Untitled Love Poems: a cycle

Untitled 1

Sick from this or that
Home, no place feels
Right. It's a matter of
Thinking, i guess, gathering splinters
For flowers, weeds and barnacles—i need more
Of the ground than I've got,
But i said that yesterday,
Too, and all they took from me
Was nothing i could eat.

My earth doesn’t spring fruit, so,
I suppose, i
Understood—Funny, how the tense
Drifts back,
The more i try for it.


Untitled 2

I was almost no longer
In love with you, but then
I forgot. And each day
Teased away at my thinking—

Too-precious shudder: i
Was long exposed. Maybe tomorrow
The film will develop
Different, to your eye,
And, maybe,
Tomorrow, my features will congeal—

Yes, it was me you woke to,
Not the dog, licking your face, i
Was just thirsty and i saw
Your nose run in temptation

—even Christ had his passion,
allow me mine.


Untitled 3

I was busy scrawling life
With intentions on your wall
When the doorbell
Interrupted me. I do not appreciate
Your mother. Her face
Is running thick and she is a
Distraction from the flies,
Whose wings beat heavy
In my ears. Take perfection

Like a man and separate
Your own sword—

I cannot watch her
Panting, any longer,
She is in the corner, she is
Lewd, and she
Growls when i turn.


Untitled 4

Insouciance was my lover,
Once. But he got old
And died. Too bad. I had
Picked out matching pant-
Suits and our towels
Were set for monogram.

Standing the colors against
Themselves, for hours,
I watched which one would last,
But neither one turned, (as far
As i could see: my eyes
Giving out long before the contest
Even had begun.) I

Always was the poorer judge
Of talent: as he never forgot
To remind me—and i think it
Kind, on these days, without
Him; i think it so much
Worth the effort.


“Pools of It”

you said, & then i
said, but you said it
first, after me, but before
anyone else, & so, i heard
it last from you.

Wasn’t that how it went?
All knees and elbows, all
purpose lost in the drift-
wood. We could have been
anywhere, but you said it
naked, beside me, in
my room, under blank
sheets, reading words
i had written, in your voice.


Untitled 5

Your breathing removes me
from the sense i had situated, now
we are dismantled, you and i.

Invoke the seasons, bard.
Invoke a voice to speak them
with—they don’t mind, it is

in nature to exist without
asking. Watch me
a little closer:

I’ll show you; I perform
if there’s music.
It’s ritual ripening and I’ll do it

Whether you watch or no, perhaps,
it’s better to pretend. Go
on, I understand, Spring

Demands so much from her
participants. It’s not from weakness
you abstain, just disgust.


Untitled 6

All of your madness, I keep
it with me
on these rain-choked days,
blister-fucking in sand-
light and stars with nothing
but the burn
between us to let out,
so we do. We let out
fire in exhaust patterns,
steam like whistles blown
between our teeth, engine
grease to keep our joints
from locking.

Don’t worry, I won’t let
you happen, this time around.
Not for never and again,
this time, we’re sacred.


Untitled 7

Already in love and this time
too far gone. My consecration
comes wasted on the table
and your prayers are elsewhere—
not here. I said, look for
beauty, for the strange and
the sad in a world moutain-
toppled and grainy. I said,
love me like you love art,
with reverence and distraction.
But poems, they don’t get it:
sitting soiled on the page
these words might mean, but
they don’t know! They don’t

feel your hand, approaching
my back, nightly, just to
resist me, again.