Every once in a while as a poet you produce a poem that you feel like you didn't really write, but instead just happened to be holding the pen while it came through you. Below is one of the those kinds of poems for me, like all the technical aspects were internalized and I was just spouting pure poetry. It may be the fastest I've ever written any poem. I'm sure it can use some polishing, but there's plenty of time for that. Anyway . . .
[Untitled]
Once I was homeless
staggering down dark hallways
to snore in a sterile stairwell
where I dreamt your lips
kissing along my collarbone.
In the dream
your voice is cashmere
brushing my earlobe,
girlish and high
as Barbies on a shelf.
The curve of your spine
makes the small of your back
a jewelry box.
Like a snake, my tongue
can taste what will moisten
when I release its secret latch
and finger the velvet lining.
I have fallen down
enough bushy hillsides
to know how water
shimmers into a pool below.
I trace my name
in the sheen
on your inner thigh
Doesn't the forecast
of the first gasp
call for a firestorm in the brain
followed by a heavy downpour,
then the slow rhythm
of bright beads dripping
from eucalyptus leaves?
I have heard
that after the Autumn Equinox
you become Persephone
white knuckling the rail
of a long escalator
into a dark depression.
If, as we lay tangled as strands
of just washed hair
I held up a sliver of mirror
to reflect your laughter,
would it be sunlight enough
to seed the ceasing
of your smallest sorrows?
Or would it suffice
if you knew now
that last night
I slept again in a stairwell,
wrapped tight in the ragged
overcoat of my imagination
and felt the soft feet
of a nude descending
the staircase of my spine,
that her lips wore only a light gloss,
that this creaking morning
I'll stagger and stumble still,
but wearing her lip prints
like a necklace of light
whose gauzy glow hallows
whatever ground I cross?
2 comments:
Love the poems. Let's see how the Steelers do against the Giants this weekend. Peace, Lester from St. Albans
(ALAN KING's REPSPONSE)
I don't know if it's because I read the City Paper article William Jelani Cobb wrote on you, but this poem really hit me.
One reason was because in the article Cobb mentioned that you hadn't wrote about your times living in the shelter. I think Kenny Carroll said those poems were coming. Maybe you've written others, but I'm glad to come across this one.
This poem is heavy with references.
"I have fallen down
enough bushy hillsides
to know how water
shimmers into a pool below."
I thought of Jack & Jill here.
"you become Persephone
white knuckling the rail
of a long escalator
into a dark depression."
I love how this woman (imagined or real) cannot be claimed wholly. It's as if she's teasing, but at the same time that's all you have to hold onto to make it through another cold night on the stairwell.
Another thing I like about this poem is the hinting at things:
"Like a snake, my tongue
can taste what will moisten
when I release its secret latch
and finger the velvet lining."
That's probably the best way I've ever heard anybody describe cunninlinguist.
"I trace my name
in the sheen
on your inner thigh
Doesn't the forecast
of the first gasp
call for a firestorm in the brain
followed by a heavy downpour,
then the slow rhythm
of bright beads dripping
from eucalyptus leaves?"
And there it is again.
There is one point in the poem where the images don't seem to work with one another:
"your voice is a Q-Tip
brushing my earlobe,
girlish and high
as Barbies on a shelf."
When I got to "Q-Tip," I paused there for a minute, and then re-read that line. When I think of Q-Tip of think of something going deeper than just the "brushing my earlobe." I don't even know if you need "is a Q-Tip," instead just going into the action of the voice:
"your voice
brushing my earlobe,
girlish and high
as Barbies on a shelf."
I especially love "girlish and high as Barbies on a shelf." That image nails it!
"The curve of your lower lip
says that the small of your back
is a jewelry box."
This was an image I had to smile at. Those lines, for me, takes this woman beyond a one-night stand -- like you two had something deeper. The fact that, without her saying it, the curve of her lower lip hints at something deeper, makes me wonder what you had with this woman, or desired from her.
"If, as we lay tangled as strands
of hurriedly washed hair"
I don't know if you need "as strands of hurriedly washed hair." I think "tangled" does the work without the rest of the line. So that it's:
"If, as we lay tangled
I held up a sliver of mirror
to reflect your laughter
would it be sunlight enough
to seed the ceasing
of your smallest sorrows?"
I love how the last stanza below, brings the reader back to the stairwell.
Whereas I read the first stanza as the images being "real," the last stanza is metaphoric:
"wrapped tight in the ragged
overcoat of my imagination"
"a nude descending
the staircase of my spine,"
"wearing her lip prints
like a necklace of light
whose cottony glow hallows
whatever ground I cross?"
That's an awesome poem, man. And you said this just came out on the first try?
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