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.
