"night is falling to the ground"

"composite sketches"

i try to remember your face
i try, but it's gone
i look for your image in my head
and i only conjure up blank space

i watch the traffic running through white center, i'm watching, and
all i can remember is the way you light your cigarettes
there is nothing that will get it back
even should i run into you downtown
a quick word, and you'll return to smoke

you'll stay in the compartment
where i keep those i can't take with me
a tiny room from which you'll leak into my poems
you'll join that noisy crowd of composite sketches
and breathe, you'll breathe out like wine

I don't like this as much as I did after I wrote it, but there it is. This could be, and probably is, about a lot of people. No one specific. I wrote two things today that won't be appearing here anytime soon. They are called "the agony" and "puget sound lovers".

phone blog

I wrote a poem on the bus this afternoon called "composite sketches". It's too new to appear here, but maybe in the future. I remember wondering who I was writing about. It referenced White Center which usually means certain things I won't get into. I also was worried I was predicting the future. It turns out, in a way, I was. I really hate when that happens.

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"because this is kind of embarrassing"

"tiny prayers"

where am i going to use that line?
the one about the streetlamps
glinting off the moon
and the fire in my head
how am i to embrace anything
when I'm too busy yammering at myself?

i could write a million more
(and probably will)
poems about women i've pulled from under my skin
they always share vauge features with women i've loved
things that ended badly, or never got started
i've mastered all this, god let it evolve

i've been as happy writing about death
as writing about a lover's skin
and i've hid behind the ink
only to throw poems like bombs at the world
and i've watched them drop
as if i'd never pulled the pin

ignorance is love, and it breathes
which might be why i feel i'm safe
but maybe i'm only blind, or deaf, or both
maybe i'm simply burning time, or playing a long con
the tricky kind, this ones on myself
but maybe i'm waking up, maybe i'm taking my bullshit out with the trash


This is the best thing I've written since probably October, though it doesn't have a lot of competition. I'm especially proud of the third stanza. Very introspective, again, obviously. There's a lot of real shit here, a lot of  real worries.

first poem '11

"for for for"

if you wear that dress tonight
i'll be yours as long as you ask
let the past lie as it's buried
i've waited for this
i knew you'd be here, eventually

sacrifice my urges for yours
call you when you need me to
my impressions of you will be as you wish them
you calm me when i'm shaking
i can only be better if you let me

your ever pertinent smile
is the sun i wear when it's raining
cut me, before i'm dependent
or, i'll be a slave for your touch
and, i'll only eat for you

but, if you want these things, i'm able
you can take them
pin them to your chest like a prize
wear your hair down, and put that dress back on
carve your name across my soul, and plant a flower there

The impetus of this was me thinking about someone I know. The rest is fiction. It isn't very good, and I had to drag it out of myself, which rarely yields great things. This is the time of year I don't write much poetry.
I'm fascinated by how people become so utterly dependent on other people.It probably shows up a lot in my stuff, but stuff I don't understand tends to crop up a lot when I write.