Go to cafecafe (link on right) and join the Fantasy Challenge to raise money for donations to the Red Cross. If you're not a member of that blog, email didi menendez through her profile there with your poem, since non-members are welcome to enter, too.
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Your smile slices my breastbone open
and I bleed pink wantwords across
the restaurant, watch while confused
men and women pick missed you, kiss me,
touch me from clean dresses and jackets.
Your hair is graying.
I'm twenty pounds heavier.
You ask if my husband is good to me.
I inquire if your children turned out smart.
You lay your hand on mine and our feet
dance to that room, the room where we
wanted to be from the start of this night,
the room with the blue shiny spread and Degas
prints on the walls, the room where
we urgently throw our clothes over a white
fuzzy chair and discover that our bodies
haven't forgotten the old rhythm between us.
In this night when the stars sink
close to the ground and the clouds
step aside for the wild, rising moon,
I'm twenty again. You're twenty five.
Dylan and Baez sing live on the radio and
we pledge love forevermore.
Later, zipping your trousers, the marks
of my lips on your face, your body, you say,
We'll do this again.
At that moment, that one nano-grain in the
sands of our time, I see in your eyes that
we won't meet again and know, too, it's fine.
You hand me the rose you pilfered
from our table upon leaving, pull on your jacket,
bend for one last lingering kiss.
A thorn from the rose pricks my finger,
draws blood as the door closes softly behind you.
Pris Campbell
(c)2005
6 comments:
Hi Michael
Thanks. Now I'm waiting to see yours go up on cafecafe:-)
I know. It was hard for me to focus to write this. I kept wanting to make it a poem about an evening with Bush, taking him on a tour past all the people who had died under his so-called leadership, here with Katrina and abroad on both sides. I finally decided that all of this was beginning to stress me out so much that I needed to focus on something else for a break.
Pris,I should complement for your efforts,especially your website is amazing and the music is soul stirring....keep up the good work, am lookin fwd to ur posts!
Anand
Thanks for commenting and visiting my site. I'll look forward to seeing you again.
Brilliant poem Pris, as ever; I always enjoy the dry, detatched 'tone' of your voice on the paper - the other side of the coin from 'sentimental'. There's always a little hint of romance there, the lost love, the one that should have been, the one that got away; but your poetic persona always seems to say, after each encounter, "Oh, has he gone?" then rolls over to get on with the rest of life :-)
Hi G
Thanks... I think there's been enough rolling over to get on with it that I've got good experience that way:-)
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