I admit it. I don’t really read poetry very often. And ironically I also admit to being a poet. It’s hard to own. You know? To fess up. To tell folks that you are that which is useless, poverty stricken, and particularly impractical.
It’s also hard to admit to being a texter. Especially at my age it is most unhip to choose to use your device for the written word over the spoken. As if the text was degenerate, a sacrilege! In fact I’ve been accused and taken to the mat over texting. Taken to task because my texting is somehow too verbose, a substandard mode of communication,…an annoyance at best and a bona fide wrong turn for our humanity at worst. Ignorant and deviant.
Meanwhile…
There are so many people that just love to talk on their phones. It seems to be a dynamic of the FOMO, to feel the ever immanent nervous urge to call or receive. To happily give over actual minutes of your life, I commend these people who just aren’t as stingy as myself and find themselves with quanta of time they’re ready to void.
But it’s still not for me
Nevermind that these same folks wouldn’t make the same virtue signaling parallels between a book and downloadable spoken media, AKA books-on-tape. People tend not to see the irony in favoring aural over written communication.
I get it. The cradle of the tech world of cell phones played to youth over the aged. Of course the children went for it. After all, it was easy, and more importantly, immediate. So we got imojis along with lots of shortcuts like IDK, FWIW, WTF, and my personal fave, IRL.
On dating apps (at least for my age and gender) I hear a lot of “let’s not waste time texting” and “we should go straight to talking on the phone”, as if hearing a voice is going to tell you more than a carefully constructed paragraph. I don’t know about you but I’d rather go from the text (which is a body of work) to the pheromonal experience of two bodies in the same room hotboxing each other, even texting each other…and altogether skipping the digital image, which is, BTW, nonsensically unscented and unpoetic.
😉
Now when I text I almost always stop to correct my grammar and my punctuation. But more importantly, and I say this in earnest, I always want to write my message with words that will stick to your ribs, become puns, turns of phrases,…poetics. Bodies/texts. Words thick and of substance.
Thick. Substance. Bodies. Smells. Sexting. Desire meeting production on desire’s terms. Doing it on the piano.
At this point if you have come to the conclusion that most of my poems are about sex or the sex adjacent, then you would be correct.
Here are some to poke at. Even if you’re not excited about poetry, I do hope you’re excited.
————————————————————————————————-
Owning It
a terrible gaze
blushes my mask
because I was caught
looking
to see you but I want
to see into you
my boy eyes fixed
to the ground seeking
your bodied mind the thing
of thingness
chaste and misshapen
sheepish foot searching out
a pebble amongst stone with
my hands crowding my back pockets
scar the line this
view and no further
I say I want to see
inside you and are you
the skin I blow upon
or but the hairs of your
borders facing all directions
may that I kiss it I would
set to a redefinition a
raiment of little wood
carved from desire
so don’t spare me
the reveal of your breath
a penny thrown and returned
as boulder
placed boldly where
the dancing headless scheme
in the periphery I want
to see you
but still need mystery to
wrestle
———————————————————————————————
untitled
dove-tailed hiccup in
time between my head
and my feet
which are too fast
to know
___________________________________________________________________________________________
The New Aural
erect clunk of chopstick
on tin can
ghosts gather this sound
collecting pieces of non math
arithmetic stomping
guttering and sputtering
two whistles versus
two whistles struck
glides as reeds buzz
and scream the largest
instrument the quietest
a flutter of hands and hips
to imply a decoration in
time or something
less solid
__________________________________________________________________________________________
untitled
whispers across hairs
in collusion with Eros
daring flights and rations
upon a dimpled beach
steeling up for launch
scheming thieving
the many singular holes breached
on a wet day’s dark thought
stealing toward dusky sand
ablaze and quiet for the
neighbors
___________________________________________________________________________________________
September third twenty twenty three
I think
I saw you on the sidewalk
moving happy like
a cat
tuxedo styled and vamping
and then like smoke you weren’t there
I was late for work
so I booked it
wordless
________________________________________________________________________________________
Who’d You Think I Am
you left me with
me and my old hands
spooning the dog
in your dank silence
yawning at 5:00 am
and I’m wondering where to wash
see you’ve seen my rage
the one you invented
I’m tattooed over with man
mistakes disbelieving
my ally status just you just
wait to see the summer me
you said I won’t so go
I wouldn’t because I’m
bathing in the summer ash
of the ol’ swim hole
I half hear Blueberry panting in
wet earth as I nap his nails click
I draw up a paperboy satchel
with the Sunday burden
the real reason I was
told to dig wasn’t
the ditch but the shovel so
I resolved to be you see
come a painter my onus
was punted
for the safe point
since I couldn’t read music
Coyote eats my ego in
the aerosol night
keeping my rabble occupied
and under-aroused
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Don’t Lock the Door
i’m surprised you remember that
night you took forever to cum
in Seattle after Paul and his balloon
trick after all you
said you were too high
but thankfully I jerked myself off
and you said that was pretty hot
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Climbing the Loop
it starts along
my sewing machine leg
in fits wrapped around
a cheap prosthetic betrayed
a taut rope’s
cracked whisper
as it approaches the limit
hefting me the burden thing
alighting upon a shelf
this stone vessel on stone tongue
vast and granite and tome
I graffiti with a stone blade
carving desire-a tinted
faint tear warp
coal colored hairs
wormed cypher under
the skin of all things
I blow the chiseled crumbs
over the edge as dust
beckons in spooled light
I puff up again
you were seen on fire
so furry and oh so wet
fumbling with matches
resting lens is off
watching my dog dig and twirl
crevice filled with tongue
__________________________________________________________________________________end.
