Stages, love,
Stages
Help me to my feet
A smile for every inch
A kiss for every three
Stages, love,
Stages
Pull me from my seat
Towards waiting obligations
Towards a world asleep
Stages, love,
Stages
Pry me off your street
Away from warm inclusion
Away from your safe-keep
When you analyze this poem
(in a classroom, thirty years from now)
You should know
I mean every word.
When you analyze this poem
(tonight, before you fall asleep)
Know
Your perception
is more real than my intent.
Candis and I are making this fajita
For you
Heaped with beef, and cheese,
And lettuce –
Candis and I are making this fajita
For you
Without tomatoes, or onions
Or selfishness –
Candis and I are making this fajita
For you
And dubbing it
A love fajita –
(Made of Lindsay and Candis’s love
Not love and Lindsay and Candis.)
I tease you in my rear-view mirror
Lip-stick-less, but no less attentive
Flaunting my head-start
I tease you in my rear-view mirror
As I turn right or
Wrong
And even though I am easily lost
I expect you to follow me.
Insistent
would-be kisses
keep me from
my paper
Tell me you would, if you were here.
Persistent
guardian arms
keep me from
imagined danger
Tell me you would,
you will
you want to.
Tell me you would, if you were here.
There is a space
in my lap
my beagle-boo
just for you
There is a space
on my floor
for you to lie
once more
There is space
in my room
for beagle-feet
to zoooom
There is space
in this place
in my home
just for you
my beagle-boo
Longstreet to Lee
Gravity demands conflicting armies
Crash in a burst of sanguine sacrifice
A fleshly offering too expensive
To be divinely endorsed
Conscience pleads conservation
While honor commands we duel to the death
Valorious though you are, Sir
Preservation mandates defense!
Lee to Longstreet
The enemy is here
Confronting us
NOW
The enemy is here and now we must strike!
There are no more reinforcements coming!
There is no excuse for our flight!
We fight here
Now
With these men
In these skins
We fight
HERE.
The problem is
I always begin
Anxiously
Casually
Conspiratorially
The problem is
There are too many problems
And I complain about them
Too often
The problem is
My own anxiety
My own conspiracy
Paranoia
The problem is
My mouth.
In the space between
Intermittent beats-
Elongated
By stifled breaths-
Faith
Exists.
Even now,
As I scoff at its mis-direction,
A swift, tacit
Prayer
Stems from my lips.
A vain hope for
Reconciliation
Of the mutually
Exclusive.
Knowledge
A tenuous cord
Oscillating between us
Spindly and opalescent
A shimmering periphery
Of tacit understanding
Knowledge
As sure and certain
As rainclouds heavy
Laden with accumulated drops
And anticipating
To break
