Category: Poem-A-Day 2013

prisoner’s cinema

sitting quietly in meditation
looking at the wall, I see
your face in the grain of the wood
the whorls and knots and loops
become your eyes, your mouth
the smooth curve of your jaw

at night, while the rain beats against
the skylight, I hear your voice
the rise and fall of its melodies
accompanied by the percussion
of the falling water

walking through the humid air
of an Alabama summer
I feel your fingers slip into mine
I turn my head to smile at you
see only the silent houses

22 July 2013
Auburn AL

/ / /

This poems was inspired by the first episode of the podcast Here Be Monsters.

a list poem for lovers

let’s kiss on a rainy bridge
while a lone busker plays the saxophone
his tattered umbrella keeping off the rain

let’s buy fruit we can’t identify
in a market in Vietnam, negotiating
the price with hand gestures and smiles

let’s lose ourselves in the winding streets
of an Italian village and ask for directions
from a nun carrying a basket of flowers

let’s make elaborate dinners for our friends
filling the house with the smell of garlic
tasting it hours later on each other’s hands

let’s make love in a park after closing
staying quiet to avoid the occasional cop
some clothes on and some clothes off

21 July 2013
Auburn AL

/ / /

The painting: Lovers, 1870. Pál Szinyei Merse. Hungarian National Gallery

a sign that I’ve missed some fairly fundamental clue
about the way life is supposed to work

there is a list of lessons
about how to be content
included on the back of this
bag of potato chips

29 July 2013
Auburn AL

timing

there are some folks
you meet at the right time

there are some folks
you meet at the wrong time

and some about whom
it is too early to tell

18 July 2013
Auburn AL

in a name

we already had
the same first name
so when we decided
to become one
having the same
last name
just made sense

and while it may
be harder to call
to one of us
across a crowded room
it’s easier to understand
that we took two
distinct lives
and made one
stronger life
from them

16 July 2013
Auburn AL

this beautiful monstrosity

it fell between the
cracks and grew there
into this beautiful
monstrosity

wandering swallows over the golvin

it lead him to the rough
sound of a drum
it Sunday punched him
with love

Mr. Rabbit doesn’t like tea and chocolate
or going in the dizzy machine
he’s still scarred from
the Sanberti Revolution

in the end, we are Caligula and Nero
and there are a lot of t-shirts
being sold in the revolution

13 July 2013
Auburn

a million pebbles and one sore foot

without warning the rain starts again
a million little pebbles against the skylights
I’m at my desk, naked, typing, pausing
occasionally to look out the window
at the curtain of water, the dripping leaves
soon I’ll leave my modern hut, walk
with one sore foot to the center of town

10 July 2013
Auburn, AL