quote for thought

A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot. That means the least popular books are judged by people who have the highest standards, while the most popular are judged by people who literally do not know any better. An American who read just one book this year was disproportionately likely to have read “The Lost Symbol”, by Dan Brown. He almost certainly liked it.

Writing In The Sand

There was a time, once
when you left your door unlocked
and I stole in after 8 o'clock running
and snuck under the covers next to you,
my fingers still frigid from the frosty morning.
"Mm cold," you complained when I reached beneath your shirt,
to hold your heaterlike body to mine,
the smooth skin of your breasts marred
by a mess of goosebumps I'd made.
It was a perfect moment,
stolen from the resolution of a romantic comedy,
meant to be savored.
Moments like those don't come often,
moments in which life outlines its poetical tendencies,
and they go too easily.
There's no film to rewind, no page to revisit
until with analysis the bloom can be gleaned from the plant.
For you see, the bloom fades.
Life is no photograph
and memory, I think, no engraven stone
but more a sandy beach with everlasting waves.
So much of you and I has washed away!
This small seashell, a conch or welk,
whirling around itself like we were then,
is the best piece I have left.
It sounds in my ear of breath, of heartpulse,
of "mm cold,"
and I wonder if you have any sand dollars saved,
or if you spent them all on movie rentals
and museum visits.

An Empty Cage; My Heart Has Flown

I want to take my heart and thrust it in
the hollow cage your ribs have made, to see
if life can last alone for two or three
quick beats. But then I spy a frost within.
I can't catch where the ice creeps from. Perhaps
it leaks, like marrow, from those bones. They're lean
and white, but not that frore. It is between
those corset ribs? I peer into your gaps.
It seems an icy hand sneaks up my spine.
There's nothing there where hearts would beat, but that
I'd known before. It's now I catch the trap,
detect your trick. To snare this heart of mine
will take more work than just a cage of bones.
You set it free before; my heart has flown.

Once More, With Feeling

I think it hurts the most after the cut
is done, the mark already made, when blood
is just arising fresh. Endorphins flood
the brain but do not force the new gap shut.
It's like the way I felt after you left.
At first when you had walked away I watched
you disappear without a flinch. I notched
the lipstick case, my fingers steady, deft.
But then the salty blood arose and burned
my eyes just when I thought the time had come
to knit my two parts back into one.
I hid my dreams, the fact that I now yearned
to take the time away. If only it
could be; my cuts undone, my love unquit.

I'll Be Your Light

I have no faith in men or love. I learned
my lesson well - all lovers leave somehow.
Even those who swear they'll stay til death with bow
out then, if not before. My mind has turned
the thought of love into a willing lie,
and rightly so. A fool might sit and dream
his life away on faded old sunbeams
but I have words to waste instead of sighs.
And in the lonely night that brings me down
beyond the pull of truth I build the ash
of hope into a pyre to burn the rash
impudent throughts away. I find I'll drown
my hope in any way I can to cut
the chance of pain and force my heart's door shut.

Read at Thursday Poetry

It got kudos from Dennis, who's phenomenal. So, I'll say it's not bad.

What Am I?

I am just one more sweaty patient scribe
eating week old chinese half naked and wrung out
on a life spent in pursuit

Pursuing the words of gods
that only come at inconvenient hours

The rest of our lives all as if walking from room to room
adjusting the temperature

shuffling papers

watching the fans spin
and the plies circle lazily below

the rest of our lives is waiting
compared to that moment

when god him or herself takes our hand,
and our pen

and uses it to scrawl words
in red ink as its bloody,
no longer silent, tongue.

poem

Time Passing, Beloved (EDIT: NOT MY POEM I FORGET WHOSE I'LL FIND OUT)

Time passing, and the memories of love
Coming back to me, carissima, no more mockingly
Than ever before; time passing, unslackening,
Bitterly, beloved, the memories of love
Coming into the shore.

How will it end? Time passing and our passages of love
As ever, beloved, blind
As ever before; time binding, unbinding
About us; and yet to remember
Never less chastening, nor the flame of love
Less like an ember.

What will become of us? Time
Passing, beloved, and we in a sealed
Assurance unassailed
By memory. How can it end,
This siege of a shore that no misgivings have steeled,
No doubts defend?