Category: Poems

RENEWAL

I slept in tears – Loved against all my sorrows

Held & warmed by Someone who owes me nothing

(But a slap upside my head)

If the mourning is over, let the revels begin!

Let my hands hold secrets to universes

My eyes be kissed

Our tongues entwine

For all my shrilling fears tripping alarms

I will put away now

To let you bring them outside

For the wind to whistle away.

Thank you is never enough in true gratitude

Blessing lays thick with love, balm for the broken heart

I have Much to mend & more to make holy

In the doing of deeds.

My only gifts may be words to bridge the darkness

Yet these I do have & in plenty…

               ‘Come unto me when

               I breathe your name’

Last night too soon, too sad, too uncertain

Too full of truth that first clears the way

For us to part from parting.

I had to dissolve the wounds of dissection

Bring in the soothe of belief

Mop up the bloody departure.

Rediscover with new eyes

You will not disappear or disappoint

I would not be rushed the savor of forgiveness

Of your kisses, the tips of your fingers

Your offer of skin to skin too raw in that moment to accept.

You teach me to learn again

You are the place where yearning may rest awhile

Where “love me” dissolves in the mist of Holy Joy.

It is said the man chooses the woman – but, well,

I did steal that kiss for no reason other than your lips backstage

I did offer my perfumed presence in an unbuttoned shirt you could not refuse

I did fit myself too closely over coffee, cup after cup just so as not to part.

I love your energy, warm & welcome, the season of cold undone.

I love your christening touch, your murmurs which I do not hear

But always understand.

I surrender pretension of holding ground against

Of beating back your small demands:

Only gentle me with a kiss

Only take me with a touch

Let the sun measure our lengths on golden afternoons

Of heart-centered joy, hostaged to love.

Bonfires on a hill as angels overfly

Land not here! We are our own beloved divinity

But later, with the final moan of breath releasing love

Come then to laugh, to stroke our overheated bodies

With wings of balm & glory!

Midnight Maunderings

I never thought myself a leader

Yet I have always been skipping out ahead

Finding the way of the Wayshower.

I venture outside at 3 a.m.

To breathe night-ions

Garnering the darkness

In eager search of distant stars

I fly no flags of bedsheet measure

Only tiny banners of love

Protected on my windowsill

But these I fly proudly

Wings open to the heaviness of air

I am the mouse fascinated by the whiskers of the lion

Unobserved yet always overseen by gentle Divinity

Tweaking my tail, tickling my nose/

I paddled in ponds wearing shoes of adventure

I walked away from lifetimes

While laying no claims

Save those of memory & desire.

As to where this shall take me

I hardly imagine.

My face & my name ahead of me

I still search, scanning horizons

Calling myself forward.

#2

Unready to upstage the world,

I can only upstage myself

One accomplishment at a time.

I test the boundaries of constancy

Questing the North Star of God

I live behind no screens

Of televised content

Content I create my own world.

Where I am a hero on the Hero’s Journey of real life.

I boil carrots in the dark

To better see the day

I wipe my pens on my sleeves

Dotted with ink & drenched

With words about worlds yet undiscovered.

I would bestow my wisdoms

To children I shall never have

Applauding their creativity

Inspired by a tiny phrase.

Until I began these midnight maunderings

These densely-packed thoughts only to

Be experienced in single splendors…

It IS possible to love every tree in the forest

Every wave breaking in similar salty froth

‘pon strangely lit beaches

I watch the world lie down in death

Anticipating only resurrection.

#3

The incense burns

Fierce & hot

Devouring itself

In the grace of alluring scent

I burn to be so!

Never regretting the

Ashen remnant; each

Thought clinging to my nostrils

Breathing in & out.

Blessing all, even the unholy

Especially the unholy

My singular quest to bring

New thought to a mind

Steeped in the familiar.

I cry “Poverty!” while bathed

In the richness of a burgeoning world.

I follow growth in a hunger of appetite

Sentient in the awareness all of it has passed.

My life is a bowl of chocolate strawberries

Sweet upon sweet

Succulent & bursting with juices filling hunger

All is moisture tho more appreciated

In the deserts I choose to live in…

I burst with the treasure of living words

All spoken before me by minds so much greater

Yet what I know is sweet upon sweet

As one by one, I choose my earnest, surprising adventures

I am an oft-told story

With hope of teaching another.

#4

Inimitable, this world at the measure of ten tiny toes

I fight no dragons with my bamboo walking stick

Tho I smell them nearby

Feeling jeweled eyes fixed ‘pon my morsel self.

I pray on, an unlimited artesian well of self

Prevailing over their fiery breath

I pay no attention to mirrors

A rooster’s comb of misrule for a crown

I smile at reflecting shadows

There is nothing left behind but the journey forward.

My past is buried, a scratched-over self I claim not to know

How can I remember a name

Called before I became who I am?

Would it entice me even a moment to become that she?

There are bite-marks all over my past

I’ve chewed it to the bone & beyond

To nourish this future!

2/21/20

Of Sable Wings & Ivory

On a day I felt as if I’d swallowed a wasp

My soul, beset by angers all about

Found a maze of love to wander

And at its center, bowed in two, before a Holy Light.

All fear fell from me like dry scales

I began to luminesce

I took up the warrior’s wield:

The shield & buckler

An axe of war-torn dreams–

A sword grew from my hands.

Two wings flared from my back

I groaned at their heady weight

I flexed then to the ends of the world

And screamed to fly again.

The chocolate night unfolded

I passed between great heavens

Of chilblained division

Which sealed behind me, becoming warm glass

Developing a face half-weeping, it called my name

A blast of sound I rode forward into infinity

There would be an arrival: a choosing:

A serious battle

“You will bleed,” it shrieked

I gave no heed, flew on

Touching wingtips to the Poles.

I will not say it a dream

Or an impossibility:

A flight through fire

Singeing me well

My feathers seared to black, to gray

Ash drifted down to float the river.

When bared to bone

I folded them in whiteness

Lifting weapons instead.

I fought to brilliance

The morning’s gold renewed me

I breathed hoarse sweat

Rank & beaded in blood

I took my measure & pressed the Battle

Fierce we were, uncomprehending

To win war is to lose

Each of us the other.

We were brave, skirling the mountaintops

Like thunder, our faces mist

We bashed & clashed

Till, fought to a standstill, we

Balanced atop each other’s feet

Staring, down to knives & nails

We bled each other’s blood

As morning paled to day

The humans watched, stunned, all disbelieving

We were thunder made solid,

Caught in the storm of our own making,

My soul mirrored his

Till black & white emerged as doorway

Where all might enter

Searching Peace.

Carol Borsello

New Year’s Eve 2019

Shaving Off Sorrow

Take your hands off my philosophy

What do you care if I cannot fall in love with myself anymore?

What can it be to you how alone a human stands when her life transits to Mars? 

When all turns red as a tomato on the shelf where it freezes, where the skin thins to tissue

As the center hardens to rock?

What did I care that your life has turned into a radio

Broadcasting 24/7, unheard in a tin room?

I may never have been what you think I was

That good little Catholic kid from New York Avenue

Growing up in a town as far from New York as geography can take you

What about that skinny kid

A macaroni child with a lazy eye

Uncomfortable with focus, never knowing where to look?

Wearing Buster Browns with corded laces

A blue serge uniform covering bony knees

Chapped lips, always in reach of a book about horses?

Listening to life like a mouse for a cat’s paw

Watching for light not of rods and cones shifting

But divinity descending.

—

I can take my heart & bang it on a table now. No harm. No foul.

No burning houses with smoking windows to toss it through

It wouldn’t blaze anymore, having become ironwood & char

Unfeeling, unemotional, squeezed out with a rasp.

No matter. I was likely never who I thought I was, yeh?

I brought the best of me to the altar for sacrifice

After the light in the room changed

I found all was turned inside out

And there was nothing inside to pull from

No strength, no love, no shy violet water.

So I can toss it around, a medicine heart

Too heavy to play, too common to breathe

Too full to give away

Too empty to love.

Let’s find something else to do, okay?

Let’s find an afternoon we don’t have to pay for with blood

With dis-chord, let’s paint this Room of the

Unknown Soulmate some other color.

I’m so tired of empty.

—

Pray me into life: let the sunset squire me to beauty

Unbeknownst to others

Visited by my jaded eyes

Blurred with reading-tears

Coffee cup of empty

Guilt & sorrow my two most constant companions

A new lightbulb in a house afraid of an electric bill

I am naked as an undressed manikin

Featureless as unformed clay

Full of metaphor & simile, meta-for & similar

In the land of the unique.

Yesterday at this time, I was laughing.

—

Back when I felt important in the world

When I felt like someone wanted me to smile

Like it would be a devastation should I not

Back before the world chained the angel in me

To words I decorate with a pen

Too much cliché does a body no good

I know this is an unoriginal thought

But must voice it, nonetheless.

There was never anyone who loved me but God

And God has to love everybody, just because.

Just sayin’

—

Listen to me! The broad devourer of having no past

Of never believing much while convinced of it all!

I can wear my shoes on the couch now

No one corrects me.

I can avow a sunset for its beauty

While whispering of dawn to come.

What would I give to not be lonely

To be out of this moment where all feels “emptified”?

Where would I walk were I following my heart?

The dream a wish created vanishes with the color from a sky

I have closed my blinds against.

It is so much safer in the dark.

—

These words run out ahead, a parallel track

I huffnpuff along, steam rising from my head

Looking down for pennies on the track.

I would not see the angel until I walked into his robes

Nor feel him until the wings wrapt ‘round

Not know of my sorrow til he gave me a handkerchief

I want no direction without holding that leading hand

A little cold from flying…a little coarse from picking off sins

But landed in time to unfold me from my fear,

Scraping with a pearl fingernail at these old scars

Bleeding into tomorrow, staining the day.

The wound clears &, clean, I find a ring of bright new hope

To dance within.

—

So this is my talent: to wring words from rocks sun-dry & dusty

This world I strive to escape by pulling on a cloak of poetry

Hand-woven, soft & muted of dove-grey

Swirling around the rainsoft boots

I have kicked my life down the road

Now I need to go looking for it again.

—

October Souls

Dearest

I cannot write you into my life again

It seems two month’s passing does not erase

A year of your  hands

‘pon the hills & valleys,

The intimate creases of me

Yet I’ve faith in forgetfulness

That time creates

I have hope in the creation of new

Replacing old

With clarity for us both.

It won’t ever set straight

The doglegged path we shared

Nor lose (loose?) us ‘pon that way

You are a song below the waterfall of my being

Where branches & elbows of trees

Are washed clean, where wet leaves gather,

A snag & rustle of underbrush

Where I hoped to pass silently unobserved.

Where I cannot swim nor linger in sunlight.

=======

I miss you, LoveMan,

My body misses the bits of you I encompassed

My mind straddles you as my legs could not…

My heart encompasses what hands could not hold.

I opened to you in intimacy,

Gentle & giving

Until it turned opposite

To awakening & remembrance

I opted for the lessons of in-between

Where you are not:

The days when lonely is a four-letter word.

I finger these memories to frayed silk

Tying them with blessing

To toss upon the waters.

I walk once more bottled & contain’d

No longer the beauty of your addled regard

But the scour of my holy self,

The pale scourge of longing

In substitute for fulsome remedy,

That wholeness of your temporary regard

I wish you love

With all the power of a woman

I miss you like midnight with a moon upon its chest

As the wakefulness of longing closes my eyes

=====

Come love again!

Come fitting the seas of our bodies together

The mingling guilt

Glistening on beaches of touch

Come the opening of limbs!

Over lives & all betweens

Come that special smile of love’s regard

That faint warmth kindling to full-throat heat

That words burn into moan

The dragons of desire heavy-limbed on waking.

=====

You do not understand:

I cannot continue

Sex on Mondays only

Nary a hand-hold beyond

Not enough days of too many miles

Unable to speak, or gaze, or kiss,

An open blade I handled, careless

It might cut both ways.

=====

You are a desert I crossed in hope of moisture

An oasis turned mirage

Where only imagination grows.

We were lucky of our time together

But guilty of the clocks meting it

I stand over an open grave

Pondering resurrection.

=====

This was not my life: to

Have a faithful, capable love

Wherein I stood encircled, & safe

I fingered the horizon with car keys in hand

Not matched, not meshed

People like me cannot hold a static pattern.

=====

Unbalanced as I am in my headlong rush at life

Caught up in the love of many

Over intimacy of one

Were you to ask if I could have it any other way

I’d be forced to the honesty of looking away.

=====

An uncertain future must compensate

The flickering present

I am no gift to glory:

A rusty hinge on a gate to a weedy garden

Wherein one blossom of penetrating color –

A forget-me-not you will always twirl

In the hesitations of your mind.

I so miss being beautiful for you!

=====

And if I write enough of words

A landslide or an eruption of language

Will you (can you) forgive me?

I am the constancy of change

Of color, a fragrance caught downwind

A vibrance passing by

I am made for Make Believe as sure as

Any other theatre of life

Where fantastic is commonplace.

I play an endgame where laughter is the only closure.

A vast riparian slash

Where water runs swift & sure

Displacing earth to deepen itself.

=====

Almost afraid of love, now, though ginger with desire

I dare not live in the unreality that I am whole

Or human.

I have my little habits, my great disparity of beliefs

Around which gather & garner tiny stalks:

I believe I can be loved

The way I love the sky being blue

Remote & beautiful

Filling with blazing stars at dusk.

=====

I am an apprehension of the unreserved

In the realm of the unredeemed

Gatherer of words of smoke.

Didn’t I warn you enough, my love?

Didn’t I chafe your limbs to life

Filling your sight a spell?

Will you always see me in the

Gingham of old desire?

Could we best entwine

As man & woman?

Could I satisfy you to stay

And live with me

For a time when all is beautiful?

I am no slim willow bending in winds from your passage

I captured you for a bit, with only a wish in my hand.

=====

You fold your arms, holding yourself in

Keeping me out of your heart.

I understand protection – this you can believe!

I get it good.

I yearn to tap the power held in seal (in soul)

To have you open, enfolding me instead.

=====

Was I cruel to wish to see you?

Did I whet a dry drive

With conversation yet unsaid?

Have you any words for me at all?

You leave me to my imagination:

               That you feel…

I know you to be cautious of my exuberance

I like to think that had we met in moister times…

Just when I think I can do this –

Limit myself to love on Mondays

A nova lights within & I understand I am timeless,

A flicker of answer in a time of steady questions.

I cannot love you except in the surprise of your loving-back.

I am one to choose firelight over the sun.

Were we free to race the fields

And laugh out loud

To share the path, to dart among the trees

Seeking new realms to bed within

I might could love you more than mem’ry alone

I might could make a prayer

We say in churches, a name for the unborn,

I might could –

=====

I had to see you once more

To seek out common language

To hope for love in your regard.

I’m so weak when I’m not strong, it’s comical!

The house I built of straw in heavy winds…

A conscience free of sin

Has little left but itself..

That still, small voice

Hush, hush.

There, there.

When I cry for that open vista of passion

The taste of your breath

Your eyes closed in kiss

The tumble after the climb

And all the butterflies between.

Starving

These places made of hunger deep within:

I’ll touch them with my heart to open wide,

That never shall you hunger there again

Starvation will not find there to reside.

My hands are made of light, thus darkness fails.

This whimper that discovers its own shout

In fear of darkness, never will prevail

With truth of such divinity about.

We shall not starve together but shall serve.

Eliminate the vacuum in our souls

Abhorred by nature’s blessing, shall observe

A flame all coaxed from darkness in the coals

I cannot help but see you as the light

I dare not hold the darkness near so close,

You bring me to the edges of my sight

To places where the limits only pose.

We far extend these, turning one to two

And two to one, we join in sheerest grace,

We knit our worlds in blessing, me & you

I touch you with my soul wearing your face.

Wearing PJ’s

“If grass can grow through cement, love can find me.”

My heart has learned to keep many secrets
too many I am told, from the other parts of me…
my hands can make all known to another
of love, of regard, of comfort & blessing-touch
my head can wrap around a thought & express it
in one of many ways
my mouth can encompass your kisses
an orbicularis orbis stargate…
My skin is made of tiny cells calling “more”
my eyes may be closed, but you are behind them
& I am not quite embarrassed, but more focused in giving
I exist in the present of your presence
in a way I am not in any other –
a being made of space-time, infinite, encompassing,
allowed to be a child-woman, to sing & dance & show
you paper cut-outs; I am permitted to be shy & bold &
all that occurs in between
My whole life flashes before us in a safe space.
Allow me to share me; allow me to gift you;
Permit me to offer all I have in the moment
of all you are.

Thursday Morning: 7:02

Poems drift out of me

Like islands form in an ocean

Of infinite space

A sea of creativity

Into which others dip & swim

& nourish themselves & my selves

Some grow shady trees

On which fruit hangs, juicy & nurturing

Some grow worn tracks where thoughts

Have gone round around, grooving the land

To grow themselves

Some are parks for picnics & play.

What a life that gives me gifts such as these:

What a life that has offered me love

At a late age; love I’ve wished for forever

Even now, rare as unicorns, ephemeral as double rainbows

Even now made of prayer & songs of morning.

I pick up the threads once again

To knit? To sew? I have no ideas

Beyond my hands having something in them

With which to work a working

Towards magic? Towards love?

How can I tell, for all is such

In this life:

“Everything is holy now:” *

Don’t bring me figs; I do not care for dates

Don’t bring me excuses; live up to your own dreams

Don’t put anything dead at my feet for me to prepare to food.

I cannot tell you what I want

For if you don’t know by now, you never will.

Life is made of one continuing surprise, after all

What you bring forth today

Bears fruit on the morrow

As one day passes,

Another  lines up in its place

Like some cosmic Stairmaster of before & after.

Exercising the soul.

Filling in the blanks I didn’t know were there

Frightening small dogs with my heavy tread

Still, it is only me

Shrugging on a jacket

Or pulling off my shoes

Or climbing on top of you on the couch

To stretch my body around you

To make a wish for a dream

Worth dreaming

To engage with my age

In eager enjoyment/enjoinment

To taste & test & touch

To yearn into & tease away

And all of all, to love.

Who has time to live a conventional life?

Or the inclination?

Not when there are worlds & words to

Uncover, discover, recover

To render into small bites

For chewing: a cud of circumstance & dream

An element mixing surface & inner elements

A deep’ning dwelling of hope & holiness

The place where these meet & rebalance

All of who I am

That I walk forward in this world

That I take your hand in intimate delight

That I bring my smile to you

That I offer the who of I am

For your love.

A hobbyhorse on a carousel

Colorful & gilded in morning

A turning of around; an eternal wheel

Whereupon the world may never change

Yet the universe is shifting from up to down

From rote to miracle

From beginning to ending

All upon a calliope.

Circus music, mustang mortality,

Bright lights, small encounters

Bought & sold, given & retaken

An afternoon’s delight

A morning’s withdrawal into coffee & comeuppance.

O bring me no resolutions, no fake news

Restrain your anger, suck it back inside of you

I have no use for it, no space in my life

Where that fits: your angry logic…

Allow me my miracles

Stand down or look away

For I am dancing to the tune

Of my own being, a cosmic ballet,

A giggling shimmy

A vest of fringe over clown clothes

I am whomever you make me to be

While you have nothing at all to do with it…

*

Riding the Light

#1

Sticky with need, hungered with longing

Speaking In Poetry: a potlatch of words/images

Ideas like pebbles tossed down a well

Just to hear the splash.

I once thought words built houses

Safe spaces wherein dwelling

Was of comfort & whole

Yet the wind whistles through verbs,

Rain washes away adjectives.

I am left holding only the idea

I thought writing would coalesce into love.

#2

And this is her fate:

The always of the clock

Hanging silent for one D battery…

Still right twice upon each whirling day

At Ingo’s, the clock runs backward

But offers no undoing

Simply reversing Time’s forward dance

Now the Mandela Effect

Of my soul’s Mandala steps forward

Running down my arm onto paper

The lanky outpour of a million years lived

A thousand years loved

A past of pens, a present of words

Writing.

#3

If words are a spell, I am deeply ensorcelled

Splayed on a pentagram of circles, stars & points to ponder.

If love is an event, I arrived just in time to take down the banner.

If heaven is a train, my watch put me past its departure.

I’m always arriving after the wards are set;

When time rests on its haunches

Always in between beginnings

Resounding climax dying away

The years haven’t softened me any

They washed off the pluff mud

Rending me to bare rock

Knuckled & craggy

Slapping back at the waters

Urgent & laughing,

Bent on uprooting me

To tumble downriver.

My footprint is a mantra

My pedigree soundly peasant

I am who I am that I am

Blessing & Muse & all that occurs

In that Between.

#4

Dumbledore’s Cauldron

I love the Pensieve

Where a wizard fishes out a single memory

From the mercury swarm afloat

Freeing if from fellows

All a-clamor for attention…

The memory, laid upon a towel to dry

Smelling of holy water & salt

Circling up with the prod of one fat finger

A stain of brine, a sharp cut of odor

A former place to be in the mind

Moved on to the present & far beyond.

I rest it upon my upper lip:

A clarion moment to inhale

Chill with wet suppositions –

Sodden strings of should/could/would/if

And just before it dries to sere

I flick it back to its pickling medium

It brightens, bubbles, swims away

A squirt of ink, an idea of smoke

Who will venture a guess who’s more free?

#5

I am a rogue mouthpiece for one small voice in the universe

An egg & a sperm penetrated long ago,

Perpetrated in a cosmic giggle

No longer in gravitas, simply gravid

Yet so fully lifted into life by the dreams of heaven

A breath of patchouli, of sage & ylang-ylang

A brilliant magnolia blossom, white on green-wax leaves

A ciliated, petalled moon.

I am a night-shadow, caught for a moment

In sweaty mystery.

The light of a false dawn, fading but a moment after.

Yet for all the ephemeral I find myself to be

There’s no doubt of my footprints

Crossing space-time, my spoor off the paths of heaven

Leading to those mountaintops, to the moment insubstantial

When I return to the memory of God

Who’s almost forgotten me,

“Oh, there you are! I just thought of you the other day, my dear!

I felt you all this time, you know, playing peekaboo on the trail.”

#6

These poems are running waters wearing me away

Rushing over grooves of white-salt runnels in rock

The years serve singled purpose: teaching me to fly

Oh yes, there will be a time

When laughter is my only memory:

The Holy Grail of life softened by a smile.

I have stalked the boundaries of heaven,

Drawn by a promise, a waft of pie-on-a-windowsill

A cool glass for an overheated soul to rest against

Taken by the view inside.

I am a vision, a shimmer in the corner of your eye

A snatch of bright song on an emptied-out day

A dip into perfume’s transitory promise

God has scraped His knuckles over me

I am bruised, imperfect, parts I started with now missing,

An angel touched down but for a moment but netted by gravity.

A breath of calm moisture on a searing hot day

I am the red shoes not dancing, the bare feet rejoicing; free.

Step out of your cities to my green velvet pastures

Allow the sun of my morning to break your frosted night,

Find in me that once-told joining of all you are to all you can be

Where you are born once again; born Holy.

December Afternoons – A Myriad of Poems

Ok readers, please excuse the spacing – WordPress has added a new format which I clicked on. O Lord! It’s making a mess of my poems. First, it won’t allow me to keep lines together, then it removes spacing between words & within punctuation marks. So errors are NOT mine! I am in correspondence with them about this.  ALSO, I am happy as a happy clam, so do not assume that I’m in a cell of depression just b/c some of the poems are sad. OK? Thanks! Happiest of clam holidays to you all!

My heart is lost

Wandering

A balloon with no string

Nor a wrist to tie it to.

Visiting landscapes I have not seen in years.

We perambulate & each horizon brings new to the old

A childhood at the beach

Winter in all weathers

Dunes blown & tracked with triple-toe prints of gulls

Landed & windblown, feathers flashing wrong-way-out

And they turn to face the whirling squall, stately as small can be.

I perceive old enemies waiting behind boardwalk stanchions

It is Christmas Eve & I am on the shore

Of my mind

Watching my heart lift away across the sea.

—————-

I am not alone tho all around me except me is invisible.

I am the child of a universe

So bright with delight

So filled with gifts & laughter

It sparkles with my blessing

Mirrored back to me

I slip the ties of dreams

For open fields swimming in sunlight

I lie down next to you in holy anticipation

Of your whispers & feathering my hair

Oh God, your hands…

Repeat your tattoo on me, my love

Charge me with ecstasy; you know just what to do

And if you do not, I am not shy to direct you

Sweet carnal Angel to lift me, dancing,

On your fingers.

Lips & lives meet, late & in the land of lost, lonely dreams

We have waited long for this:

I cannot think but that time prepared us so well

That when we touch, all the connections of years

Fall away until there is only us two

In all the stars.

Your Jupiter, my Venus

We are ruled by benevolence smacking

Its lips in cosmic delight we have met

Whispering behind hands now joining

As our passion sparks theirs

As our coupling moves planets

From their accorded realms.

—————

I know. I’m brilliant.

But it’s because I shine with your regard…

This is not me…I am bitten with a dratted dream

A swatted swing… I am cupped in your hands

 Like a kitten, purring, yawning pointed kitten teeth

I am caught like a kite in the thorn tree

Wanting the pain of your missing touch turned into longing

Into pleasure.

O Lord! I am a selfish woman.

Yet these are not my tears, this is not my longing,

This is the whole world banging through my door

Barging into my kitchen,

Raiding my drawers for secrets.

I am a song at the edge of your lips

Sung with sweet longing, an echo of notes carried

On chill December nights

Promising Christmas.

——————-

Caught in the open without you here

I am bared to elements hard to fathom

My coat, my scarf, my gloves all indoors

My Uggs upstairs in the back closet

I am made of pearling snow

Frozen in posture – my arms reached out

For you, for love, for all that could be

Were all that is now, not all there is.

But I am gonna survive this; I’m a woman

Made of steel standing in front of the

Foaming Forge.

I close my eyes & walk on.

————–

There are seasons when life is different to bear

There are times when I live only by wits & what

Little wisdom I can rustle together, one

Hand on the recipe book of life

The other holding a spoon.

Salt & pepper on the table

Frypan heating on the stove

I am starving in the land of plenty.

Will you not find me tempting?

Will you put me back on the shelf?

No. I see your hunger; sense the rumbling

In your heart.

Come, devour me. I breathe my love

Into your mouth, over your body.

I am no sugar confection, pinkly spun

Atop a cake.

I am a force of nature

As you have never tasted

A flavor created just for you.

Dig in!

—————-

Wait, I hear another poem coming on

Not the train in the tunnel

But whispering up on fox-feet

Almost invisible, an intransitive verb

At the tip of a fricative…

Push me around again, world

& you’ll know I’m here

I’m not one to sit down

If there’s a performance to be held

I’m up in front of the mic

Capturing hearts

Not asleep at any wheels

Turned toward me.

——————

I want to pour myself over you

Like syrup on pancakes

Finding all the cracks & crevices

I want you sticky with my love

Fingers & face

I want to push you around the bed,

Chase you to the headboard

Tickle your toes with mine…

See? There it is!

I want you smiling!

—————-

A life divided by books I have & have not read.

Music I’ve listened to & that I never shall.

A love I can call my own & that poor excuse for it which I now have.

There are too many truths to understand anymore

Far too many opinions to be shared

When all I crave is silence &

Seagulls overhead.

I want an easy touch

Becoming more familiar

A burnishing here,

A tiny kiss there

The penetration of each other we allow.

I’ve seen it already:

The divisions in my life

Before & after  you.

—————

On Learning My Grandson Writes Poems

“They’re quite good,” says my daughter

I sense the surprise in her voice & hear her smile

This one little gene pops out…piping a shrill note

I may yet live beyond my days as a Babushka!

————————-

The Washing Machine of Emotions/

The Wishing Machine of Time

Banged about by both,

I surface for a breath

Once more gone under

Water overhead

While I orient to air

And swim.

These omniscient waters

Cold & warm by turn

Bathing beaches arced by rainbows

These impertinent frothing bubbles

Tickling up my body

No one save me now

Caught in-between these elements

It’s only a life I lack.

——————

True North?

Is it true the man finds the woman he loves?

I read this long ago…in some dusty book

Some outlived tome.

I could  not know how it would end

The days I imperiously marched thru the door to Love

Took it by the ears, pulled it down atop me.

In this lies my forgiveness.

If men find love

Why are women so charged

When they lose it?

Can’t these yearnings

Thick enough for spoons

Be fed to hungers

Wide-mouthed with tomorrow?

——————–

The Tan Egg in a Dozen of Brown

Why are eggs sold by the dozen?

Potatoes by the sack?

Why so many names of measure

Ounce & pound & by the rack?

I eat potatoes paid tomorrow

With a fork earned yesterday

In a world turned pay-to-play

Down a street that’s marked One Way

All the signposts of this lifetime

On the black & yellow row

Where the colors cannot go

In the space I wish to know.

—————-

What Child Is This?

Peering from atop my heart this Christmas –

Why do her hands tremble on the rim; tears on her lashes?

What is she seeing from her pulsing landscape?

Rich with copper-smells & red…

She is an orphan of all its storms

I scarce reach my hand to her

What story do I have except our own?

There! She clambers out & looks at me

“I have a story now,” she begins, “Would you listen?”

She takes my hand, inviting my head to her lap

She combs my hair with tiny fingers.

“I started in darkness with only stars to light my way,

Before the world had air & light.

I danced when you thought of me – I got here first,

Remember?

I called the snow

And showed you how to bake bread

I howled for you like the wolf

So you would find me

Yet you needn’t be afraid to be we.

I kept all our moments safe

Full of presents & love, porkchops & beans,

There’s a Brother in here with me & a Sister

One of Daddy’s laughs,

One of Mother’s frowns.

Plus all the time you ever lost

With Christmas Eve & Christmas Passed

There’s a bunch of relationships knocked about like tenpins

Each one with a face.

Believe me, I’ve looked ’round hard

There are no monsters here.

It’s safe for us both.

Now, maybe you would like to play?”

———————-

The songs went through me

Like an express through the station

Stopping for no one,

Stirring up leaves so sere & dry

They snowflaked down.

I have no words for me anymore

Just a pen whispering in a heart, taking notes,

The pen so sure, the heart so not.

I should have kept on singing, even without a voice,

I should have counted all the gathered shells I

Envisioned in glass bowls on wooden tables.

Instead, I have collected my sins

Numberless & flickering, like lights on a tall tree

A rosary of pain I now ignore: old sins don’t count

Only the fresh ones, yeh?

Life is emollient

Ebullient

Opportunistic

Capable of living itself

Without interference from the outside.

I have no extant record

Tho I’ve been dragged to the copshop now & again

I’ve smoked stolen cigarettes

Wished others harm

I’ve muddied incandescence

More than once…

I’ve watched the light change so many times

Skirting the liminal edges rising

Tattered, tattooed, footsore & scaly

Yet the sun rises on me with incoherent joy

Burning me clear; I rise, translucent

Open beaming wings to fly.