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Tulips for Penelope (Free verse) by zenhaircut
I.
We're melted, side and side,
some ambiguous potion
lodged between
faultless hips.
I'd like to sketch her lashes
there..
as if martyred charcoal
could compare.
Lace and politics
may stroke her soul,
as we sip from this
disposable Grail,
the fountain of youth
for one small town.
She combs her hair
while no one looks,
some distant maternal dialect
hushes me well..
As if her eyes would
crash with the tide.
as if her limbs, those porcelain things
would bend at March,
a crocus fiend regime..
We'll be dreaming by two,
if these bottles provide,
and still I'll be there,
memorizing
your profile.
II.
She is muted in the pink blanket
with white clovers
that smells of vodka
and peopled air.
Existence is stark
and stale as bread crumbs
lowered in rank
to cardinal rejection.
Shit-slick priesthood.
She is made of soap
and air-bubble buoyancy,
the silver of a dove
glittering on the contours of
her whittled collarbone..
I want her to drag me into the kitchen
where she experiments in cinnamon
and Tchaikovsky
While I'm anchored in linoleum
seeping cold into my cheeks.
No song is sweeter
than her erratic pitch,
crooning to a bluebird's funeral.
Dandelion shells
in her hair.
I muffle myself in
someone else's cigarette ash,
desperate for verse.
She is radiant with renewal.
III.
She has the frame of a sparrow
and can position herself gracefully
between piles of listless bodies,
heavy and stoned
with denial;
A myth!
how else did she fit
those tiny legs
into commercial fishnet?
And it must be compulsory
to watch you sleep,
your serene untwitching lips
and angled limbs
under threadbare sheets
and angled walls
with sleep graffiti;
the dizzysweet mumbles
half-lidded and nearly asleep
when you murmer languidly
and ask my views
on abortion;
It is a Marijuana Saturday
but you are airborne;
they are stabbing cigarettes
against the walls
and the lights go out;
silently you pull back your hair
and I sigh.
IV.
Sleeping. You're always sleeping.
Dazed with fragrances, you're
sifting white fingers
through the smooth forestry
of dyed red hair;
so red, in fact,
it stains your hands for weeks.
and when I transfer you to paper
you squirm and drift and fall
through the lines,
dissipating martyr
of beauty.
Had I not seen you shiver?
on cold nights, the vacuum of a moon
soaking up your light,
while my eyes my were transfixed
onto the unpressed folds
of your blouse, the milky wrinkles, soaked
in unbruised idealism?
you live simply, and dream
of being immortal, armed
with a cheap guitar.
(The mother in me objects.)
Capturing you in words was impossible.
I could not read your eyelids in sleep.
V.
You get your drinks for free,
wearing a limp, tattered dress
and no bra,
and with a sweet naive tilt of the head,
you guess they must have noticed
the rosewater on your wrists
and that you always talks
in mumbles.
Oh, you believe in everything.
Why brood on deadstill
May nights
when we can lie on grass,
a million shades of earth
drunk on sky
and locate
a single haggard star,
your form of salvation?
The moon's a dandelion sheen
reflecting gold
cross the pallor of your neck.
You didn't even notice,
and after the alcoholic loudness subsides
you'll still be thumbing the grass;
sighing.
In exactly one hour
the politics will dissapear.
we'll collaspe into dreamless sleep
as they share a smoke with the moon.
You get your drinks for free.
my belly stings
with misplacement.
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