Emotional stealth.
Laura is
in the face of adversity.
Sitting unsteady,
head cocked,
puzzled brow.
Every atom quivering.
She’s confused.
“What a pretty picture!”
the lady dentist said.
“Ah,” I returned, “but this is no picture.
This is a puzzle for you to figure out
with your hands,
with your lips,
with your slow touch.”
“Thank you” she said
and she took the puzzle
and walked away.
I had the thought to
slide my face up against
the hot, rough skin of the tree that grows in our front yard,
jagged brown bark,
and maybe tear a hunk of it off.
A lump of steaming flesh with that
glistening yellowey fat
shorn right off.
I would stare stare stare.
Actually I think it would more resemble
some whiting flesh.
All feathery and soft and cold and silvery
and quivering.
I’m not pink inside.
I’m not a seeping red.
I can imagine
how I’d feel with
such a large chunk of me
missing.
Snippity snap
I was listening open-jawed,
wide
to that soprano
you didn’t like.
I could tell.
Highs and lows. Your cheeks
would burn.
You were playing board games
over your legs.
No ladders,
but I could spy snakes galore.
Biblical proportions.
And they were such that
I had to stare at all the polished shoes
of the cellists in front of me.
But I was stealing
secretly.
Glances of you. To sell off to myself later.
Oh, what an honest thief!
On the bus back,
before we had to get out and walk,
you held my arm in your hand,
Your little grip on my heart,
And slept slept slept.
And I was so warm
and the moment so beat up with hammers
that I tried my best to cry quietly
so I wouldn’t wake you.
This is one of those ‘lie awake all night’ things
isn’t it?
Your face is small in the dark
of a thousand unlit street lamps.
Our coats couldn’t hold out the blusters
but our hands held
out the cold.
Your heart held out.
Your cigarette smoke hung on the air
and on your lips.
This is one of those lingering, quivering smiles
isn’t it?
Why won’t you let me sleep?
I’m waiting for you to explain.
And when you do
all my prayers will be answered.
Everywhere I went today
you were with me.
Not in body
but in scent.
You were up to your elbows in nasal mucus.
Appologies about the head cold and the horrible image.
But you can make anything
beautiful.
You were everywhere I looked.
Swimming through my Vitreous humour.
Every turning head was yours.
Every wayward curl hiding that smile.
Oh that smile.
Everywhere I went today
you were there.
You are here.
Oh how I wish you were
here now.
–This poem is officially dedicated to slynne.
Thanks for the kind words and Happy Birthday.
This is a case of rediscovering love
and the softness of heart
that I have only known from you.
I believe the message here is
“Don’t try too hard
but don’t give up,
and don’t lose hope”
And I haven’t.
I hope you’re not shaking your head because of all this
undeserving
that you kept whispering to me
with those black lips.
Come here.
Your magic.
You are a jellyfish.
You swim without fell purpose.
You hark of another world.
Some regard you as beautiful,
ethereal and glimmering. Glowing of your own light.
Some regard you as hideous,
a thing to be stood on and prodded with sharpness (of word).
You cannot deserve.
You have no harpoon tale,
no visible jaggedness.
Yet you have a poison. You sting.
A movement graceful yet foreign:
You bloom like a flower, with tenfold speed.
You close like a puckered, forced kiss.
You move.
You are a jellyfish,
floating away.
At the risk of sounding adolescent and naive.
No love-lorn ancient I.
But being yet still innocent,
It is suffice to say that
the very utterance of your name
paints the most magnificent picture in me.
Why would you make yourself less
than what you are?
Shrinking away, hiding treasures beneath a smouldering veil.
You are beautiful.
But perhaps it is this small self-shame,
this desire to be unknown, undiscovered
that so inclines my eye.
Your smile is soft.
It makes my heart warm.
Your lips are no devil-sent apple,
though they are red as blood.
Your soft touch eases and troubles my heart.
That those few seconds
might last in me
beyond those of others and ever on.
There are far too many words to use, tales already told.
Let your soft lips and mine
tell our own tale
late into the night.
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