This Scarlet Note

The trickle track of blood run down your throat
I took with sharpened stone formed like a quill
and used to scribble out this scarlet note.

You cherished me too dearly. You would dote.
And so with time I made with art and skill
the trickle track of blood run down your throat.

Your veins I learned, each little flowing mote,
and dug out each desire with a drill
before I scribbled out this scarlet note.

Whatever I may say, or may connote,
I only said, my dear sweet love, to spill
the trickle track of blood run down your throat.

I truly loved your courage. I won't gloat.
I held you as I gently made the kill
and set to scribble out this scarlet note.

You clearly read what I had clearly wrote:
you knew my heart, my mind, my purest will.
The trickle track of blood run down your throat
I used to scribble out this scarlet note.

(Photo credit: "Hallowed be Thy Name" from Anais Gomez-C on Flickr)

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The Web She Spun

The spider spins her web with strand by strand,
to form around herself the work of love,
and though she may not touch the maker's hand,
she knows that as below, it's so above.
What spun the strands of life moves in her web
and in the legs that move and form with skill;
a billion years of life won't sink and ebb
as long as she has art and blood and will.
What spins the straw to gold one quiet night,
or spins the tale the public will be told?
What spins the child's top, or planets bright,
or turns away the thought of growing old?
So spin away to catch the food of life,
and in the work forget a world of strife.

(Photo credit: "Spider Web" from Alex Ranaldi on Flickr)

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Reverie

I sit and stare into the blue,
and as I sit I think of you.
I wonder if you've thought of me
if once you found a moment free,
all empty of the calls of life,
so quiet calm a pause from strife.
I'd like to keep you from my mind,
but there you wait, and always find
my heart that beats, and beats alone
(I'll not complain, nor will I groan).
Oh, how I long to kiss your lips
and brush you with my fingertips,
to pin you down and make you sigh,
and love you till we both may die...

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No Single Word

No single word I speak could ring quite true,
no joy or rage or dying lover's sigh,
unless it spoke your own sweet truth to you.

I'd spin my lines and fasten them with glue,
but if you were not here to tell me why,
no single word I speak could ring quite true.

Go kiss the girls and tell them what you'll do,
you'll never lift them up and make them cry
unless they hear your own sweet truth from you.

They'll love you like a dream they almost knew,
but if it wasn't all a silly lie
no single word would ever ring quite true.

So kiss their lips and love a special few.
Remember their sweet faces till you die,
because they spoke your own sweet truth to you.

And since I've got to leave now, that's my cue
to offer up these thoughts as my goodbye:
no single word I speak could ring quite true
unless it spoke your own sweet truth to you.

(Photo credit: "Kissing Postcard" from Michelle B. on Flickr)

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Unrhymed Poetry Seems More Sincere: A Poem

Never worry love, never fear.
I'd promise you everything, and I'd almost mean it,
but it's so hard to lie
when I look you in the eye.
(You can tell it's a real poem
because some of the lines rhyme,
which was totally on purpose)

I'd like to say I'll love you forever,
and that I'd never get tired of you,
and that we'd be happy together,
and I'd be just so thrilled to have kids to raise.
You're supposed to want those things, right?
Or I am?
Or maybe "we" are?

I think that's what growing up is supposed to mean,
or what it does mean.
Suck it up, pretend to be happy,
do your best to propagate the species
and maintain the community.

But how to do that,
when I just want to die,
see the community burn,
and watch the species go extinct?

Fuck it.
Let's just screw
and not tell anybody we met on Tinder.

(Photo credit: "Love" from Alberto Garcia on Flickr)

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Wanting Things is Dumb

I'll get you
because I want you.
I don't know why I want you.
If I was smart I wouldn't,
but I guess I'm not smart.
Because I'm dying to learn
the feel of your skin beneath my fingers
and the taste of your lips against mine.

That's a silly thing to want.
That's a dumb thing to want.
I wouldn't want it at all,
except I do.
Wanting things is dumb.
I hate it.

I bet you think
I'm about to go on about how beautiful you are
and how "your eyes shine like stars"
and all that malarkey.
Well if that's what you're expecting
then you're wrong,
because I'm not gonna say any of that.
Even if I wanted to.
And it's not just because wanting things is dumb, either.
It's because all that stuff goes without saying,
and because you've probably heard it
from a million other guys before me.
Not that I care all that much,
because I don't.
I can stand to be a face in a crowd, if I have to.
I could put up with being just some guy.
It wouldn't hurt at all.

I try not to be annoyed at you
for the fact that I want you.
I mean, it's not like
you intentionally sought it out,
or anything.
I don't know why I want you,
but I'll get you.

(Not that it would make any difference,
or anything,
if I didn't.
I really don't care all that much.
Nothing touches me.)

(Photo credit: me. Because I took that photo. With my own camera.)

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Social Justice Love Poem

Don't blame me if I love you.
Besides, it's all socially constructed anyways,
and I only love you
because the diamond cartels invented love
as part of the cultural logic of late capitalism, or something.
Not that I believe in marriage, of course,
and divorce should be easily accessible.
For the good of the individual, you know?
Who cares what it does to society?

I mean, it's that society is corrupt,
and all the selfish exploiters on top
keep keeping the rest of us down.
It's just awful, I mean, they're hardly human,
and they keep selling us junk
because they only love money
and really only care about themselves.
I mean, maybe if they were
just a little more self-aware
they'd see they've got everything they need,
but they're too self-absorbed
just nursing their petty complaints
and alienating other people.

Whoops! This was supposed to be a love poem.
It's not my fault.
I'll try again another time,
when my soul is in less pain.

(Photo credit: "The Caryatid Porch of the Erectheion" from wolfgang.mller54 on Flickr)

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