| I Take Master Card (Charge Your Love To Me) I've heard all the stories 'bout how you don't deserve me 'cause I'm so strong and beautiful and wonderful and you could never live up to what you know I should have but I just want to let you know: I take Master Card You can love me as much as your heart can stand then put the rest on account and pay the interest each moneth until we get this settled You see me modern women do comprehend that we deserve a whole lot more than what is normally being offered but we are trying to get aligned with the modern world So baby you can love me all you like 'cause you're pre-approved and you don't have to sign on the bottom line Charge it upp 'til we just can't take no more it's the modern way I take Master Card to see your Visa and I deal with a Discovery but I don't want any American Express 'cause like the Pointer Sisters say: I need a slow hand |
| You were gone You were gone like a fly lighting on that wall with a spider in the corner You were gone like last week's paycheck for this week's bills You were gone like the years between twenty-five and thirty as if somehow You never existed and if it wouldn't be for the gray hairs I'd never know that You had come |
| Resignation I love you because the Earth turns round the sun because the North wind blows north sometimes because the Pope is Catholic and most Rabbis Jewish because winters flow into springs and the air cleans after a storm because only my love for you despite the charms of gravity keeps me from falling off this Earth into another dimension I love you because it is the natural order of things I love you like that habit I picked up in college of sleeping through lectures or saying I'm sorry when I get stopped for speeding because I take my coffee Black and my milk with chocolate because you keep my feet warm though my life a mess I love you because I don't want it any other way I am helpless in my love for you It makes me so happy to hear you call my name I am amazed you can resist locking me in an echo chamber where your voice reverberates through the four walls sending me into spasmatic ecstasy I love you because it's been so good for so long that if I didn't love you I'd have to be born again and that is not a theological statement I am pitiful in my love for you The Dells tell me love is so simple the thought of you sends indescribably delicious multitudinous thrills throughout and through-in my body I love you because no two snowflakes are alike and it is possible if you stand tippy-toe to walk between the raindrops I love you because I am afriad of the dark and I can't sleep in the light because I rub my eyes when I wake up in the morning and find you there beacause you with all your magic powers were determined that I should love you because there was nothing for you but that I would love you I love you because you made me want to love you more than I love my privacy my freedom my commitments and responsibilities I love you 'cause I changed my life to love you because you saw me one friday afternoon and decided that I would love you I love you I love you I love you |
| Balances in life one is always balancing like we juggle our mothers against our fathers or one teacher against another (only to balance our grade average) 3 grains salt to one ounce truth our sweet black essence or the funky honkies down the street and lately I've begun wondering if you're trying to tell me something we used to talk all night and do things alone together and i've begun (as a reaction to a feeling) to balance the pleasure of loneliness against the pain of loving you |
| Poetry is a Trestle poetry is a trestle spanning the distance between what i feel and what i say like a locomotive i rush full speed ahead trusting your strength to carry me over sometimes we share a poem because people are near and they would notice me noticing you so i write X and you write O and we both win sometimes we share a poem because i'm washing the dishes and you're looking at your news or sometimes we make a poem because it's Sunday and you want ice cream while i want cookies but always we share a poem because belief predates action and i believe the most beautiful poem ever heard is your heart racing |
| You Are There i shall save my poems for the winter of my dreams i look forward to huddling in my rocker with my life i wonder what i'll contemplate lovers- certainly those i can remember and knowing my life you'll be there you'll be there in the cold like a Siamese on my knee proud purring when you let me stroke you you'll be there in the rain like an umbrella over my head sheltering me from the damp mist you'll be there in the dark like a lighthouse in the fog seeing me through troubled waters you'll be there in the sun like coconut oil on my back to keep me from burning i shall save a special poem for you to say you always made me smile and even though i cried sometimes you said i will not let you down my rocker and i on winter's porch will never be sad if you're gone the winter's cold has been stored against you will always be there |
| A Poem of Friendship We are not lovers because of the love we make but the love we have We are not friends because of the laughs we spend but the tears we save I don't want to be near you for the thoughts we share but the words we never have to speak I will never miss you because of what we do but what we are together |
| Love Is Some people forget that love is tucking you in and kissing you "Good night" no matter how young or old you are Some people don't remember that love is listening and laughing and asking questions no matter what your age Few recognize that love is commitment responsibility no fun at all unless Love is You and me |
| The Way I Feel i've noticed i'm happier when i make love with you and have enough left over to smile at my doorman i've realized i'm fulfilled like a big fat cow who was just picked for a carnation contentment when you kiss your special place right behind my knee i'm as glad as mortar on a brick that knows another brick is coming when you walk through my door most time when you're around i feel like a note roberta flack is going to sing in my mind you're a clock and i'm the second hand sweeping around you sixty times an hour twenty-four hours a day three hundred sixty-five days a year and an extra day in leap year cause that's the way that's the way that's the way i feel about you |
| How Do You Write a Poem? how do you write a poem about someone so close to you that when you say ahhhhh they say chuuuu what can they ask you to put on paper that isn't already written on your face and does the paper make it any more real that without them life would be not impossible but certainly more difficult and why would someone need a poem to say when i come home if you're not there i search the air for your scent would i search any less if i told the world i don't care at all and love is so complete that touch or not we blend to each other the things that matter aren't all about baaaanging (i can be baaaanged all day long) but finding a spot where i can be free of all the physical and emotional bullshit and simply sit with a cup of coffee and say to you "i'm tired" don't you know these are my love words and say to you "how was your day" doesn't that show i care or say to you "we lost a friend" and not want to share that loss with strangers don't you already know what i feel and if you don't maybe i should check my feelings |
| Just a New York Poem i wanted to take your hand and run with you together toward ourselves down the street to your street i wanted to laugh aloud and skip the notes past the marquee advertising "women in love" past the record shop with "The Spirit In The Dark" past the smoke shop past the park and no parking today signs past the people watching me in my blue velvet and i don't remember what you wore but only that i didn't want anything to be weawring you i wanted to give myself to the cyclone that is your arms and let you in the eye of my hurricane and know the calm before and some fall evening after the cocktails and the very expensive and very bad steak served with day-old baked potatoes after the second cup of coffee taken while listening to the rejected violin player maybe some fall evening when the taxis have passed you by and that light sort of rain that occasionally falls in new york begins you'll take a thought and laugh aloud the notes carrying all the way over to me and we'll run again together toward each other yes? |
| Habits i haven't written a poem in so long i may have forgotten how unless writing a poem is like riding a bike or swimming upstream or loving you it may be a habit that once acquired is never lost but you say i'm foolish of course you love me but being loved of course is not the same as being loved because or being loved despite or being loved if you love me why do i feel so lonely and why do i always wake up alone and why am i practicing not having to love i never loved you that way |
| Untitled there is a hunger often associated with pain that you feel when you look at someone you used to love and enjoyed loving and want to love again though you know you can't that gnaws at you as steadily as a mosquito some michigan summer churning his wings through your window screen because the real world made up of baby clothes to be washed food to be cooked lullabies to be sung smiles to be glowed hair to be plaited ribbons to be bowed coffee to be drunk books to be read tears to be cried loneliness to be borne says you are a strong woman and anyway he never thought you'd really miss him |
| Introspection she didn't like to think in abstracts sadness happiness taking giving all abstracts she much preferred waxing the furniture cleaning the shelves putting the plates away something concrete to put her hands on a job well done in a specific time span her eyes were two bright shiny six guns already cocked prepared to go off at a moment's indiscretion had she been a vietnam soldier or a mercenary for Ian Smith all the children and dogs and goodly portions of grand old trees would have been demolished she had lived noth long and compeltely enough not to be chained to truth she was not pretty she had no objections to th elies lies were better than the silence that abounded nice comfortable lies like I need you or Gosh you look pretty this morning the lies that make the lie of life real or lies that make real life liveable she lived on the edge of an emotional abyss or perhaps she lived in the well of a void there were always things she wanted like arms to hold her eyes that understood a friend to relax with someone to touch always someone to touch her life was a puzzle broken into a hundred thousand little pieces she didn't mind being emotionally disheveled she was forever fascinated by putting the pieces together though most times the center was empty she never slept well there wasn't a time actually when sleep refreshed her perhaps it could have but there were always dreams or nightmares and mostly her own acknowledgement that she was meant to be tired she lived because she didn't know any better she stayed alive among the tired and lonely not waiting always wanting needing a good night's rest |