New News?

Some things that have happened to me lately:

I got engaged to my love, Keith.
I bought a Holga and put the first roll of film in upside down.
I’ve gained at least 20 pounds in 4 months and will lose it in 3 weeks for a race.
I throw pottery occasionally in overalls and my bikini.
I’m letting my hair grow till I hate it.
I let my new bike sit in my tiny bedroom under a pile of clothes.
I find it hard to make friends at work becuase the poeple are older.
I love my tiny square apartment with my constatnly crying cat.
I am envious of my gay neighbors decor. (ficus tree and square plates, hello!)
I am ready to be moved, married, and honeymooned...

Again,Thanks Garrison

Light, at Thirty-Two

It is the first thing God speaks of
when we meet Him, in the good book
of Genesis. And now, I think
I see it all in terms of light:

How, the other day at dusk
on Ossabaw Island, the marsh grass
was the color of the most beautiful hair
I had ever seen, or how—years ago
in the early-dawn light of Montrose Park—
I saw the most ravishing woman
in the world, only to find, hours later
over drinks in a dark bar, that it
wasn't she who was ravishing,
but the light: how it filtered
through the leaves of the magnolia
onto her cheeks, how it turned
her cotton dress to silk, her walk
to a tour-jeté.

And I understood, finally,
what my friend John meant,
twenty years ago, when he said: Love
is keeping the lights on. And I understood
why Matisse and Bonnard and Gauguin
and Cézanne all followed the light:
Because they knew all lovers are equal
in the dark, that light defines beauty
the way longing defines desire, that
everything depends on how light falls
on a seashell, a mouth ... a broken bottle.

And now, I'd like to learn
to follow light wherever it leads me,
never again to say to a woman, YOU
are beautiful, but rather to whisper:
Darling, the way light fell on your hair
This morning when we woke—God,
It was beautiful. Because, if the light is right,
Then the day and the body and the faint pleasures
Waiting at the window ... they too are right.
All things lovely there. As the first poet wrote,
in his first book of poems: Let there be light.

And there is.

From this Morning

The Shipfitter's Wife

I loved him most
when he came home from work,
his fingers still curled from fitting pipe,
his denim shirt ringed with sweat
and smelling of salt, the drying weeds
of the ocean. I'd go to where he sat
on the edge of the bed, his forehead
anointed with grease, his cracked hands
jammed between his thighs, and unlace
the steel-toed boots, stroke his ankles
and calves, the pads and bones of his feet.
Then I'd open his clothes and take
the whole day inside me — the ship's
gray sides, the miles of copper pipe,
the voice of the foreman clanging
off the hull's silver ribs. Spark of lead
kissing metal. The clamp, the winch,
the white fire of the torch, the whistle,
and the long drive home.

Love?

In Praise of Imperfect Love

Courtesans of tenth century Japan knew
the keening of the caged copper pheasant,
solo double-note aria for a missing mate,
could be silenced with a mirror

The ideal of a love that completes
masks a yearning for homeostasis,
a second umbilical, island fever,
harmony tighter than unison —

dull as a solved equation;
like the ex-lover who said,
"Being with you is like being alone."
He meant it as a compliment.


I like this poem because it bespeaks of all the expectations and realizations of love. It is more joyful and painful than any other feeling.

This IS it.

What was that look we shared lat night? In the dark I could feel your eyes wash over me. I searched your face in return. But a new feeling blossomed in my dark soul as the glints of blue and sparkles rained down on me. It made my stomach queasy and strange and my heart race to express what words could not. It was a love, stronger than I have guessed I was ever capable of feeling, wrapping it's soft hands around my heart- never to let go.

You're a prodigy in scoodlydy- doo!

From More Poetry

Last night I dreamed of X again.
She's like a stain on my subconscious sheets.