Some of my amateur poetry to share with you--> enjoy, comment, critique as you will, just please recognize that this is copyrighted material. CE
I Thought of You Today
I watched my cat pounce
as he clawed a finch
mid-air,
off the thistle-seed sock
hanging in the garden.
For a moment,
akimbo legs and tail
fur and feathers
intertwined,
twisting grotesquely
in the springtime sun.
CE
March 2008
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Upon Realizing That I Will Never Trust You
frozen moment
still frame
snap
edges blurred
fuzzy
quarters clinking table glass
voices fade
beer bottles
creaking chairs
and instantly
inherently
instinctively
I knew.
under poignant crystal prismic
light
unbidden Truth
creeps
Suspicions breed .
forbidden secret
spawned
from long-shriveled hope
cowered
cornered
cold
a girl laughed intimately
and I knew.
CE 2006
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Oregon
The sun is gone, the sky is dark.
Every one huddles closer to the earth.
People scrunch their shoulders and bow their heads,
Worshiping the changing heavens.
Balls of water, soft and rhythmic, break against my skin,
Drawing little rivers down my arms and face.
Along the breeze waft loamy aromas
As the earth sighs in satisfaction;
A heavenly shower—
Cleansing
CE 2003
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Marital Bliss (sonnet)
Between us distance shrinks, expands like clay,
much like the ceiling shapes that shift and yield
at random, oozing over painted fields;
unrealized dreams, irreconcilable ways
are floating, gloating ghosts about me—flay
me, deride me, ignore me, abide me, and try
(echoing your laughter at my cry)
to make me think I only ache today.
A sweet and sudden yearning to be free
anoints this crowded silence with new hope,
an unction for a selfish game revealed—
this deed we do means nothing now to me.
I will no longer knot this weathered rope;
consider this an elegy repealed.
CE 2003
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The Night I Found Out My Daughter Is Female
No, Baby, you’re sleepwalking. Go back to
bed.
But, Mama…
Come on, Honey.
But, Mama…
Let’s go back to bed now.
But, Mama, it has to be apples ‘cause the mirrors took the fridge.
CE 2004
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Postcard to the Past
An ancient breeze among the dead
Rattles the bones, the skeleton’s head.
An ancient people, eyes grown dim,
Vacant stares and mouths set grim.
Memories faded, choices gone,
Rancid flesh where maggots throng.
Royal crowns of amethyst blue,
Priceless jewels—jaded, too.
Empty lives and wasted years,
Hearts of stone with frozen tears.
Stifled moments, broken dreams,
Lusts fulfilled and love unseen.
Hovering fog, aborted thoughts,
Useless minds, existing rot.
CE 2003
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Moving this Week without Warning (pantoum)
Moving this week without warning,
suddenly having to pack,
landlord insists on this morning—
muscles rebel in my back.
Suddenly having to pack
an entire lifetime of junk,
muscles rebel in my back—
it won’t all fit in my trunk.
An entire lifetime of junk,
thirty-six secondhand years,
it won’t all fit in my trunk—
time burnished in memory by tears.
Thirty-six secondhand years,
tackiness bright in the sun
time burnished in memory by tears—
Tell me, when is responsible fun?
Tackiness bright in the sun,
Is this really the life that I own?
Tell me, when is responsible fun—
embarrassed to be all alone.
Is this really the life that I own?
Landlord insists on this morning—
embarrassed to be all alone,
moving this week without warning.
CE 2003
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(For the original Cowboy)
Texas BBQ
A second off Highway 18,
not far from that unshaven moment
when you mouthed empty words,
looking darkly through airport glass,
tumbleweeds tumble—
silent, fragile bones battering against my door.
Sometimes
I peek out from behind steel walls,
entranced by twiggy balls of nettle—
cobwebs that crumble into morsels of memory,
like filling Chinese pagoda take-out boxes
with bird nest bits.
Rarely,
I nibble just at the edge,
you know—the soft, melty part—
tasting
tasting
crunching dry desolation
soaked in acrid words—
judgmental jargon—
and I grin wickedly, tears salting Cowboy remains.
CE 2004
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(Cowboy again)
The Gardener
If you had been there,
you would have seen
how he embraced
her bitterness
and stirred,
spreading marbled veins
across her
jagged limestone walls
kist in effigy,
sprouted in neglect,
streaked with remnants
of black-light smiley
faces and puffy dead
blossoms
and then watered carefully,
peeling the outer layer
of sun—just so—
to mark her
growth
in solar stretch
spurts,
ravenous
hunger,
begging
meat not
milk, more
sun, more
sunmoresunmoresunmoresun more
CE 2004
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(For my son)
Towhead blonde
engineer hat
toy train
scraped
knees starfish
hands kneaded mine—
reassure
and comfort now,
a knowing squeeze,
shoulders
I massaged at night
while singing you are my sunshine
and this old man—
wider, poised,
confident, perfect
peachy untouched
skin—first Band-aids patched
my tears—
now tanned, hormonal
already blemished
with promise
your delight in words
is mine
your ease
with mechanical parts,
separate—
your own
grin,
just so—
I see my dad,
when you frown,
I see yours—
and then you laugh
freely
joyfully
unabashedly
you
CE 2004
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Procrastination (pantoum)
Driving to school in the morning,
Racing to beat the clock,
Light turns red without warning,
My gosh, how long is this block!
I’m racing to beat the clock,
My professor will yell if I’m late,
Light turns red without warning,
Pedestrians blocking the gate!
My professor will yell if I’m late,
Left my coffee sitting at home
Pedestrians blocking the gate!
Just parked in a no parking zone.
Left my coffee sitting at home,
Next to my poetry paper that’s due
Just parked in a no parking zone
Now I’ll have to write something new.
My poetry paper is due
The light turns red without warning
Now I’ll have to write something new
Driving to school in the morning.
CE 2003
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(Feminine military)
Guard Duty Outside the POC at 5 AM
On the other side
of concertina wire,
shouldering alone
the dewy weight
of southern summer dawn,
as the slumbering earth
shuddered, melding
to the curves of my body,
I watched shifting shapes
along the scrub pines
dance among fireflies
caught in reverie
between my rifle sights.
CE 2004
Zeroing Rifles
Earth pocket unzipped,
toes touch black lint
rocks roots,
belly pressed
in corner womb,
elbows planted
on green hair,
breath beats blood pulse
tension builds in/ex
h a l e
wait
wait
wait
gentle
finger
squeeze
sudden screaming echo
as the green torso falls
CE 2004
Cattle Drive to the Range
Crushed together
in wet ponchos,
we huddled
on splintered benches
back of a deuce and a half,
M16 muzzles seeming to
connect the dots of
Louisiana
along pungent OD green canvas,
and us,
achingly aware of
warm bodies leaning
against thighs arms backs
steel pot helmets
clanging in rhythm
against steel poles
to the pock-faced insolence
of untamed roads.
CE 2004
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(remembering)
Still
If I hold very still
in this twilight silence
to glance at shifting shapes
through half-awake lashes,
golden dunes arch again
against milky clouds,
yawning contentment
in easy affection.
Sea foam laps gently
nuzzling my toes--
and for a moment,
if I hold my breath quickly,
my skin will dance
once more
like a gypsy in the moonlight
at the first touch
of your lips
lingering in my shadows.
CE 2004
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