Poem: August 31, 2019

Kissing

It's time we did some kissing.
None of that pursed-lip pecking
on the way out the door, or the
dry cheek sacrificial offering
before the makeup mirror.
I'm talking about kissing. Making
out. The kind you can't wait
to do the first time you go out.
The open-lipped, pulling each
other together, searching with
the mouth. The coming up for
air and diving right back down,
whole body kind of kissing in
which our lips can't seem to
ever get enough, in which our
muscles flex and hands grasp
and eyes close and our chests
are pressed together, expanding
like bellows, and we say Mmmm
into each other because aren't we
delicious. And you might think
I'm confused, that I'm talking
about sex (because isn't that what
happens when that bottle gets
uncapped). But I am talking
about kissing. K-I-S-S-I-N-G.
The carbonated, blinding, mystic
space. The wet and wordless
convergence of our faces. The
celebration of tongue and teeth.
The slow, sloppy teen-age type
of race to the top of one another
that lingers at every. blessed. step.
The kind of kissing that sparks
and pops and leaves us panting
at the edge of an unguarded drop
into one another. A hovering and
heaving collection of pauses
before we are sent into the frenzy
and eventually relent, spent and
melted down, muddled, worn,
a puddle of our former selves.

Poem: August 30, 2019

Drawing Horses on the Program

At the funeral, I am interested
in the kids, the little girls with
their hair pulled tight into bows,
the boys with their scruffiness
and sports jackets. One child
spends most of the eulogy
flopped around her mother's
neck, looking back at me and
when the solemn hymn begins,
she claps her hands. My own
daughter, older, lowers her head
during prayer to fidget at the
buttons on her dress and flip
the program, front to back,
looking for something else to
read. As adults, we come to
recognize the structures of this
ceremony, our purpose here.
We let go. We say what needs
to be said. We hold our hands
out just so. We stand and brace
against an invisible storm that
we all have had to lean into, but
the children, not as used to the
comforts of hard and formal
surfaces, not as comfortable
with the tightness of ties and
dress shoes, still find in this
space their quiet ways to play.

Poem: August 29, 2019

The Point Is

They say you can't blame a guy
for trying, but at some point,
you can because after a while,
if he's still trying, he's no longer
stubbornly reaching for his goal
so much as he's aware that if
he quits, he will have certainly
been a fool to those around him.
People will laugh at him at
cocktail parties and say, "Do you
remember when you failed?"
But if he persists, he thinks,
he may draw the gambler's lucky
break, and prove the future wrong,
succeed despite clear evidence
and lengthening odds, and his
efforts will reward him with a
smudged trophy, a worn sash,
the title of Not Fool, and we can
blame a guy for trying not to be
a fool instead of trying to be wise.

Poem: August 28, 2019

Aujourd'hui, Je Veux être Tranquille

Aujourd'hui, je veux être tranquille,
assis sur un petit balcon au-dessus
de Paris, avec des géraniums en pot
à côté de moi sur une table en fer forgé.
Une tasse de café. Un livre de poésie
sur mes genoux. Des sons lointains,
comme des rêves, flottant dans les airs.

Today, I want to be quiet,
sitting on some small balcony
above Paris, with potted geraniums
beside me on a wrought iron table.
A cup of coffee. A book of poetry
in my lap. Faraway sounds,
like dreams, floating in the air.

Poem: August 27, 2019

Inflexible

People who can touch their toes,
or their palms to the floor, frustrate
me no end. I bend about as well
as a concrete block, my hands
barely reaching my knees before
my hamstrings protest and my
legs fold rather than suffer another
millimeter of stretch, and if this
was a metaphor, I would have to
feel ashamed, but it's not and
I don't and you can't make me.

Poem: August 26, 2019

Post Cards

Maybe if we had written poetry
instead of the usual Having 
a great time! Wish you were here!
we could have rescued the pleasure
of sending post cards, with their
maps and landscapes and slice-
of-life photography. Now it's all
low-brow humor, beer and busty
women. Something to be hung up,
where?, in a garage or bar? In
a fraternity house, I suppose, but
in college, I remember collecting
post cards, filling whole cork
boards and walls with Monet's
Waterlilies and Millais' Ophelia,
Count Basie in mid-performance,
a cow alone in an autumn field,
Bob Dylan, Han Solo, a black
and white still life of a microphone.
Rectangles to contemplate at odd
angles, a canvas, when flipped,
for a few lines- a haiku or rhymed
couplet, and who can say how
things might have been different,
had they been addressed and
dropped in the outgoing mail?

Poem: August 25, 2019

Ars Poetica

I come back, always, squeezing
sand and water in my hands, shaping
what I have in front of me into
some shape, rough and unfinishable,
that approximates what small
handfuls I can reach inside myself,
stripping away dimension, letting
only part of the light in, certain I
can satisfy myself, less certain I
can make sense to others, everything
crumbling on the page as it does,
and given that the days shift, slide,
and we all have our own shadows,
and blowing winds, and distances,
and lapping tides, and hours in
the day in which the light is just so.
So who can say, even, what we've
built together, who can say what
we've built alone? Press your fingers
in deep and it starts to fall away. But
I come back, always, rubbing hands
along grainy surfaces, building broken
cathedrals to celebrate, to bear witness
to the elegance of erosion and decay.