marriage poem #3

Sometimes there's not enough time

to talk about the things I want to talk

to you about. Sometimes the time fills up

like a bowl of green curry with jasmine rice,

basil leaves and sliced chicken.

The time with you gets spicy and I forget

to talk about the things I want to talk

to you about. Spices fill up my bowl

anyway, time doesn't. Time with you really

can't be bowled, drawn, quartered

or pressed with garlic paste, distilled

in candy sticks, and I forget to think

what it was to talk with you.

marriage poem #1

When the purpleblack night grows soft,

blends its own sweet Billie Holliday tune

with the dark morning I shed my shirt,

my pants, slide in naked next to you

and feel the sweet soft ache

in my shoulders, in my legs, my chest.

I touch your tickling hand,

fingers sprawled open on the bed,

limp with sleep yet opening, closing,

the bitten nails tiny,

your breaths regular with a quiet cat-snore.

When I wake in the later morning

you will be on my chest there, there

in the place you love to set your head,

and perhaps, because we are married now,

the air will collapse or be in a state of collapse

under the weight of my many night-time farts,

and things won't get too terribly sappy.

But you will still love me, even then.

With morose laughter, at times, and moaning

at my morning murmurs and the awful

smell. Pulling the sheets up once more,

twice more, I may say, will say,

Welcome to marriage love. Welcome.