USA

jbuck22874@aol.com

Stringing Lines Incessantly

You crimp a crust for cherry pies
and we talk. A little with words,
but mostly in that sacred place
where eyes are windows rattling.
Crimson pupils weathering
both dawn and darkness, equally.
My mother there, a slab of wood
eaten by the termite jaws
of tiny capsules by the bed,
washed down with cups of Chardonnay.
I ask you for some apple juice.
Its sappy fragrance like a prayer
my arrowed palms could learn to trust.

You see my tears as roads to take,
listen as I spill this fat
of turkey-basted emptiness.
"Our holidays at 'home' are cold.
Every reach becomes a breach
and bottles win each argument."
Funny how a poem can rhyme
and touch just sits there in dry prose.
Stringing lines incessantly
as if they're threaded fishing poles.

I sit in messy margins now
of disappointed dossiers.
Bruises building to a callus,
the blood of it all, just drained.
Brilliant contrasts of amour
don't even mean to be these stars
leading sticks away from fire.
I plan to go where quilts exist,
where needles work in busy teams,
chronicle and own a storm,
even with arthritic hands.
Love calls love-less shallow things
without an uttered syllable.

The Beer Mug With Holes

"There must be a hole
in my glass," you say.
And hand me your mug.
Laughter does its little thing
and our surfaces
seem at peace.
We putt a joke or two
on the lush shaved grass.
Practice pays off
and I smile
my caulking gun grin.

I keep my tears,
their snails and slugs,
their bee remains,
stinging still,
on the bottom rack
of a greasy oven --
in case some renaissance
occurs and you ever grow
hungry to hear them fall.

Planting Time

Love drills,
breaking its bit on rocks.
Plants flowers
in a whiskey barrel,
pretending air will clear
and rings of rust can hold these
spreading slats of soul.
Time rain helps and hinders --
for the cold that burns
burns less and flesh
recovers from the lie.

In the spirit
of a touch-me-not,
daisies drop their white silk.
Go to seed
where bottles don't
wash down a meal.
Their gossamers
of angst and ail
some fruitful sprout
given license in the dirt.

This is the wet dream
of a heart
paddling upstream
through guilt
to lay the egg
before breakfast
is a memory.
If I were more lovable,
less languishing,
would I be playing
with poetry dolls,
staring at my
strangers in stone?

Disappointment's Dossier

Burns leave scars and mine
are lumps of oatmeal gray.
I wonder if the clothesline
of an uttered prayer
will hang and fluff
wet pages of this dossier,
its muted trust, a doorbell
ringing in my sleep.
I play a memory's instrument
of every evening half-past-five.
The drowning of insipid ghosts,
messages of bliss I missed.

I've climbed a tiny spirit notch;
the ladder wobbles even more
in darkness of this sober light.
I see you in recycling bins,
ancient scraps of bathroom mirrors
bulging in a sliver's pocket
digging into swelling flesh.
There you sit, a weathered cork,
a tarnished dime off bottle caps
from beers you've used for teddy bears
and diaper changes of your grief.

Will there be a renaissance
that comes with wrecks,
a withered liver crying out
for filtering the ill and ail?
Will it take a death, a crunch,
to walk you barefoot in the grass?
Its yellow edges whining
of our dry canteens, hoses kinked
and sputtering with tears of lace.
My axiom is helplessness;
scores are not inside my palms.
For now I kneel, let the ocean go its way,
fill me like a plastic bag.
For now I harp on string-less harps

© All Copyright, 2001, Janet I. Buck.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.