A La Plage

Impending Doom

A pathetic excuse for the night sky
like faded black construction paper
closer to violet or navy blue
than the void of the universe.
The closer it gets to the cityscape
the lighter it becomes,
and in some places
just beyond the horizon,
is pure white light.
I've been told its just
a baseball stadium across the bay.

But I prefer to believe
it is impending doom.
A bomb has been released
and the following blast
is slowly creeping over
the curve of the earth.

The sky is too hazy and the shoreline too lit
to see a single glitter star
in the construction paper sky tonight.
So Iwait fot the end of the world
under a sometimes violet, sometimes navy sky
in the pretend silence, a faked reverence
for the final moments of exchanging
oxygen and carbon dioxide.
Did I treasure all my chances to walk?
I cry for the beauty of lifetimes gone past.
I cry for a baseball stadium lighting up the sky.


He Will Disappoint You

You are who mothers
should warn their daughters
(girls who are charmed by
starry romance and blue eyes) about.
Forget those dark haired boys
sizzling with danger
and smoldering with sex.
No self-respecting girl
with expectations and ideals
will fall in love with him
for the first time.
Leave him to older women
with better taste and the ability
to identify their needs.
No, mothers, tell your daughters
about the nice boys
with honest smiles and easy laughs.
They will make your girls glow,
assured in their uniqueness and beauty.
With their collared shirts and fathers' cars
they are too kind to tell them no.
They will teach your daughters
how to fend for themselves
when they realize even perfection
can fall to lacking.


I see my worst

I see my worst in other people-
the flaws I've tried so hard to hide,
I recognize them in action
while I kept them always in my mind.
The quick and easy lie,
a slight desperation for compan,
for love, loneliness,
an unwillingness to forgive,
attempts to mask my ignorance.
The only difference between
those I find pathetic, and myself
(whom I sometimes find pathetic as well)
is my ability to capture my impulses.
I flatter myself, that I have this skill.
But if I didn't, wouldn't I recieve
knowing looks, when others
mirrored my shameful traits?


Sisters of Suffering

We are swans, languid
stretched out on the shore,
pale breasts exposed
waiting to be ravished
by Apollo, not Zeus,
like the corruption of a creation myth.

We stubbornly deny the heat
sweat dripping onto the sand.
We bask in over indulgence,
for soon our skin will bear the prize.
Beautiful in our suffering.

We are fallen birds, easily seduced
unable to escape a different siren's call.

We are our own sirens.
Glorious, glorious on the shore.

We lie supine in grace
not moving, only rotating.

We are basted, turned, and baked.


A Formal Complaint

I would like to lodge a complaint
against hand towels in all forms and positions.
I deem them pointless, useless, ugly luxuries.
In every bathroom, poweder room, half-bath
hang those terry cloth atrocities
embroidered with flowers or sometimes ducks.
I blame hand towels for crimes against humanities.


Families at Low Tide

I watch families at low tide.
One day I will be married
I will have children.
At least, I am told, that is what's done.

I watch families at low tide.
Mothers in semi-flattering bathing suits,
saggy bottomed and thick legged,
and potbellied husbands with hairy backs.
When does this hairy-back sydrome take place?
Does the receding hair line replace itself on the back?

I watch families at low tides.
Beautiful little children tanned beyond belief
with shoulder blades I have always coveted.
They race the tide and roll in the sand
while they are guarded
like treasure, worth their weight in gold
by those saggy mothers and hairy fathers.
I realize I won't mind if that is my lot in life.

I Hear This Isn't Living

The Future

For the first time in the history of love
I worried about a broken heart.
I saw the future and I was shaken.
I was missing you terribly, desperately,
the curtains blocking sunlight like shrouds.
I saw the future and in it, I had finally
forgotten to be rational
forgotten to measure out each decision
instead I ran full-force into your arms,
only to be dropped rudely-
all the king's men could not put me together
with all the glue in the world.
I saw the future- for once I was not considerately
informing a man it was his time to move on.
Instead you left abruptly and quickly
but not painlessly.
I know you are the one I would let break my heart.
This future was not as I pictured.


A Solid Defense

I wear a mask, stainless steel. It covers my entire body.
Some might call it armor
but I call it as I see it- my protection of lies.
So disregard:what I say,
the posture of my spine,
how I kiss you-
none of it is real in comparison to
the words battling in my mind.
I tell you nothing of what I think:
I even betray with my eyes
schooled glassy like marbles,
the same reflective depth.
I shield so you can't disappoint.
You ask
Will I see you?
I say
No.
But I think
I would see you forever.
But I deflect, defend
and walk away.

Epiphanies and Defense Mechanisms

You unzip your skin but all I see are bones

You unzip your skin but all I see are bones-
nothing special, nothing to brag about,
nothing worth the way
you'd been holding me in suspense.
I'd seen you laid bare before,
when you hadn't chosen to reveal yourself:
when fate and failure intervened
and split you open at the seams.
So the utmost private innermost you
is not so surprising: my apologies.
Your carefully composed unveiling
is laughable in the dark.
***

Maryland Weather

The world might have drowned
but at least it cracked the heat
hovering over us, a suspended dome
of heavy glazed pottery,
dripped in honeyed brown.
We were trapped beneath
with no air to breathe
only moisture in our throats
weighing us down against car seats.
Like a tumble and plunge to a hard floor
rain burst through the thickened air.
Relief to a dark skied day.
Floods on the roadways.
***

Blue Sweater

Will you hate me
if I stiffen when
you promise to be the last?
I edge away; I doubt
those dreams of forever.
No one can swear eternity.
No one is so omniscient.
No one is so true.
I am skeptical of everlasting love,
even from the divine.
So how can you:
mortal, flawed, with a penchant
for blue sweaters,
offer me something
I think is impossible
to exist?

What the Body Remembers and the Mind Forgets

What the Body Remembers

I washed my hands
but, puzzled, I still felt
the need to wash again, this time
with the water blistering hot.
I scrubbed my face
until I glowed pink-
new, just born,
and smelling of apricots-
but still puzzled.
I considered rubbing away
with handfuls of sand.
The need to scrape,
to flay my skin:
overwhelming, consuming.

In desperation
I tried to solve
the mystery of my skin.
What is it creeping on the surface
or beneath, unseen?

The mind does not try to remember
but it seems the body
cannot forget.

hear a refrain

OCMD

This is the place
where I learned to read
(at the kitchen table).

This is the place
where I learned to recognize
the scent of sand and sunscreen.

This is the place
where I learned what it looks like
to watch my father cry;
and this is where I learned
that family can lie.

This is the land of sunburn and warm nights.
This is the world where
even the food tastes like the bay.

Star Searching

Under forty degrees
but we can see every star from here.
Under the dome of a close sky-
Your hands are cold and so are mine.

I don't say a word,
and you don't ask me to.
I think the dark night says it all.
Your face is cold and so is mine.

It is only time until we part,
the end is soon to be.
It is clearer than the view
Your eyes are cold and so are mine.

We look for Orion's belt,
something to keep us entertained.
We shake hands, defeated, say goodbye
Your heart is cold and so is mine.

And that makes twenty

River-Rock

You looked softer then.
The light behind your eyes
isn't brighter but it's different than today.
Perhaps a few rocks have scraped the smile on your face
into something harder, and smoother.
You are polished, iron and sleek,
with less to be hurt and more unafraid.
I like the river-rock you,
but how were you before?
Vulnerable, and softer to the touch,
more innocent and wide-eyed.
***

Fitting

Your fingers can always find

the light pulse at my throat.
My life is at your fingertips.
I watch your eyes when you survey my skin.
Am I a puzzle put together at seams-
are you trying to assemble me?
Or will you map my highways, by-ways
and crossings with red and blue?
I am not glass, not china.
I am cotton, breathing.
And you are suede.
You are the tailor
fitting us for each other.
***

Jane Austen Living

I'd love for us to curl up

in an old English manor
with ivy-covered walls.
We'll call each other by last names,
drink tea, and be painfully proper.
So perfect, so peaceful-passions boiling

beneath bonnets and cravats.

I'll tell you a secret.
The Romantics planted that ivy
to make life more mysterious.
Women, we love a good mystery.
The plan backfired.
That intriguing foliage?
It slowly tore down buildings.
No mystery left.
You can see right in.
***

Where We Are

Where I stand, the space between
myself and the bed, is holy ground.
I am barefoot for this,
the slowest, shortest journey.
The ground is warm, burning, perhaps-
tongues of flame running across
the cracks in the floorboards
from the bedpost to the soles of my feet.
What can be more sacred
than this silent, honored place?
Take off your shoes.
Don't you see where we are?

Poems of Patience

March Third

Embraced in the sun,
today I forget
about blinding white snow
still lingering outside my window.
I only see what
the world should be:
green and vibrant like my song.
I am standing still
in a world in a thaw.
Every impulse becomes
an action committed,
because I am young
like the grass trying to breathe.
I will never acknowledge
gray skies again.
I am solely celebrating
the return of life and ludicrous living,
refusing to realize I am finite.
We are invincible
and we shall never be cold again.
***

He is Reluctant

If the sun is faint
and weak on the window sill,
I will sing him to
full-flame,
until he bakes the earth
under a crust of
dry, scratching grass.
I will sacrifice
long-sleeved sweaters
and boots
so the sun will rise
in all his white heat,
the promise of sunburnt-skin
the lure to shine once more.
I will never wear
gray or black again;
only violet, yellow,
and orange
to coax an illusion
of spring, tricking
the sun into assuming
he is late.

More Poems

Violet-Colored Fireworks

She looks at him the same way
I look at him:
like she can see the future
in the sky of his eyes.
I have never had the skill of battle
in love or luck or war
So I can only relinquish any claim
and suffer silent and unprotesting,

watching her games-

to her, he will be one in many
to me he had been the one.
I will stand, one in the crowd
and watch in awe
as their short-lived romance explodes,
a spectator to violet-colored fireworks
that should have been my own.
***

Without Restraint

You worry me because you fly

on open, twisting roads without restraint.
You are too reckless, too carefree,
too easy with living,
letting the radio rule mood and speed
while I clutch the seatbelt in fear.
You see my panicked face

and white knuckles.
And you laugh until I laugh
and I let go; I sing along with you.
I lean forward and I live with you.

the bedroom revolutions

The Fragility of Islands

I suspect that this union
has the fragility of islands.
Believed to be so strong
adrift in the sea, but when really
a grey-green wave could destroy it.
Just as we are lifted
from the depths by a seismic shift,
so we can be sent crashing
by another quake.
We were born in ash and flame
spewed from the crust of the earth-
how romantic.
How well it bodes for us.
Maybe we are not as eternal
as we like to assume.
Even if we do float
unknown in the South Pacific,
we think we will never be discovered,
conquered and civilized.
However, consider this:
even a continent is an island
on a globe of water.

We have hope.
***



Broken Pitcher Voice

Your halo of smoke
masks your eyes.
I'm warm even in this snow storm,
hanging over open air
waiting for a quiet word. I inhale
and breathe out your smoke.
And let my voice come pouring out,
a broken pitcher.
I talk about futures
so many fractures in the mirror-
I ponder my last living twenty-four hours
and if I could choose where I would be
for that final beat.
(Times Square at midnight;
do you find that trite?)
I list all the words I've ever read or written
and compare them to yours.
I babble about love
because I am thinking about you,
but I skim past that topic
and land on Creation.
You and your rare, quiet words.
You like to hear me
murder the silence, I think.
***

Constellations

Every sound a gunshot
as I creep across hardwood floors
to lie again beside you
as you sleep on,
and I wear someone eles's shirt
for whom I've never really cared.

I'm tired of waiting
for you to roll over
and reveal the constellations
on the underside of your skin.
I know they're there,
hidden in the darkness
in all their starry glory,
white beams of light
that would fill our silent spaces.
Milky ways and black holes,
I'll take them all for you.
An orbit of the two of us:
My planets and shooting stars
(which I've never really seen)
and your suns and rings.
Maybe then
we'd lay in silence
for a reason.
***

the DSB favorite

When If Perhaps

When. If. Perhaps.
We reach a point
where reconciliation cannot be made
where love does not conquer all-
I promise our end
will not be a gentle parting as still friends-
with soft farewell kisses

to the corner of the mouth.
I promise broken china

thrown across rooms with intention.
I promise you a hasty scramble
to the door, dodging and refiring

hateful threats.
I promise a fierce battle
for paperback novels and folding chairs.

I will condemn you west of the Mississippi
and reign free on the East Coast.
I will parade a string of handsome lovers
through my door;
and you will become wildly successful.
I will hear your name everywhere;
and you will dream of me.

At night we will bitterly remember
the years and call them a waste-
but neither of us will mean it.
We will miserably recall every kiss
and late-night whispered conversation,
and we will never speak
of each other again

I promise in the end,
we can only pretend
it meant nothing.