Best Tenuous Poems
How tenuous, how softly demure,
Sounds this interlude, which I trying to catch!
Like bereft of a sigh, non formidable sketch
It is soaring around, immutably pure.
I watched her crumpling up the paper with her eyes,
throwing away emotions that regret tainted with scribbled ink.
To her, her words were never enough;
pleading emotions spilled out of mascara plastered tear ducts,
as the evolution of catharsis opened up the spout to her soul,
and I watched black rain, amazed by the subtle beauty
of a quiet girl’s inhibition plucking itself apart.
She was trying so hard,
to manifest poetry with a used up ink pen;
words half written left indentations on the paper
…between us, I could feel the rest sinking into my skin.
She tried so hard.
Too hard.
It would never be enough, not to her.
She wanted her words to grip the wounds
of the Earth, and piece them back together
with silken metaphors, and velvet prose.
I think she thought it would make her feel alive again.
But what she didn’t realize was,
she didn’t need to write those feelings,
not today, not in that tattered journal
marked “Tenuous Miracles” ..
In that moment, she was the miracle.
She was poetry;
living and breathing
…poetry
And I had the other half of her story
tucked within me, waiting to be read.
-James Kelley 2014, All rights reserved.
Our relationship is tenuous at best.
I know you by the sounds you make
when touching me at night.
Now and then, mid-day bright,
I hear a thunder of applause.
No doubt for your staccato dance,
producing chance encounters
on my mind without a cause.
Showering me with sound that’s found
inside each draft of air.
I cannot tell you when or where
but I feel it as a movement
raising hair upon my arms.
Stillness fills the sky.
A calm of great power,
felt within the presence
of something that might end you.
I have known your love this way.
You know me in ways I cannot fathom.
Our blood filling with the essence
of each other’s life. I have spilled
your moisture from my eyes.
We speak with the same tongue,
swimming in each other’s wake
throughout our lives.
Creeks and rivers and rivulets
of passion draw us in, floating
upon each other’s waters.
Moving freely into spreading limbs,
stomping our feet upon the surface
of each other’s soul. I feel your touch
upon my naked skin without, and then within.
A touch that’s tenuous at best,
moving with an unknown purpose
I cannot pronounce.
Moving through care that is always there.
Shouting loudly, “I am here!!”
Oh Love forever in the now,
alone I come to visit thou.
A future or a past you have not known.
Your touch, shall in the end, become my own.
Thread cast, a lifeline
stretched touch, finger to finger,
poised for connection.
But without grip, can't hold on.
Out of reach, connection snaps.
Fleetingly the day begins
Clouds roam in and out
Cold air seizes my imagination
Shaken the oak tree melts into the driveway
The cardinal pecks away at a piece of seed
Cat watches with avid interest
Life is tenuous
Storm comes up suddenly
Rain pelts us with ice cold jabs
Warmth was not appreciated until now
Clouds have dissipated
Gray white sky winks angrily
Oak tree disappears
Blurry eyed people are bewildered
How did this happen?
Life is tenuous