From you, I have learned

The hidden location of the rock tiger on Lake Superior
The secret moss that covers the skin of the walking dead
The shadowy wreaths that hang about the necks of old women
The veiled grip of time that clutches sanguine lovers
The unheard howl of desolation and erotica
The concealed wisdom of those who understand love differently
The buried trail that a pair of eyes leaves beneath another’s skin
The unseen vacuum of a song that is lost completely

A rough draft of a new piece, with reference to Oscar Wilde and Johannes Brahms. Good week for writing.

Passacaglia

As I let go of
the gnarled and chiseled fingers
of this same hand that used to
brush over my waiting skin
or tuck the dark blonde curl
back into its place behind my ear,
A thought like music
drifted like an indefinable harmony,
That if the Wilde heart
is meant to be broken
than mine is perfectly made.

Sometimes, when I have periods where I am on stage quite a bit, I sadly let my writing go for a time.  I wish there was a better way to balance both sides of my artistic life….music and writing, but as the old saying goes, there are only so many hours in a day.  When one is flourishing, the other is diminished for a time, but never forgotten. 

While I haven’t been writing much in the way of poetry, a play I wrote will be produced this summer.  Indescribible and surreal.  Anyway, after a long hiatus, I started a few poems as well as a longer piece.  It has always been my desire to write an epic poem, something like Don Juan by Lord Byron.  I know, not much of a market for that sort of a thing…its not like you hear the words “Bestselling Poetry Collection” together in the same sentence.  Will this be the year I do it?  Who knows….stay tuned.

In the meantime…here is something smaller that you will hopefully enjoy….a first draft, but its not a half bad start….

Let us make music together
as heat encircles, encloses
drawing up a deep brain-melody

I’ll take the song you put into my mouth
and crush it against you in soundwaves;
word and touch can do this

Palm print against palm print
I’ll hum as you murmur into my ear
the clasping of one hand into another

and there is just so much blue in your gaze
that I have become a woman undone
my dress gathered into ragged corners

Your breath is thick on my neck
the teeth and lips plucking from my strings
a tune that you will tease out of me.

“Sing for me, baby.”

So while I was on the mend from my surgery, a very dear friend and muse gave me a poetry challenge to write a poem in the style of a famous 20th Century poet. Read it and take a guess. I may not succeed in having emulated their style (we’ll see by the total number of correct guesses I get) but I am pleased with the result nonetheless.

Now, without any further adieu…

What a Tale

A happy woman does not tangle the sheets
but the undeniable twist of cotton
encircles the breasts with 900 counts
a gasp as the body changes position
encircles the neck with covered eyes
a gasp as the body changes position
encircles and cups the apex of thighs
a gasp a gasp a gasp followed by a cry

A happy woman does not tangle the sheets
wasn’t there a cry for happiness?
wasn’t there a story repeated in the mind
some cock and bull story about true love?
wasn’t there a pragmatic logic behind
the rational rabid love-making
before the torso was encased
in 900 count Egyptian cotton?

A happy woman does not tangle the sheets
still stuck in a web of weaved cotton
repeating in the low hushed mumble
what an entangled web was weaved
and oh, what a tale of cock and bull
cock and bull, cock and bullshit
and oh, wasn’t it a happy time
as the cotton web weaves, deceives,

and finally leaves.

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.

I have an idea for a play based on a historical event from my hometown of Bath, Michigan.  I haven’t written anything at all in that particular medium, so I sort of doodled a bit this weekend with writing a short dramatic monologue, just to get in a little practice.  The monologue has nothing to do with the subject matter of the play, it was really more for exercise, but I’m somewhat pleased with the result.  Now obviously a real monologue would need to be longer, but I’d love if any of my actor-type friends put in their two cents….

Anyway, here it is…

Monologue 

There is this photo of me where I once thought I was happy.  I had my arm around your shoulders, and the cufflinks on my tux glinted a refraction of light.  We were two kids playing dress-up, all swagger and bravado, and the moment was bathed in fairy dust and voodoo magic.

It was only a season ago, these years and miles between us; a lifetime, really, in a few short months.  You found out about me; that I was frail, flawed, needy, not at all the man that either of us thought I was.

I wanted to explain myself to you, to cut off your accusations and the long litany of failings, but I’ve never done well without preparation.  Are you really doing something wrong when you don’t know that it’s happening?

It’s never really been the same now, has it?  You feel so very strange.  I must seem completely different.  You see, the shattered glass that I hid inside me like jagged stuffing is spilling out of the holes in my skin, and I leave bloody shards wherever I walk.  I am broken in a way that makes me forget what it was to be whole–if I ever did know, anyway.

I put big thumbprints over out faces.  The joy in them was hurting my eyes.  I forget now why I was smiling.

This new poem was sort of written as a response to some poetry I was reading today.  I’ve been reading a lot of poets this spring and summer that I hadn’t gotten around to yet.  So anyway, without any further adieu…

Thinking on Ferlinghetti’s #34

Singers are poets too
at least, I look at it that way
and like the wordsmiths

(and the surfers)

they are seeking the eternal rhythm
the lilt of the syllables connected together
caressing the tide of music floating beneath

they, too, seek to interpret
the world through sound and language
the echo of resonance and vernacular

the voice for them is the rolling wave of sea
the buoyancy of timbre and harmonics
bobbing on the surface tension of a melody

Aria

I let your sheet music sit
atop the baby grand where you left it,
one corner slightly raised
where it rests on a champagne bottle
made into a vase for a silk orchid.

The cadenza is stained
by a ring of dribbled coffee.
The cup’s mouth is dusty
and I have no heart to raise it
lest I smudge the print of your lip.