WANNA GO TO A COLDPLAY CONCERT?

We could stand front to back with your arms around my bosom

Our faces brightened by the lights

and the exhilaration of being together

MY FATHER LOVED MY MOTHER

When they were young, he used to joke, “For a fat broad, you don’t smell bad.”

When they were older, he still would joke, “For a fat broad, you don’t smell bad.”

Other would scoff and be offended 

But he loved her as much when she was thin

As when she was fluffy 

That’s what I want in a man

PRIVATE

You were the only one I kissed on that beach

Your warm hands in my hair and on my skin

Side by side in love and purpose

Reveling in our innocence

Later, I lived on that beach

And had water access via wooden stairs

The tide had washed away any trace

But the memory still lingers

MOON POEM 447

The moon looks like a flashlight

shrouded by a bedsheet

Its folds creating dark bands of light

A sunny side egg 

with pepper

A halo moon

3/19/98

ALONE

I spent so many years
fearing being alone
And when it finally seemed like a possibility
I learned to embrace it

WE HAVE SO MANY GOOD THINGS AHEAD OF US

How could you take what you took
and never give a second look
How could you give what you gave
and have no desire to save

Was your speech just practice?
Were you just warming up
For a performance not yet played
Another woman to show up

you jerked my heart out
and made it yours
and I was trying so hard not to fall

Why did you have to do it?
Why did you have to hold it?
Did you have to possess me?

CLOUDS

Sometimes a poem is in my mind

as a whole

a brain cloud of completeness

that rains on the page

Other times

there are scattered showers

and the words and phrases come out in snippets

sometimes these bits can water the idea sufficiently

so a full-grown poem can form

sometimes they die in the ground for lack of water

or effort