Strangest Strangers

Higher Things

2007-01-20T00:17:00.000-08:00

My mother climbs mountains

She conquers peaks looks down
at the faulted world and still
remembers love

She offers ready hands
for combat and comfort
to the failing daughters of this line

she believes in
higher things

Slak Cave

2007-01-17T22:15:00.000-08:00

Sleep, and work in shifts. One coming in as one or the other is going, to sleep, one leaving for work as the others are going to bed. They tiptoe and whisper, cringe at careless slips and crashes that break the wall between sleepers and reluctant risers. There are moments when they don't care. There are long periods of silence, but for typing.
The windows are covered over, to suit day sleeping, and the constant brightness of multiple video screens. Laptops, games, TV and video projected at movie theater size on the wall of the one room studio. The walls are cracking plaster and wood crammed with tech equipment. Stray cords, tiny flashlights, and headphones join the dust and ash and ever fluctuating pile of roaches on the tenuous glass and brass coffee table.
The sun is coming up on this room again.
It may be a few moments, before I know which way to go.

Variation on the word "swallow"

2007-01-10T22:21:00.000-08:00

I am expiriencing a strange obsession with the word "swallow". It's been coming around a lot in my poems these days for some reason I haven't discovered yet. Anyone and everyone, feedback on this piece would be well appriciated

Choke

you lean in close over the fresh squeezed
complimentary, VIP customer,
roomservice breakfast
to tell me again that you're leaving
that she's waiting

you soap and water me off your skin
struggle, still damp
into your early morning golf game alibi
find your keys
kiss me good-bye

I choke

on cold toast crusts
and rage
slow myself
breath through my nose
swallow hard

swallow you
like I've learned to

the door closes behind you

I pour the cream
traces of decay rise to the top
and I know it's gone sour

with you
knowing has never been that easy

Waiting

2007-01-09T22:52:00.000-08:00

With winter blowing in
and you still out there
willing yourself into the world
the city looms over me in two dimentions
you the absent depth

I wait wide eyed
for your arrival in the hours
I should use for sleeping

touch will be my rest
yours and mine, my sustinance
when we swallow each other whole

in the small hours of dawn

Finally

2007-01-08T15:35:00.000-08:00

One of my new years resolutions, is to centralize the work I have on the web. Being generally mistrustful and uneducated in the finer points of the internet, I've decided that this is the easiest way. So I start off the new blog with the 2007 New Year's Day poem, "Surfacing"

surface
from dreamless sleep
on the air matress
in the corner of the one room
flat

turn naked eyes to me

the sky outside the window
is glass, grey and dust
impossible to tell dawn from dusk

and I don't care

I've been wrapped
in lips and limbs
lauging patchwork
and strange chemicals
for days

These walls are the perimeter
when you are here
and I am here

with the television flashing
and the roomates pretending at sleep
ten feet away

skin, sinew and bone
ease open like
snake jaw under the silk trace
of your hair on my thigh

you press into me
I press into you

you reach into me
I reach into you

this is the suspended moment
between leap
and land

the city outside the window
is glass, dust and grey
impossible to tell yesterday from today

and I don't care

I've been rapt
by lips and limbs
laughing patchwork
and strange chemicals
for days

These walls are the perimeter
when you are here
and I am here

surface
from dreamless sleep
on the air matress in the corner
of the worn out one room
flat

turn naked eyes to you