Not Touching

The valentine of desire is pasted over my heart
and still we are not touching, like things
in a poorly done still life
where the knife appears to be floating over the plate
which is itself hovering above the table somehow,
the entire arrangement of apple, pear, and wineglass
having forgotten the law of gravity,
refusing to be still,
as if the painter had caught them all
in a rare moment of slow flight
just before they drifted out of the room
through a window of prefectly realistic sunlight.
~Billy Collins

SONNET

A man talking to his ex-wife on the phone.
He has loved her voice and listens with attention
to every modulation of its tone. Knowing
it intimately. Not knowing what he wants
from the sound of it, from the tendered civlity.
He studies, out the window, the seed shapes
of the broken pods of ornamental trees.
The kind that grow in everyone's garden, that no one
but horticulturists can name. Four arched chambers
of pale green, tiny vegetal proscenium arches,
a pair of black tapering seeds bedded in each chamber.
A wish geometry, miniature, Indian or Persian,
lovers or gods in their apartments. Outside, white,
patient animals, and tangled vines, and rain.

-Robert Hass

Involuntarily Angry

Today I don't care much
if slipper-like love songs take the air waves
or if I find track two and seven
overly romantic
staged and cotton filled.
no songs today unless
they are in Spanish
but never French.

French sounds romantic
too enticingly come a little closer
even when you speak
of rotting flesh sludging into sewage
you are just meeting the language.

Because you can talk about
how he loves her,
almost
how perfect the moon locks
at night silhouetting your
girl and how her eyes steal starlight
I love you... (I love you but her right now.)
your slow whispers filled with almosts.

Just don't let me understand
why
let nice be ignorant
keep them in soft whispers
too soft for my
leather hard ears.
No love songs today,
not in French or English
and nothing physical,
you want skin and breath
anything too personal is long dead.
and eliminate thoughts of why.

If you do talk out loud
Speak in code for me
say its nice
say that everything is nice
and I will never need to know
that nice means we
had dinner together
and forgot the candlelight
because the excuse we'll use
is we were too busy in
the other ones eyes
Physical.

Attraction has no polarity,
and my father says
anyone will be the same
and people keep anger
I have no choice
but to believe that.
I'm new to this
unspoken language
and I choose to be right now
illiterate
and far away from
your trappingly sweet almosts.

-Whitney

Even as I Hold You

Even as I hold you
I think of you as someone gone
far, far away. Your eyes the color
of pennies in a bowl of dark honey
bringing sweet light to someone else
your black hair slipping through my fingers
is the flash of your head going
around a corner
your smile, breaking before me,
the flippant last turn
of a revolving door,
emptying you out, changed,
away from me.
Even as I hold you
I am letting go.

-Alice Walker

What Can't Be Had

Cupping my hands
out of these
uncooled thirsts
I am drinking
from the small pond
of my palms
The honeyed droplets
I let fall dry,
my unsteady hands
won't stay round.

Dancing to Distancing Rhythms

A rebuttle
to the well...
'moving on
theory '

Crucial phases
threaded by sides of
lengthening conversations
take their places and
plant in the banks of my mind.
These are confessions
of a long time thief:
I take the shells, even the sands
I also take flowers
from unseen gardens
to lock them in my heart.
You become complacent
talking like the earth
will soon shake,
as if I should feel the shudder
narrow these one way tunnels
which didn't let you turn
leaving only the direct way ahead lit.
Permission? yes...
I assume it should
be there,
but I cannot help
that I have grown,
because I did not live alone.
It was Wednesday evening,
the air heavying
held back the summer,
'there' is valued
'then' is dreamed
like stolen smiles
piecing together broken glass.
I already keep countless onlys.
If only you could hear them speak.
There are so many
places I want
to touch and live
more than twice.
I'm caught between
the hurdles of
tommorrow and today,
as yesterday puddles
at my feet
rising to my knees.
I'm asked
what time it is or
if it will be Thursday.
All I can confirm
is that it is naked daylight.
Every moment
we frame with
the limits of seconds, hours
link into months.
I find I leak falling slow
into the next day
forgetting the last
has passed.
it is different
if only for me
swearing to continue
dancing to distancing rhythms.
The truth is that --
physically mind you--
neither one of us can turn back.
I have not yet
been stopped by this.
My mind
often leaves my body
I stow away elsewhere
perched in vantage
points of corners
holding open pictures
which move
with one questioning
only, a centerfold
waving
in the wind.

Pain

More faithful
than lover or husband
it cleaves to you,
calling itself by your name
as if there had been a ceremony.
At night you turn and turn
searching for the one
bearable position,
but though you may finally sleep
it wakens ahead of you.
How heavy it is,
displacing with its volume
your very breath.
Before, you seemed to weigh nothing,
your arms might have been wings.
Now each finger adds its measure;
you are pulled down by the weight
of your own hair.
And if your life should disappear ahead of you
you would not run after it.
-Linda Pastan