Smoke Signals by Ayla Rogers

Smoke Signals by Ayla Rogers

There was a time I so longed to share this

Feeling resonating deep in these bones,

Like a reverb from my epicenter,

My origin echoing through some viscous

Medium, soft enough to permeate,

But too firm to yield to gentle pressure

Points, and paradigm shifts with sticky keys

To locks of hair you loved twirling, tangling

Up my fingers like rings, and crimson

Ties that bind my hands to your tasseled head.

Something senseless, like nibbling my ear,

And how I still feel it, and how I hear

Hasty breath like imagined melodies

From a brook that babbles human lyrics;

At least rolling ripples of empathy

Across a frictionless plain, cold as ice,

Sea, all tundra-bound to form a sinkhole

Where I can practice the art of drowning.

Breaking, eating ice and throwing up fire

That reminds me of the way roses look

In your eyes, when burning bleaches them

Stark white, like the moonlight we bask beneath,

Whether or not she fits into our plans.

We live the sharpest lives on a blade’s edge,

Bending backs, you live to make my squirm,

Knowing I’d surrender it all for one

Kiss me anywhere you like, but leave me

Something to hold to, someone worth holding.

Leave me anything but disenchanted.

Kiss me anything but the last goodbye.

There are some words my lips refuse to move

For, and two lips my words could never touch.

You can’t even loose your lips to swallow

My sweetest sentiments, or the savor

Of my skin caught in your teeth, sunflower

Seeds that tried to sprout where land was fallow.

Now the good left undone means nothing more

Than pulling out the roots to curl under,

Curl up, and burrow down deep in a whole

Mess of you own invention, still drilling

Holes in your head, like petrol might surface—

Full of overturned fishes, and x’d eyes

Still mark the same old spots, without treasure,

Where some will only bury their trinkets,

Like happy hour glasses and jewel’ry

Every now and then I find a seashell,

A shale, a nesting ground—some sign of life—

The subtly sensuous sentience

Of sequence and substance so meaningful,

I can’t quit leaving signals in the sand.

                                                                                                                                                                

Poem of the Day: For Love

by Robert Creeley

Yesterday I wanted to

speak of it, that sense above

the others to me

important because all

that I know derives

from what it teaches me.

Today, what is it that

is finally so helpless,

different, despairs of its own

statement, wants to

turn away, endlessly

to turn away.

If the moon did not ...

no, if you did not

I wouldn’t either, but

what would I not

do, what prevention, what

thing so quickly stopped.

That is love yesterday

or tomorrow, not

now. Can I eat

what you give me. I

have not earned it. Must

I think of everything

as earned. Now love also

becomes a reward so

remote from me I have

only made it with my mind.

Here is tedium,

despair, a painful

sense of isolation and

whimsical if pompous

self-regard. But that image

is only of the mind’s

vague structure, vague to me

because it is my own.

Love, what do I think

to say. I cannot say it.

What have you become to ask,

what have I made you into,

companion, good company,

crossed legs with skirt, or

soft body under

the bones of the bed.

Nothing says anything

but that which it wishes

would come true, fears

what else might happen in

some other place, some

other time not this one.

A voice in my place, an

echo of that only in yours.

Let me stumble into

not the confession but

the obsession I begin with

now. For you

also (also)

some time beyond place, or

place beyond time, no

mind left to

say anything at all,

that face gone, now.

Into the company of love

it all returns.