poems for pussies 1
2.13.04
there's a time when everything must be forgiven
the eiffel tower throbs like a red Chagall headache
as you drink weak milky tea
out of soil and air
a losing: a wanting to be lost
the feeling that your wrists are too small
or that your head has grown bigger
disproportions
I melt words onto paper onto blank slate screen
staring and humming
laughing and crying
because nothing will come
In this desert I remember the sounds of abandon
dance floors writhing with pop
on weekends spent in small sleepy hamlets
Hermanus: where whales rise up to meet your eye out at sea
and everywhere you walk, the smell of fish
I remember the taste of two oceans colliding,
the rushing of water below the railing at my feet,
metal sprouting from rock
there were moments
I wanted to jump down into
cold Indian blueness, to feel the sway of the Atlantic
lurking nearby
Today, I think I would like
to consume all the blues of this world
the snaking of streams, the color of sadness,
the brief glimpses of late winter sky
blue as the lined paper I am trying to fill
to speak words into, instilling life and love
as brief and sweet as I've been given
all these years:
feeling the slow sweltering room of decision
I've spent hours tripping over
the diverging paths between
familiarity and sex,
self and body,
monuments in France and the steady hand of home:
the choices engraved in Plato's shadowy caves
Sipping the sharp edge of Chagall, I sit above you
in the light, squinting
as I curl my fingers into
the page
Wishing I could reach inside you
there's a time when everything must be forgiven
the eiffel tower throbs like a red Chagall headache
as you drink weak milky tea
out of soil and air
a losing: a wanting to be lost
the feeling that your wrists are too small
or that your head has grown bigger
disproportions
I melt words onto paper onto blank slate screen
staring and humming
laughing and crying
because nothing will come
In this desert I remember the sounds of abandon
dance floors writhing with pop
on weekends spent in small sleepy hamlets
Hermanus: where whales rise up to meet your eye out at sea
and everywhere you walk, the smell of fish
I remember the taste of two oceans colliding,
the rushing of water below the railing at my feet,
metal sprouting from rock
there were moments
I wanted to jump down into
cold Indian blueness, to feel the sway of the Atlantic
lurking nearby
Today, I think I would like
to consume all the blues of this world
the snaking of streams, the color of sadness,
the brief glimpses of late winter sky
blue as the lined paper I am trying to fill
to speak words into, instilling life and love
as brief and sweet as I've been given
all these years:
feeling the slow sweltering room of decision
I've spent hours tripping over
the diverging paths between
familiarity and sex,
self and body,
monuments in France and the steady hand of home:
the choices engraved in Plato's shadowy caves
Sipping the sharp edge of Chagall, I sit above you
in the light, squinting
as I curl my fingers into
the page
Wishing I could reach inside you