Discounted Poetry

I strain to lift you near me From the tides. I fear you're slipping down Despite my grip. You don't see All the evenings Wasted wondering How many of your daily smiles I have earned, How many were angelic gifts of grace. Before you sink to bed, Do fragments of headlights glide Across your midnight overhead, Shifting to a phantom cast of faces, Swells of cheeks Or blurs of waiting lips? Does 4 o'clock entice your mouth Imagining my taste? I see nocturnal paradises Burn away beneath the orange hues Sent by the brutal sun. How late were you awake? Inside the shade and shadows, In the shimmer on the surface of your ceiling, Did your drowsy eyes Chance spy me in your room, An undulating image on the water, Or have currents wrapped around your fleshy thigh And pulled you gently too far down, Away? - 3/4/26

Your lips are resting wetly open So just slowly say my name. It's simple, One small syllable, And lifts from off your tender tongue Like the young red-breasted robin Finally arising From the lowest limb. - 3/3/26

I swear I felt your fire Through the airborne icy particles between And saw your brilliant circle About pathetic fools Who loathed to leave the darkness. I felt, Yet I did not believe Although I carried you. Your god of love did smite, My doubt my guilt. No chain or rock or hungry raven, Just an aimless warmth without a lover, Imprecise endeavor, Hunger without clarity or object. Undeniable rock always rolling over. - 3/2/26

You and I are naked nerves in winter, Sheathless in electric storms. If someone carried a canoe Or if we knew a common tongue... We curl protecting our softest undersides. I do not believe you hide a weapon, But I'm often incorrect And I can't comprehend your speech. We're both a country's length from shores. Perhaps we're seeking warmth, A covered cove to pull up on After being flung from splintered moorings, Home. The lightning's over. The black rebounds victorious. I see walls of water, Nothing more. Your voice is underneath the roaring. - 2/27/26

The hens were scratching for a change. I left the porch to find The rooster limp and sprawled. He crawled despite a hundred bites. He never once had strayed. You don't get a poem today. The weatherwoman promised rain. The sky collapsed to smears Of darkest gray debris. The breezes cleared it all away. The sun's a searing pain. You don't get a poem today. She neared to meet my bursting flame And lit and blazed against the heat, Yet crumbled fast just like  A fumbled finger tap above A cigarette ashtray. You don't get a poem today. - 2/26/26

The hum, The constant quiet whining Of efficient strip lighting, Hands unsteady, Cracked in driest air, The longest empty pauses Till the grey explodes And steals your everything within the sudden chaos, The evenings when you know The floor has dropped away, Although you cannot feel your fall. You only know you now have nothing Deep within your chest. You're moved outside the room To hospital hallways Smelling antiseptic Just like every hospital hallway. After the doctor tells you You pray as if it might Unsettle scales to balance, Knowing she will never make it. You see the morning Long ago, The fresh croissants and juice and coffee, Hazy sunlight barely bright enough For you and her on rumpled sheets To read voluptuous chunks of Shakespeare, Lyrics of a hungry love, And staring lost into her face, She everything, And this the world you want to live in, World you had eleven years You believed the dark collectors Wrenching her away Had taken what it would To cover your presumptions...