The verb to live

AUTHOR Ina
Born from the earth
Out of blood and dirt
In between wars and arguments
We are driven to escape
From gravity and parents
From doctrine and religion
From schools and peers,
Borders, hurdles, conventions.

Braille

Your skin is paper
as my fingers read
the lines in your face
(though I know them by heart)
sensing what is new,
cherishing familiar stories,
rounding your chin,
then you read me the latest
as the nail of my index finger

Why this won’t work

I would not mind if you sat here,
fallen asleep beside me on the sofa;
I would put a plaid over you
and watch you sleep.

Three memories

The mist is a blanket
covering most of my world,
keeping all out
for now;
its salty moist air
gently touching my skin, my scars,
like a lover I once knew.

Just another morning

The window open while you make coffee,
I smell the flowers. This is the season
they grow everywhere.
Syringas, you whispered earlier, pansies,
hyacinths, lilies of the valley.
(Hyacinths? Do we still have them?)

Apostrophe

An apostrophe is all that stands between
the me and life, reality and verb,
a little dot and tail, both so superb,
connecting me to being, that I’ve been.

Perhaps another punctuation mark
would be a much worse chaperone for me,
as I am troubled by the verb ‘to be’
that chases me in daylight and in dark.

The stranger

This happened long ago when I, still young,
did not belief in angels (nor in hell),
nothing was biblical that I could tell
but life would change, and I should bite my tongue.

The stranger in our local place to be
wore white and made the dusty sunlight twirl,
his eyes were looking for just any girl
and out of all the ones, this man chose me.

Sex (shadorma)

Completely
overwhelmed by you;
not moving.
You caress.
Holding my breath, I taste you,
let you enter me.

Be coming – shadorma

How to call?
You looked for a word
naming me,
just a word
describing your emotions
(but I’m no beauty)

Leaning

Often houses keep the shape they were built in,
although over the years some extensions are added.

After centuries of exposure,
they lean a bit to one side,
their walls become cracked,
and so it is with old friendships.

wisdom

wise old men know this
going for a pee at nights
sleep in much better

😉

Bloody Christmas

Christmas poem: challenge.

I could stay where we are
hiding from snow and be fine,
no need to get up, if I didn’t feel
how the tiny thin glass splints
of the broken Christmas tree ornament
that was over fifty years old
enter the skin of my hand.

Fishing men

Why are they angling on the pier,
their gear well taken care off:
they know of fiberglass and throwing line,
of spods and rods, harpoons and hooks,
they only use real feathers,
and have the best of bait,
real flies, some worms, some dough,
and they wear fancy wellingtons
and mackintoshes in rain, in wind,
in autumn fog, for days, for nights, forever,

Imagine the night

How to express what I feel for you: I
only have words in a language not mine
but in my dreams you appear in silence.

Nights are better when with you. Even awake.
I feel your shiver going down my spine:
attached, bonded, (please don’t call us soul mates.)

Outnumbered

Lying in bed on my side
I push the world back for a little longer.
Thoughts flutter and return to silence.
I want no part of what is turning around
beneath my head. Beyond my sleep.
I’m slumbered.

Strand

We built sand castles
and around us children
walls of old fortresses
were tumbling down.

But the sand held on
to dreams and truths
till we let go the grains.
Till we watched sand be smoke.

3 times Lipstick

haiku/senryu:

lips painted red blood
untouchable, no coffee
kisses might wear off

sonnet:

For the perfect look a red shade lipstick
that makes the mouth look like a blooddrenched snout:
voluptuous vampire wants to go out
for the perfect look from any dipstick.

After

Don’t stumble over our neighbour,
he didn’t make it to his home last night,
using your shoe as a pillow, and on the sofa
there’s a man we don’t know who he is,
he was good in telling jokes though.

Motherhood

She screams a sound
that goes through bones and rocks.
The gull is witnessing the drowning
of her wounded young.
Circling anxiously over the waves,
attempted rescue doomed to fail,
she can not help. Her desperation
goes beyond what she knows safe.
She looks at me.

As you are asleep

I look at you as you are asleep in your chair,
and I cry, for no other reason than my thoughts.
I notice how you hair is whiter now.

What if I am gone before you, who will laugh with you,
share your dark sense of humour, and who will be there
watching you sleep in your chair?

The coldest cold

Many apparitions of cold don’t bother me:
I don’t care for the cool of the glass
against my feverish head,
nor the breeze in Summer
that makes the night bearable
but the windows clap,

Thinking of you

I was thinking of you
how you looked at me
those eyes of yours
piercing right through me
and I wanted to feel more of you

Old man of mine

Old man of mine, we shared a lot I know.
I hear your thoughts before they are well said,
and know your groaning, you don’t mean it bad.
I know you well, you know me much more so.

Horizon birds

Always there is the horizon. And never it is making sense
It is no line, but just an abrupt ending,
a fence between the world we know and all that lies beyond.
Yet I see a line. My mind wants logic in this too grand overkill of space.

Hearing the daylight enter

The quietness is all I’m looking for,
as the noise of butterfly wings flying,
of slow-moving clouds, of the music I
find in your eyes, would be too much already.

Before we slept, the sound of our bodies,
of lips and sheets, of wanting more,
was what I saw and it was darker then.
I felt all senses, they became insane.

Night

 

The words had given in to silence now
and evening crawled in shades across the bed.
It had just been five hours since we met,
and now, should I stay or go, and how.

You stood before the window, had a smoke,
the air becoming mist, I saw you fade,
your face was now another’s. Had we made
real love or not? No sound. I wished you spoke.

Acrostic: Christmas noise.

 

C– Conversation in the room

H– How all day long, new people come,

R– Rambling, while others go, it doesn’t make a difference:

I– It is that they have to talk,

S– So why can’t they just sit,

T– Take a cup or glass, enjoy: coffee, wine, whatever,

M– Maybe their own thoughts?

That magic time between the sheets

 

That magic time when real is mixed with fake
as dreams have overtaken truth once more,
and every fictive bend is in the make,
yet we believe that we were here before,

some cities dangerous and strange appear
with streets to wander in while getting lost,
there is no telling if the end of it is near:
the purpose of these nights is to exhaust.