YESTERDAY'S WOMAN

YESterday's  Woman

Yesterday, a man,

a gray-haired man,

cohabitating within an old man’s body rolls in. He

flaunts a Parisian beret fairing a pin of three gold stars 

thrusting up the side of his head.

A man, a thin man, with artist hands, and wire hair

sprouting out from beneath the soft black felt. He sits down.

This man, who I ate a pasta dinner with

yesterday said,

he just wants to paint the perfect unplanned portrait.

This man, with two languid burgundy tubes acting as animated legs stares at me,

and as if out or nowhere says, “As you sit there in that straight back chair,

just as you sit with your hand under your chin--

I would not change a thing about you. No I wouldn’t.

I would paint an impromptu portrait of you, highlighting the red tint in your hair and

capturing the cobalt of your eyes.”

I smile and reply.   “How much is the portrait in the living room?

The one of...

the beautiful young Asian woman lounging on the velvet chaise in the afternoon sun?”

He spoke slowly after sipping red wine. “At a gallery ten thousand, for you I will do half.”

I decline.

I ask him if he was ever married. The golden sign was mockingly absent. 

I don’t know why that question was important.  I gaze at the women’s portraits

hung on spare nails around the mock gallery porch dining room.

He hums with conceit in his breath.

“Three wives- not one lasted. Each woman plateaued.”

His long crooked fingers parted the air between us.

“They each left. Actually I’d say I left them.

 I was bored. They didn’t want to grow anymore.”

 In half his life he is a portrait painter; in the other, he is

a vacuum repair man as his trade for a living.

“I want to paint portraits.”  He says as he lights a joint.

“I want to paint the perfect unplanned portrait.”

His smoky breath exhales to blow out the burning match caught between his finger tips.  

I believe he wants to paint women--

a woman with luxuriously tussled hair, a porcelain face of grace,

the kind of woman you want to kiss, who’s eyes want to kiss you.

The kind of woman that makes you need to

put your parting lips directly onto a taut canvas.

I wonder if the crimson lips he paints might just feel real.

Maybe he can make an unplanned portrait real. Make a real woman real.

I shake my head yes and say to the artist, yes I understand.

TJKG

dverse -- more poetry to please

DIGNITY OF AGE

Dignity of Age

The unfolding bloom is

lost inside the purple bud where

a promise once rose from

inside the stem, as

roots grip the

darkness of the dirt--

inside of the core of the earth--

hidden

deep,

deep under the sun.

The face of this blossom--

bursting fragrance,

inner truth folded

from butterfly and bee

not seen. The sun’s mystery,

the glory of this flower

unfolds her elegance, a

birth of beauty,

an age of dignity.

TJKG

dverse open poetry night

THIN AIR

"Souls are not designed to float around in thin air." A. Chiu

Thin Air 

You rest in thin air

with things like

a lingering scent,

a child’s outcry,

a foreign language,

a distant chill as you drift by

on the intent of your path.

You rest in thin air--

subtle and palatable--

a veil of consequence,

a mile of destinies,

a chance at a fork in the road;

white wings of hope lay low in

a solitary flight of time.

You rest in thin air,

inside the hourglass

of you;  I am lost in the

cacophony of your trust.

My tiny describable breaths

pull you into my chest

barely nourishing what is left.

  TJKG
Read some more great poetry at dverse

I WALKED INTO A BAR...I NEEDED A HOSPITAL

 Lucille: "I'll be in the hospital bar." Michael: Uhh, you know, there isn't a hospital bar, mother." Lucille: "Well, this is why people hate hospitals. Arrested Development

I Walked into a Bar…I Needed a Hospital.

Hospitals should have bars--

I think they should-- a pint

of beer for a pint of blood.

Lounges are like waiting rooms

in hospitals, yet with libations.

Hospital stays are not

like a wild weekend, more

like a reality check.

The regulars are sitting,

some in waiting rooms,

some on bar stools,

some wondering how much

longer until their time is over.

The patient is praying

this stay won’t kill me;

the cocktail barely numbed me, 

the t.v. is blaring.

How much longer

will it hurt like this?

the patron asks the bartender.

Who's winning the game?

Can I get another lager?

The pounding of a heart,

the pounding of a beer--

states only one thing--

cardiac arrest or attesting

to the beginning of a scar.

How much longer will I be

waiting for a miracle at

a hospital or at a bar,

because after today,

I am not sure whether I

need a bar or a hospital to

pick up and heal my remains.

TJKG

Neck

Visions of the fine, fair, velvet hairs covering
the collar bone, the smooth blue roadmap inside
warm valleys, rolling into the concave road of flesh.

Intimate fresh scents of gardenia and sandalwood soap
saturate my soul, eyes roll and fall inside wet magnolias.
Content fission of hope, one breath I am unearthed.

Bordeaux lips of butter brush the curves between
the neck and the shoulder. Memories cream into the
the inward softness of hot cashmere, pink petaled rose.

Cheek pressed into the sunset of skin, soft hair,
curved smooth heat encapsulated inside river rock,
water flows, ritual wrapping of arms, faith grows.

One hand of fingers flow around the flesh
of another’s soul, skin gently placed, a perfect mold;
pulse quietly beats, violin chin, she blankets her sins.


Her hair meshed on my face,
a questionable twists of trust.

Salt

Pushing through the crease of her arm,
you erupt,
unexpected and enticing.
Her skin is your path as
gravity guides you
down tiny hairs.
Salty, clean
and perfumed.

I watch you drip
down her soft
inner coves.
Delirious skin,
delicious
wet taste in my mouth.
The sight of you is
iridescent.

Your liquid body is drawling,
talking,
staring.
You slide
from the nape of her neck,
curling,
to the dimple
of her back.

Beads emerge again.
I watch you roll down
glistening flesh
to the lulling
of her breast.
I hold not to lunge,
as you mock, taunt
and own.