Free Form Kiss

Peck:
to mark the page
I want to kiss
I've been trying 
and trying
I miss the mark
the slightest purse
imperceptible pressure
invisible wall
Where is our Wailing Wall?
the print, seen or unseen
always there
perhaps slightly moist
not violent

Open Mouth:
but look, it is already there,
wide open
the Great Mouth that filters the oceans
ride to it
be cleansed past the glottis

with the algae, the seaweed,
the minnows, jellyfish
all water around us slowly spinning
draining

once we were expanding
at the time of Abraham and Noah
now we retract back to the Source
for saltiness

out of a Great Nose
we return to the world
washed up onto a sandy shore
undiscovered by man and woman

the sand crabs edible
if only we could dig after them
but hands must remain tied
behind the back 
until the baptismal
drains through the little hole
at the bottom

how strange it must feel 
to know that nothing will happen 
after this kiss
that it is perfectly impotent
between one man to another.
But why?
Where are the Impatiens 
that belong in the shade 
beside the house?
Those certainly did have the power
to mark something,
whether or not it was this kind of kiss
---maybe not
but we could ask them if only they could be found.
that of course in a memory long gone

Peck:
It's the warmth of the kiss
that is indelible
They say body temperature water
can induce transcendence
We know the Spirit 
is our amniotic fluid

 

What do you think about when you think about bread?

What do you think about
when you think about bread?
K thinks of gluten, no doubt.
Perhaps E thinks of her favorite cartoon.
I suppose the right thing
to think about would be the Eucharist.

I think about sustainability
(and peanut butter).
Like how unsustainable my life is, financially.
Like how I can't sustain more than
a handful of lines.
Like how this, my favorite pad of paper,
is about to be used up.
But I don't think about nutritional sustenance.
The peanut butter takes care of that.

Cleverness

The efficacy
of humility
in terms of writing a letter

is better than
a wild pen
but truly I would never

want to be
the enemy
of a clever poem in hiding.

Who wouldn't want
never to wane
in the court and wink with the king?

In the cool upstairs room
I read the words of a mystic.
You read the impressions
Of your impulses,
An innocent dance,
The most innocent dance,
Of an unfettered conscience
Spared of the exposure
To ultraviolet rays of judgement,
which paradoxically begin to burn
At the onset
Of linguistic recognition
And the realization
Of language's prison-like structure.
But I'm trying to teach you
To abide
Such that you won't find yourself in a prison
But a shelter.
You choose the path
that has been chosen for you.
Choose wisely my sweet child.

Affirmation?

No more holidays
Or days on the bends.
I'm crooked
But let's not pretend

That there's not a way
To spend the whole day
In productive reverie.

Ambiguous Air Quotes

My mom air quoted
the word "writer"
when talking about
my responsibility to
record the things Edith says.
Like, you're the "writer"
you need to write a memoir.
I don't know what she meant
by these air quotes
and I'm too cowardly to ask.

Unifinished Limerick

Once there was a short man
Who through the course received a command.
While on the hill
He fit the bill
And relieved something something in the sand