All we’ve talked has burned, embers smoothing silly me, impatient you — until we ease into each other to enthrall Dark.
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AfterTalk
Tag: poetryinthemoment
Venture
I once fell in love. I once found a prince. He stood on a beach dark against the rolling surf, full with the universe. I once flew into daring rough hands, mute, lucky, held — an odd fish silent and ready, silent as hope. “Why couldn’t you be a woman?” In rowdy hands I wiggled the signs, did my best to become sexy, curvaceous, something — but slipped lonely-homeward back to the sea that rushed for me.
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“Doctors”
New doctors are like puppies. They have to play with all their toys and can be wildly cute. Fresh out of obedience school, all they know is rules and cutoffs; they cannot yet lay by the fire because they are the fire and have trouble being still. Old doctors, like old dogs, aren’t so eager. They know our secret heart, the love we’ve spent against coming back and smile as we wave So Long.
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Lake House Memory
The coffee pot sticks a little to the warming plate. Sliding-glass door’s a bit rusty. I love it cracked open, lake-smell gets in, grass and summer rain, trees on the breeze — maybe the morning doves will come again. It’s good to feel stiff old shag, see stacks of books we’ve partly read, stacks and stacks. Your grandpa’s kitchen table, Ruth’s worn chair, dusty Mantovani on the player. Paintings hang crooked, curl on paneled walls, fading in memory and slow-days, that other house, the city one, already forgotten.
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AfterTalk
All we’ve talked has burned, embers smoothing silly me, impatient you — until we ease into each other to enthrall Dark.
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Two Trees
I couldn’t help it, leaving. It must be the way I’m made. They spoke God, said I'd wreck my soul with that abomination — so I chose the other tree, blue-green against the same sky, splashed its dark on my face and fell sound asleep as they raged beneath an equally good tree preparing for my salvation.
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Late-Night Lucid
What you discover after — after the battered “Yes, okay” to your heart’s direction — is that all of your guns that once shot enemies and fools are now trained and aimed at you. One Last Chance to apologize to recant to come home. So you write another poem as familiar bullets speed toward their mark.
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“Quick! They’re coming for you! Call down your god!” Oh, buddy, if you only understood. My god runs towards me, bayonet in hand, trying to scare me off, see if I turn. “Some god!” Yeah. My god. As I take a run at him.
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Game
You know that game where you walk around chairs to music? “Musical chairs?” and one is removed, leaving someone standing? “Yeah?” I’m the one left standing, looking at this dumb game, this violence-inspired mirror of the human need to hurt and wondering “Why you ever started to play?” Yeah. “You think too much.”
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Beds
Come make love with me, my friend. Show me your self, whether you’re fast or slow loud or soft — curtains opened or curtains closed — let me know, if only for a minute or more, you’re just like all the others with a few tricks up your sleeve.
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Victory
“Stand back, stand by.”
I am about to know I have loam and rock for a back and blue-grey sky for a head honor an orange sun yellow and gaze purple into ink rest in love as I have done all these years, wake to heartbeats and sleep with all sighs. Then when unripe Boys rape in dirt and shoot dark; masturbate dry pricks blood-smear voided genitals kill this body gorge on dull meat eat our kind burn our memory; then my arms Earth and Sky my companion-Sun my love this man envelop me pierce this hell carry me home.
Greg Beckman 