poetry spring 2004

i shoved hours under the carpet of sunday staring
out my window.
i noticed with squinted eyes the silhouette of my foot
against the blazing summer light.

i wondered to myself:
how i have grown. how i have aged.
where are all those smells i remember as a child.
the scents of freedom i could almost put in my pocket
they were so thick.
the hundred signals of a coming summer
after the last bell of school rang for the year.

i would blaze a trail home. sneakers i can no longer recall
even the color of.

all those smells exist now for some other young boy.

i spent a day looking at my foot.
i spent a day hearing my grandma's voice from that morning.
it was in my head.

i noticed today as i had not on others. how fragile her laughter
really is.
how thin her time is, and i havent seen her in a while.
i am afraid to move towards her now, like the smoke of my incense.
approachable only in theory.
what if i move and she's no longer there?
what if i see her and the wrack of time against her face.
the same rubbled struggle i hear in her voice.

i want to be young again near her.
when summer brought my freedom from books
and pints of not so cold milk cartons.
from smocks wreeking of tempra paint.
back to when the sun of july brought
my grandmas freckles out even against her bronzed italian skin.

its strange
how a day of a foot silhouette can
can warp the space of my mind
in such ways.

i forgot to say i love you to my grammy when i hung up on sunday.
i shouldn't do that again.

i think i will call in the morning.

we are all incense.

i feel like i've been left in the attic.

i am tired, and i simply long for the red dart of a lovers tongue
to either whisper to me or kiss me.

and i a thousand muscles to use in my
army of hugs. i've been training for love
and it just doesnt come.

i can be found in the briar waiting.

my desire so much of a crocodile's mouth.
my legs are open, and devouring the lonely nights,
i am full of black space inside
where butterfly desires echo
themselves senseless
and now lay heaping like electric skeletons.

i hid myself for so long
kept my body from the urgings

tonight i want you to be against me.
full against me with such flowering kisses
i love the sex pout of your mouth
when my words tumble
through your flesh and ignite systems of flares and super-novas.

i am open against the night wanting more
than just as it is now.
i want you to move my hands
my heart
my window is closing soon.
where ever you are put haste
in your stride to find my quivering

it is painful to wait in the dark alone for
as long as i have.

soon my legs will close, and my arms
and only the edges of the books will remain
as i study to shed the fierce sexual fire
of my undulating
of my coil tightening
of my quiet should be bolting of lightning.

hurry home
and marry me under the stars

before i am too ragged and old
and steeped in prayer.