“Combed up Velvet” on Poetry Super Highway

As originally published on Poetry Super Highway, editor Rick Lupert, Los Angeles, California, August 2022.

Combed up Velvet

Windswept gatherings of confused moths 
cloud over and flitter across 
my speckled memory, moving, 
flickering
candlelit flowers, held up above, hovering 
over 
such 
white linen, rough
woven dusty with peachy 
sprinkles that sparkle, sparkle
as a twinkling
glittery, and 
shine. Just like 
dead confetti,
angelic mysteries, spread out and about and unorganized as
this and these,
my thoughts of what was

As if there, their
unheavenly scissored up, snipped and cut
snowy cooled
insistence, unsated and sticking
to my attention
lazy, bump, thump 
tacked heavy to jazzy sax beats
beating soft, 
a stranger
wanting more space on the train
just tapping steady, beating softly
at my shoulders, but I blink away
your gaze and 
whatever there was

Toss it, again 
your smile and then
a strapped touch, thick in emotion
I do not want to remember
or consider this part
of this eventual
go away, but-. Your face (damn it) 
                         (what you said next)
and then another *thing*
that I used to like
petals down, slow and sloppy
out the window I cannot turn away 
anymore
from the window and in your hair
                         over by the window
breathing vanilla musk kisses and Daring
Your smirk should not be in my mind, dragging
through me, too much 
my old unwanted memory feeling brushed up to a thick stuff,
combed up velvet
fingertips bent, 
earth spinning outside our own seams
with us and I’m still
dizzy, becoming 
a bubble sipped up
dripping,
running away from what absolutely have to be dried-forever thoughts, 
away, then 
a drop, a 
petaling sparkle, dusted 
away, then I realized it, I can wait for
your return, your next visit,
your revenge, too
                         your comeback
of what never really was. I can.

Fingertips bent, 
I rake up and through
past you
I’m way past you
and all that
combed up velvet.

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Read about my experience being showcased on Poetry Super Highway as a Poet of the Month right here.