Muddy’s Coffee HouseKC Poet: Smoke Signals
Smoke Signals
This is how I am
given to speak my worth:
as if my tongue
were fired,
but set upon some
distant peak of earth
where wind or rain
might wreak its ruin
on ev’ry plume of heat
that rises past my lips;
each word
a smoky raft adrift
on intervening air,
and I am frantic
at my hearth up there,
to think that you may
ne’er so much as
glance my way—
‘Tis thus my weavings
burn, both one by one,
and day by day…
KC Poet: Body Parts
Body Parts
Cannibals, they say,
pepper their language
liberally with
culinary cant:
…use a bit of
elbow grease; fire
in the belly; have
a little backbone,
avoid the cold
shoulder, trust a gut
feeling; take heart,
toe the line, never
turn a blind eye or
a deaf ear, though
it cost an arm
or a leg; a finger
on the pulse
is just the thing…
So knuckle down,
toothsome;
learn that lingo,
their jargon, the argot—
it’s all that keeps
our salty, half-
cocked tongues awag,
our juicy parts
out of the pot…
KC Poet: Built Like This
Built Like This
Balance not always
being the ideal state,
maybe what tips my pate
is a built-in trait
that favors the hand
over the blander
proxy—
not that petty business
of acting foxy,
but just having the moxie
to want some skin
where sense matters most.
I concede the argument’s
thin, its logic
rash as the ghost
of a whimsy for that
headlong dash into bliss—
but flimsy or hasty
doesn’t disprove
in the least a breed
built to bleed for that kiss…
KC Poet: A mazing
A mazing
Of course the Minotaur
was merely red herring,
a piece of dangled bait
no derring-doer
like Theseus could ever
resist; a simple snack
for the sword-flick
of his heroically
muscled wrist.
It was the Labyrinth’s
dangerous trappings
and elegant twists
that were shaped
to grind the grist
of his fettered ending.
I only mention this,
because in bending
toward the lure
of her wilding eyes,
such a fog and mist
arise before my face,
that I tryst with lies
like lips forever lost
along the nape
of mazing grace…
KC Poet: To Sunlight
To Sunlight
Having himself
weathered too much
of poisoned atmosphere,
unseasonable freeze,
the droughts, the storms,
the disease—
Is he mad, to be once
again limned in leaves,
a lunatic tricked out
in fingertip green, a mind
uncluttered by reason?
Or is he well aware
the wrack upon his bark
is not the mark his own
blunt hands must bear,
and so long as there be
some still drawn
to care, one day will
dawn upon another…
KC Poet: Wrinkle
Wrinkle
Having loved her
long from afar, he
took to the coolness
of her light as any
wistful dreamer might
in lifting the song
of his heart to a star,
drinking what
ardor he will
from the twinkle
it lends the night.
And yet he’s never
bent to this wrinkle
where such longing
could be set aright,
this miracle of
Beautiful
drawing quite near—
so one may pardon
his trembling aspect,
holding the dawning
warmth of an earthy
heaven here…
KC Poet: Medium Rare
Medium Rare
Walking the line ‘tween
talking too much and
saying so little?— Well,
it’s crazy anyway,
thinking
there’s a medium in
the middle of passion
that’ll ever do us favor.
Better to let fly—
admit that I crave her
in every way a mouth
will fashion; that I
can no longer sleep
with her scent on my
pillow ‘less my hands
be ‘sconced in
the tumble of her hair—
And the only medium
I’m likely to walk is
the running stumble
that lands me there…
KC Poet: The Province Of Man
The Province of Man
Sleep is no state
for the chaser
of Dreams
to reside in.
It’s just another
darkness,
another artifice
to hide in;
a place where
the lazy let
seeming seem like
dreaming does
when the heart is
supremely awake—
No, Sleep is
merely a realm
for the fake;
a cakewalk
to sop up the snores
of its makers.
Dreams— dreams
are for movers
and shakers…
KC Poet: Dark Doth Spill
Dark Doth Spill
Touch is a wolf
lying in wait
behind shadows,
if what is known
of words and truth
has any worth,
ev’ry sound—
from the first,
having been a ruse
to draw one through
the night’s thin veil
into the jaws
of such a hunger
as Life itself
might hunt its fill—
so all across you
dark doth spill
and fingers click
like anxious teeth
behind the howl now
smoking off my tongue:
Closer, closer, yes and
then some…
KC Poet: Transliterate
Transliterate
How one’s use of
‘I want you’
became a javelin
thrown up
from a wine dark sea,
or the arrow flown
off its nock
at the Coliseum
or Plymouth Rock;
the Inquisition,
the Crusades,
Jihad, and every other
threatening stock
in trade of ruthless
mindless banditry,
I really can’t say—
I hear it only
as the toss of a dart,
a match,
a bouquet…
KC Poet: This Poll Is Not Scientific
This Poll Is Not Scientific
Who’s in favor of
replacing struggle
with snuggle, out-
source with inner
course, habit-forming
with heartwarming,
and defacing with
embrace? Who’s making
the case for conception
over deception,
delightful over spiteful,
passion over fashionable,
and more in lieu of
more-or-less? Who’s into
the caress as expression,
the clasp that can’t be
grasping, an arousal
free of reprisal?
All those in denial,
say yes— the rest
of you come with me…
KC Poet: Deciduous
Deciduous
A hundred leaves
litter the ground
for every kernel
their veins have
bled to fruition,
(seeds a cruel
attrition weeds
down to nearly nil)—
a condition
so akin to our
own spill of leavings,
(with all its failed
seedlings dust
among a more
fortunate flowering
few), reason may
well exist to believe
what follows
our fall
is a colorful season too…
KC Poet: As If You Could
As If You Could
Smooth away
what trembles here
as if you could
interfere with the sway
of continents
or dampen
the deepest press of tides
by enploying
an offhand gesture,
and still this pent up
quake
at her next drawing near
would shake no fewer
hundreds
from their beds,
nor tumble less
pale evidence
of their toil—
This turmoil
in her presence
fields a force
for which there is
no Richter scale…
KC Poet: Inside & Out
Inside & Out
Outward, the mannequin,
too civil to be driven
by his senses,
tenses imperceptibly
given the moment
that draws you near;
whilst inwardly, the man
takes up the candled
shape of your coming
from clear across
the room in hands
whose reach is the rake
of wanting to make bloom
the deepest instinct
of them all—
He sweats upon
hearing your footfall,
as ten fingers twitch
to lay hold of your tongue’s
perfume…
KC Poet: Apple Seed
Apple Seed
In general, having
a taste for women
will tend to give one
an eye for women
(and maybe something
of a nose), but that’s
about as far as it goes
in the usual sense
of things, which works
just fine, I suppose,
when culling peaches
or plums off branches
from carefully planted,
gardened rows.
It’s craving the fruits
of an ardor, and
harboring hopes whose
reaches run well past
the arbor that grows
a deft hand and
the keen ear in kind—
a desire for tartness
mingled with sweetness
that yields a smartness
more ripely inclined…
KC Poet: Options
Options
In the book,
our story unfolds
under heavy
foreshadow
through a serial
retelling
of breathless
vignettes
characterized
by the smooth
resolution
of every vexation
hindering
our trysts
with desire—In the movie:
two simple powers,
one fire.But in the moment,
only you, only
me, only
inspire…
KC Poet: Music Box
Music Box
What are we then,
if not little
music boxes
with tiny melodies
locked inside;
pins on hearts
and hopes
like metal tines
who bide the darkness
in dovetailed silence,
waiting for the key
that winds us,
the hand that opens
and so unbinds
the singular song
we’ve always played?
What are we, if not
like inlaid shapes
that long to lift
the music for which
we’re so
uniquely made?…
KC Poet: Universal
Universal
Somewhere out there,
at the improbable
edge of impossible
distance,
the ethereal skin
of a cosmos itches
to get over its
one-of-a-kind existence,
jittery to be off and
outside the bind
of its temporal
contentions and into
an extance whose
murky dimensions
even know-it-all impiety
could never infer.
Somewhere out there,
the end of everything
molecular
is crowding unreality,
looking for that plurality
where miracles might
occur—
Same as he. Same as her…
KC Poet: Poets On Safari
Poets On Safari
After the day’s hunt
they crouch beneath
the creeping dusk,
nibbling on the dusty
bones of prior pursuits;
rain swims through
the slush of voices
hunched against
a silent dark, staining
faces bent on the fading
spoor of future prey
and the morrow’s
looming chase,
telling nothing
save pensive tales
of trophies that all
too easily slipped away…
KC Poet: Seeker
Seeker
Asweat, he bends
sail starward,
into the long arc
of despair, running
hard before the fair
winds of memory,
the shrinking earth-
light falling farther,
deeper into the dim
reaches of no return.
Nothing cools him,
not even the chill
clutch of darkness,
for he burns
as always he has,
brighter than any
pinpoint of light,
abrim with a need
toward which
he cannot navigate,
ablaze with an ember
as yet ungiven
a human
destination…
KC Poet: Amethyst
Amethyst
It seems just
a piece of stone,
but in its heart,
where the light plays
around on the shapes
and colors, it has
a life of its own,
as if dreams danced
beneath those sparkling
faces, living warm within
that hard cool surface
of crystalline skin.
And that’s where we
begin, you and I,
inside those glittery
unthinking places—
because ours too, has been
a dance of light,
a twinkling in the gloom
around us, a thing
precious and unforeseen,
like the flash of a beautiful
stone uncovered
in the unconscious
turning of an otherwise
darkened earth…
KC Poet: Divertisement
Divertisement
I cross those
weak-kneed
moments same as
anyone else,
craving
a pause to this
ceaseless
circus of thinking,
needing a few
thoughtless hours
now and then
with a suppliant
to drown
my drinking in;
a desire to lie
down in,
soft as grass—
And just like
all the rocket
science and fire,
they briefly burn
and pass…
KC Poet: Night Sweat
Night Sweat
I must be squirrelly,
thinking she’d have
so much a thing
for limbs draped
in leaves that I should
find her alight right
here in the trees,
pretty as moonsilver
creped merely
in cloudsleeves,
with yes
on her tongue and
why not
‘tween the press
of twin lips—
Nuts, to sweat
nightly round such
a skirl as this, but
fated somewhat too,
as I am that fuzzy
thinking thing who
slips across a humid
limb o’er dewy grass,
drinking moonlight
out of the blue…
KC Poet: Relativity
Relativity
Taken from Andromeda
or the Greater Magellanic,
what’s the dif between
a bark or a squeal
and a sonnet, other than
their various shades of panic,
their several tiny tirades
against the temper of everything
dark and implacably titanic,
the microscopic bleatings
of manic amoebas
caught up in a blackness
more infinite even
than oceanic in scale?
Infinitesimal is too big
for the insignificance
of how we pale before
an endless gulf of stars
and silent space;
too large a label to mark
the voice we manifest—
Though still, seeing her face,
there’s no making the heart
beat slower, nor asking
a single dream to rest…