Ditch the ads, upload images and much more - upgrade today from 5.95/month!
Read • Contests • Groups • Learn • Forums • Store • Help
 

Poetry Portfolio



POETRY PORTFOLIO


   
 OCTOBER WEEPS
 (In memory of poet-friend, J.T.)

 I follow the unlit road
 tucked within hilly blindfolds
 to the place you once lived.
 You're gone two months now,
 seasons pass unceremoniously.
 Though summer to autumn
 fall lightly as clockwork,
 you lay on me heavy tonight.

 I need to see the dim light
 from your window,
 the Ford pick-up waiting
 for you at the curb.
 I want to hear your voice
 stuttered yet steady
 sing somber Cohen songs
 you've left me humming.
 I want to snatch up the poems
 strung from high leafy branches...
 We laughed about this long ago.

 Your house is all blackness,
 old pick-up hauled off,
 the music stops inside my head.
 Trees stand solemn witness,
 all too quiet and bare.
 Dry leaves skitter
 across the dark roadway
 like ashes,
 unwritten poems
 these leaves.
 
 
  
BLACK HANDS

This is Texas, early 1960's.
This is ESSO
before tiger tail,
I'm almost ten.
There's a sideyard
of rusted jalopies.
A metal "Mechanic on Duty"
sign clings in the wind.

I watch his hands
move like quick wrenches
deep inside the guts
of an old Chevy.
I'm thinking it's strange
God made the colored
with black
and white hands.

A trooper pulls up,
slips a couple dimes in
the slot for a Pepsi, kicks
the machine and calls
out, Hey Boy,
this he-ah
pop machine's
done-damn broke. 

And the colored man
mechanic
wipes his hands
on his pants leg,
drops his eyes
and says
Sorry Suh,
I apologize.
 

  

ONLY TO SAY


I wanted you to gesture,
acknowledge...anything.
When you said nothing
my cold hands wrestled,
my mind went back


thinking to last summer.
I always brought a sweater
because Potomac breezes
always were too cold and
I always layer


words with dual meanings.
I won't write about hearts
or missing things or things
like that, though you never
read my poems


but I wish you had.
I only wrote things like
do you still love me or
t's so cold lately.  So maybe
you could've said


flat-out yes or no,
it's not that important, or
given some indication if only
to let me know how cold
it had become.
 

 
  
YOU NEVER SLEPT WITH SYLVIA PLATH
     
 You never slept with Sylvia Plath,
 yet you have a need to tell me
 how you met up at a party that night
 and she kissed you hard,
 you kissed her harder.
 Your tongue touched her very voice
 and the world wobbled
 that night.

 You never slept with Sylvia Plath
 though you kissed her hard
 and she kissed you harder.
 Worried husband Ted might see,
 you offered to get a room for the night.
 She threw back her head
 in laughter so full
 yet empty as a late-night street.

 You never slept with Sylvia Plath
 though she had the fever
 and you had the cure,
 she slept alone in the oven that night.
 It must be hard for you
 having kissed her,
 yet harder for her
 kissing you
 that night. 

  
   BUT TO SLEEP WITH ALLEN GINSBERG

   I am determined to sleep with Allen Ginsberg.
   He's over there, sloshing down cheap red wine,
   tinkering with lines of some new poem.
   I sip white, watch and wait,
   undo my neckline
   one button lower...
   You must remember this is 1955.

   He steps forward, rising like a rabbi
   to us, a curious cautious congregation
   anticipating his first experimental breath.
   "I saw the best minds of my generation..."
   he bellows, balloons.
   I am determined to sleep with Allen Ginsberg...
   But this is 1955, the FBI is watching tonight.

   He heaves another breath of momentum,
   throwing himself into a passion.
   A rant of defiance, a challenge to system.
   We follow his voice, resonant, brave.
   I imagine his coarse black beard
   tickling over my breast...
   But the FBI, U.S. senators are watching tonight.

   We want to follow this new Messiah,
   chain ourselves to his star.
   We want that he rival priests' Sunday sermon.
   I am determined to sleep with Allen Ginsberg,
   feel his breath enclosed on my own nipple-stars...
   But this is 1955, the FBI, U.S. senators,
   old McCarthyites are watching tonight.

   He falls back, exhausted and weeping.
   We're wailing back, "Go!  Go! Go! Go!"
   I want to toss myself to Allen Ginsberg,
   make myself his inspiration of flesh...
   But the FBI, U.S. senators, old McCarthyites,
   the D.A. proclaiming obscene--
   The whole world, watching tonight.

   I re-do the button of my blouse.
   You must remember,
   this is 1955. 
 

 
  
 chopsticks
 holding the full moon
 an empty bowl
 

       setting sun
       in an outstretched mitt
       the fly ball
 
 
bare bonsai--
winter silence deepens
in everything
 
 
       winter quilt--
       a sunlit patch of calico
       catnaps
 
 
 half-drunk
 moon in the sake cup
 disappears
 



A contest entry

    : , Your review:

    Comment Suggestion: What is your your first impression?
    • Line numbers  • Invite them to read
    : no Cost: 0 free left 0 points, You have (?)