Some Nights

Some nights I hold myself and wonder
If somewhere across the fields and the cities and sea
There’s another who feels herself and wonders
If somewhere across the hills and rivers
There’s another who wonders and holds and feels.

No Great Surprise

Tonight I’ll creep as quietly as a cat burglar
Up to your back door,
I’ll pick the lock and let myself in
And though you know it’s a sin
It’s no great surprise when you roll back your eyes
And wallow in painful pleasure.

Gifts To Share

The clouds part to give us the moon
But we’ve our own smaller, softer gifts
To share with ourselves exclusively.
The night is in motion and so are we
And as the stars make their way across the heavens
I, no longer a lonely traveler,
Move gently down the nape of your neck
And undo everything in the way of our dreams.

Dame Street

What would you like to do right now
She asked, eyes wide and hopeful
For I know not what,
How can we take advantage of a night
So full of rain and strangers?
So many unspeakable things passed
Through my mind but not through my lips
And all I could manage was one dumb smile
To meet another and more words
To weave into a smokescreen
As we stood by the taxi rank
And Dame Streets evening roar.

Dare I, MacNeice?

Dare I read on, MacNeice?
Dare I speak my piece
When the puzzle you’ve created
Leaves me sated
Yet hungry for more
And rocked to the core,
Knowing more but less then I knew before,
Do I mention the one who gave me this
This newfound bliss
This perfect picture of the words I miss?
Oh gee, oh my, what can I do
Except say “HA”, I’m still younger than you!

Answers

To be young
Is to be full of wonder,
A shining ignoramus.
I’d rather be lost than found
Because at least it’d feel more honest.
In constant flux.
Growth is awkward. Growth is war.
Death is peace. Death is destination.
Death is closed and horizontal
So let me fall for as long as I can
As fast as I can.
Let me make what I can from
All these blurring colors,
To arrange and rearrange then mess it up again
And do it with my friends, to laugh along the way
And provide no answers
Nor be provided with them.

Across Tables

I’ve been spending a lot of time with my peers
Eating and drinking and discussing the future.
I’ve sat across tables and stared into pristine eyes
And all I wanted to do was to reach across the room and feel
The beat of a blank slate heart
To press closed youthful lips and say hush…
It’s gonna be okay and I haven’t a worry in the world
Because if we realized by half how beautiful
These worries and these fears make us
As we’re driving in our cars beneath the city light,
As we wake up with headaches not knowing where we are
Or where we’re going,
As we huddle together every night and whisper,
We’d know that this is what they meant by living.

Fire Into Flesh

In most of us the sex beast lies dormant,
Hibernating our life away,
Made to live in man made caves
As its deep breath spreads the germ of hysteria
To the darkest of our shadows.
Though dangerous,
I desire nothing more than to grab the beast
By the scruff of its collar
And set it purring like a jungle cat in heat,
To caress the scales of the dragon
That breathes fire into the flesh
We all hide from the sun.

Vapor

Airplanes are holy
If for no other reason
Than they remind me
The sky is always blues,
The deepest of blues,
Blindingly blue,
And the clouds
Like all our other maladies
Are as vapor in the face
Of the infinite sky.

We Are Green

We’re too much for one room tonight,
Too much for these walls.
You unbraid your hair
And let it fall with the sun,
I hang my coat on the moon.
As you undress beneath the starry sky
My breath drives trees to whisper
And I can’t help but think
That my green blood, my wintry heartbeat
Are craved by your pink blossom.

Wind Up Doll

I only show lost souls
The things I’ve found
And even they need look no further
Than my heartbeat,
No further than the mirror amidst my eyes
To see their very own face,
Their very own beauty,
The unique way in which
They wind me up each morning.

Breath By Breath

Reality is enough to drive one mad,
nevermind our vivid imagination,
nevermind the stars, the sea,
the objects of our poetry,
the vermin, the abject,
the sewage of psychology.
We're all tuned in
to our own particular frequency,
confident we can make sense
of all this static,
that our picture is clear,
But it's so easy to become unmoored,
to see instead of day and night
infinite changes in the light,
to measure life not by death
but breath by breath by breath.

As Long As It's With You

"I don't mind being afraid with you"
-Belle

I don't mind being afraid with you.
I don't mind growing old
all grey and wrinkled and experienced
so long as it's with you.
I don't mind tip-toeing through life
as everything about us withers
and the day grows into night
as long as our bed is ours.
I don't mind watching us lose everything
except for a hand to hold
as long as it is yours.
I don't mind being surrounded
by the deepest of mists
as long as it's with you.

Very Much

Very much in love,
I'm very much in love
with a girl whose little shoes
give the ground something to dream about
and when the rain falls
and finds itself resting
so gently in her hair
she can't do anything but laugh.
Very much in love,
I'm very much in love
and when I look her
I see her and only her
even when she's not there
because I'm always looking.

Some Evenings We

Some evenings we,
the smallest of creatures,
want nothing more than to squeeze in tighter,
to make ourselves smaller,
to wrap arms and fold ourselves over one another,
to tuck ourselves into all our secret places
and hold on for dear life.
At that moment all we are
are vital signs performing primary functions,
we're breath and sweat and blood and semen,
a mess of flesh,
every action a dedication
to the one we share ourself with.