PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

I Went to the Museum of Art to See My Poet Friends

 

I went to the Museum of Art

To see my poet friends,

I heard their poems and wrote some lines

Picking them out as they flew,

Dropping the sunset in the glass cabinet

So much sadness in the world,

Eclipse and the drop of champagne

In bed at night,

Feathers at the bottom of

Each Dream

Cushions the fall of the miners

Shakespeare stops my thoughts.

Dress up gold in the back closet

Forgotten twenty in the jacket pocket

Roll, knead, and fold

Fermentation.

Damn not allowed to say damn

To out spot out spot out spot

You damn friend not a friend sorrrreee

Slings and arrows rest on your couch

Waiting for the wind

Head to my shoulder

Found me in the field

Center of each story

Stretching your lies across the sand.

Scared the Titan from under the bed

Took me so long to kill you

An old friend I don’t call

Anymore.

 

Wages of dying is love, what if

You live among the small stuff

Head shrug

Sad art

Right-of-passage

and running.

Cad

Her friends hated him. 

She, on the other hand,

Did not. 

She looked pass the arrogance,

Not really believing it there,

To how she felt 

In his arms. 

A step into his embrace 

Upon departure,

A good-bye the first night

They met

Sealed the deals

As they say.

Even the love of female

Jazz singers,

Wasn’t the cement

That bound, like that hug. 

Winter coats opened

She had stepped into

A room that felt like nothing

Before. 

Years later

It still conjured up that surprise 

Of, oh my god, what have we here. 

A fit not fit before,

A spark of instant home.  

Even after the havoc

Beset upon her

Through years of jealousy 

And incomplete expectations,

It still was the finest moment

in a long line of moments 

That can’t be explained 

To her friends.  

It just that-

That moment-

Of why she endured

Those moments

In a shapeless relationship, 

Non-descriptive in terms that

The audience of her companions 

Could grasp,

It’s just,

It’s just,

It’s just how he makes me feel

She’d say 

To he’s a cad 

No he’s not

It’s just-

And the excuses get lamer

And her heart

breaks and bleeds

In revisits of spaces 

They previously shared 

All she could think was 

It’s how he made her feel

That night in December 

Under a neon moon

An embrace that would 

Change 

Everything

Hands Over Privates

You came at me from the long distance of a few feet,

Captured me in an embrace

and held on till it was time

to let me go.

Only after they cackled, “Get a room,”

Hanging your head in mocked shame

Hands over privates,

Did you skulk away.        

 

The long distance of a few feet, covered in an instance.

You tease me with your eyes,

Follow me whenever I look.

I try not to look at you.

Only after some pretense to speak

Do I, look at you. I like to look at you,

And want to feel

Hands over privates.

All You Can Eat

It was all-you-can-eat mussels Monday.

Vintage wallpaper, reminiscent of pulled-down mite-filled plaster in college town apartments of our youth,

Hovered over our table.

I sat and looked at that wallpaper, 

Diamonds of turquoise outlined with  gold fleur-de-lis’,

Truly ugly, but magical in this hidey-hole restaurant.

Laughing, eating mussels, breaking the record of bowls ordered, 

Silly, full and sinfully contemplating another round, he said,

You know I’ve been thinking about this lady I’m working with, 

I think there’s more to it,

And I want to be open to pursue it.

He said that as I decided the wallpaper was going to be permanently indelible in my mind's eye,

Just as the taste of garlic lamb wine sauce would smack of rejection,

Innocent mussels cut off the floor of the ocean or riverbed or wherever the fuck they lived 

Their fucking happy lives 

Before they came to bear witness to his

Emotional infidelity.

Not bound to her, under no obligation except friendship and the sharing of a bed winding down a six-year love affair, 

They had settled in a coupling

Monogamous and exclusive

Knowing he wanted to flee.

Time again his scorpion sting 

Would make a break but grandiose ideals

Faded

And he’d return,

She’d take him back,

And they’d sit and watch Jeopardy by the artificial fireplace 

Battery candles flicker

And fruit flies flutter. 

They’d sit in an embrace not sat before in all their geriatric years,

His arm around her 

Her back against him

His hand cupping her breast 

Without intentions,

Stomachs too full from a meal. 

Here though tonight with the mussel shells piled  

The sauce glistening greasy on the dark wood table,

Concrete floor abstract art in grey,

He said he had to see where it led.

She keenly took notice of the floors similarity

To the designer scarf

Around his neck.

Is there a way to let the air out of your soul so many times 

That it no longer can be filled again?

Flaccid?

She came all the time. 

Over and over,

The first man to ever do that,

Their lovemaking thick and drenching

Never quite done

An endless series of toss and tumbles

Until the time he said 

It’s not you it’s me. 

You mean I'm not the you you need me to be?

So yea it is me?

Staring at hideous mid-century colors

Eating mussels my mid-century parents brought me up on

Being dumped by a mid-century born bald man

To pursue an un-shareable dream

I was never invited to dream.