Why does everyone on the net a) feel the need to post poetry, and b) feel the need to apologize for it? Just a question.
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Song One: Conversation/Song for Colorado
You say, baby, do I talk too much?
and I say, it depends, it's a crutch
You say, I compulsively do it
and I am thinking,
at least you recognize that bit.
We have to believe in something
to get us through the day,
and if we can't believe in each other
We might as well just fade away.
I am far from perfect, but then, so are you,
and if we always dwell on shades of perfection,
then nothing will be true
We talk about our blood, European mongrels,
and I think, we are all a human stew.
You don't want to touch me,
and that's okay, I'm sure,
but at the same time, see,
my heart's a little sore.
I want to ask you, why this sudden range,
but I know that I'm caught in the folds of your past,
a past we cannot change.
I flow throughout your memory
like the bitch who wouldn't die
and I roll with your selfishness
like rolling with the tide.
I suppose platonic is better, maybe even best,
it's just not what I was prepared for,
I didn't set off on this quest
And I don't mind not having sex,
but God knows I need to be held
and you have to be open to me
you have to let us meld.
You say, baby, why don't you talk,
and I say, it requires you to listen
it requires you to grok.
Not with your body, but with your heart and hands,
because otherwise, my baby,
you will never understand.
We have to believe in something,
to get us through the day,
and if we can't believe in each other
we might as well just fade away.
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Song Two: For a Word Processor
Poetry
is a curious itch
that needs to be scratched
fleas biting
the inside of my brain –
ah, well, I need some cultural soap
to wash
and dilute
this primitive urge of living
this nagging housewife
in my brain –
keep your room clean,
keep your
thoughts on paper.
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Song Three: Song for my Backpack Straps
Ah to travel is both ridiculous and fearsome
a backwards high dive, maybe?
Travel is
getting caught in the busdoor
in Rome
and eating curry off the street
Curry and fried bananas
in Thailand
I want to travel
but at the same time
it scares the hell out of me
But I’ve got to
keep traveling
until I finally
figure out how to pack a backpack
to my satisfaction
which probably means
I’ll never quit.
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Song Four: Song of Angst
Home again
home a
gain I jump the puddles in the driveway
where are our
homes? Distant
far removed, that
was one thing
my mother never found
was a knowledge
of home.
Now forty years later
I lie in her teen
age room, her bed,
and I know
that this was never
her home.
I know that
I don’t have a home
either. We are
both wand-
erer’s and home-
bodies in the same breath.
Like mother,
like daughter,
as I lie on her bed,
so many miles
so many years
Away
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Song Five: Word Processor redux; Meditations 1
Sometimes
(ah what a beautiful word –
occasionally but not never)
I feel my body start
to slip between my fingers
turn thin and supple
then brittle; my life is merging with
paper, pen, the written word rising up to meet
and devour my soul,
my physical form too,
as I see my life flutter,
back and forth, humble to the winds of change
like the sheaves of a book;
page by page. . .
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Song Six: Silliness
I am watching my boyfriend fence,
and am wondering, do men have any sense?
They knock each other about with swords,
I guess the lovely maiden was always bored
They run around on the grass
And I am feeling quite harassed
They shout and grunt, thrust and parry,
And I think, this is one I’ll never marry
They wipe their brows, sweat flows from their head,
and I suppose their brains must be made of lead.
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Song Seven: Song for Destruction
I want
Prometheus’ vulture
to come to me, on this mountain where I stand,
and rip out my heart, my lungs, my mind,
rip out those things that give me so much pain.
I want that vulture
to eat my marrow,
chew it slowly,
enjoy it’s tenderness.
I want
termites
to crave my body
to nibble it away
to feast on my wooden flesh,
to leave me nothing but bones,
bones with no feeling.
I want
to live my life
not seductively imagine it
not believe it as that which it is not
Must I
be tossed by these throws of myself
these birthing pains?
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Song Eight: Song of Self
I came across
a curved mirror
in the funhouse of your soul;
Some artful piece of light,
that bounced across my visage,
and showed me
distorted, twisted,
not myself
in a way that I had never seen before.
Is this how I look to you,
I wondered,
Or is it some trick,
of two curved mirrors
facing each other
bouncing back and forth,
to an unknown eternity?
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Song Nine: Song of Spirit: Cahokia
I am writing a poem
about being holy
Not because I am
holy all the time
but I am holy occasionally
We all are
Occasionally
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