.....I was gonna just keep lurking around here for a while and not post, but I absolutely cannot resist this thread. My blog, for anyone who is interested:
http://danidennis.blogspot.com
Some recent stuff (no idea why they both end with "hour", but hey...):
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My Eleventh Hour
I caught my own breath in my hands
and took the time to breathe it back in--
sweet and satisfied, stale and strangled,
spangled with lavender and sour milk
and what it means to be nationless.
Tell me you smell something different.
Tell me I'm bound to what I give
but never to what I am given;
that I can choose when the balloon pops,
when my corpse falls earthbound;
that the rushed and eager touches
I collect under my bed
can be quilted into
a sickening new height of love.
I can't remember who told me
that I wasn't young anymore.
It might've been the stout cashier woman
who proclaimed me a thief when I
slid a Snickers bar into my pocket.
It might've been my Playboy Mommy:
she warned me of the sins in my blood,
of her own obsession
with a woman's power to unveil.
Or maybe God told me on the day
when he made me suddenly
wretchedly
unequivocally alone.
On this ancient earth, I'm rarely glad to seem young--
until I'm tangled in sheets
and limbs I can't get out of,
until the simplest mechanisms of
a beating heart lose their intrigue
in my stoic desperation for blood.
Tell me you smell something different on my breath;
Tell me I can choose to be boundless.
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Witching Hour
In September, he found his witching hour,
while the rest of the house was asleep
and I was the only one left
to switch out the records for him—
To sing “teenage wasteland” with him,
to top off his rum for him,
to light his cigars.
In September, it was cool outside
but his body stayed warm.
I sat in the cold with him,
rocked in the wind with him,
my eyes following the furious sway
of his body with him.
But he wasn’t furious with me.
Baba o’Riley excited my father.
“Doesn’t this get your blood going, honey?
“Don’t you just need to hit something?”
I watched him dance with it,
the heavyweight bag flying seamlessly
between his fists.
I watched him with frozen veins,
with all the need in the world
to sit still, to never hit anything
like he could.
He took his last swaggered punch
and I jumped to break his fall—
clinging to hands that know
my blood all too well;
haunted by a breath
that once kissed me goodnight.