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Archive #46
April, 2017


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Ken Allan Dronsfield

Ken Allan Dronsfield Has It
​Straight From The Man

Burning Man Diary 

blasphemy courted with anecdotal perversity 
limitless chatter echoes through the canyon
all now weeping at the sight of blind hypocrisy
catching the orbs dancing with a butterfly net
seeking a peace but tripping through garbage
sands stained with the blood from star shards
music calms the beast, deep the jungle roars
pinnacle of life, enchanted in an icy cold desert.
tutelage from shamans moving to a spirit drum
casting vows of pious devotional decadence
earthy spirited flute touches the heart and soul
the burning man tosses ink onto the parchment.


Read the poetry of Ken Allan Dronsfield
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Rowan Taw

Rowan Taw Returns With
Poem, Voice, And
​Humor  
☊

Sister Mary's Eyebrows

Summer evening with visiting
Sister Patricious and Sister Mary.
Sister Mary has been teaching us
to chase the devil.
But now playing cards are packed away,
and Horlick’s is being made.
There is a firm knocking at the door,
Sister Mary seems surprised that
an unexpected visitor could be
calling at such a late hour.
The visitor is my 6ft tall, 
long-haired friend, Aidan.
Sister Mary looks shocked that
I should have a gentleman caller
so late in the evening.
Her eyebrows are somewhat raised.
Aidan is ushered in to the dining room,
where we are all gathered.
He needs to speak with me about
our plans to attend the Glastonbury festival.
Sister Mary’s eyebrows are now 
walking up her forehead.
We continue our discussions
and Sister Mary gathers I’m
going to be in all male company.
Her eyebrows climb closer toward
her hairline.
Simon has his own tent,
and Aidan has secured a
good sized tent for me,
him, and Joel to squeeze into.
Sister Mary’s eyebrows are now
teetering on the brink,
eager to escape and throw
themselves off her cliff side face.
If it weren’t for her habit,
keeping them from encroaching higher,
I do believe they would have taken
the leap and fallen off. 
Enjoy this poem in the PoetryAloud area
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​

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DeMisty D. Bellinger

DeMisty D. Bellinger Contemporizes An Ancient Form

Nasty Girls Pantoum

​​        “Do you think I'm a nasty girl?” ~Vanity 6
         “The only nasty thing I like is the
​          nasty groove.” ~Miss Jackson


Am I such a nasty woman?
I’ve cleaned my hair, I’ve clipped my nails,
I have made sure to smile and baby,
I’m not being so mean.
 
I’ve cleaned my hair, I’ve clipped my nails
I washed each inch of my body
So I won’t be so mean
And dressed in well-laundered clothes.
 
I washed each inch of my body
And didn’t linger on the special parts
Got dressed in well-laundered clothes
Left the house with good intentions
 
I didn’t linger on the special parts
So I wouldn’t hurt anyone’s feelings
I went high, I stay high
When the rest of the world went low.
 
So I wouldn’t hurt anyone’s feelings,
I acted like a perfect lady
When the rest of the world went low.
Am I such a nasty woman? 


Read the poetry of DeMisty D. Bellinger
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Edjo Frank

Edjo Frank's Narrator
​Meets His Admirers

Dream on the Balcony

frosty silence without the pigeons
dumbed the miserable cooing
a load of shiny white shit
on the railing of the balcony
 
the wind pulls the curtains in the air
wave, white flag
sign of surrender, sign of peace
I step outside
 
put the air rifle beside me
down on the pavement
riddled with hail
flaunting lifeless feathered bodies
 
with eyes closed
I come upright in the pale sun
spread my arms
take a deep breath
 
soon the street will flood
the crowd, provided with flags
cheers, chants, claps for the brave
calls my name
 
just one more moment, one more dream
it feels good to be a hero
inside in a little time
the loneliness of a tired man


​Read the poetry of Edjo Frank
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​
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Goran Gatalica

VerseWrights Warmly Welcomes Poet Goran Gatalica

from Selected Haiku

​          summer heat -
            on the bamboo twig
            debating ants


            ❧

                    tipping point -
                        on the church's window
                        moon limbs
 

            ❧

                    autumn wind -
                        the loud gyration
                        of maple seeds
 

       ❧

          fading dusk -
            beside the highway lane
            a dying pheasant


Read the poetry of Goran Gatalica
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​
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Tracey Gunne

Tracey Gunne: The Beginning
Is The Determinate

If so. Then it shall be.

Fractured, yes. Moving still as the
blood we encompass. Sweet,
so sweet. A sliver of a life
considered ordinary and
preordained.

The beauty we as newborns took
for granted. By the grace of
a mother who abused the power
given. She slept through it all.
Tears

soiling the newly washed flowers.
If so in childhood. Then it shall be 
as working soldiers. Lovers
placing tongues inside the
dangerous

ravines of sin. Or is it love. And
now impatient with the hungry 
cries. How was it missed. The
same house rebuilt. The same bed

slept in. The same flowers rinsed

of everything but the beginning.​
Read the poetry of Tracey Gunne
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​
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Janette Schafer

We Warmly Welcome Poet
​Janette Schafer To VerseWrights

Dear Auntie,

Once, a therapist showed me a chart
of the upper and lower intestines
diseased and distended from
years of laxative abuse.

I’m telling you this because
of all the times you said
Pretty in the cradle means
Ugly at the table.

My belly has its own orbit
of lovers who circle like
the three suns of Kelt-4Ab
I am the hot Jupiter

I am a planet made of cake
sweet dense creamy
with frosting to make one swoon.
I have the teeth marks to prove it.

My hips and breasts are asteroids
their trajectory knows no boundaries
outside of gravity and the fullness
of the Universe. My purview

is a constellation. I am called hot tomato/
Goddess / siren / curvy
Buxom / shapely / voluptuous

and those who grab on don’t let go.


Read the poetry of Janette Schafer
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Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Ryan Quinn Flanagan
​Takes On Life, Death

Light Is Just the Dark
​Pretending


there is no glory in death,
just death;
the remembering of others
and much forgetting
too,          
until there is nothing left
but the whimpering
of rangy pack animals,
the mailman out of the job,
leaking jars of sea water
the myth and the
terror…
sit in the dark, no matter,
the light is just the dark
pretending, sit there as well
if you wish;
squash a bug underfoot
then ask it about glory
and the bug will not answer you
as it is now busy
with the business of
not being
there.


Read the poetry of Ryan Quinn Flanagan
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Catherine Baker

From Catherine Baker, All New Haiku And Tanka

from More Selected
​Haiku and Tanka


​the first bumblebee
drunk on so little sunshine
blunders through the wood

              ❦

          the space inside trees 
          full of green shifting leaflight 
          sliced through by finches 
          with scimitar certainty 
          in the quickening of spring

                      ❦
​
                    darkness before dawn 
                    sliding off a wet slate roof 
                    the eye of the moon

       ❦

how flimsy the fence 
that keeps me out of the wood
its firm intentions 
shouldered aside by badgers 
and ducked by the dancing hare


Read the poetry of Catherine Baker
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Amauri Solon

Amauri Solon's Poem Is
​Fanciful, Poignant

The Cricket

​A cricket
called my attention
not to mention
what it spoke 

to me

—Whenever you weep
over unfulfilled dreams
call me over
and I'll cric- cric

to you

A cricket hopped
twice 
just in front of me
it caught my sight
as it might

again speak to me

And so it did

—Whenever you are sorry
for  unfulfilled doings
call me over
and I'll
double  cric

to you

I could see
no cricket 
hopping around me
but for my delight
during all that night
double crics
were heard 

inside of me

But I knew
what they meant

Sorrow crept over my heart
and I wept all night long


Read the poetry of Amauri Solon
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​

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Witty Fay

Witty Fay Gives Us A Poet's Poem

interior of a poem

Skewed merciless geography
That does not know my name,
A river of inksome potential
And tiptoeing displacement.
A coterie of critics gathered 
To ponder the intricacy 
Of its structure, unstructured,
Yet vibrant in its build,
And applaud the mishaps.
And a famished reading 
Audience, deaf of one 
Ear, thirsty for ink.
When you’re here, I dream
Of the beginning of every
Burning thought, 
When you’re gone, I feel 
It all, in convulsions 
Of something bearable
And I come to inhabit 
The distance, in maiden words.


Read the poetry of Witty Fay
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Peter V. Dugan

Peter V. Dugan With
A Violent Martyrdom

Burnt Offerings

Do you want to stone me
            because I might be
a heretic
            or an agnostic
                        to your faith?
Maybe you should just
            crucify me,
splay me,
            tie my limbs
and nail me
            with old rusted
            spikes
upon an intersection
of fact and fantasy.
Will you do this
for my redemption?
I’m not worthy
hang me
            upside down
let the blood rush
to my head
                        then
you can cut me down
            chop me up
            piecemeal
feast on my body
drink my blood.
Take what is left
of my remains
burn them
in a sacrificial flame
scatter the ashes
in the wind
            or
place them
            in your chalice
keep them in your private
            catacombs.
And then you can try
            to resurrect me
drown me
            in your holy water
a baptism
            to make me
a martyr
            for your
                        salvation.


Read the poetry of Peter V. Dugan
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​
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Angele Ellis

For Angele Ellis, Spring
​Brings Fall To Mind

March

Under this last snow,
my garden Virgin grins
beneath her tippet,
my resin rabbit
endures the drifts
salting his ears,
my rooted pots
in seeming emptiness
sit dreaming.
 
March. But I see
November’s firefly flakes
sizzling on the grass--
cool enough then
for you to shiver
on your front porch
in a flannel shirt,
your lighter’s flame
rising unreflective,
a signal flare--
shadowing your face,
your false perfection

of despair.

Read the poetry of Angele Ellis
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Paul Mortimer

Paul Mortimer And A Bridge
​That Is An Anchor

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Clapper Bridge: Credit: Wikipedia Commons
Clapper Bridge

The giant’s pebble is caught
mid-skim, wedged on dry stone
pillars. And underneath

the East Dart river is a reluctant
slip of amber. It drifts away
through gorses that rake the eyes

with spines and yellow. Tight fists
of bracken wait for spring’s looms
to tease them free, weave them

into summer’s patterns. Larks
swallow sky and air, pour
it back in a stream of song

and you stand on
the clapper bridge
that goes nowhere
from nowhere.
A granite staple
pinning this


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Ria Meade

Ria Meade Finds Joy, Yearning In The Slightest Being

Fireflies

They visit my dreams of late.
In daylight hours, glow in memory.
The twinkle, blinking lights,
their warmth.
Worry these wondrous visits might disappear.
 
I travel in night,
without moon, stars, sun.
My Labradors, my partner guides,
sleep unconcerned nearby.
What will happen— will,
in its time.
 
Still, I dream of fireflies.
Desire to whisk their energy
out of the black night. 
As one tickles my fisted palm
with gentle flutters,
I reassure this nervous fairy,
no sealed jar for you.

Drawing her close, I urgently whisper
Tell me, firefly,
your secret of light.
Maybe it will unlock mine.


​Read the poetry of Rea Meade
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Judith Dorian

Judith Dorian With A Slice of Tenuous, Tenacious Life

“I ain’t no sit-down man”

he says 
his spine bent beneath 
anthracite years.

he works silently 
without pause, intuits potential 
in scavenged objects. Push-pull

he hauls metal scraps―
sharp edged wire, mattress coils
bicycle parts, paint cans―

to his 60-watt shed  
gathers lighter scraps―
twigs, bird feathers, acorns, splayed leaves 

brittle with death
boils coffee in a tin pot 
crumbles, smears an earth cake on wood 

textures violet wall hangings with house paint
bought on sale
the afternoon light fades 
as decay’s vintage heaps up around him.

a shape emerges beneath
scarred fingers that wield a welding iron 

and tame the jagged remnants.

Read the poetry of Judith Dorian
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​
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Phil Boiarski

Phil Boiarski: Death
​And Innocence

Blood Soup

She called the white ducks with a soft
Clucking of her tongue and they came to
Her busy hands for the hard corn she shelled.
Taking a fat one up in her arms, soothing the
Down with her cheek, she cooed and sang to it,
While the eager beak bit at her palm cup.

She bowed the graceful head down to sleep
Beneath the perfect white wing and keeping
Her place on the long neck, like a finger in a 
Book, she brought up the porcelain bowl to 
Hold in her knees, in one motion.  I can still
See the shining blade layering through the
Orderly feathers, through the sleeping veins.

Headless, featherless duck swam in clear water,
Dark blood, carrots and apples, black prunes,
Parsley, pepper, thyme until the meat fell
Away from the bone and pieces floated among the
White kluski clouds in a dark brown broth.  Every
Bit of the down she saved for small pillows.

When she gave them to my children, she said
They won't remember me, so tell them these
Were from the duck feather woman. They took them
Eagerly from her knotted fingers.


Read the poetry of Phil Boiarski
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Katherine Gallagher

Katherine Gallagher Sees
​Innocence And Ignorance

        ~ after a Students' Save Our Environment Exhibition


The White Boat

The child's world
is born on a white boat
 
but these children have fixed on
dead birds and dead suns,
a papier-mâché baby wailing
and paper-trees
littered with old cartons,
cigarette-packs,
 
everything documented
without magic or mercy:
 
their multiple-voice shrilling.
 
It spits in your eye
an anti-revolution
dropping warnings over plugged-up rivers
as a frilly lady smiles papery
out of the crumpled span of her hat
 
and the last white boat
sticks on a black canal.


​Read the poetry of Katherine Gallagher
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Ali Grimshaw

Ali Grimshaw, Making Home And "Finding Away"

Replay

Before I walk away,
returning to a new season of my life,
let’s rewind this journey for one
last view. The thrills, near misses,
and countless conversations melted together,
making me the true color I have become.
Wherever I am
is your home
to come back to.



A Mindful Vacation

Between each breath
one, maybe two seconds at most,
a tiny space of nothingness.
My passport can’t get me there.
Driving faster, running harder,
multitasking while eating lunch
working later, doing more…
no closer to my destination.

“Where would you like to travel to?” they ask.

someplace between
inhale
and exhale. 


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Frank C Modica

VerseWrights Warmly Welcomes Poet Frank C Modica

Tabula Rasa

Kindergarteners race
across the hardtop
back into the hallway.
Faster children
run circles around
the slower children.
George yells
“tag, you’re it.”
Little Frankie
falls to the ground
after Ellie pushes him.
“She hit me,”  he cries.
He’s cheating,” she yells back.
Tommy pulls Mary’s hair,
Mary kicks him.
Rousseau and Calvin
tumble into the classroom
wrestling with each other.
Cal mocks Rosey
“Your whole nature
is a seed of sin.”
Rosey protests,
“We are noble savages.”

The teacher closes his eyes
to the noise for a few seconds
and shakes his head before
breaking up the fights
and getting the children
under control
“They both are wrong,”
He mutters to himself.
“They don’t know
what they are doing.
They’re children.” 


Read the poetry of Frank C Modica
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Emily Strauss

Emily Strauss' Simple Observation, Then Wonderment

Dripping Water

a thousand feet of ravine
so steep the road insinuates
itself back and forth climbing

the dry ground a tangle
of overgrown brush, wild
peas, pines, half-dead oaks

the stream long dried
it flows only in the wettest
years, a few hours at most

the land parched despite
the daily fogs that rise,
and birds— quail, jays

juncos must forage beside
rabbits and squirrels for 
water to sustain them--

how in this wide vista
they know the one tiny drip
of a broken garden hose

and land one by one to sip
carefully from this small leak--
my silent form immaterial.


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Charlie Brice

Charlie Brice, Sigmund
​Freud, Erect Trousers...

Repression

Freud’s shirts
starched stiff
arrested attire
his dickey
erect and shiny
 
Press on the pleasure
Refry desire
Stoke the Freudian fire
 
Repress son
prodigal boy
always returns
 
It was supposed to be about liberation
but turned out to be about
how unfree freedom is
 
Early on Freud pressed
the foreheads of his patients
forcing down what they’d exposed
 
Freud’s trousers
stood by themselves at night
like a fireman’s uniform
 
Freud slid down the panic pole
to rescue us from
what we didn’t know
 
His pants stood alone
like those awful elephant legs
turned into garbage cans
 
and proved once again
what was erect
eventually falls
 
And those cigars
A caesura in the preconscious
precancerous mouth
 
A vagina dentata that analytic floss
can’t repair or prevent
Only an opera of operations
 
A prosthetic jaw that made
the professor whistle when he spoke
So he rarely uttered a sound
 
which caused his American sycophants to ape
a gaping analytic silence
 
What they thought was psychoanalytic technique
was actually the old man’s vanity


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​
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Mark Gordon

Mark Gordon Reveals
​The Flaw Of Self

The Ego's Embrace

It’s hard to avoid the embrace
of the Ego, it’s a charismatic, sexless thing
that steps in when you are praying
or simply taking a walk
offers you heady opportunities
like world power, a trophy wife
or a brand-new Ferrari.  
 
You say “let go of my hair,
don’t pull like that
I am just taking a walk in the woods
reciting Psalm 23
watching the way the veins
of this leaf are opening
taking me to a deeper understanding.”
 
But the Ego, as always,
has a different idea of pleasure
fogging your glasses with excitement
putting you on stilts
that no one else owns
saying you will see over mountains
then leaving you just as suddenly
 
with no more eyes to see
how you and this leaf are one
both breathing the air of the universe
both unfolding
season after season
arriving at a depth of your own.


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Matthew Henningsen

Matthew Henningsen With
​An Enigmatic Discovery

A Poem Found in a Cave
                ~Discovered behind a stone
                  in deep, barren dirt.


Off on ancient ridges by
Falls that tumble down to
A hand that waves at
Me in the dark I
 
Seem to see walls in mist and
Gray men in suits tapping
Down alleys that I knew I could
Find once but lost
To a song sung on cold
 
Nights by fires that burn in
Deep canyon caves that we
Can only find by the bright
Lights of hands traced on
 
Ancient ridge walls. I…
 
Think so much of days in
Forests and feelings of running
Like a child lost…
 
In the dark.


Read the poetry of Matthew Henningsen
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Diana Matisz

New Poem And Photo Art
​From Diana Matisz

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Photo art by Diana Matisz (Click art for expanded view)
Interim

fevered dreams
abandoned me
thankfully,
left me
to my own devices,
and i found myself
wakened
from this somnolence
pressed
to curvilinear ridges
to the hard insistence
of cool rough planes
unfurled
beneath me
my fingers
stretched
to grasp every surface inch
of raw hibernal pleasure
you've been storing up
since winter
cached
until i wanted you
in my fevered dreams 


Enjoy the poetry and art of Diana Matisz
​Read a profile of Diana Matisz
​

L.L. Barkat: A Photograph, A Painting


After a Photograph of Dark Firs

You see how the trees are touching
how the gap in the sky is only white space
how they are drawn to traverse, extend, find
each other over time,
and the road keeps going

over the lip of what is seen.


French Painting


On the wide space
where the windows overlook
their blue squares
of possibility.

Let’s lean away

together. You with your emerald
hair. I with my gold—creating

a single amber shadow.

Read the poetry of L.L. Barkat
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​
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Marie Anzalone

Marie Anzalone's "If"
​Becomes A Manifesto

Maternal Line:

If you were my daughter:
you would know the joy 
of walking barefoot on a rainy day
And how mud squelches just so 
between your toes
And how the air smells of rebirth 
and uncried tears from what life 
throws in your direction, every day. 
You would know the stars in their constellations better
than the ones on television, and the color
of your dreams would matter more 
than the color of your nail polish. 

You would know how to enjoy going to the movies
or to the beach or on vacation, alone. 
You would enter the playing field 
in tennis shoes, not sandals. The integrity of
your “no” would value as much as your “yes,”
and you would know to reject anyone
who thinks otherwise. You would learn
how to forgive, walk away from, and firebomb
your enemies- and which application 
suits what situation. Without apology. 

If you were my daughter, you would never need
to hide or deny or negate your love,
and its expression; you would never 
be ashamed of your desires and passions.
your boyfriend or girlfriend 
would be welcome in my home. 
And when love forsakes you, 
when dreams elude you,
when employers overlook you,
when life abuses you in the street-
you will learn the truth

That the same genes that give compassion
also produce warriors- and they 
are hereditary in the maternal line. ​


Read the poetry of Marie Anzalone
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​

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Reka Jellema

Reka Jellema Expresses
​A Delicate Sadness

Matchsticks

you ask me 
are we close

but I have never 
heard your laugh

or felt beneath 
the cotton of your shirt

or had the pleasure 
of this dance

the female cardinal 
rams her body into glass

my sister looped a rope 
around her neck

and hung her body
in the shed

the secrets that I kept
the secrets that you kept

I never knew you had a twin
until the visitation

and that he died and that 
you died along with him

I ask you
are we close

we are matchsticks 
in a matchbox

send me some skin
a sentence that you penned
​
nothing more intimate
than an exhalation 


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B. Diehl

VerseWrights Warmly Welcomes B. Diehl To Its Pages

Xanax & Chocolate

When the clock’s hands strangle
the honeymoon phase, I’ll remember today.

When the laughter turns to crying
and we glare more than screw ––
when the passion starts to shrivel
in a drought of lust, I’ll remember today.

When this quiet bedroom becomes
a full-blown warzone
and our hearts are fighting to the death ––
when flower-vases shatter upon
peeling-paint walls, I’ll remember today.

I’ll remember today ––
your hand on my chest, your Xanax tongue
against the roof of my mouth. Today:
before “darling” and “baby” are replaced
with “asshole” and “douchebag.”
Before a light caress turns
into a close-fisted punch. Before my knees
are bruised from begging you to stay.
Today: before our chocolate charisma
melts in the poison sun. Before the thorns
grow bigger than the head of the rose.

Today, you are far from gone.
Your eyes are loyal dogs. They do not
wander. They’re fixed on me
as though I’m made of something pure.

But even as you’re perched
on my bed with that firecracker grin,
and the past and the future simmer
in the dreamy heat from the present ––
and even as you lean in for another kiss
while everything around us
runs like fresh paint
on the hottest day of the year,

I think you should know
that I already miss you.


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