Come And Get Me Please

If you inexplicably

Were to saunter through my door

Grip my shoulder, tug

Me off this pitiful pedestal

And take me, just once

In your arms, once

In your heat and heartbeat

Only once

I feel certain my soul

Would at last untangle

Its ragged and bloody strips from

The thorned, barbed wire of

Slow-passing years

And limp away down the path at last

Broken, but content

Knowing how to mend

Me and the Moon

The moon is a boxer

A crossways eye rimmed pink and blue

Wide, rolling, frenzied

Clinging to ropes of black glory.

I am a fighter

Small fists, big heart clenched

Tremulous, terrified, savage

Dancing on the brink before the bell.

Tag team, we will swing and jab and swing again.

Nighttime is our square, spectators stars, a full house.

For the good of a cause with no need to be named

We take the hits from relentless forces

Insatiable, taking us piece by piece for their own.

By minutes, surge for surge, we snatch ourselves back

And rise from the dirty floor, always, every time.

We do not allow ourselves a choice.

14.12

So late it's early
No cool side to the pillow
Such fools, both of us

Wandering Song

A wandering song came on in my ears

As the train swayed, and swung, and swayed

The sky had old man eyes, squinting

Gray like the newspapers piled by his chair

The mountains were evening wear blue

And I was big, gigantic, absolutely enormous

Big as every earthly country on the globe

The yellow and red ones full of sand

Green and beige with grass like hair

The black and blue with big hands and long arms

I was all of them, incandescent

Moving feet in time with a wandering song

Dancing down cobblestone dirt paved roadways

And the train swayed, and swung, and swayed

The Word Goodbye

Around the time
When it's time to leave
We often find that word goodbye
Difficult to please
Lightly on your lap
Legs around your waist
Keeping you captive
Like a portrait in a picture frame
Tilt up your head
To expose a smug smile
And meet me halfway
For the longest kiss goodbye

A note:  1500 pageviews!  Pretty awesome, I must say.

14.9

My dear, I miss you

All of today, tomorrow

Till I can hold you

A prayer to the

Nighttime; please hold me warm and

Still until day breaks

Fix This, Doc

Outside reeks of cigarette smoke. 

All of it. 

The arthritic air and the black smudge trees

The fluctuating spaces between people

Walking hard and fast.

Snowflakes drop like fragments of ash

Tapped resolutely from the end of a Marlboro Red

Gusting in the cough of a tired wind.

Like the world is an ashtray with cigarette butt buildings

And in all our love and losing, we all are slowly dying

From cancer of the heart and lungs.

Finishing like Zusak

He's right, you know
When the final few lines jump to the last page
That last page, white like the gates of heaven
The worlds scrambling, tripping over each other
To be the first to be thrown down
Like the finishing planks of a bridge
All the while you are digging in your heels
Pulling back hard on the reigns, no, no
Slow down and savor like a roast Sunday afternoon
Like the last day of school
And the late hours on the eve of your birthday
Remember the crook of the hands on the clock
Remember the sounds and the taste in your mouth
What you are wearing, what clutter has gathered round
Sketch a picture, just quick, to preserve it forever
And when they ask by the thousands, how did it feel?
You can say, like each page was a single glass step
And I climbed every one to the peak of the sky
And as the last casualty words fell on the papery hillside
I looked down from the folds of a velvet blue night
And I was alone and on top of the world

14.6

The moon has not set all day
Mothlike he has swung in the sky
Lingered on the lashes of the mountains
Avoiding the reproach of the wrathful sun
And now that she has retired to her bed
He nestles in the clouds and settles down
Like a working man melting into armchair and hearth
Coffee in hand, paper blanket on lap
Bleary-eyed he watches the world in slumber
A pale shade of envy over their nocturnal peace

14.5

This is home, I think

Far from kith and kin

Beneath high ceilings that

Smell of new paint and plaster

With the promise of a busy tomorrow

Sick in my stomach

With strangers for whom I have cultivated

A tightknit tolerance and affection

This is home, I think in my crisp bed

This is home.

This is.

The Late Minutes

The late minutes belong to me

Marching by, haughty in their guiltiness

Dripping slow like water off stalactites

Muttering stiff apologies in mechanical tones

Stacking on themselves like firewood ready to burn

Those late minutes, they belong to me

And to the determined car

And to the mercurial music

And to the thought of you lying in bed

Arm behind your head, thoughts

Of me before your eyes

Scrabble

I have never sat at table

Or sprawled on carpet

And played a game of Scrabble

Yet the burned black letters

D, C, L

In their smooth wooden shells

B, P, E

Stack in my soul

U, F, M

Like puzzle pieces

W, J, T

But that is a different game

14.3

I send myself to the top of the mountain

Treading the soft brown path with hungry feet

Who savor each pebble in its ancient earthy decadence

The target peak juts out like a rescuing arm

Surveying and sighing contentment over the valley

It is here I halt my driven march and fill both lungs

With the ocean of early morning blue and foam

Stretching its arms and yawning into waking

In similitude I too throw my limbs wide

Open my chest to the new surge of living

A lover of the light am I, in truth

A lover of the life in my own winding veins

And the freedom of this cannot be taken

By any number of good or bad intentions

Cynical Sunset

The sun is opinionated
Red edges quivering with conviction aflame
Smug, he lowers slowly behind his headboard
Of the mountains, his final glare
An illuminating finger to the world
In the meantime, the city has
Sunk tightlipped into a permanent haze
A screen of gray and sickly pink
Dusty, weary in the indifferent routine
But resolute, always resolved
To stand with shoulders back and flat heads raised
Peering with streaming smoky eyes
Into the vast gap of daily purpose
Looking, under the guise of a worthy cause
In the bold hatchet face of a futile trudge

14.1

My New Year's resolution is to write a poem a day. Simple, no? I'm on track thus far, but I haven't had a chance to post yet. That is about to change. Here's January One.

Winter nights run down the sky
Fresh paint, thick and glossy glistening
Drying slowly, congealing  on the icy walls
While in my smaller comforter dome
I breathe your scent off my blanket
Wrap it about me and drift warmly away