dopplegangers.

for Elizabeth:my sister, who knows.

erelong our buds will blossom into buttercups.

life's too short for me not to say that

i...well, doihavetosay? won't this poem do? 'cause the

zealots with their branding rods have

anchored us together, like the extra A between your names,

but brazen, you dare not drown. you say, think quick, for

even as our lives are taken out of context,
there is still a literary chance - we
have yet to be mollified in Flanders

now, i see that some days
are far worse off than others,

but if disaster strikes on monday
would we leave our A's behind
two Gretels grasping for breadcrumbs
on the other side of the week?

now i feel that when we speak
our zaftig shapes sway to the beat of
dangerously different drummers

even our discord is divine
just know that i too taste it,
our friendship bitter-sweet
and while you've never seen me weep,
during nights of fitful sleep
i hear your whispers - how they
tranquilise and fortify me...
saying shh, just listen: you and i?

we're just a couple of fellows:

fellow, "don't you know each other?"

same glasses, different mothers

fellow black, up-and-coming

twenty-somethings. my fellow,

"you look like a fella, girl!"

we take fellow clumsy steps, 
unstable we fall feeble over fabled

fields filled with
flourishing blossoms

and buttercups.

yet brazen, we dare not drown.

on the shine i've taken that won't dull down.

The characters in this poem are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.*

Special person,
if I were you I'd pay no attention
to admonitions from me... 
                                              ...To love another is something
like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall
into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief. 
-Anne Sexton

 

dismissal, devotion.

each blue eye

on the same bright face

nulls the space that lays

numbed by her candor which

echoes- rings out - in ardor, in ardor, in ardor

ebullience. 'til an ending.

no one knows that i will

never match the rhythm of her heartbeat. with

one pound and three-quarters of premature chagrin i

expect the question; maudlin, mirrored: 

do i? i think i do

 

for her smile's the same at six as it was at two,

her hair shimmers its blonde good morning.

we stroll for one night onto hard-pressed streets,

and onto my pages she comes pouring.

the gentlest glance turns to the softest blush

and i'm soaring...

          i'm soaring...

                     i'm soaring

*except, of course, if i'm referring directly to You. which i am.

lunch in a parallel universe.

Somewhere, in a town completely unlike the one you grew up in, there are two women at lunch- mother and daughter, obviously. The girl is beautiful, tall, twenty-five or so. Yet she can't sit still in her seat. She bounces around, tosses her hair, eats too fast, talks a mile a minute while looking all around just in case there is something interesting she hasn't seen yet and can talk about. The mother is also beautiful, perhaps sixty, her eyes alone are a 500-paged novel. Serene and smiling she is a total contrast to the young woman sitting across the table. How happy she is to be here with her daughter, how proud. Not many years ago this is the same child who frequently tried every bit of patience she had. The difficult student, the one with dyslexia or ADHD, or just wildly impatient about anything that didn't interest her. But now look at her- this wonder, this young woman who is moving way too quickly out of her mother's life and into her own. She has already set sail and we can only watch. But today she's generous enough to have lunch with Mom and talk about things that matter with her first, her greatest pal. She doesn't even know it is a gift. But Mom does.

on the difficulties of living every week like it's shark week when you're the bait (a pantoum).

Since the last poem made use of the metonym, I decided to opt for a bit more transparency in this entry, which I've actually been working on for a while. At Deonne's reading a few weeks ago, a guy went up before her (or maybe afterwards- there was free Scotch, so who can say for sure?) and read a few poems, one of which was a pantoum, a form in which the first and third lines of a verse is always the same as the second and fourth lines of the previous quatrain. Harder than it sounds, especially when you're not a poet, which I'm not... If it weren't so angry I'd dedicate it to certain FPers who know where i'm coming from and help me see where i'm goin'.

my bad habits and i,
we may need couple's counseling
i can't always be "on" or "off"
moods shifting like swedish seasons.

we may need couple's counseling.
at night when we turn our backs i say
i can't always be "on" or "off"-
i smell blood in the water,

at night when we turn our backs. i say-
i plead with you to leave me-
i smell blood in the water!
my tears bleed through your pillows.

i plead with you to leave me
"the sharks," i say, "they're circling"
my tears bleed closer to your pillow
but like bait, you've thrown me over

the sharks!! i say, they're circling!
as i'm clinging to your pillow
like bait, you've thrown me over
i swim towards them, i'm a martyr.

as i'm clinging to your pillow
they tear me limb from limb
i swam towards them, good little... martyr.
i hope they save a piece for you

god, how they tear me limb from limb!
it's nothing i haven't already done
i hope they save a piece for you
self-flagellation's not just for christians, 

it's nothing i haven't already done 
anything for you to love me.
self-flagellation's not just for christians
your reticence keeps me under

i'll do anything for you to love me
so my moods shift like swedish seasons
as they devour the final piece i think
yes, we may need couple's counseling.