Poems

some humble love potions, I mean poems

It’s that time of year again. Turkey and football and mashed potatoes and Black Friday and pumpkins and fall weather and cornucopias and… thanks? Yeah, sure. It’s good practice, I suppose. Why not. Let’s see—you go first.

What am I thankful for? Like green beans and cranberry sauce, the canned answer works here: family, friends, freedom, and fudge. The four F’s.

No! Love. That’s a good one. Take a journey of love below, because, you know, I’m thankful for it. And you should be too.

Leaves in water. I dunno. It’s fall I guess. Run with it.

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The Mime's Box

One day, I smiled for your camera,

and you captured me.

Here I am, glossed on a sheet

in a static 4x2 world,

only wishing

you could find me

without losing

any time.

Last hour, I cradled our shadow

and neglected the light

till they died. You are there,

in the heat of a snowball stand,

thinking

it could heal me

without changing

how it feels.

Now I shudder when the sun burns

red on your skin.

We are not here, in the crater

of a shadow, but I am

still hoping

you can hug me

without touching

where it hurts.

---

All My Silly Protons

If our love was concrete, it would be air,

too scattered to gather in a box

and call my own.

I would shoot its protons through a pair of slits

and read the waves it leaves. I am tempted

to measure them, see if they love me back,

make them choose.

I am done with probability.

If you never see me, will my particles run away,

perhaps join the circus, form the painted smile

on a melancholy clown?

Maybe some will find a bulb buried in the loam,

wondering when the frost will die

so it can bloom.

Others will fling across the sky, join the dark matter

between the stars, maybe slide around a black hole

like a penny in a funnel. I suspect

some have left already.

I am glass to you.

Then you smile, and they all rush back,

getting stuck at the back of my throat.

---

To Live for the Moment

A little long in the claw,

but days are measured in hours, not minutes.

A heartbeat may be a second,

it may be quicker

when we're lying down, nose to nose.

What if all our lives we never mentioned this

to anyone else? How the grasses cowered

and the hot springs spread between our thighs

as the days fell off like familiar clothes, the years

playing in your eyes. I pull the edge of my mouth down

to retrain the grimace I know is coming;

later, when the years too have fallen away

and lay disgusting in the runoff.

---

What can I say? I’m a hopeless romantic. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!