24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
I wake alone in a made-up bed
in twilight, city-sounds stirring through the open window
my eyes roll to the spot where you should be
my hand strokes the unmarred sheet
the lack of two breaths echoes.
You left this room, and every day since
is a day unwanted.
Water:
Every morning,
And throughout the day,
Water cleanses me,
In more than one way.
It cleanses my body of toxins,
While repleansing my skin and hair,
It hydrates my body,
Better than any liquid out there.
Earth:
I walk on the sand to feel,
Home on my feet.
Or lay on the earth
When I feel defeated,
I gaze at the sky
With winder and dreams,
Lost in wonder and life
As a human being.
Wind:
The wind reminds me
I do not need something to feel it,
It cleanses the earth
While blowing through my hair a bit,
It can help when I am hot
Or even to cold,
The warm breeze feels so nice
As I grow old.
Fire:
The flame or 🔥 fire
Bring us life and soul,
With no rhyme or rhythm
This element has no goal,
It does heat us
To make us feel safe,
It can burn us, heat up our food
To make us feel great.
All of the elements:
The elements of water, earth , wind
Fire
Complete our nutrition needs
And bring us desire,
Water so cleansing
Helps us cook yummy food,
Wind caresses our skin
Makes us feel nude,
The earth reminds us
We are far from alone,
Fire will always reach us more than we know.
TK
She will leave her girlish laughter behind
She cannot take the air with her
She will not hide her tears but how will she laugh again?
The smell of ripe guava trees will be forever etched upon her mind
The sound of the morning rooster will ring in her head
They will never understand the grief of leaving her old wooden house behind
The warmth of the kitchen in the cold mornings
Against the cold cement and red marble floor will remain in her heart
When the nights get cold in the city and the longing begins
She will hold these memories close
Like she does her handmade quilt blanket against her body
My old friend, Pearl,
lifts a licked finger to gauge the wind’s direction
and begins to run, to stoke air into flame
with legs muscular as a steam engine’s pistons.
Running is what she knows, that
and the vows we swore as children, the hiss of a knife
drawn across two wrists, twin red snakes
uncoiled from veins to touch forked tongues
ever so lightly, to taste oaths
written in blood. She never blamed her father, nor mother
who advised her to run and hide outside their shack
until he collapsed into a drunken stupor, a railroad man
who disappeared one day where the rails
join at the horizon, that juncture where sky meets earth
and a train, a ghost train moreover, stops
and opens its door to let you board. The last time I saw her
she claimed a train passed her open window
on the twelfth floor at the same time each night
and true to her word she boarded it not three weeks later,
a sleeping compartment no less, the mind
feeling its way free of a life lived on the wrong side of the tracks..
Green and red,
Green and red,
Your eyes are Christmas colours,
Bright against the snow
Crisp and crunchy underneath your shoes
Smeared and stained with vomit
As you stagger screaming down the sidewalk;
Your rage, your pain,
Echoing across the street.
And just before the jealous winter wind
Takes you from me forever,
You turn around to face me,
And say
(slur)
“Fuck off!”
(in a world without sound)
You can still scream
I mean
open your mouth and
flex your eyes
and your nose.
Wiggle your fingers
and waggle your arms.
Flailing is descriptive
just do it right.
Paper and pencil,
once charades isn’t fun anymore.
Just remember about
body language and sign
language
or whatever.
Communication
doesn’t need air
vibrations
just pay some attentions.
When people plead the fifth
on their vocal cords
or ear drums I guess,
you can still slap them
and bap them or pinch
them
and hug them and kiss them
caress and confuse them.
Body language is more effective,
you know,
than words.
Stop being lazy.
He had a house
or did he rent?
I wasn’t sure
kept in the dark.
Elusive him,
married he was
he wasn’t clear
he had me wait.
White Castle here
his wife so near
he had me wait
with coffee in hand.
Frustration came
doubts remained,
he had a wife
promise he made.
Is that we which we do not speak of
Lost?
Is it possible for every emotion to be
Shared?
In longing, for anything, anyone, do we ever share
Fully?
When I dream of kissing you, whom should I
Tell?
Who would want to know my deepest
Yearnings?
And worse, who would want to know the
Shallowest?
If we share everything, what of us is
Left?
To ourselves longing, desires and dreams
Belong.
The high priest croons
take this longing
while life is shortening
everything depends upon how near you sleep to me
but so much depends
upon a red wheelbarrow
and every other image
emblazoned on my retina
nanosecond by nanosecond
until I sleep.
Shell-trash and gull-clutter
along the dirty curve
of Revere Beach.
A rough-tongued winter.
The Atlantic churns
its mass of liquid slate
with cold relentlessness.
The sixteen-year-old poet
carries a paperback book
at least twice his age.
A yellowing Oscar
Williams anthology.
He reads the words
of the self-drowned psalmist
of tropic voyages,
Marlovian hymnographer
of azure deeps and steeps.
The sea claimed you,
Hart Crane, as you
claimed the sea, scribe
of brined bones,
of doom and spume,
the merciless ocean’s
“bent foam and wave”
swallowing your song.