Writing 5 Poems at once

Plaid runs hot on the roof of my mouth
Screaming and scrapping perpendicular
colors getting more and more confident in their contrast.

I love the red pen
proving there's life in writing
things unfurl and beat like a paper bird
in the wind
that is strong enough to rattle the wind chimes.

I am swallowing the expectations.
and being run by my typos
I want to pull and spit
And then I want rip a bird from my wind chime lungs.

Talk

Networking
In conversation
those eyes were dancing like two sparrows on a chain link fence
open and round and swaying like an amber thicket beneath the moon
mouths moving in pink agreement
we ended like an unfinished sentence
or a greeting card whose punchline is waiting to be opened.

I think about your throat
and hope you don't notice the forwardness on my face.
beneath the shadows colliding like breezy lace
our tongues press down the angles of the sun,
is it night already?
I am thinking and you make me think about
how telephone poles must keep each other from being lonely
when they live in the desert.
So many lines pressing up and marking the belly of sky
like swooping bars of music

Ghost music whispered though the blades of a ceiling fan.
I can hear your voice from all the way across the country
summer heat boils into syllables and anxious talking over talking.
You're my favorite one to interrupt.

IT'S BEEN SO DASTARDLY LONG AND I AM SORRY!!!

(but more poems forthcoming!!!)

7/27 (listening to a friend work on a story)
Silvery fricatives bouncing out in a tonguish frenzy
sharp notes telling stories
that carve out spaces in the dark.
It’s not quite music
but there are those who sway
& close their eyes as if it were.
Your body in this story
is a crow’s beak cracking
& your hands are a lucky blanket with a few holes worn into it.


6/28 restaurant poem
Butcher paper flakes and flails
bunching like hide beneath the palms.

This love note is for high high kite flying
—for anchoring lightning to your heart keys
—for making science of electrical storms.
This love note is meant to be turned upsidedown
in the answer key of your calculus textbook.



6/29
Your kiss pulls the fire alarm in my lungs,
whistles & bells become a beehive between the ears
& every sensible adult fiber of my being is running about,
Wild with the notion of fire.

8/12
The moon sees right through me tonight.
Quiet and timeless in her lavender stockings
she thumbs around that flat pastel landscape,
and makes the adjectives run rampant over a tumble of timorous thoughts.

The evening is just staring to grow out its beard,
Jellyfish torn up & pressed against distant mountain shapes.
I am simple & slightly sore in this story on the island at twilight
& in this story all of the light bulbs flash then die out
at every gasp of emptied lusty breath
our throats pull what they can from the smoke-filled air.
When we come together I begin breathing like a light house.

Sinews push action electric through the skin
Our moon is burning brighter now,
swinging like a single breast waiting to be bookended.
I’ve always thought that the sky should have at least two moons
like the sky is actually just some big cloth wrapped around a woman’s body,
at most a single breast slips out once
maybe twice a month.

We would swing that other moon into action
Smashing out new gravity.
Catastrophic tidal changes would ensue,
Our bodies becoming flooded coastal cities.
Thick red algae washes up on street corners.
Between crashes of water & light
I watch your skyscraper eyes getting their feet wet.
And when we open out mouths to speak
Only the low grinding of whale song comes out.

(I think this one is really yummy but it needs some working over before it is book ready!)