swindled our swan songs like elbow room on a flight

i know you didn't care if i made it home that night

swept all my emptiness that just became un-kept

hiding under my pillow, leaving while you slept

hey. i didn't forget this.

stinkybutt

i want to be held by you
by your voice your hands your face lips mouth ears you hear
when i talk not like someone
waiting to speak

i enjoy you
your words,
your taste.
i miss you and it stings.

not writing

i promised you a poem

expecting to pull that slime out of me

like puking on pages

but i can't find the words

mushrooms

i remember wanting to do

psychedelic mushrooms with you

i thought it would make us.

sanguine

another heart I turned blue.

(found it useless to seek) a new me in you

haven't written in ages

here staring at pages

they look back blankly inside their cages

i am chewing the traces

of yesterday's poem, last year's regret,

and formulated phrases, like "now's not the time,"

"your eyes don't match mine,"

content with dispair, and perfectly fine

swallowing it all with wine.

ooo

in the morning i felt your fingertips after you left

they told me i could love you

but maybe some other morning

when we had the time.

nothing yet

by now

you patented the smile on my lips,

and maybe even my hips.

A closet full of make-up,

learning colors

downstairs, Grandpa in the darkroom. (while the fan swayed its arms,

your orchid watched.)

Counting backwards, she makes room for us all--

unveils the evening: a scrabble board.

we learn colors

upstairs,

her chest full of scarves.

Careful careful hands held us

enveloped into a charmed dance

of the softest quiet beauty within my Grandmother's hands.

Poetry's Pulse

In gardens occupying each others

mind and body as a tree full of birds.

Coffee for the morning, glanced at our clothes

Both formed quiet comfort, without showing

Loveliness and lull on our rooted rhymes

Talked the way out of dinner plans, climbed back in bed

(Instead of seeing a movie we saw each other's eyes)

feel pulps of a dawning kiss, our cadence, this bliss.

felt like writing something. needs work as does everything but feels so good to see a poem.

Uncle Ross

Technical Drawing by Ross Feld

It’s different than invention, burdocks
pulled off alone, let’s say alone.

I can’t take my own comparisons
nor make active the dumb rust machines
that are leased within.

Call it what you like but what rhymes
with peach is reach, teach,
beseech, all in a chorus of some positive
drawl, getting there.

Or with cherry? merry, berry, ferry
into some days you can’t get enough of.

But my invention. Not the novel of
insects. Plum with
dumb, come, some rum
soaked half-life burning

and sighing in a small wind.
Inadequate. My song sung. And just
too much for invention, phased

out, obsolete, parsed.

Reveille

The heart is too easily awakened by things
like the telephone. It is whipped from
its own tired science by a

noise, it sets down the figures of women
who ran, wild-haired, thru its dream. Women,
scenting the world with morning,
cut grass, damp breasts, an
odor of plums.
The heart lay there absolutely
mute and fascinated

by these visitors who had something
to do with happiness but now it

drops them and they crack. Broken women,
broken plums. The telephone rings and says,

"This is the operator,
Fuck you."