A selection of poems from the upcoming volume Flipside Id:
Eros:
Exploring, we discovered Bee Tree Park.
Tree branches laced like lazy fingers behind our head,
above the trail, above the naked rock
where neon graffiti was worn to earthen tones.
The slow Mississippi whispered by.
Fingers woven like dreams and the night
before falling asleep.
Her warm palm pulsing, we paused
to watch the barges wander down
and sip the summer breeze.
Her voice murmured cooly in my ears,
as she spilled her hair over my shoulder,
maple syrup dripping down my chest,
"This would be a great place to make love."
I smiled, ruffling kisses through her hair,
a butterfly on a field of clover,
and rustled in her ear, "We are."
It's always more than sex to sleep with you.
Don't get me wrong; I like to tangle sheets
and hungry scents and taste the salty dew
of glistening sweat where heavy eyebrow meets
soft eyelids closed, relaxed. I'll kiss them, too,
and sample other slow seduction sweets.
But I'll run out of juice, won't thump my chest
and say I won't, and so I like the rest:
I like to lie, arms wrapped around you, deep
in comfortable darkness where the moon projects
odd patterns on the walls. I want to keep
you safe and warm as winter licks our necks.
You mumble love and slowly fall asleep;
these moments worth much more than simple sex.
Remember me in steaming showers where
you loosen tensions from the day and think
that I massage your shoulders, soft and bare,
my touch so warm it turns your skin to pink.
My fingers trickle through your clinging hair
and jeweled droplet kisses make you blink.
But if a shower too quickly runs to cold from hot,
let soft bath waters assure you I will not.
Imagine me there when you close your eyes
amid the bubbles of your bath, my hand
there in the subtle motions, stroking thighs,
smooth palms across your belly, lightly tanned,
and over scented neck up to the mouth that lies
above the water, crying your demand.
Sometimes on throbbing winter nights
smelling of uneven engine heat,
my car cuts through the late-gathered rush.
Neon taillights moving crack the starless dark.
Little jigsaw pieces of my life fall from the box.
The future seemed seamless once,
now a shattered mirror mosaic,
what might be scarred by what is and what had been.
The jagged little dreams tinkle underfoot
as I march on, lock-stepped with the world.
But then, sometimes on throbbing winter nights
we scatter our tatters on your floor,
mixing metaphors and semantic semaphores, our thoughts, our dreams,
incomplete and holy, we can mix their textures together.
From what was and what is,
we'll sew what we've ripped,
making a quilt to wrap ourselves in. Thanatos:
Broken
Hearts crumbled cobblestones, i walk on broken
promises, forever frayed and tattered.
people chatter, chipmunks, cloistered in passing by.
i sort psyche's seeds
into reluctant piles
spilling can-dos and cannots
and sticky-tar should-haves into order
simple as shoveling a stream
my city sighs tepid bittersweet lies
fears, tears, years fade into the breeze
memories lit from behind.
slave to lucidity's dream, i
walk on broken, i
walk on broken
(with hli)
Central Illinois Solo
Thundering south across the Illinois plane, a herd of diesels growl to challenge foreign cars and sedans plodding endlessly on thin strips of pavement stretched tight against the corn. Inside a seventy mile-per-hour asylum, I howl at the other drivers, other beads on the strings of time, dots on an unconnected line. I wail the pilgrims on the radio, shrieking their gods of pop love lie bleeding along the highway side, caught in the rushing light of youth and energy, and thrown aside with a thump that rattles heart and hands upon the wheel. I rage, I shriek, I roar into the wind—
The quiet time is over....
No longer she sleeps, reclined and half turned, in the passenger seat,
breathing deep and lightly scented for the ride
No more will she blink slow, stretch like a Persian,
and cast lightening eyes across the crops and me
to ask, "Where are we?"
I could reply, certainly, softly, over the whisper of the radio,
"Six miles south of Tonica."
And she would smile, and try, but slip back to sleep.
No, that quiet time is over—
Despair, delusion, illusion, confusion swirl, four winds, driving doubts like thunderheads across the prairie. Recriminations and accusations echo tantrums against the windshield, yet I sing with the storm. With strobing flashes of hindsight and thundering claps of I-don't-give-a-damn, I hurtle into the darkness, screaming sentiments too simple to repress, at speeds too sane to be startling.
But through the fifth floor hospital panes
autumn shuffles in.
The trees, agonizing, clear through ammonia glass, burst
into red gold pyres
for summer to lay its sunsets on.
Sepia eaves slide like days to the next.
Church spires stab the gelling gloom
and clutch the last tracings of light.
They were things once—
now textures, colors and brushstrokes flat beyond glass.
The world blurs Impressionist
and beneath the varnish of medication,
the November son slides into darkness.