some old poetry

I am working on some longer stories right now, so I thought I would post a little bit of my old poetry.

Krishna, Stargu, Lisa, Talasi and That One Guy Who Wouldn't Let Neruda Go

Your names, my thoughts of you, are lazy snakes
hissing through my tall-grass lips and teeth:
you, unfamiliar friends, go undetected.
Yet, once upon a time you were
the local loci. The rotation of your words
made gravity,
music, like gyroscopes skipping across
the kitchen floor.
The rhymes and words and lines
in reedy teenaged voices, all ready to
crack mirrors, spewing beauty so extreme
that it became hideous: your meanings are forgotten,
but the hum remains.
We took turns lapping each other on the same circuit,
racing for three minutes and ten seconds apiece,
never knowing defeat.
With each of us in stages of poetic undress, we drove,
and hoped to find a sexless, skinless nudity
at the edge of the centrifuge.
Did we find it? Did we have fun?
And now the memory of you is snakes.
I grab one by the tail sometimes, and swing the serpent
like a sling,
in circles over my head.
I do this crazy thing to hear the hiss become a hum.

---

Storm Story

When the sky was painted, tumultuous gray
and we stood behind screens of dirty metal
your eyes reflected everything.
I could hear the moist, electric air
and feel the low rumble of your voice.

We watched as water bounced, defied gravity,
was thwarted by dry dirt and concrete.
We watched the parched earth
as it slowly learned to take its medicine.
It was not unlike
watching me with you.

Saturated with seeing, we closed the windows
and made our own rain.

---

“the object of someone else’s madness”

never have I been so loaded
as when, failing to avoid your stare
I thought I could be placated

into pleasure, with a blind eye
to slow approaches, your
fingertips. at least I hoped to try

to be myself. when the day is done
I like to kick back, relax,
enjoy an ice cold vodka
with a warm lemon gun.