An Open Letter to John Berryman

April 5, 2007
I understand that impulse -
writing yourself in two, placing
all your darker emotions
into verse, putting the gun’s
cold metal to your temple
and pulling the trigger with words.

Ghetto Library

One room, the size of a fast
food resteraunt dining area,
and people waiting for
the next broken computer
to become available. Books
dog eared and tired line shelves
out of order, and magazines
like Ebony and Cosmo
fly off the shelves
and out the door without
going thru the check out.
What is here but the runoff
of knowledge offered so
poorly to those who
need [...]

Without a Name

Covered and coveted,
you are hidden almost
all the time. Only a few
people will ever see
or appreciate the warmth
and beauty that
imminates from the folds
the compose you. Once,
I felt your warmth
and knew that I would
return here, that this
is where I will live.

I’m lost to you

She woke one morning with the words
floating in a flat paper bubble
above her head. She suddenly
noticed: she is no longer her own.
She had known it in her arms,
her legs, her skin all week bubbled
and tingled without any coaxing,
and her mind finaly caught up today
to the yearnings of the rest of her.

Valentine’s Heart

It’s just a little, an incosequential
thing, a blip on the radar, the beat
of a heart so light but stubborn beneath
the surface of skin. It stopped one day
for you, it stops all the time for
reasons unknown. It stops for its own
pleasure, it stops for my pain. Once,
she said my skin was so [...]

Corpse Pose

Yoginis are better than lovers – (a bumper sticker)
They’ve stood behind you, pulling at your hips with a towel until your feet raise off the floor. They’ve demanded that you twist and flex yourself into pose after pose. Now, your body glazed in a sheen of sweat, they ask you to lie on [...]

Changes and Poetry Thursday

Poetry Thursday opened a site of their very own this week, and it is wonderful. In appreciation, here is a poem about change…
Bedding
She tugged at the corners and then rolled
the thin, limp fabric into a ball. As she hoisted
it off the bed, it fluttered with the sound
of new winds. She tossed it [...]

Mathematical Poetry Thursday

Bounded Function
A function with a range that is a bounded set. The range must have both an upper bound and a lower bound.
I kissed you like infinity, loved you
like the randomness exhibited by pi.
But we were a more complex math,
we needed more knowledge than either
of us had the skill for. [...]

Why I love poetry (in 153 words or less)

Because it is the only way I can articulate myself. I love it for it’s sparseness. In a few short lines, a poem can say what a thousand pages of prose can. And poems are accessible. If you read a poem and you don’t agree with it’s message, that poem can [...]

Poetry Thursday re-used lines

A collaboration, of sorts, this week. A line was shared by ecm and I am using it. I will create a link to her page on the line, as well.
After you asked
You kissed me so softly that I knew
you thought I might break, and I hated
myself for being this sort of girl. [...]