Half Empty (Audio)

Fragile and wound

Like a wicker basket

I harvest shame

By the earfuls

You on the other hand

Are half empty

*

I cannot even begin

To understand you

Beyond the confines

Of your former lovers

Who speak through you

As if a mannequin

Only they never bother

To alter their voices enough

To confirm their existence

*

Deluded by the grandeur

Of my heightened expectations

Infatuation flaunts

An unseemly neurosis

I assemble the flavors

Of your primary palate

In an effort to slide

Inside unchallenged

But sensing my intentions

You’ve removed

Your left ring finger

That nothing enduring

Should come to pass

*

Perhaps I will never know

Your hands in proximity

Absolving my loneliness

Or the sound of your voice

Shuddering under the ballast

Of genuine correspondence

Perhaps I will never know

Any love at all

Having none to spare myself

But there is always the dream

The fearsome but obliging dream

That draws the heart to the surface

Into an atmosphere far too dense

To ingest by virtuous means

*

I have felt

The suspicious grip

Of your mollifying detours

Yet the sickness pervades

My heart is a charcoal flame

Blackening all extremity

Unloved by you

Unheard by you

My words stumble

Regretfully

*

As this is a longer poem I found it rather challenging to read through without error!

http://vocaroo.com/i/s1NvyfbjlZw9

 

Render Me

We used to take turns sketching each other

Laid out naked against the sheets

Two self-conscious models

Two self-conscious artists

=

My clumsy hands

Could never capture your beauty

Beneath the pressed graphite lines

You always become a smug rectangle

With an expressionless face

How to convey

Your haunting eyes

The tenderness of lips slightly parted

The shadows cast on your angled jaw

My pencil understands nothing

Of love or substance

Renders only careless half-shapes

Incomplete depressions

On rough white sheets

Perhaps its the artist that’s incomplete

All I can draw are your beautiful hands

And your sex

I wonder what that says

About the nature of my mind?

=

Your sketches are graceful

Sweeping, whimsical

As if you’d commissioned the wind

You capture something ethereal

Beauty unformed

Unfettered by angle or contour

Suggestions of sensuality

I love the dangerous dip of the waist

Your curvaceous imagination

Hands playfully uncertain

I love the way you render me

On paper

Not because I am beautiful

By your sloppy hand

But because I am adored

=

(I didn’t have any other sketches that I have done on the computer, I really don’t draw very often so)