and return to the land of nod

where i’ve a cloud for my pillow

my wing-ed creature shod

for my sleep, i do apologize

but at three, the witches,

the witches, they do arise

as then must i

but these witches

they come bearing gifts

such as worries, wants and, of snow,

a great silence

a great silence vining

a great silence vining with that other great force which is your heart

so, for now, my keeper of forest and flame

these

are

my

words

it is like trying to put my finger on the equinox or something

that is what poetry feels like

that is what poetry is

it is the fingerprint of everything

time and light

mystery and contentment

art and muscle

energy and awareness

it is like, or rather, it is f l o w

mind grounding it

body feeling it

spirit free of it

let others be romantic and speak of what it is that they are and do and why it should matter so much to me or anyone else for that matter

i will love and hate and keep their words in a cage for all the yearning

for the click of homecoming

they create within me

lauravmdotnet.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/img_7349-1.jpg

yours is an ugly history

and i do not know why

you would choose to share it with anyone

let alone me

with my unpredictable attention

my wayward compassion

my compulsion

for seduction

and inept philosophy

why would you throw three such stones

there, at my feet

do i appear to be accomodationg

or, in some way, lacking

unable to put things back where they are meant to be:

fear, being the heaviest,

its surface craggy

grief, the smoothest

and love, there at the center,

broken and holding light in captivity

i do not need nor want it

i have my own stones, you see

i like a book to have its stowaways

post-its and postcards and tearaway squares with the purposefully faded butterflies and coffee cups that you can impose yourself upon

even cocktail napkins

i like when you pick one up, how there’s a falling of leaves and words defined and abandoned poems and the phone numbers of men you should not have written down, let alone stowed away

i like how these stowaways gather up against the beginning and end

and between the sewn pages ordered and re-ordered over and again

i like the semblance of self found,

added to the enterprise of another:

be it an entirely formed story

or lined and awaiting what someone, such as yourself, may have to put down

i like how, over time, what was once stark, just the two colors:

one for the page and one for the ink

pixilates and blurs

and may no longer lay flat enough on your desk

i like how, in the reconsidering, it perpetually appears and re-appears both simpler and more wrought than it once did

i like how the stowaways are sometimes cast away

and sometimes just lost

and others still that show up as replacements

i like how, given your curiosity, vanity and your sense of preservation, that you recognize such a volume for the infinitely renewable source and resource that it is

1.

i was swallowed whole by a man again

he took me in for the sweetness of my skin

and spit me out for the bitterness of my bones

2.

do not say my name unless you will loose me from this prison

unless you will swallow me whole

maybe it’s the lightning bugs

and then the heat needing to break

and flow

maybe it’s his voice in my ear like

rain on his tin roof and

soft as my skin

maybe it’s the map of more than one soul stretched taught against the dome of the night sky

and me just drinking it all in