A new one, with excerpts from old ones... Life's crazy, and I'm still learning how to live...

"No more poetry for lovers,"
I said, to your lips pleading,
still wet, catching the yellow sodium glow
of the streetlight outside.
You had the misfortune of stumbling upon a discarded yellow folder
hidden between directories and binary digits.
Inside, intricate arabesques I crafted
for a girl with short hair and ahirt fingers with
"hands like dove flights over estuaries."

"Why don't you write anything for me?"
you asksed - feeling smaller than the square
scraps torn off of my day calendar.
You looked smaller
your face contorted
sideways, like the sky behind
a bleach white cotton mountain.

"No more poetry for lvoers,"
I said. Too many elegies that lost their wings
came careening back to earth like Icarus (he was so bold and young)
Burnt offerings whose smoke refused to rise
past marble roofs, flooded temple, sending me choking,
fleeing the site of my sacrifices.

"The words remind me of who you're not,"
I said to your shadow as you rolled over,
speaking to your milky back, refusing my refusal.
I wanted to say nothing
just connect your freckles
(dabs of earth, like distant planets.)
with my fingertip.
Lines crafted change you into an icon
made of shattered rose glass and obsidian tiles.
Soft pink cannot be captured by icy mosaics
built for worship.

It makes you feel less valuable,
like a new plaything, a passing child's toy,
not even worth the effort or engagement to
sketch my name on your foot.
But you are that which cannot be made painted
in imagination.
Crafted
in lines,
words like cells, isolated,
no toys, crafted like...

I no longer know how to say these things.
Instead,
"No more poetry for lovers,"
I say, then roll over
and go to sleep.

4/8/05