may came too swift

and I know

The voice comes soft and low
melodic in bittersweet:

"Do you remember when you'd pray
To never see the day
When someone would make you feel this way
'Cause you knew
They would cut right through you
And once inside, you were afraid they'd find
Nothing to hold on to"

and I know
I have faced my worst fear.


May 15, 2007 - Tuesday

cold blue damp

Masque', the cold blue
damp glows
that I will let my lover fade
my heart, each step
along with goes
leaving me the numb


catch and release

These last few years
I have had many a sweet crush
like a pup's nose in an ant hill

I have discovered

something about me
that I am made to love;

they were beautiful men –
each in their own way

of such varying depths…some
more handsome than others
some more shy, wry of wit, most
of words, one or two I happed to kiss

everywhere,
especially the lips
.
Then one day I fell in love

and I discovered
something about me
that I could learn to trust
that I had learned to catch

and release

but in my joy I had forgotten
how to breathe.


beauty behind me

I long for eves
of fevered dreams
not so much them
but the morrow
and waking
sweat purged and pure

instead of days
spent in slight tinge
of something
unsettling, on edge,

a fear of should be's
and moving on
but how to put
beauty behind me?



May 14, 2007 - Monday

what it means to be naked

The Naked Poet is a spin off of the Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver...
"The idea behind The Naked Chef was to strip food down to its bare essentials - to prove that you didn't need to dress up ingredients or buy a load of fancy ..."
Anyway, so...The Naked Poet is my forage into simplicity. Though I love questions on authorial intent and yes, of course my writing is very much autobiographical, I am all about reader's interpretation. I want you to take away what you need, not what i am compelled at any given time to express.
much love and stay naked,
~peach

(When my ex and i divorced, it was logical that i would get the bookshelves and he would get the leather living room furniture but when it came to the two autographed cook books by Jamie, we split custody. check him out: www.jamieoliver.com)



May 5, 2007 - Saturday

drowsy is this day too damp

I am saturated to the bone with damp;

sweat – and other bodily fluids
we won't mention –
(and sleep between) smeared
with hands and tongue until…

I am saturated to the bone with damp.

Seventy-three degrees of damp
as I left him sleeping in mid morn.

This is not my Texas summer
of dry heat coming up in waves
from black gumbo and hot concrete

let these clouds burn off and give me the sun

for drowsy is this day too sweet
when indeed I need to write.


May 4, 2007 - Friday

I on the brink
I wanna get a guitar
strum to the countless hum
that fills my silence
echoes of low beats
and the moon in twilight

I had one once
it was smaller
made for little girl
fingers so fey;
drug around for years
sold it, no tears but
melancholia for a youth
that never bloomed
resignation to that life
of sacrifice
I was always sacrificing

and then on to the leaving
along Valhalla's shores
I stepped, let blood drip
from vorpal blade
blood from all
those demons slain

now I bend and sway
fluid lest ye break
wanting to lay
naked in the water
warmed on the rocks
walk barefoot in the river
the creek bed, the rills
that trickle sweet
and I have learned

change is ever in the coming
and I on the brink



May 3, 2007 - Thursday

journalesque - brave but lost

Where am I in my life? My shit…is far from together.

At thirty-seven I'm just now graduating. People ask, "Your Masters?" Regrettably I reply, "No." But it is an accomplishment – though dragging and ready to be done in these latter days – an accomplishment that excites me. I will not graduate Cum Laude but close and it is the immense effort that counts. It is an accomplishment of which I can be proud.

My job is paying for my degree through benefits so I'll have no loans to repay. Otherwise, this is not my, my career, what I want from life. I often dread even going in. Almost eight years though, surely that says something toward loyalty and dedication…even lunacy?

The internship is developing slowly, but I love it, have set hopes on it. I tingle at the potential of something brave; work from anywhere, get paid nicely eventually but nothing for now and positively impact the failing ecology.

My teaching is not quite a joke. I have learned that third-graders run over me and I don't want children of my own. Though they learn little of creative writing, they learn to read, orate in front of others, to express creative ideas without censor. They blossom and bloom like I never did. I mold future generations and affect the lives of children. I worry that I'll fuck them up.

My home is livable. It's a decent size condo that has all the right parts and pieces necessary to live. The paint is pealing, foundation shifting, carpets are a hideous blue. It is in dire need of repair and updating. But it's mine and I'll get it all done some day. I'm getting involved with my HOA and therefore the community and this feels pretty good.

I sound like a good citizen but feel spread thin and know that much is just filler to quell a thirst for accomplishment and companionship. Really, if I had the time and money I would spend it with family and friends; going out, staying in. I would schedule time to write more creatively than therapeutically. I would think less and do more.

My sights aren't set on marriage or children. I feel I'm to open to understanding and too fluid by nature to set my sites on relationships or any other prize. I find I too much enjoy the means and the process of discovery. I just can't say I want my life to be X, Y, Z. That's not to say that long term companionship isn't preferable to hermetic reclusion.

But still, I desperately want to know at what place I am in life, what all this says about me. Where do you think I am, because I'm not so sure I know. I feel rather lost in America…brave, but lost.



May 2, 2007 - Wednesday

this thing entrez nous

Last night I dreamt
in a sky blue haze
a myriad comprehensions flooding
of me
of you
of this thing entrez nous.

I want to keep you
loosely but fear
if I fail to assert, pursue
you will fade
and go.

Help me hold you
while apart but feed
my passion that consumes

let us stay
and wallow
in squeals and coos
in this thing that binds
into summer, into fall,
into winter

for if it were nothing
would we be this long about things

at all?



May 1, 2007 - Tuesday

eight months in...

I have paced about this cage
this wrenching limbo
in constant push-pull
of joy and concern
ready to move in, or on.

The outs I gave were many
but you never took them. Why?


I am neither happy
nor sure in this distance;
I have tried but the day is gray
and feral instinct wonders…


my heart recedes instead
into observance
and the cool wet of mourn

that time will escape you
indefinitely and I will
have faded away, forlorn.


summer

Sun comes to call
world moves easy
into slow grooves
of water and shine
cool, salient smiles
from her hot rock
of too warm days
she lay, stretching
sleek in skin soft.


in this city, Terra Firma

So much traffic out my window
I try to think of them
as animals or birds
(and really, aren't they?)
I wait for them
to do something curious.

Two sat on my stoop the other day
I flicked the blinds
and tapped on the window
shoo shoo go away
but they didn't go far enough
I had to step outside

up and to the right as well as left
are these ghetto-ites
up the street
they crowd the pharmacy steps
drive the grocery into disrepair
do their deals in the open on the street.

So much traffic out my window

and I teach their children how to write.

Behind me, behind the creek
the affluent in their quietude
they crowd the coffee house
emit exhaust to shop miles away
they are good at avoidance
no traffic out their window.

Us in the middle
we speak of moving bus routes
making the grocery remodel
how best to recycle
in our attempt to affect change;

in this city, Terra Firma,
we, the eclectic, are the minority
we, the eclectic, are the future
we pay attention
to the traffic out our windows.


April 25, 2007 - Wednesday

untitled

fuzzy haze of strange days
as if my skin had been
under veil too long tactilly
subtlety molted into grandiose

I think I could sleep
deep at peace this eve
the fear I ate whole digesting

and I recall the ocean off Vieques
fingertips in the water
streaming baby stingray below

I knew god then
later in sadness letting go
grown girl setting aside
childish things

and then the leaving
to be alone

suddenly this summer
I feel soft beautiful blessed
salient on a roll



April 24, 2007 - Tuesday

as I write

coffee grows cold as I write

stop to masturbate
then bathe

cold and bitter
and the day is gray


slap and tickle - three

I
The other day I suppose
my body forgot to breathe
bit by bit my face grew numb
and I found deep peace
in that deepest exhalation

and a strange awareness
came over me – mortality, and
that days would pass
before anyone guessed
or came to call.

The doctor took his bits
poked and prod
"No worries, it's just this…"
but the bits came back odd.


II
Robert, there are reasons
I sought to sever ties
want to sever more

but for love, I need them


III
And oh but Death,

look not for me in the shadows
look not for me in the river
for fear not I you but scorn

and laugh
and bare my naked ass

borne too much true
but taken it all in the end
in squeals of pleasure and delight

and lived I in the growing madness
of deafness, of other – full and bright.

I will run ye a merry chase;
stratagem of confusion
in exasperation you fail for

attitudinal, socially inept, synaptically
challenged and giggly, I prevail.


April 23, 2007 - Monday

shade my eyes against the glare

In the skies come the bright

I want the bright
it's taste and feel
for often am I steeped in shadow
and blur and sorrow;

if I could I would
but you may need to lead me
out and into twilight where
I want, need, to sing my soul

shade my eyes against the glare.