The Lonely Hours

The second hand on the clock marches,
dances a stiff two-step circle.

Sleep flees, an unfaithful spouse,
courts everyone else while I lie
still as a corpse, pretending not to notice,
not to care. The rest of the world
sinks into its embrace.

My conscience sparkles like clean plate
glass. My body a race horse, ridden
hard and put up wet. If I were a rode
doper, I’d be a recovered one,
stimulant free.

God does not whisper to me.
I receive no visions.
I am simply awake, witness to the hours.

On The Way to the Library

Two oily crows play chicken with idling cars
at the traffic light. Inches
from a tire, the birds jackhammer
gray pavement for a smashed tidbit.
This is their only task,
to eat six times
one’s weight every day, even
if that meal sits on a four-lane
boulevard. One crow grabs
a prize hunk and rises
with helicopter wings, landing
on the crosswalk light.
The other pecks and pecks again,
unaware of the thrumming metal
bull looming next to it.
The light changes. I drive past.

Barely

She was a mouse in the thicket,
a hidden operative gathering intelligence.

She was a spider in a wall,
weaving darkness, hunting blind.

She was a fish flipping through deep water,
a sun-flash shimmering.

Wherever she went, whoever she was,
she was barely there.

Cat Nap

The cat comes
on little fog feet
sneaking toward me
lying prone. She
heaves her body
onto the ottoman
moves to my thigh
her paws pressing
into my flesh.
She bursts into a
roar of purring
kneads my stomach
and ample breasts
reliving kittenhood
memories of suckling
finally settling
herself across me
pats my cheek
and closes her eyes.

Quenchable

A toothless pinecone sits abandoned
on a tan patch of crispy grass
that serves as a lawn.
Pointed brown pine needles
long enough to knit with tangle
among singed ivy leaves in cemented
dirt. I sit at a sun-bleached
table, scrawling on a dry page
inked with a Rorschach tea stain.
The earth is sullen.
September. Everything not
artificially watered sits parched,
patient, dormant, waiting for
autumn rains that will make roots
gasp with relief. Soon dust and water
will meet, mingle, dance in rivulets.
Gullies of debris will rush to the
sewer to merge with the bay.
Magician rain will vanish smog.
Crumpled tissue mountains will
bloom emerald green, cloaked with
clouds and adorned with shafts of
sunlight. The sky, no longer a
one-dimensional flat blue, will
carry chilly news of the coming
season, a season to replenish.
We are so thirsty. So ready.

A Little Desire

His kisses like cotton candy
melting quickly, barely touching my lips.

I devour them.

His fingers stroke the nape of my neck.
A chord of need rang through me,
vibrating up from between my legs,

snaking around my hips,
winding through my lips, impaling me.
I fell
away from myself, turned
inside out,

inhaled,

and floated away.

Damn Hot

The crepe myrtle weeps in the heat
I step out the door and wilt
like a bunch of collard greens abandoned
at the farmer’s market. The wind’s
fingers press my skin, sticky as the tarmac.
I am a bacon ultimate cheeseburger,
dripping and overcooked.

Sensate

Mid-night I rise to pee, my feet shocked
awake by chill tile, the cold making
my arms like sandpaper.

Then I return to the warm cocoon bed
next to you, and melt again into sleep,
grateful.

—
I’ve written nothing since mid-April, and I could not abide allowing May to pass without my writing something, however lame.

My encounter with a poetry forum inhibited my willingness to play with words, made me overly conscious. While poetry is a difficult craft, something to become skilled at, this awareness made me stop completely, rather than strive to improve. So here is a small poem.