Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Love Poems from the Lost............


I was looking through old files, and found poems, poems from people whose names I have lost, poems from people who left me their beautiful moments in poetry of one shape or another, and then were somehow lost, like footprints disappearing along a beach, in the time stream. I have lost their names, I am sorry to say, they have become unamed, even un-faced, in my own particular stream - but here they are, their moments remaining, like touchstones.  Some of these poems, on old typewritten paper or even the lined pages of a notebook, just have a first name.  Most, not even that.  Should I be ashamed to share here what was so generously given thus?   So I felt like dedicating this post to those  poems from the Lost.  And if the names thereby surface again, by any chance, that would be good indeed.  I am sorry I have lost your names, but with age, it seems the names go out of things. 

 Perhaps, it is time to un-name things anyway, and find new names closer to the fragrance of who we are or were.  Thank you once again for the pentimentos  that remain.
















Anenomes


At this shoreline
there is no visible 
bridge to cross
the anemones of love
are opening, closing
opening, closing
half-visible
in waters below


you must take the leap

....?














It was only

three strands of hair
falling across an eye half closed
a flash of green light
a  curtain of eyelash

a snapshot
in my memory book

where you  still live,  the moment
unlost,
expanding,
weightless 

.....Darren


Losing Her Way Back Home

I want to still be that girl with
Cottonwood leaves caught in
The damp rope of her undeniably
Red hair while she dances so hard
The whole day stops –it just stops-
To stand brilliant and razor-edged

Around her long brown body
Writhing so close to the ground that
Her hands and hair caress the earth
She is holding onto lust, life and fire
Even as it all sifts and spills
Through her wide open fingers.

Down here in the riverbed,
A dry heat is burning my skin
To parchment and clay. I chain-
Smoke stolen cigarettes and
Mumble the words to a song I
Once heard on your pickup truck

Radio when it was tuned to only static
Except for that beat: the pound
Of dirty feet against the dust
That was rolling up in clouds
Around us, the sudden vision
Of human bodies urging the

Earth towards orgasm. The
Spirits of animals walking
Towards the dancers with
The intention of union,
Singing a song with the sound
Of wind-filled bones and

Skin drums: heartbeat/
Bodybeat in the lucidity
Of a circle filled with light.
You wearing golden feathers
And calling out to me until
I gave life to the dance and matched
The rhythm struggling to emerge
From those half-busted speakers

And I sang words as bright
And hard as the desert we drove
Across at not-so-high
Speeds taking in the stars
Like a drink, like something
We could become drunk upon

Exploded into something
Less than fragmented
Until we were lit up
And glowing volcano-
Red in the August night.

But tonight, the world is
Darker and much less alive; you
Are long since gone and the dance
Circle is nowhere in sight. I am
Just a girl with crow feathers
In her red hair, crouching in the

Remnants of a dried up river
Alone and aching for a song,
A drink, a dance partner
And the sound of a hundred
Barefooted bodies still making

Insatiable love to the ground.

.....?




The Game

The big bang was a sigh,
God wistful for a playmate,
bored of being and looking
for action.
I remember God as chubby
from eons lounging
on the ein sofa, a bit mad
from an infinity
of doing nothing.
He made me just after finger painting
a binary star; this forever colored me
in shades of two, as if being One
wasn't hard enough.
I divided: One half hurtling
to frontier reaches, the other
curling into a universe
no bigger than dust.
The game was to find
each other across the vastness,
space and time
our playground.
When we met
in the billionth year,
we traded discoveries
and tales, gifts
of blue feathers, a red stone,
arrowhead and a chain
of stars.
The real prize: In your arms
In my arms,  Home. 

....Lori


If I were to write a poem for you

I can tell you what it would not be

I would not include flowers
too sweet with immanent decay
no forevers, or  deadly promises, 
or worse plans for
Where We Go From Here.

I would say just this:
your fire ran across my thigh
it burns there still.
You have left your mark.

For a moment,
we took that  flame
in our mouths,
and passed it, one to another:

and we were warmed by this,
made bright.

If I were to write a poem for you
I might say this was more
than enough,
without having to give it a name
or a position in the Zodiac.

.....Steven

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