My poem is up on voxpoetica!!

My poem “this poem is not about you” was published today in the “words to linger on” section of voxpoetica.

I’m extremely excited about this! If you would like to see – please click here!!

painting facades

I see 13 tiles
stretching across my ceiling
left to right;

last year in the dead of winter
3 besmirched squares
were covered over by a layer

of clean, white paint.
They still shine happily
in the near darkness

like your night-dimmed face
grinning above me – in return
I faintly smile, eyes drifting

looking over your shoulder
to the painted tiles above,
feeling kinship with the ceiling.

telling me your story

with eyes tightly closed
seeing with my fingertips
your goosebumps my braille

good-bye

your lips warm pressing
on the coolness of my skin
the imprint lingers

 

Inspired by slpmartin

what I see

the moonlight kisses                                            
the angles of your face good-night                         
before slipping behind
the close-drawn cloud curtains
leaving your lips untouched

my mouth presses smooth
the  lines softly etched
at the corners of your eyes
as time passes
they still taste of only you

decisions on where

the crows filled my yard last night
just before the sun was sinking
below the horizon’s furthest edge

the unintelligible cacophony
of a thousand beaks cawing-
none appearing to listen to the other

until one lifted off
wheeling over the space and away
the rest following freely

destination unknown, but somehow
knowing that where they were
was not where they were meant to be.

Provoking the thoughts… the Bard
And more about crows:
http://raysharp.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/everyday-crows/

Crows

Louie

limbs bare in the morning light
sketched charcoal
as they stretch against
the blush of the waking horizon
Louie croons softly

“It’s a wonderful world”
your lips whisper
against the nape of my neck
your hand gently cups my breast
as vestiges of warm dreams slip away

zero anaphora

zero anaphora,
what comes before,
a gap to refer back
to what once was

you loved me –
tender, deep
with legs entwined
and foreheads touching,
your hardness pressing
into my softness,
yin and yang

I loved you –
hearing the slap, slap, slap
of flesh upon flesh,
bed rocking, loud cries
hushed laughs
soft kisses
alpha and omega

the end comes not
in blazing fury
but in subtle shifts,
incremental distances
slowly stretching out
until the space
is unbridgeable

unless
we can become
zero anaphora,
forcing the gap
to refer back
to an “us” once more.

Another form of anaphora, similar to a pro-drop is the zero anaphora. For example:^[11]

There are two roads to eternity, a straight and narrow, and a broad and crooked.

The gap in the phrase “a straight and narrow [gap]” is the anaphor for the antecedent “two roads to eternity”; the two phrases are said to have a zero-anaphoric relationship. Similarly, the phrase “a broad and crooked [gap]” contains another gap anaphor.^[11]

just one moment

meeting of our eyes
across a crowded space
tunnel vision
like a train bearing down
frozen, I see nothing else

your lips on my neck
eyes meeting in the mirror
our smiles radiant,
as we bask in the moment
and your hand slips to the curve of my waist

myself an inferno, wishing
your lips, mouth, hands to stoke the fire –
solar flares stretch thousands of miles
into cold, empty space –
no less, my body reaches out to you

over your shoulder

They say hindsight is 20/20.
Like looking at something in the past
magically makes
all your mistakes cleaner,
like scrubbing away the emotional messes
with a stiff brush and some Clorox.

Looking behind perhaps
you see paths
that might have been chosen –
or realize that the exit is now
completely hidden
by brush and billboards advertising
insurance on life, or lasiks,

leaves you stranded, gasless
in a desert surrounded by cacti,
collecting bones bleached by the sun-
remnants of unwise tangents drawn,
consequences spontaneously
breathing a life of their own,
until you see only to the horizon’s edge,
highway’s lines converging
to one single point.

Maybe they are right –
life is just a series of parallel universes
and nary a pillar of salt,
each choice peeling off another reality
until you are paper thin,
no substance,
never embracing your destiny;
never owning your past.