W/out.

There are many sources here, but it is new chiefly in terms of form.

You have eyes that flash
green with electric intent,
eyes that speak volumes
concerning capacity,
and I am entranced.
There is poetry inside
your pale, unlined face.

 But it is a cold
verse, wrought in the vacuum of
a vivid cosmos.
Those eyes have only mastered
a small fraction of
the grey stores awaiting us,
passion plays in full.

Focus it in red
so that you might take it off,
that metal casing
where all your secrets are stored.
They will congeal in
the satin cloak of longing.
You will sleep sated.

Or walk with me to
the crowded corners of West
Avenue and 3^rd,
where lovers dance and guitars
are wailing with sax
and staccato ivory beats,
we as all of white.

If you wish for the
more guarded extremities
of human conduct,
the black of night may serve as
a forbidden bed.
There are stories in twilight
that still reek of tar.

Or maybe you just
want to be, want to exist
as something at rest,
a small and placid wavelength
glimmering blue-- a
silent nurturer, calm and
unusual, too.

The carpet cast at
your feet is not unruly,
nor roguish at heart.
It is still closer to your
own olive windows
than any other color.
But ‘tis just one piece.

 

Reviews

[H.]

You stayed very consistent with your theme of color, but I was actually pretty sad to see that you mentioned exactly one color in every stanza except the second. It felt like a fumble, expecially since you came back to her eyes at the end, as you had begun. The poem, true to itself, unfolds from her eyes, and rightly it ends there.

This is not a critique as much as an observation, but you use the descriptor "___ of a ___" a lot. What is that, a simile? I thought a simile was only when "like" or "as" was used. Either way, I realize there are only so many ways to describe something. That method does lend itself to those rambling elucidations you have very much made your own.

I'll give you one dollar to somehow include a color in that second stanza. It would make the poem exponentially more significant, at least in my tiny perspective.