Absence

I wait
in expectation
of your crackling consciousness
to break this ominous suspension
of my heart

a smell upon the air
the ozone of loneliness
thick, pervades
senses, aroused for darkness
coagulates my despair

inhaling a day
turned night with
bird-abandoned trees
splintering the earth
all sap drained

leeched of life
I draw upon all withered things
for acceptance
understanding, beneath
a gray, still sky

silence is
the nourishment of your world
a blood-scented storm
promising only the calm
death-like, in its arrival



I Hate Brooklyn Rain

I hate the rain of my Brooklyn childhood
crying through sparse sycamore trees
of an early, darkened morning,
bark dripping with residue streaks
of a youth's insomnia,
heartbeat newly touched by the
tyrannical tapping and heavy thuds
of grief and pain atop
old, battered aluminum waste
cans.
The caco-
phony of wet woe
completing its course
through dirty street gutters,
clogged by random impediments
in a sluice for all good desires
dared and dreamed and drenched
in the passage of love--
before the corner drain,
clogged with heart's brambled blood
claims what I have felt.

Long Island lawns,
manicured and lush and green
with the nourishment of mature manna
fallen from guarded, suburban skies,
are mute to the sound of pain.
I will mow my pretty grass
silently this weekend,
tenderly treading
on its tufts of tacit toil.



Gullibility

All this time, I thought
the words of your soul were mine to know...
Soft sand sifted
through fumbling fingers of discernment;
feet entrenched in the silken sauce
of the ocean's spread eagle margin.
Bright summer's day, belonging not to me.
Still, I plunged into this glimmering gullibility.
I did not sense the distance traveled
from your blanket-strewn existence;
nor the undulating undertow of power, playing
my limbs with taunting, teasing tugs.
I did not sense the warning winds
of the gathering gloom--the silence,
but for nervous gulls of grace,
hovering, circling, looming,
crying out Fooooll Fooooll,
tossing me their crumbs of despair.



Forbidden Love

Forbidden love, I curse your strength:
Addiction from the start--
A plague must be upon my soul,
A sickness in my heart.
I sipped of blood the like of mine,
But slowly did I taste.
So sweet and potent was each dose,
I gulp them now in haste.
Forbidden love, my veins are chilled
By this toxic thrill.
Can there be no cure for me
From this feverish ill?
Intoxicated am I now
In this shameful place,
Imbibe her offered remedy
And reek of our disgrace.
Forbidden love, I love her though,
No dearer can there be,
Afflicted full am I of her
And nurse my malady.
So come now, please, forevermore
To bed shall we be ridden.
Let's drink our fill and offer cheer
A toast to love forbidden!



Hungry Forevers

I want...you
with the naked seclusion of greed,
to dip my hands deeply
in the rich evening of your hair;
massage the moments of this unexpected
taste and awareness
of your natural beauty; grasp
the subtle invitation of movements, to
explore wide-open territory of your wet,
unworried desire

...to feel

the stark landscape of your skin,
expose its smooth, unhidden surface
to the moisture of more and more's,
plundering well-springs of your discovery,
as fingers of brave but gentle determination
spread wide...and far...
saturate, with glimmering enrichment,
your fragile, soft terrain, leaving,
in their wake, facial trails of scented trust
I want...to be captured
in the illumination of your eyes,
plummeted to depths
of mysteries; my mind aglow
in their honest liquid, reflecting a light
to guide me through
your secret spheres, sun
and moon and stars and heaven, swirling,
shining in seductive, celestial intensity
on a heated, glorious land, as yet unknown

...to hold you

within our universe, as you hold me...
for the static second of this stare,
where humbling need and thrusting urge
pioneer an elsewhere of understanding,
transforming the immediacy of breathless, lusty
gain to the serenity of unrushed arrival...

embrace you in the newly scaled, exotic wilderness of now;
explore you beneath the hungry forevers of tongue-tethered skies;
call to you atop this pristine, unconquerable summit
both hands to mouth,
screaming out "I Want You"
to the echoing everywhere
of the bursting,
dew-delivered dawn
of each
silent
kiss

Full-length Poetry Books
by Michael D. Petti:

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Poem Art at: Wear a Poem!