Two short poems.  One is from people watching this weekend, the other was from a bank meeting earlier in the week when I was pretending to take notes.

Tuff Grrrl

It was meant to be a statement
T-U-F-F spelled across the left knuckle
making the fist held up show
that she was one to be reckoned with.
The chin rose and the head bobbed,
heels coming off the floor as she marched
like a proud stallion, ornery and beautiful,
the jut of small breasts peeking out
beneath the gray tank shirt.

Her lover gently stroked a soft line
on the back of the arm,
gathering her fingers in the waiting palm;
grace softened the face with the ache of affection
and the tuff hand curved around
the gentle circle of hip
with a nuzzle of mouth against the temple,
and the weathered heart pulsed
red with love and stories to tell.

In August

A cell of heat the size of a city block
rises amidst a field of asphault
leaving the heavy air motionless,
unable to leave the exhalation of sunlight
as it hangs, dripping onto everything
lingering like an old woman’s rose perfume.

A short prose piece from this afternoon, written while watching the happy old married couple across the street. 

Beauty

     She studied him thoroughly with the care and exactitude of a scientist mulling over a case study.  Her fascination with him had long confused her.  Aesthetically speaking, he was not a beautiful man.  The hair was far more gray than black and so closely cropped to his head that it was nearly shaved.  His jaw and chin were soft and round.  The smile, though large and vibrantly displayed, revealed snaggled teeth.  The chest and arms were too broad and strong to be considered tender and the belly protruded beyond the belt line.  His skin was deeply tanned and weathered from many summers tending the pools and gardens of the well-to-do.

     It was the internal man that stripped her of normal restraint and propriety.  His broad back did not bend beneath the weight of hard work and responsibility.  His cornflower eyes danced with joie de vivre and effervesced with intelligence and wisdom.  She knew every fiber of his body from his thickly muscled fingers to his experienced brown hips; from his scarred knees and fallen arches.  When others looked at him, they saw a laborer past his prime.  But she, who knew him best of all, loved him in his gray sweatpants, ripped golf shirt, stained sneakers…so perfect.

This was a poem from the spring.  Finally had time to sit with it and flesh it out.  I tend to be a fan of naming your poems…however, I can’t seem to think of a title.  If anyone has a suggestion after reading it, feel free to send it my way.

Poem

Wombs bring fruit together
the smooth outer skin mottled
by nibbling teeth, plucking
the meat away from the rind.
The tongue moves from its mouth cavern
scaling the vowel canyon
to the fault ridge
until held back by
the hyoid bone.

Raised up on the heel of the hand
and the most unimaginable angel hips,
pleasure commands the larynx,
the world is water pierced with light
syntax does not exist here
only the body/mind connection
body is the mind is the body
a hibernating den waiting
for the wakening call of spring
duality suspended in a single touch

the beloved is the self is the beloved.