This is part of an older poem I wrote, but I think I like it trimmed down like this better:


When I say I love you,
it is a shoe under the staircase
seen every day and changing nothing.
You just press the snooze on your alarm,
but I still say it, over and over - an inane mantra,
performed for ages, long ago losing any significance.
I wrote pretty words that slithered to the floor one night,
but it could have been the hot wax that you remembered.
I told you that I would gladly steep in you for hours,
carry your stain like a potent mahogany tattoo.
I know how you taste even when you are gone,
white chocolate and grease soaked denim.
I roll in your scent like a lonely beast,
lap you up in my mind every day.
Being in love is acute insanity,
dashing off sugarshore lines,
spewing red butterflies,
tracing Spirographs,
and I love you.


I thought I might do some calligraphy on a card for the hubby. Awwww.

If I push past the skin
until it gummydrop pops
it will silence
the head and
heart line turns
a tale untold as promised

familiar limbs fall from trunks
of devotion;
I gather them up
to
leave them be
like oilspots in gutters,
pretty to look at
but black on my thumb.

I ride Hokusai's wave
until it evens the shore
to something soft and malleable;
a new foot
presses
shallows under gulls
bubbled with new days.