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Text of Poems - Love, Erotica and Heartbreak
Even Now (2003)
Flame (2003)
Fountain (2003)
Haiku (2003)
Haiku (2003)
His Eyes (2003)
Impatience (2003)
Inertia (2007)
The Intemperate Heart (2003)
Last Impressions (2003)
Letter to the Younger Woman (2005)
Love in Flight (2004)
Love in the Meadow (2006)
Love Letters in the Void (2004)
Love Poem (2003)
Mirror (2004)
The Ocean in Your Eyes (2004)
Ode to Stolen Moments (2003)
Options (2006)
The Pool (2003)
Release (2003)
Sanctuary (2006)
Say it, Say it (2003)
Sitting Shiva for Love (2005)
Song (2003)
The Sumac Bower (2002)
Time Stands Still (2003)
Truths (2003)
Tug of War (2004)
When Inside Voice Escapes (2003)
Windswept Soul (2003)
Even now
though we step on one another’s toes
and move to different tunes,
sometimes we come together
and you dance inside me
and hold my breath in your eyes.
You are the flame
And I, the obedient moth
I fear what I crave
I must look away
Or be consumed.
With gentle tongue
I will slake my thirst
with the mingled milk and honey
from the trembling fountain.
The passion of lovers
burns glorious when shared
yet is rarely sustained.
I wait in silence
To touch your soul with my eyes
Your heart with my heart.
Swept me in
Held me back
Laid me bare
Judged me
Measured me
Calmed me
Frightened me
Aroused me
In a single gaze
My deep aching emptiness for you
will not wait for a bed.
Let me ride you where you sit
your face warmed by my breasts.
Lift me, suspend me,
brace the wall with my back.
Wrap my legs around you,
pierce the sky with our joy.
My kindness elicits your venom and spite
yet your smiles are unrelenting and remorseless.
Each time I accept their dizzying regularity,
your olive branches sprout thorns.
I recoil in pain, I seek solace, I lick my wounds -
you disguise the thorns better on the next pass.
I never ask myself whether I want their bitter fruit,
as if every meager offering must be accepted.
Clouds of disappointment crowd days that
stretch and linger and fade all hope of summer.
The intemperate heart must wait for love,
for passion equal to itself
no matter the pain, sorrow
inconstancy or solitude.
For to do otherwise,
for companionship, amity
for worthy compatibility,
is to walk as one dead among the living,
drawing breath without sight of it,
feeling flame without heat of it,
gazing at the sun without blindness.
I held snapshots of you in my memory;
The lines of your face,
the depths of your eyes,
and the colors of your words
were windows to hope.
It happened in a single moment;
Crippled with expectation,
we saw only one another’s selfishness.
I recoiled from your coldness;
you sneered at my anonymity.
Now, the briefest glimpse of your face
sets me shivering.
The blunt force of your voice
leaves me cold and empty,
hollow and unmoved.
In the corners of my emptiness
only shadows of you remain;
dim and imperfect and faded.
Yet I would wish for more light,
if it were offered.
Only your eyes in the softness of another season
can balm my heart,
and they are withheld from me.
How did I earn your disfavor?
Were my eyes not invitation enough to kindness?
You have left me hanging and jagged
as singed parchment
ready to crumble at a single breath.
My hair is not like yours:
It has the streaks that reveal experience.
Age, some would call it; but I call it wisdom,
and am proud to flaunt its shining tears.
My eyes are not like yours:
They crinkle with the joy and glow of living.
Though they can still darken with self-doubt,
they can search and know and impart grace.
My body is not like yours;
I am abundant and curved and soft,
and silvery knowingness is in my skin.
My hips have borne both lovers and children.
My sighs are not like yours:
I have long since abandoned
all pretense to convention or propriety,
and give and receive in equal and hungry measure.
But we are not so different, you and I:
The same arms have embraced us
The same lips have kissed us
The same eyes have betrayed us.
My love is a bird
flying over shifting horizons,
feathers blossoming
with each breath or breeze.
Let me not cage you
but love you
in all your beauty free.
Make love to me in the meadow,
awake to the starry night,
beneath a canopy of branches,
on a bed of leaf and vine.
Listen to the trees breathe in concert;
feel the earth thrum up into our bones.
There are love letters in the void -
murmurs to you
and whispers back;
gasps of commonality,
sighs of sharing,
warmth in our safe separateness.
I savor my dreams of you -
as secret as boundless joy can hold them.
We teach each other
by shouting,
by silence,
in masks and in nakedness.
You are my muse, my tormentor -
the touch of whose words
can sear me,
can save me,
can hold me
harmless and innocent and defiled.
You are a dream I allow myself
the light and love
of what is possible
and precious
and pure.
I didn’t want to be on a pedestal
looking down at him
or over his head on to something else.
I don’t want to set someone else on a pedestal
to suppress my own desires
or show him another view.
I want to be eye to eye
and hip to hip
I want to get my hands dirty
smell anger, denial, release
taste pain and ecstasy
eager to swallow
all you offer and demand.
Lock me in a deadly embrace
of blind fury and passion
leaving the noble sentiments behind.
Fill me with heat and rage
and fear and adoration
till I break with exquisite pain
and then I’ll climb back into your lap for more.
Take this bitter hunger from me
Feed me.
Does love need a mirror
to know its own face?
Does its secret make it sweeter?
There is ocean in your eyes -
Throw me a line
and pull me into the infinite.
I want to dive into the
unfathomable depths of your eyes
not fearing to fall
not fearing to land.
The ocean in your eyes
calms and excites
and frightens
in its unknowable depths -
Depths in which I would spend
a lifetime, lost.
Ode to Stolen Moments
It is impossible
to open a Skippy jar in silence -
I surreptitiously swirl the spoon full
and raise it
engorged and glistening
to my eager lips.
I slide my tongue firmly up one side
and then down the other,
Pressing it against the roof of my mouth
Bathing it with saliva
And in a burst of flavor
Letting it sublime down my throat
Options
The cage you chose
The bars you gnaw
The lock you never picked
The burdens you bear
The paths you take
The road that lays unseen.
The words that slip
The pain you inflict
The arms that ache, so empty
The embrace you crave
The love you hide
The lie you choose to live.
Your fingers are gliding as if
drawn as if by a silken thread
over the hillock
through the thicket
to the secret grove.
Enter the glade
and bathe in the pool.
Your splotchy wine glass
from last night’s episode
sparkles against the granite countertop.
I want to fling it against the wall
and watch its glittering shards
scatter and rain to the floor.
Hold your corners to my curves,
your steel to my silk.
Let me wash away your angst
in the waves of my hair.
Soothe your rough edges
against the swell of my belly.
Release your cries
into the warmth of my neck.
I am the moon and the tide
and the force to which you cleave.
Say it, Say it
You are sealing the duct tape over my mouth gently
as if remembering my allergy to adhesive.
I feel walls coming back up
shortening my arms
blunting my fingers
covering my eyes
starving me
suffocating me.
I’m barely treading water
in the belly of the beast
straining against a tether
rationing my time.
You are holding on so tightly,
while I am trying so hard to squeeze through your tentacles.
A word has coalesced on my tongue
forming a drop,
waiting for enough gravity
to fall resounding into your ear.
The one shall be as two;
turning the we upside down.
I want to gather my anthems of uniqueness about me
and remember who I am,
without judgment or blame,
and be the best person I can be…
Alone.
I try to speak
yet you pluck the very words from my vocal cords.
I’m sitting Shiva for love –
Sitting on the edge of the mattress
on the floor, rocking,
holding my pillow to my face
and remembering your scent.
I’m sitting Shiva for love –
Collecting shards of memories
From my pockets,
the nightstand,
every corner and counter.
I’m sitting Shiva for love –
Scrubbing off the pink nail polish
you loved so much,
rubbing away the streaks of mascara
and standing naked before the mirror.
I’m sitting Shiva for love –
Later, I will wash my sheets
sweep the floor, scrub the bathroom,
removing your skin, your hair,
and the scent of your cigarettes.
And tomorrow…
Tomorrow, I will paint my nails red and
I will draw my eyes bright and my smile wide
and I will dance as if it were Purim.
And you, my love,
you will be but a thing
of pebbles and candles and Kaddish.
Take the instrument into your hands
Tuned to your touch
Bring forth mournful, moanful song.
The Muscadine grapes hang high in the pine trees,
pendulous and sweet.
The sea of reedy grasses
parts before us under a late summer sun
Waving dill, butterflies in suspended animation,
milk weed pods ready to burst.
I’ll lead you to the sumac bower;
Yarrow and Indian paintbrush lining our path.
Lay down with me in the lacy shadows,
make the tufted grass our bed.
Join our song with the meadowlarks and the locusts
and our fragrance with the sunlit herbs.
When our eyes first met,
everyone else in the room blushed.
I remember the sound of the door opening,
the light steps of your moccasined feet
the sway of your hips,
your shoulders, your hands,
and the intensity with which
your eyes fixed on mine.
I remember the most trivial details
of your clothing,
but I remember not a word
of our fragmented conversation
over the next four hours
while I waited for your shift to end.
I remember most
the cool grass of the park,
and the scent of the Russian Olives,
with the Pleaides
and the dew falling around us.
Some things cannot be said
in the light of day.
Truths that flew eagerly
from hungry lips
and moonlit arms
are bound and gagged
in the harsh light of morning;
our courage stolen
our masks replaced
context and practicality restored.
Does the sun remind us of Icarus?
Remind us not to fall?
A rope in a tug of love
a hug struggle
fraying over a fulcrum of need
abrading and giving and taking and giving and
taking and taking and taking
and leaving.
When Inside Voice Escapes
1.
It’s all about you
what YOU don’t want to lose,
the time YOU want with me;
As you cling more tightly
I fly further away.
You don’t listen to my fears;
My words bounce off you
like hailstones in the lawn.
You don’t respect my time;
Sometimes I feel I am drowning
in a sea of trivial crap.
2.
I have no inherent value;
I’m a natural resource
whose assets must be metered
and carefully exploited.
I’m controlled and constricted;
I’m the quaking aspen
whose roots must be poisoned
to prevent spreading.
I’m free for the taking;
I have boundless natural predators.
Yet my defenses are toothless
to restrain them.
I’m invisible;
I’m the grass by the garden
to be felled with a weed whacker
when I obscure your view of the flowers.
3.
I want to excise my dreams with a scalpel
to make the pain stop.
Don’t you realize
I’ve wanted to drown
in a bathtub of my own blood?
I want to stand
in my own space,
in my own shade,
not yours.
I want to hear my own thoughts
vying for air time
with the leaves in the apple tree
and the thistles in the field.
What do you do when your soul sings to you
of feelings you'd safely packed away
and plants within your heart
the dream of another?
Does depression infuse attraction with desperation?
Is infatuation always unrealistic?
Is it always immature?
Or is it premature?
Does healing allow infatuation to be genuine?
Can it be a seed for something else,
to flourish and bear fruit
or to wither for lack or nourishment or opportunity?
Does infatuation compensate
for lost opportunities for immortality?
Plotting escape from the ordinary
striving for a life that matters
clutching pregnant moments
that hang like drops on a glass
slipping with the weight of memories.
Can you rekindle for someone
a spark that was never lit?
Can you cultivate that which runs wild?
Can love endure without hunger?
Do you suffocate your soul
in repressing passionate kinship?
Will patient commitment suffice to withstand
the bloom of passion for another?
Is it natural for a windswept soul
to tether the head and heart?
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