
POEM FOR DENISE


RIDE
I am not in
a rocket ship.
I am not
on the Hawking express
edging across time.
I am on
a regular flight
just a
mere 37, 000 feet above sea level
longing for a
soft landing, home
in your arms and
then (beloved turbulence),
the truly seat-of-pants, much
bumpy
ride.
WROTE
wrote
a poem
for you
the words
bleeding through
memories so
powerful
painful
hearts
torn
in
two
ANYWAY
my love
was not enough
stuttering, halting
it was
never enough
and so
we lost each other
lost life
hardest price
to pay
we paid
it anyway
love
the commodity
cannot bear
exchange
BEYOND (YOUR) EMBRACE no melding tonite your mind closing like an anxious wound infection, infiltration, metaphors of sickness seep still into the body politic have done so, I am afraid, since the beginning of time but the risk, you tell me, the danger sheer danger of reaching out whatever the payoff, whatever heaven in that yield risk run (you calculate) is catastrophic better to err on the side of hate
OF BELIEF Thought I should write love poem to (and for) the world but it probably will not end how I think it should how i wanted it to thos is the issue with creation never turns out how you hoped or thought and there is no going back to the drawing board Oh the architecture happening right now in my brain, my head, lying naked on the bed in my tiny house on this farm curtains closed lights left off (even if out of loadshedding but a moment before) imagining I could just rachet up the sensitivity and feel the flowers grow hear them breathe and talking (thinking) of nakedness, my dear, is yours not overdue? but hold that thought even worse news from the Middle East streaming in pictures of Dantesque horror words of insanity, of satirical vulnerability everything up to the max pushed to extremes (not what Aristotle was thinking what he figured on teleology would derail poor Socrates in his project of self-knowledge and moral sphere) things here so naked, exposed in all their ugliness (by every metric) bleak intensity things the world of the farm would not believe and so naked as I am speaking to you calling out to you wondering what your good self might make good or best and even better in whatever illogical gradation fullness of our together might sway the nature of belief.
NO EASY MEASURE
there are many ways
to start a poem
maybe an image, a theme
a rhythm
bouncing
around in your head
snake-like
rasp of word
many ways too,
to enter a poem
linear or
non-linear
syntactic
or symbolic
feeling your way
set to full tactile
or up
for helicopter shot
to view
as mosaic
put
everything
in perspective
then
fill in the detail
induced, deduced
seduced
at your pleasure
although
linger on
this thought
if you will, let us dissect
this
dark treasure
only
fair to point out,
to leave a poem, however,
(speaking
of seduction)
is no
easy measure
here is the poem
here is we are
unexpectedly
together
not so many ways down
from that height
this height,
routes
out of the labyrinth
this
labyrinth
safe and
without cost
hardly enough
to count on the
fingers
of one hand
so many surrendered
to the poem, dissolved,
got
absorbed by
poetry
something about
the beauty
of this python still
to comprehend
as it
closes the circle
you now mine forever
RICH I am waiting, searching for my perfect being but I fear she will be made of anti-matter altogether, too complementary and so in the face of an oppositional universe I turn to poetry, just vegetate scour for a physics that might suit md better, sweeter, finer truly orgiastic resonating like bongos played in bars and night clubs by some California genius spirit a figure so rich pushing the outside of the envelope with every squiggle of chalk smooth stroke of his pen
M have alwayd loved you from the first moment I saw you all those years ago I loved you despite the impossibility but now to see you defending the indefensible speaking the unspeakable I no longer know what love is do not know if there can be love anymore
SUMMIT ten thousand candles a sea of flowers hundred bottles of fragrant oils and above all three stage booster . to launch our capsule summit of my romantic desires