Progress/No progress

i am trying
not to empathize with
just anything
that reminds me of you
but even when the six letters
of your name
are enshrouded in metaphors
or emblazoned on tee shirts
I’m going to find my nearest bathroom stall
and cry for an hour
I’m going to sit in my room until
12 O’Clock, with my dull aching chest that
yields to crumpled and
compromised exhaling
even if it isn’t you
even if it’s only someone like you
even if it’s only the extended idea of someone like
you,
you’d best know i’m alone behind the bathroom door
listening to the neighbors screaming under the floor
wondering why this doesn’t seem to stop from
being relevant anymore

Copyright 2015 Golden Star Poetry

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Alternate Timeline

as i safeguarded you
i knew there would always be a tomorrow when,
lazily draped over the sun
there you would always be,
your face.

you tumbled onto a grassy shelter of concrete
your edifice
sanctuaried here, on this
lone bus stop.

i’d mourn,
but no one has been laid down
no one is dead.

if it had all been real, though
i’d mourn the thought of being squashed down
being lost somewhere in the middle;
i’d murmur in the moment i had touched the
solid gold year, the ripe fruit of the fresh year
the orange-blossom-laden year
palm to heart, pressing like a dart
pressing my torso,
rocking:

mourning for a dead moment
i stood by the stoop
mourning for the still moment
short minutes long,
that i held the crisp autumn air of ripe truth
when i held your water eyes in mine-
when i had looked into my calm, opiate future
in your pooling eyes:

i saw the book-filled apartments and the
late nights and the
long trips and the
aching shade and the
long walks down the city streets,
talking or laughing of nothing at all–
but you needn’t look to find me now,
all i ever do now is mourn.

Copyright 2015 Golden Star Poetry

Jasmine

The first breath in the morning,

and oh,

how that smile

which so seemed

jasmine

to a broken eye.

Myself, and the water above my head

singing of the only song

that was,

a face.

a rainfall monsoon spread to india today.

A girl was seen rushing up the street

soaking her dress,

and i thought

of myself

when,

dragged beneath the sea comb of the beach

my hair dragged and rippled up in knots

you were my first love

and now her eyes stare into mine

that girl,

tossed inside the waves of rain

whispered

“he is gone,

and a jasmine blossom

now drowns in the river”.

Copyright 2014 Golden Star Poetry

The Other Window

When that glass window is my friend

so too, hers

and both of us lost

both of us engaged

in that uncertain drama,

in something so vile it turned our stomachs and guts into

piles of squeamish liquid:

 

When that music in my ears is my lover

so too, hers

and both of us separately entranced

both of us “some other where”

in that lost lost place

we call

home.

 

Sometimes I will try to coax her out, while

the days pass by

all in place, the city glare

and the hanging humid air…

 

sometimes this small age of uncertainty

is the age of vulnerability,

as the gentle days go by

without a warm embrace

I  enter the world where

the one man makes the other man feel

ashamed for being himself,

while telling the world

he needs to be himself,

and pressing upon you

the urge to be like him

making you forget

you were just normal

to begin with.

 

now, eight days later in the rocking  bus

enshrouded in my own solitude

I think of  the girl I didn’t really love

and the boys I never really knew

but practically died trying to:

 

I look back through the window

and I am trying to be alone with  myself

without her prim-rosy face

which is turned the other way

to face the other window,

 

and as the day slowly fades

she is losing herself in herself–

but I couldn’t be her,

and I couldn’t blame her.

 

Copyright 2014 Golden Star Poetry

 

 

PS.

I do not own this picture–I should probably start saying that, since I did get a camera. Unless this is a photography post, or I specifically state it, I do not own the pictures I use in my posts. Okay, Bye!

This Winter, Two People:

This winter, two people
edge upon edge
and the slight misgivings .
on the lawn the boy is rushing up the frost bitten lawn
his red button nose and pinched smile:

“what did you want from me?” he asks,
but soon all the boy remembers
is his father clutching his mother’s hand
(that’s him, that’s him, now hold it in, hold it all in)

why do all these idiotic
moronic
stupid
people
want a way out?

the world doesn’t come naturally to anyone!
when he was younger the boy lived in a strange world
full of awe at the bustle and life of it all,
in that dreamworld world where you forgot your own name
in the fancy of it all.

This winter, two people are on edge.
that delicate flower you were trying so hard to preserve
like melting snow, soon gone
and not till he takes her through the second barren dawn
will it lift her from the sleep again.

The mother will see the smiling boy
And she painfully
regretfully
remembers a lost moment.

Kissing is that act of sheer remeberance
as the two people edge upon edge
topple against the sunlight,
exposed and bare, unable to
remember anything, but trying so hard…

The boy enters the house,
his breeches worn from the wind
and the wintry weather.

Night falls on the county town,
and the homestead will slowly quiet down within the hour,
The father in his armchair, reading by firelight,
will see his son’s ruddy chapped face
in a bright white silhouette
imagining for one single guilty moment that he is his son;
and his son will catch a hopeful glimpse upward
and imagine that he is his father.

Copyright 2014 Golden Star Poetry

Black Streamers

Lila hated the mornings.
fleeting, once, she dreamed
of flowers
whipping flashing
wanting the wind to kiss the peonies
she knew her lover stood there
and he boomed commands like a vast mountain

“who dares to find the treasure inside me?
I alone can grant the misery or the pain or the pleasure”
and it was true:
he knew to cast the pain or the joy
when just the moment came

and when she would realize that he was not there
she would scream into her comforter
while her mascara painted
black streamers
onto her ruddy cheeks
as she half shuddered the words to a poem that’s first line was:
“I just wanted to talk to someone beautiful”.

she could feel the nausea,
and she still hated mornings.

well,
the mornings hated her,
but the dreams wanted to love her silently
giving her the same dream with the same lover.

yet she still she wakes up,
half groaning,
lying on her stomach
feeling seasick
from tossing around in her bedridden storms.

Copyright 2013 Golden Star Poetry