Sunday, September 5, 2010

How to ease a broken heart

I lean against a mountain facing east,
cool rock at my back,
morning sun in my eyes,
and sink into the schist,
feel myself enveloped in layer
after layer of ancient ocean floor,
until I am part of the mountain itself
and can feel no more.

Mt. Rundle-Canadian Rockies Painting by Lanny Grant

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Absence

The pain of partition is no less,
though less often.
A whole day may pass before the memory
of the absent one
rises to surface suddenly, invoked by
a change in scenery,
an overheard conversation, a shell laid
on the dresser,
and it overwhelms with its intensity,
takes away the breath,
the keen longing produces
a contraction
which would draw the beloved
into one’s own body.
These spasms are farther spaced,
building energy
until the next one squeezes the viscera
with its acute yearning.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Crush

She cannot breathe.
She sits beside her crush;
her unspoken longing:
the secret knowledge of dreams,
of busy hands masturbating
where thwarted desire dwells--
enwreaths her like a boa,
not of flirtatious feathers,
but a reptilian hunger
that inexorably constricts
with each exhalation
in its close embrace
until she is overwhelmed
by its steady crush.