~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At dawn, your fingers
still trace the curve of my spine
like they're reading braille~
each scar, each shift in the landscape,
a sentence you know by heart.
You laugh when I steal the blanket,
when my knees find the hollows
behind yours, an old map
drawn without compass or reason.
Our fights are old books now,
their spines cracked open
to the same dog-eared pages~
we know the lines by heart,
but recite them softer these days.
We are two trees grown
into each other’s bark,
gnarled and weathered-together,
no longer remembering
which rings belong to whom.
Some loves are built like this~
not with grand gestures,
but with the quiet tyranny
of your coffee cup left warming
on my nightstand,
the way you hum off-key
in the shower, still, after all these years,
and I pretend not to hear it,
and you pretend not to know.
Forty-three autumns,
and your hands smell like sawdust
and onions, and I wouldn’t trade
our slow unraveling for anything~
not even the taut, bright thread
we once were.
Still working on my PhD. at the age of forty-three
though as a teaching assistant, all my schooling’s free
The problem is my thesis, I change it every year
for approval from my advisor, it must rhyme with his fav’rite beer
Would last year’s subject tickle your tibia?
“One-cell diets of 18th-century fireflies
that migrated to the north of Namibia”
But this year has me spellbound, the thesis is so perverse
It focuses on presidents – from Monica fellating Clinton
to what Lincoln did in his hearse
So, you are hereby invited to view my forthcoming dissertation
~ snicker and smirk at Oval Office ruination
~ NoBenny Fitu Sosighety
"forty three shades of grey"
being romantic
ally lazy i read
her like a
book of
cliffs
notes
Poetry is about the flow,
not the rhyme.
The inventive Swedish town of Gayle
Every winter holiday without fail,
makes a forty-three foot goat
Out of straw and an oat
It’s totally true, not a wild tale.
If your leg could talk
would it insist that you take
it for a long walk?
If I could get back the dollars I've spent
I'd be an extremely rich man
Buying stuff just because it's on sale
Then storing it is not a good plan
Got eighty-three of cans of vegetable soup
Forty-three boxes of Captain Crunch
Even if I lived to a hundred and twenty
We'll still have breakfast and lunch
Some people have a rainy day mentality
You never know what's just ahead
But more than six hundred boxes of KD
Could keep a damn army fed
Now I'm all for spending money wisely
But this concept blows my mind
Can't eat all the food that we've got stored
But the mice think I'm very kind
© Jack Ellison 2013
I'm in need of a companion, her love I'll never abandon, there's
a vacancy where that special lady should be but I got
standards...so before I give my all to you consider this, if you're
the one then there's no need for me to continue fishing, a
woman who I could share my world with was always the
mission, and lately I been missing you, your kiss your touch the
way you caress me but still you know I like it rough lol I no other
girl could fill your shoes walk in those stilettos or do what you
do, the love I searched for I believe you fit it perfectly, my
surgeon I was in need of open heart surgery, open me up I'm
not so concealed I belong to you Yeah signed and sealed is it
real sometimes I question, story of my life right it's not your
fault they were so deceptive teacher teach me how to love I'm so
receptive, give me the final exam I've studied long & hard for the
test.
I had a special little Ford
That was so shiny black
It was a tiny two-door coop
With a brake light in the back
I paid out all my money
One hundred twenty-five
There was a clutch and a brake
So I could stay alive
I think it was a '43
Though people said "not likely"
"They did not make them in that year"
But there it was...so sprightly!
I had a car though I was young,
I think I was sixteen
Safety didn't interest me,
But my car stayed shiny and clean
It had a quirk, it's cause unknown
The brakes would heat and seize
Used my strength to push the pedal
But thrilled to feel the breeze
As to the little brake light
Right there in the middle
The brakes got hot; the light stayed on
And never dimmed a little
I'd park the car so it could cool
The light finally gave relief
The longer I drove, the hotter it got
That was my belief
I no longer had a need to explain
Why the light refused to dim
Even during the cooling rain
On my car with the fancy trim
I wonder as I think of then
How did I stay alive?
Was I indestructible?
My main thought was – I could drive!
a number is a curious thing
the shape the color the familiar ring
reflections cast a pallid glow
winter's secrets over summer's tow
with magic beans and wicked tea
such fools take heart at forty three
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