your poems

your poems should go some place ---

the tip of your tongue,

beyond no entry signs,

between a stranger's toes, steeped drunkenly

in familiar feeling.

zigzagging on zebra stripes, or,

among hushed voices in the next room.



your poems should belong somewhere ---

at the corner drugstore,

in the long closed diner with mothballs for eyes,

sampling cities that like to let go, to start out;

they should be standing on vacant lots

which never held grudges, kept giving.



your poems should be seen from certain vantage points ---

nestled comfortably between the lines of your

mother's resigned face and the light,

always that light, neon, on your

brother's revealed stomach;

people should see them holding hands

with the one you love, and then, maybe later,

something more 'neath the sheets.



they say your poems should be travelling well

into the world by now --- alone, with daylight

as their only umbrella.

but you know that they are here,

the equivalent of a lifetime of kisses. they

lie with you at night and one after another, make you

climax so many times that your eyes are two scraggly

Xs. they like drawing conclusions

about god on your walls.

in the early mornings, you sit beside

each other. it's a quiet

marriage, one you are happy to be in.

sometimes, for the heck of it, they reach out, shake you.