Misc.

Adrian Poetry side blog/journal

[adrianspoetryblog]

Rose you wrote your words, in response to mine 

A fitting second swing, a bruise, a press, in kind 

When you strip back the hysterics, all we are is words

When you shuffle back the meter, all a poem is are nerves

You come to me, your knuckles bruised, and ask me to absolve 

You know there is no problem yours that I would not deplete to solve

To this, obsessed, objectified, I fret away my time 

If we suffer each other for a verse, in the end we’ll get a rhyme

I’ve said before, under the skin, the thing we shared was rotten

But really, Rose, I fear to know, it was the closest that we’ve gotten

The truth is we are strangers who dreamed the other up

Dreary poets grow apart, the dreams still dance, in love 

There is a place where we dreams meet, to play the parts we’ve cast

The place between having and wanting, and between fiction and fact 

I wrote to nothing, you reached back, and we begin again 

Our pens ever adversary, we write, from scratch, amends

[adrianspoetryblog]

Its too hot for pleasure 

The door is cracked, exposing me to cool night air

And danger

Whatever form thrashing relief 

Can slip in by in the night

I thought, when I went out into the sun

Of lying across your warm chest

As you pet my hair

Evening, skin tacky 

I think about you

But do not move

To not inspire my body to sweat 

[trans-lunar-injection]

[adrianspoetryblog]

jesus sits in a lotus flower

jesus sits in a lotus flower, 

hands clasped in prayer 

the earth was formless and empty, 

he says, and 

god sprung fresh and wet

a child with no father,

the genesis of divinity 

watching over  

anyone who has sat around a fire 

and prayed

[adrianspoetryblog]

Privacy on the Broad Line

A girl is doing makeup on the subway

She uses concealer, and redraws her features amongst jostling commuters 

I won’t even hold your hand in my neighborhood, in naked view of familiar faces 

It feels intimate, watching her makeup routine, but she doesn’t look to see if anyone is watching

She is dressed formally, dressed to impress

No one here is anyone I’ll see again, so I talk on my phone 

I wish you could meet me on the subway platform, so I could kiss you in private

The train stops, and I excuse myself as I rise into the crowd, and she does too

Now beautiful, for someone south of here

[adrianspoetryblog]

Bonfire, fall

I watch you shivering by the bonfire, angling my body so you cannot easily see me in return 

Before I realize you are watching the fire, not the crowd 

Your hair hangs in wet tendrils, and you blink the heat out of your eyes

You’re sad and elsewhere, and I can see the flame in your irises

Until suddenly you put your head in your hands 

And I stop hiding, remembering you cannot see without your glasses 

And likely only see the flame in front of you,

And the lifelines in your palms 

I could touch brush the hair out of your eyes before you knew it was me but

You look up and see me, and we both smile 

[luca-girlblog]

FAKE NIPPLES

[adrianspoetryblog]

I see you again and out from my ears pours amniotic sludge,

And I feel my bones divide and soften

I smell your perfume and the clock hands warp speed rewind and break,

And I don’t know what time it is, only that

the heat of that summer chokes me fetal

You smile and begin to speak and

Like a time lapse plant I shudder towards you, 

Aging rapidly, I toddle over my words, spitting teeth

The elixir of youth is your gossamer lip gloss, to be young again I would kiss you until the windows fogged

But lips chap and crack, I live out every promise between us before I can get the words out

The weight has already wrecked my frame and greyed my hair

I reach to you but my hands are claws

In a blink my blood has soured and my skin has broken, decrepit

You ask me how I’ve been and I cannot answer, I am ash in the wind

[adrianspoetryblog]

Lawn maintenance, in the summer

You love me and it’s like pouring water onto a dead lawn.

The yellow grass, like hay, is brittle and choked, and more useful for other things

And why waste water in the summer?

What lived here burnt when the seasons turned, and it only had my salt water to drink

The fields are scorched by the sun, and whatever you have to give will not make a difference

You love me and it nearly sizzles to the touch

I’m reluctant to absorb your love, it pools and does not sink in right away

Your old watering can, if you stick to one spot, can bring a small patch back to life

But for now, leave me to my death and find greener pastures

Please, lover, wait for spring, the whole field will be in bloom in its own time

And the soft green grass, and the swarming bugs, and the pollen on the wind, it will love you back

[adrianspoetryblog]

Cross country flight

And suddenly as the plane lands, there is darkness

Silent time stretches onward in dark rooms

The clock has been set back, it is brisk spring here

My room smells like every spring that has ever been

I can hear her calling in the other room

Women who dress like memories smoke and smile

The radio says, Seattle, you’re not alone

You’ve just missed the cherry blossoms

But the evergreen city offers leaves like palms

And keeps blooming

Be patient, my boots broke to my feet in Philadelphia, and I’m not meant for the hills 

A city that was once a world welcomes me home, but in another time zone,

The concrete has not cooled from my tread

And the dirt under my fingernails is hickory

Another plane takes off and I drink

The coldest water

[adrianspoetryblog]

Silhouetted and striking like a match 

You burn a pockmark hole in the terrain

Stomping out and around larger than life

And pointillist. You clatter, yell, smatter

Keeping the refuse and losing the plot 

Get close, the texture catches on nail beds

Perfume smears on sweat soaked skin

Well-worn palms, a lifeline like a canyon

Curtains part at a touch, and

there are no imperfections about you

I used to prefer you from a distance

But I could dive into a Seurat and

Emerge flecked, and more colorful

You stomp out a cigarette,

And I get not get to leave this unmarked

[adrianspoetryblog]

To March

Silhouetted and striking like a match

You burn a pockmark hole in the terrain

Stomping out and around, larger than life

And pointillist. The detail overwhelms me

I used to prefer you from a distance,

Smoke and rumors, but you smell sweet

And your clothes are stitched by hand

I could dive in a Seurat and emerge

Flecked, and more colorful than before

[adrianspoetryblog]

Ode to Mazur Hall

It’s an ugly chunk of campus, a labyrinth in a maze

constant chatter reverberates, on thick coated walls

navigate, Ariadne's thread through the grey hallway

less than hallowed walls, (you can tell where the money’s sent)

highbrow urban refuse, talk shop and philosophy

in Mazur hall. It’s hard to compass, but rumor was,

the architects aimed to prevent organization

in the 70s. There are no common spaces here

but in the classrooms, there are palms raised high and open

grip the thread, or you’ll get lost. The books bury

even the best, the mind and body can diverge

if either is bored to tears. Through the small, high windows

light streams through. It’s not the walls that do the talking,

hear the murmur of the country, talking to itself

[adrianspoetryblog]

A poem, Felix

There’s a faded book of poems, Felix, you annotated and signed

A marker of an era lost, of commitments now resigned

The book you lent would not return, a gift at no clear cost

You wrote your initials, Felix, next to your favorite poem of Frost’s

The verse is bleak, you noted here, about the forest and suicide

You knew the tears that path would cost, so you promised to abide

On a margin of a book, a promise, to stay alive for me

And signature by it, in your hand, the initials FJC

As I study our archaeology, I find myself beset

A thing I'd never thought I feel, in regards to love: regret

To know a perfect stranger, to have given all myself

I’m left only with words, though you’ve left me quite a wealth

We said a lot of things, Felix, to fill the borrowed time

But in the end there were easier things for you to be than mine

As our axis turn apart, I find I no longer recognize

The boy it's said I loved, through your layers of disguise

But you wrote your forgotten phrases, in that archaic little book

And when I think about you Felix, I’ll admit, I take a look

Those initials you’ve forsaken now, for a name that better fits the bill

But in Frost's book, in inky blue, I can find your etchings, still

[adrianspoetryblog]

Ode to Mazur Hall

Rumor was - and the humanities love to talk -

Mazur was built to stop students from organizing in the 70s

It’s a tough to gather maze

Voices drift through like guiding phantoms

The walls are brick, painted white

And sunlight shines through small high windows

It is small, and dark, more hollow than hallow

But there's a treasure in the labyrinth

In the lingering voices

A spark of intrigue, a lead of twine

It’s not the halls that talk

If you pull it through,

People are talking, and love to,

Learn! Gather! Listen!

[adrianspoetryblog]

Pragmatism and love

The pragmatist belief - only material is real,

what matters can be moved

Every sense a liar, there is work to do.

What does it matter which stars align?

You talk of God, but there is no one here

You talk of truth, but turn away

The truth is abstract to me

unreachable as heaven

What is God to the weight of your body?

What is truth to the warmth of my hands?

It is good, so I don’t mind

You’re here, and I love you, and that is religion

[adrianspoetryblog]

Matryoshka man clatters through, bigger than ever

And more hollow than he looks

Return to form,

Each cycle a spiral, or parody or omage

Or a traced image, of a serene smile

Build out

There’s rot in the little ones

Get him from the base, or he falls away

Scrawled on smaller heads, a forgotten adage

Everywhere you go, you take yourself