Eau de Joy

Eau de Joy

My girlfriend picked roses from the landlord’s garden and put
them in a vase. The roses were mostly yellow; the petal tips,
fuscia. Stems were bent by lush ripe blooms. Some buds
hadn't opened. As she packed and boxed things up she moved
the vase until when I arrived it sat on top a bookcase under
a vent. That was nice. As the heater warmed the room, the roses’
fragrance displaced the smell of cardboard and dust from
normally out-of-sight places. The forced air stopped. And then
the noise of petals falling two or three at once from the most bent
bloom. In seconds the ruckus is over, and the silence starts this time
for real. Do roses die when she cuts them, or when the petals wilt
and drop? What if buds dry before they open? I've been told
my son Jack, yes he is dead but he lives on inside you, like a rose
inside Patou’s Eau de Joy, where I can’t hug or wrestle him.

I think I should speak

I cannot breathe.
I am swaddled in paper
dark in a box
with mummied glasses
and candlesticks.
I am not upset with you
stowing me here,
but you never smoked did you?
Why do you keep me?
I understand
your need to move.
Certainly the situation
is untenable
and the new place,
with her family,
well, that will be spectacular!
But they don’t smoke do they?
I’m not so pretty you’ll miss me.
Start with me.
Let go.
I’m easy. I never met Jack.

For the User Experience

For the User Experience

The UX artist chose us

because we’re ripe and isolated.

(Or did she step our siblings flat

then shoot from below

to obscure the act?)

Our stems are green and pliable.

She posed us so we touch

as if to say when I am with you

there is nothing else.

Our petals are office orange

under windows blue.

I’m happy. If the wind rose

we'd lean apart. If our stamen

stirred, we’d pollinate.

We'd follow the sun.

Like wallpaper on desktops

our life in waiting still

does not exist. I can see

why you feel we need some

real time--where we would display

our affections privately.

You ask me about the weather.

It is all spring--sunny and warm.

Please don’t ask me to marry you,

or why our sepals, like mini-skirts,

hold the bloom in the best light.

The Sense of Grief

The Sense of Grief

                “The countless that love caused to lose their lives” – Dante Inferno, Canto V

Cinderella and other countless tales

that end happily thereafter

are forgivable lies I told my son

until through living he grew less naive.

When a playground bully first dimmed his light

or when he heard me call from the sidelines

Who wants the ball more!

he listened but refused the lesson.

A mother killed the son she loved

not in any abstract or metaphorical way.

I so share the sense of grief

I cling like a last winter’s leaf

twisting crazily this way and that

The first to die, losing, still believes.

Shipwrecked

Shipwrecked

Bone-tired, salt-sprayed for years

exhaustion washed longing from my body.

I listen for a siren

and welcome rocks.

I take the broken mast and scattered timber

and build a bridal suite

where some day a tree,

resilient of her marriage bed,

would growing, start to die.

This is a time, though stubborn,

when my spirit could be won over

and yet I drown again

at home where the ships all burn.

Short sermon on the mount

"God came; she saw; she conquered,” said Jesus. When asked about the meek and all the other blessed people, his mom wouldn't elaborate.

(Thanks to Anne Carson & Sierra Nelson & Colm Toibin.)

Assignation

John and I used this poem, among other props, to discuss my guilt. He says I am constantly surveying the landscape, the walls around me, the trees for mistakes I can make.

I say I'm looking for opportunities for guilt.

He says that sounds like something the old Woody Allen would say. John says stuff like that.

We are in the middle of a long debate about me the poet (the writer) and me. Why & when & what happens when I put on the writer's hat. "Assignation" is a good poem, he says, but it is clearly illustrates, too, that the problem isn't "love," or "poem," it is my focus on the word problem.

Assignation

The assignment this week
was to write a love poem.
     “I want to undress you with my words.”
I struggled, you see.
Maybe the word “poem” was the problem.

I want to meet your lips at my door.
I want to lead you inside
and leave us open to birds and the sun.
I want to pull you close
feel your hips against mine.
I want to slip my hand under your top
trace your shoulder blade with my thumb.
Maybe I’d pause, then, if I could,
and lift my face from our kiss.
But still I would stay close,
breathe your breath,
rest my forehead on yours and ask
     if you’d like a glass of wine
     if you’d like me read you from Howe, Gilbert, from Bishop
     if you’d like to lay down on the rug and let me undress you.
I watch your eyes watch mine asking me
     who is this guy?
     what does he want?
     why is he so quiet when we talk,
     when we make love?
I unclasp your bra and slip your shirt over your head.
I kiss your neck, kiss the strap off your shoulder.
You let your bra fall.
Maybe the word “love” is the problem.
I drop to my knees.
Maybe the problem is me.