Genre

The only thing that can be written about is love and being in it.

An octopus, a tectonic plate, a president.

A man or woman or both.

A platonic cave and longing and longing and longing.

You refill my fountain pen with blue black ink and there are all my future words compressed.

The DNA of the soul you own.

Letters coiled together like Christmas lights in a hot August attic.

Waiting to be alphabetically unwound.

Struggling to plot the space between us and how I hate it.

I stretch blue black into lines and curves when you aren’t watching and read the code.

How did you shape me into this story.

You refill my fountain pen with ink that glitters.

You ask me to choose and then practice your delicate witchcraft.

Crystal bottles and silver nibs balanced between your fingerprints.

Inject my thoughts into a slender barrel so I can find out what they are.

I can only write about love and being in it.

That’s all there is as far as I can tell.

I’ve checked every book in the library and I’m not wrong.

Every page strung out on limerence or else never born.

Every genre a subgenre of romance.

Every author yanked along by the aching center of their chest.

A spaceship, a needle point, a tower, a fang.

Objects that rise and fall like heartbeats.

They rush in like ocean waves.

Love I love I love.

Do you.

Love me love me love me.

I enter the aisles to worship.

Bend my spine among the spines.

This inventory of obsessions.

Aphrodite hushes patrons who cry broken ecstasies.

Turn the page.

One more chapter.

I could never reshelve you.

My journals are labeled by year until the one I met you.

After that it’s just your name writ vertical.

The marble columns I walk between.

Sometimes I nearly approach the altar but my pen keeps coming up dry.

Put the words back in please.

I have more to say.

Venus shrugged.

Railroads and mountains and dollhouse collections.

Of course you’ll never finish.

Has anyone.

Ever.

Music Box Women

This poem was inspired by Grammy and by all the women who came after her, and even by the ones who came before. Most especially, though, it's Georgia on my mind. This poem doesn't say everything that could be said. In fact, it doesn't say nearly enough. I guess that's why we have music: for the times we don't have words, and for the people for whom we'd run out of them.

Music Box Women

Women with straight backs and beautiful smiles

Who live like mountains

Who love their children

Who never stop singing

You can see them scintillating from a mile away

Lighting up kitchens and classrooms and boardrooms and stages

With hair softly curled around diamond-hard minds

With skirt pleats pressed and seasonal sweater vests

They tower over our decades remaining

In sequins and aphorisms and Broadway lyricism

They dance the steps that taught us grace and groove

The ones we'll teach our daughters

They click their heels and go nowhere

Because they landed long ago on a place called home

And even when they move house 

Change tack

Or venture far from hearths well known 

They bring with them their

Circle-'round-the-campfire charisma

Their arms and hearts so strong and wide

And bellies stretched to cradle their babies

They warm the Arctic places

And build foundations in granite and steel

Carrying a tune so lightly and lovely

You sometimes don't notice they also carry the world

These music box women might unwind more slowly 

But are never broken

Even after they leave a final note ringing

Because they stand on our dressers and hang on our walls

And whenever we see them 

We still hear their song

And on good days and hard days and certainly Sundays

We find ourselves humming along

When our credits roll

Their names appear

In places like producer and director and volunteer of the year

And if you stay ‘til the end and listen

You’ll find that the lovely and true tune that they carried

Was there in the background carrying you

The Burning

The burning soul stretches out to the sky

Air thinner up here but so clear

Breathe in ice gasps and stars

A silent flame unseen from below

Devouring oxygen feathers uncertainty

Sun black weightless coal

In sheer blue silk underthings

White lace clouds peripheral vision

Unbothersome matter from this height

Overinflated -- perhaps

But how else to let go