Energy Expended and Other Poems

Energy Expended

It is worth the energy expended, cradling this wanting—

the need to have your mouth to mine,

our hands intertwined like bodies at rest

once the loving is done.

I won’t wake you, lending you to sleep—

at home in my itching bones a few moments more.

I imagine rousing you with trailing kisses

and warm hands sticky sweet with last night’s dream.

Watching your evened breath, it rises and whispers

remembered words, a poetry that slides into me,

making me wide and full as a river.

I drift like reflected moonlight, content upon your current.

And then, as a gentle swirl, an eddying tide

I brush against your shore, eroding the slumber

to draw you up and awake as your hand rests upon my hip

and pulls me to where I long to be.

Despising Gravity

Like a comet called to dance,

you break into the pregnant earth, the solid rock-roundness of me.

Crashing into my details, furrowing a road where none existed,

you give me words, lend me sound

to say anything, to scream up a magic that rages

against isolation interrupted.

Wary, I wait on

the imagined damage already done,

for the wave goodbye with a cynical eye and easy wrist.

I refuse your prayers to wake and embrace this love.

My head holds only space for solitary kites

in flights of fancy, the stuff which dreams are made.

I despise the gravity, the weight which holds you firmly to my lonely fate.

I cannot love beautifully, nor love right.

I am perfect imperfection in matters of the heart and night.

I'd rather you be a falling star faded on the wind,

than let me extinguish your fire in the end.

Pandora's Box

You are Pandora’s Box--

a bell unrung.

I am the waiting,--

anticipation’s ring, the latch undone.

Then you say, “The stars are but stars,

nothing less and nothing more.”

And I respond so fervently, “Tell me

are you sure?”

“As a star, you sound like memory,

you feel like infinite song,

you taste of sunshine bliss—In this,

you are wrong.”

But Pandora refuses to teach me,

So I burn with stars, with words unsaid.

From your box my unwilling ears hear,

“Don’t wish on me, don’t wish on me….

Please throw stones instead.”

 Falling

You fell in love with her tears, and then
as they evaporated to salty skin,
crystal streaks on rounded cheeks--
did your love dry thin?

If you had fallen in love with her laughter,
her inappropriate giggles, after
another oddly-timed sigh,
would your love be less a lie?

You should have fallen in love with her words,
and the way they fly the air, like birds
to swoop and nest so deep into you,
then you would know your love is true.

Chaotic Space
I am not the ghost you wish me to be,
the muffled silence behind a locked door.
Nor dust motes sun-sliding from air to floor.
I'm not your distraction, or distance longed for.
I am who I am--no less, no more.

I am not the memory you wish to see,
the expected, accepted easy fade.
Nor a song with volume muted, down played.
I am not your twilight making descent into shade.
I am who I am--brilliantly made.

I am not the perfection you want from me,
the mannered charms and flawless grace.
Nor sweet lips with apple-cheeked face.
I'm not your dream bound into place.
I am who I am--chaotic space.