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.