Her hunger wrought lonely little bone of a frame.
Starving for someone to care more than she does,
To make survival more than existence.
You’d be shocked to think so many bones
In such a tiny little sack of a thing
Could contain such a spirit.
I was.
Days should have passed before she warmed to me,
They really should have.
She hissed and spit at everything new that came at her,
But never at me.
Even when I distracted her gaze with one hand
And snatched her with the other
She didn’t look at me with fear, just wonder,
I hope a little recognition.
Because I never felt such a soul-rattling purr come from something so little
Something so alone and hungry and tired and desperate
I think she hungered for me just as much as I did for her.
And now we sit, me with my fingers leaving keys to stroke her vibrating
Rhythm of a body, and I worry like a new mommy over her bones and old hungers
But delight that she is smiling in her sleep,
A kitten smile, content, purring until she can’t purr anymore
Gosh…her ears seem bigger than the rest of her…
Perhaps we both in some ways have wings.
You give as much as I can take, I’m scared to enjoy this so entirely.
Simply reaching for you I feel like an absolute libertine,
Like a recluse reaching for a bag of fruit from the fridge, I want to devour you over a cup of ice cream.
Undoing your boundaries makes me grin wickedly….you have no idea what you do to my psyche.
I want to unwind you, make you beg as I grab each rope from your corseted everyday self,
I unlace you and make you a feast for me, I can’t help but take every parcel, as you offer.
You’re a banquet….and you don’t even know.
I dimple your tender flesh with the tips of my fingers,
Pressing selfishly, your wet runs down my thumbs to my wrists,
I arrest your excitement with my tongue, begging you silently for more.
First bites teeth settling into overripe flesh….
Lips suckle at your meat as drops fly onto my uncovered thighs.
Juices escape the edges of my reddened mouth, lipstick is worthless at this point, it’s painted all over us now.
And I drip my need over you, down my dewed breasts…
I’m as hungry as you are.
One stabbed to the inside of my front door with magnets that carry too many memories
Of you, of us.
That man is a by-product, I honestly couldn’t care less
But I’ve stood, stroking the cheeks of my son,
Fingerprints sliding over your smile,
Captured on paper that could never give you justice.
And cried that you’re not here, that you’re dismissed in some way,
Fucking classes that I should have had before you were here,
Time spent with professors instead of you.
And it absolutely kills me
You should never think you have no place to go.
You should know that you have two homes, two loves
You have more than any one of your fellow classmates could hope for.
Your dad builds a life with that woman, who used to be closest to me.
And I, your mom is scrambling to be worthy.
I pick myself off the ground,
Laughing at the hound, I carry on.
And count the moments
Until my little one is with me again.
A Fisherman's Lament
How still I love my lady of the sea
Yet denied my need, bid me leave her youth
I knit my nets and prayed, her devotee;
My hook and string I bait with loves own truth.
Ocean high swells rose with ships like mine own
Conceited fool, ‘lo I would pull her in
Tie her will to mine, she be overthrown
I aimed to etch my name upon her fin.
She took my bait, and gazed her fearfully,
Green eyes met mine, at last my quarry won.
I pulled too rough, she shied and broke swift free,
My love swims lost, prey to another one.
O do not rush your love, or bind her fast,
She comes to the calm and patient at last.
(Critique, please! Just remember the rules for a sonnet in iambic pentameter....10 syllables per line, rhyming scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Looking forward to the comments!!)
One more moonless night,
The stars blast themselves at me now,
Suns long dead making a legacy on our meager humanity.
How do we burn.
How do we rile.
Silly Earthlings, so full of their own existence.
Some of us think our blazes as strong as the stars.
We do.
We are.
Burn brightly.
Scald my eyes.
Make me blink the wet truths.
Wandering dry Texas trails in a year with no rain
I couldn't help it, I had to pull my shoes off and leave them in his car,
Touch the earth with my skin, let my feet sink in
And I'd wander ahead, glancing back at his smile, glancing eyes
Letting my hands brush through dangling blistered branches,
Stroking grass that would not quit.
Later he commented on my walking, how I seemed to take the Earth in stride
But I think it's She who takes me.
Trying to teach him, you cannot pound Her mercilessly with your heels
Striking, foot after foot, forcing yourself into the shifting soil.
No, you must pad as a lioness does, toes first, gripping, apelike.
Filtering each step as an honoring gesture your feet must give,
Grasping little digits, our smallest, connecting deeply with the largest.
Walking isn't simply moving forward
It is letting the Earth carry us.
Our tent a breathless huddle beside me, bedding taunting my heat-induced misery
And your gentle hands guided the cords through eyelets,
I couldn't see you, but the hands so gentle swept over my back
Lacing the binding corset lines, pulling taught the metal and cloth.
Your fingers could have been moths, brushing me,
Or the delicate green caterpillars we saw dangling in silk from every tree.
There was an audience, as you cinched me in,
And goblin giggles from the little one echoed off the leaves.
He has his own language sometimes, doesn't he?
I pulled down tight on the cords, as you tugged and shifted, doing your best.
These curves can be quite rebellious at times.
Here we stood, I barefoot on your tapestry,
You, knit brows, concentrating on the task at hand.
Myself, one bit of heart always in my child, distracted,
Yet hoping to turn around, job done, and blind you joyfully
With a smile, garbed in the stitches and sweat and work
All that built me.
I turned around, and I found myself in you.
I knit my chains,
Weaving them from the hair of my brow
Circumcising the length and breadth
Of my freedom.
All so done with will
Free
Ignorant
A virgin in the literal sense
I just wanted you to smile with approval
When really I should have been seeking my own.
Fuck you, I faked every orgasm
In sacrifice of yet another dream.
Each time you filled me I cried tears, bitter with blood.
You know what? It was worth it.
Because now I know servitude.
I know unwilling sacrifice.
I know what rape feels like.
And it was worth it.
You gave me a gift,
And with each slave-bent gesture
My back grew stronger
To bear your flails.
My legs grew stronger
To bear your loads.
My spirit grew stronger to battle your expectations.
My will finally
Finally
Grew strong enough
To grab my own shield,
Emblazoned in scars.
It allowed me to burn my spear
From the bones of my old life.
And anew, weapon raised,
I stand, waiting for anyone
To try to chain me again.
We tease the smoke with our wet eyes,
Hoping it keeps the mosquitoes away.
He writes names into the air with embers,
Swinging lit stems
Inspiring my vigor.
My notebook is lit with a flashlight, dangling from a string
Held between my teeth.
Bruised knees aching from kneeling over the infant flame,
Blowing my soul out between my lips,
Nurture the fire, easing it from its hiding place.
I kneel, he dances,
His blonde hair glows back at me,
Blue eyes flash dark when he steps away.
But he is always back again,
Dry feet in the leaves shout his steps
As he begs my lap again,
No refusals allowed.
He clambers into me, all sharp knee and elbow bends,
And I smell the smoke in his hair,
Stroke the back of his neck,
And surrender to a request,
Singing to the flames,
Rocking in the soil to the beat of his heart,
Choking back tears and trying to remember.
Your little sighs and twitches as you dreamed kept me from drifting off.
But for once I really didn't care. Just to see your peace as you dozed,
Your brows relaxed and smooth, your eyes barely open,
Your breath escaping through your pink lips,
When you sleep I fall in love with you all over again.
Not that I could ever fall out. You're my own, my flesh, my son.
And every single moment with you is one snatched from the fates,
Snatched from work, school, papers to write, evaluations to put together.
All I wanted this morning as you slept and dreamed in my arms
Was for time to stand still, just for a little bit.
You woke, and we ate breakfast in the backyard under the pecans,
You threw rocks and sticks in the water for Penny to fetch,
And laughed when she kicked drops in her own face and tried to bite them.
We wore pajamas and coats, tripping about creekside with houseshoes on.
I taught you how to build a fire, using nothing but what nature gave and one match.
And you savored the sausages we toasted on sticks,
Giggling as the grease ran down your chin.
Our sleeves served as worthy napkins, and not caring made it all the more fun.
I think you loved our hedonism, the casual breakfast fireside
Sitting on pillows of dry grasses and crackling leaves.
The wind threatened us with falling sticks and rippled water
And your hair danced in the blusters, like prairie grass on rolling hillside.
I sat, tending the flame, watching you climb ten feet over the water on leaning tree trunks,
Knowing your balance would keep you upright.
I know you'll carry that balance into other parts of your life, my darling.
You already have it proven.
My voice wasn't full of warnings or reprimands, no.
It read from Chaucer, and that cheeky Wife of Bath kept us giggling
As her accent and impudence made its way out of my mouth into the cold air.
We giggled as you build little stone towers and imagined they were castles,
We whispered about the fairies who will sleep there tonight when the stars are free.
I know we were both a little sad when we had to return to the world of the mundane,
Where doorways and appliances and schedules block out the possibility of the magic we made.
But this morning existed, it became, it was its own power,
It's alive in you even now as you nap in the next room.
Again the balance you've grown, it shows when you ask me to turn off my computer
And come out with you, under the trees again, where we both can be
Absolutely ourselves, we belong to one another, to no one,
We give and take, ebb and flow with the water, the wind in the branches,
Where I end and you begin becomes blurry, and we can reach into the very earth.
