  It's long departed 
to watch the lovers nuzzle, kiss, 
by sonorous curves of Fraser. 
Breeze on their skin: a glacier soon 
melting, like their whispers—lover  
to lover, lips to ticklish ears. 

You must feel the solitude's weight:
The haughty air, the empty chair...
Listen!  The walls are crumbling, hushed, 
akin to bones that bound the heart. 
Rotting bones inside the concrete,
marrows of room within a room. 
Sound of your labored panting breath,
the only sign that here resides, 
a living corpse inside this tomb.

Let your shoulders shake and quiver. 
Holding your breath you shiver—There
you hope to keep the throbbing walled
(Oh the illusion of control!)
Loneliness aches; and aching's so 
lonely.  Ache that keeps you closely
dead-awake, and clings to your soul;  
ache and journeys through your body‒
but you it never ever leaves.

Release your breath, forgive your sin,
ease the form, undress the ego,
clear the walls without and within— 
to and from your heart.  Let tears
cleanse you of old and vicious pains, 
polish your senses‒scent of  bread,
taste of coffee, comfort of bed‒   
Let cry, this self, I softly pled: 
I'm drowning in your tears—unshed.

Moments

Moments are butterflies.
They die, kept in a jar. 

Moments are kunik* kisses from the stars. 
They're breezes, cooled by moon and warmed by sun. 

Moments are wombs.  So too a lifeboat fleet,   
with all the boats deflating, one by one. 

Moments are lonely flower buds. 
Caress them each and watch them bloom. 

Moments are sweet receding rooms, 
with crooning walls and scented floors. 

Moments: this verse, this word.
See it, feel it...it’s gone.


*Kunik: a way of kissing or showing affection, associated with an Inuit practice of breathing in the skin of cheek or forehead.