Find and share the perfect poems.
Now that we have an alphabet
and leisure and the evening
is congealing into a plausible shape,
you can write the names of everyone
you love without contradiction
in webs of sugar
and no one would know.
Promises are pooling
round our ankles, greener,
they are pearling, born of needing
more to say.
Smoke and rapid water. O
but truth is an arena
where people get hurt.
(And on it goes.)
Used with the permission of the author.
Months pass. A year. You’re here still
haunting what we had, scratching
the phantom limb. Again’s not
some retrievable rush, it’s what
you can hope for: revolution
or another poem. The staircase
home’s a tragic shape.
All we can do is spiral,
describe the loops and watch
the epicentre dim.
What’s left? A bowl of vapour.
Questions. Lights. A love that made you
see things.
(by one bird
late chanting)
(if bird is knowing
not naming)
(how lovers)
(first thing
were fastening)
(then nothing)
(if hell is watching
their fading)
(if night is naming
not finding)
(if wind is
their breathing)
(is something)
(if night is
but cloaking)
(world never
not shining)
(if river is not
stopping
crying not crossing)
Branches stoop like fathers down to cheeks digressively.
So locks, so chute of knots & pliant waves hang fluently.
Boldness trails along the floor, lies under folds alluringly.
Loveliness denied finds you accustomed & untested shyly.
Lips unlock, loose hiccups, purse & soak superdeliciously.
Stripped, expanses slide to dips, then billow incomparably.
Conversation’s witchery now stirs, now stills magnetically.
Charms to hold a faithful heart in chains surface sparingly.