Author: Inthegazeoftheother

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Dear John…Poem 20

Dear John:

You’ve told me a man must have everything.

He must have her love and affection, trust

and cares, woes and fantasies, body and belief.

He must contain and compel her dreams, speak

her mind with her, beside her and be her too.

He must have her body, entirely his own, as she

equally partakes of his, fully accessible any time.

He must give her solace and she his support.

They must build things and break things down,

together, working as a team, united as one.

There must be abundant love everlasting, you say,

and undying even beyond death and delivery.

John, you’ve claimed possession of her opinions,

her bodily secretions, and her style of clothing.

You’ve demanded her attention and hands, her

movements during the day and night, her arms

ever clasping yours, enveloping you enveloping her…

Dear John, my dearest of all, love can’t be swapped

and traded, quantified and qualified, bought and sold.

Love is no cure, can’t fill the gaps, cracks or ailments,

not those inherent or fostered in the care of those who

thought love was power and hurt and discipline and

control, John, mere control that fear spills through you.

Love is not for keeps, never on sale, bundled or peddled.

Especially, love is not had but kindled, like wood fires

warmth and sustenance, dazzling and mysterious, in

properties known and magical too. Love has no rules.

John, let me, if you will, teach you all I know about love.

Love–

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Urban Jungle: Poem 18


Artwork-by-Kevin-Peterson-9

 
Urban jungle, yes literally, not metaphorically,
 
though maybe more like a ghetto forest.
 
Leading the determined coalition, is one sleek fox,
 
low lying, white tipped tail, like a log on legs.
 
Following fellow fox is great black bear, also
 
in forceful forward motion, head level, purpose
 
in his gait and onward gaze, alongside the girl.
 
She, decked in tartan plaid skirt, red cap
 
and sweater, strides along friend bear
 
among the graffiti’d concrete landscape
 
peppered with spare thin trees, once patterned
 
for park pleasure seekers and outdoor fun.
 
In ruins now, no one in the neighborhood
 
respects the land, so the conservationists
 
have taken up extreme measures for the cause:
 
the children and the animals, who will inherit
 
the earth when the mature of the human species
 
go extinct, march forth to the city council meeting
 
to state their peace: “Who will speak for the trees
 
and the bees before they’re completely gone?”

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Gerenuk: Poem 16

Sipping a Rasputin stout,
hoping for animal inspiration,
I watched the household pet,
a Japanese bobtail cat leap
from four-paw standing to
mid-air leap on a moth quest.
She stood tall on two paws
her ears spread wide apart
with aggravated intent.

She looked like a gazelle
and a giraffe, tall and swift;
then I remembered the zoo,
when I braved the school bus,
field trip mom amid 3rd graders.

An African gerenuk, goofball
of the Savannah, big eared,
whistle mouth, tongue clicker
that stood hind leg tall in the
branches seeking choice leaves.

While the cheetahs and lions
drew the crowds, the tree
dancer oddity, half breed
or so it seemed, of flight
and height, panic and poise,
stole my attention, ever the
soft touch for the under dog.

And hard as I tried to bring
the children to her windowed
habitat, they didn’t understand.
“That’s weird,” my own daughter
declared, and I contented myself,
alone in my fascination for freaks,
to have learned about this wonder.

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First Cut: Poem 15

First Cut–
 
Perhaps my father was the first,
 
with his absence,
 
except for the rare storms from his daytime slumber
 
to terrorize us into quiet so he could sleep.
 
I once got caught in the cross fire of his flying hands.
 
I was not yet 3.
 
My older sisters squealed and screamed him awake.
 
But I was too naive to run.
 
Before that, he was the myth my mother made us believe
 
about fatherhood and tender love.
 
First Cut II–
 
Another one I summons from memory caves
 
was the gorgeous boy
 
with the ass long shiny silk brown hair
 
and tan flawless skin sunk into Italian brown eyes.
 
I was 13 and he 15.
 
He paid me attention, walked with me at night
 
on a quiet moon-lit road named Candlewood as we
 
murmured our intentions, our future married selves
 
–or I did.
 
I couldn’t believe he was interested in me, a brainy
 
average-looking girl with the wrong kind of hair that refused
 
to hang long and straight from a middle combed part.
 
And a week after that walk under the old gibbous moon,
 
when I told him I wanted to marry a bodily lover,
 
he failed to appear, non-responsive, ghosted–
 
and I cried the cliché with a painful heart, torn
 
and scorned, never to be stabbed the same again,
 
my pillows my week-long companions in sob-town.
 
First Cuts–
 
Though others made Caesar of my heart, dagger
 
hurlers and stabbers, I remember them vaguely.
 
Not like the first cuts, the baptismal soul’s sarcophagus.

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Ten Years Ago I Wanted to Pierce My Nose: Poem 14

Ten years ago I wanted to pierce my nose
 
but I joined a firm instead.
 
My partners thought it wild,
 
clashing with the cobalt blue seriousness
 
of our office walls and wisdom.
 
So I waited til I left the firm to pierce my nose.
 
My daughters had theirs pierced by then.
 
Yet I caved to pressure in the last minute:
 
it will jeopardize your reputation, and
 
the outcome of your case
 
may be prejudiced, prejudged, predetermined
 
by another’s preconceived notions
 
about piercings and morals and drugs,
 
noise like that, which I know is just bull shit.
 
But I chickened out, and now my nose
 
has grown long with age, and the piercing
 
would not look right wedged between wrinkled
 
doubt and oily regrets oozing from gaping pores.
 
I’ve made a mess of this decision.
 
Has it been ten years since I wanted to pierce my nose?

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Moody Tree: Poem 12


Your name means mountain ebony,
a certain Bauhinia,
common to coastal California,
but I call you moody.
You own my front yard,
dominate passages and pathways,
burgeoning weight of verdure or
leafy reaches for spider’s webby catch to
neighboring anchors–rose bush branch or
car parked side mirrors.
How you please my wispy-boned mother braked still,
the dog leashed to the wheel chair,
under a relenting shade,
cooling an afternoon zephyr.
In spring or autumn, sometimes winter too,
you boom-blossom burbling orchids,
delicate pink and purple hazy bells
that sometimes ring in summer too.
That’s when your leaves burst butterfly hearts
of hunter green fringed in lemon-lime edges, a
hovering, healthy, verdant vibrancy.
But on any given week without reason,
your leaves brown at the edges,
then all the way through,
baring skeletal bramble
like bones of the cancerous,
exposed,
radiated,
burnt
for the winter–or summer complaint,
marring the yard, baring the hidden wreckage behind you.
That’s when the pods hang dry in rusts and reds, seeds
to bake or burst, sturdy uterine drip packets,
like dry, pea pod icicle tears crying,
yet unyielding to the grip.
And the next week,
they’re gone,
replaced by the brilliant buds as
poking penile plants peek through tightly tubed petals,
orchid splendor,
the softer side on a misty Monday.
Until Tuesday.
When the mood strikes.
Which outfit to wear for today?

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On the Heath: Poem 13

Alone on the Heath, a purple flower
where there once was dry reedy sand,
you, friend, rode the train to dusty plains
with me–and slept through shifting tides
along California beaches, we two, strangers
to this land, and no less to each other.

I watched your sleeping breast rise and settle,
like the rhythm of our first freedom days, lazed
into adulthood, we seekers of flame, depths
of our soulful hearts, walking poetry, youth
alluring to each other–comrades–and evil too.

I saw you leave that day, through cloudy eyes,
music, sand and weed drifting us alongside
our own nature, me, cautious and calculating,
ready to loosen within my comfortable shoes, and
you, riddle’s answer to: What is freer than free?

Air.

Who has stolen your breath, my flower?

Sleep.

Your forever frozen face stills time in its place.

 

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Under Your Gaze: Poem 11


I live under your gaze
 
in a box
 
by the bus bench
 
in the bushes.
 
Though our eyes
 
never meet,
 
not a glance my way,
 
I feel your shame.
 
Don’t.
 
Judge my story.
 
You’ll find it in my eyes.

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Tightroped: Ten for Today


Stay just where you are. Don’t cross that line. We drew it for a reason. Once you cross, it’s all over for us. You see, we’re only good so long as we each pace our own squares, our own patterns and affairs. The space between us, well, that’s what keeps us together.

When we meet, right there at the line, on the line actually, we can do death defying feats. We tightrope that line of yours and mine. We get tunnel vision. We narrow our gaze to the line, but see, your face takes up the view just as mine does yours. So—on the line—we only see each other’s eyes, not where the rest of the line beyond us leads.

And I rarely peek over the line into yours just as you rarely glimpse over at mine. And we keep it that way. I think we like that. This balancing act on the line.

Your square is larger than mine, yet narrower. In fact, it’s really an elevated rectangle with thick supports. Everyone supports your rectangle like scaffolding that undergirds the mansion perched on the hill. You can see the lumber dug deeply into the ground, keeping the place afloat in space, like struts smoothing out a bumpy ride. All the pot holes repaired, groomed.

My square is square, equal on all sides, though the area is smaller. The numbers–height, length, and perimeter– like an old geometry quiz, reveal significantly smaller space than yours. But there’s enough to go around for us who take up that square to meet the corners of our lives, breathing, laughing, eating and thriving. We take up less than those who seem to need more.

But it’s not just rectangles vs. squares. There’s other stuff too. Enough difference that might make mine think yours misshapen and yours view mine as distorted. You’ve said so. I’ve said it too.

So best you squelch curiosity, dampen desire and drop the dreaming. You know the allure is solely the forbidden stepping over the line—to know, for sure, what’s there. So stay there, where I can find you.

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In Praise of Praise: Poem 9

Not a participation trophy fan, still, I believe in praise–fair props.

Praise the days, praise the nights, praise the accident that is us,

Our planet, our time, our space, our separate solitary worlds,

together and apart, unable to perceive reality let alone truth,

less a word than a gurgling gut full of sense and the sensible.

 

We commend, we lionize, we sing songs to the laudable, those

who earn their accolades in tributes, panegyrics and eulogies.

But who among us have not suffered the humiliating red ribbon 

Or the diagnosis despite healthy choices, good living, and grace?

Bits of luck, shame, misfortune, health and love–praise chaos.

 

Through the singeing piss soaked stain of soiled panties, sobbing,

Sitting beside the third grade boy crush and plum of my notice,

Shame burns indelibly, but the blush of recognition, heart-pump pride

in mastering a job well done, earned in doubt and fear, curtained hope,

A+, raise, high 5, and fist bump, all winking nod to gratitude’s birthright.

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