Poem-A-Day #351 : Rorschach (after Jeanne Marie Beaumont)

Rorschach (after Jeanne Marie Beaumont)

I spill water on the old coffee table.
Too simple. Grains expose themselves like privates.

It feels like the kind of wood - HA -
one searches for when lost in the forest. Dry.

That one stain from the burrito - think
about culture spilling forth like foam. Go on.

The bones of a cripple
left to bleach in the winter sun - taking way too long.

Crutches left in a church hallway, no souls around,
desiring to grab one and hobble forth newly less.

Not my table. Whose? A woman's, dead and ringed
by the ivory of dogwood blossoms, spring's crown.

Her face, sounding. A flute? Sure.
I said privates because this shouldn't be seen this way.

Count the rings - Kim Novak in Vertigo -
the scent of pine will fill and fill and fill.

Next. It sat in her townhouse
filled with its early 90s neon and chrome and whiteness.

Oddly cool. Not particularly desired
but the face of those men she dated.

And if I say "tree"?
I'd say - life we cannot fathom.

Cabinet? Container.
Tell me again.

A map. A map of the universe
breaking and disintegrating.

Poem-A-Day #159 : Wood (Part 6 : Trunks)

Wood (Part 6 : Trunks)

Pulling up that much history is difficult it has consequences :

I run my fingers over the coffee table : it is a splice of a tree trunk and exploded view of the insides of the tree : it has rusty metal legs it has bark clinging to the sides : it was my aunt's :

Unsealed it begins to gray and then dry and then nothing :

Other woods get oiled and filled and rubbed until they are smooth : the end tables that were my parent's get lemon oil on them once a year : it makes them warmer and they shine for days :

I polish the brass lamps until they too shine : my face begins to distort in the bent light of the surface :

The picture frame falls and breaks the wood was cheap but it looks like splintered tree trunks : dangerous like teeth :

Let's put this all back together :