The Leaving Urge
Evenings for the most part
were an ass-chewing for one thing
or the other, neither very memorable,
but recalled again and again
under my skin never-the-lousy-less.
I’d stare out the kitchen window
at our neighbor’s cute porch.
He’d sit with his Turkish pipe,
bones creaking in tune with an old oak swing
smiling at a sunset I couldn’t see.
His wife bathed in steam-sweat
from her spaghetti pot. And I would think:
“Why the Hell am I sticking around
for this when they have that!”
Their roses sprung in full swells--
cherries ready to pop in mouths.
Lazy conversing calamine
addressing stings of bees and bugs.
Weeds were parsley crawling
up through cracked cement plates;
her husband steered her around big holes,
kissing her with words like
“Watch your feet, love;
I don’t want to die alone.”
And then he’d laugh. And I’d cry
in lusty Wordsworthian waterfalls.
Patience sat like candle wicks--
trimmed too close, they wouldn’t light.
The urge to leave was not a pimple
that rose to the surface overnight
the way you said you knew it was.
It was a long and leather rattlesnake
evading the rocks it called a home.
Our dinner stew seemed old and thick.
Time was gravy minus a holiday to celebrate.
Carrots and celery--orange and green--
bleached by the stock of breaches
we could not forgive.
I’d bought the wrong damned flavor
of ice cream once again--
your Amadeus bullet eyes
melted its cold unwanted brick.
Excuses for anger, cheeks burning
in a probable breeze
when the doorknob turned.
Someone else was giving up.
I had grown into my shell.
A bitten lip for longing’s tongue.
My fingers would feel like winter gloves
when I called for help.
Knuckles were spoons with metal fatigue.
by Janet I. Buck
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The Way We Sleep
I snatch the pillow
of your chest in the night
and play your hair
like violins.
The way we sleep,
immersively.
Warm jelly flesh
on picky toast.
Cherry blossoms
of your eyelids,
a passport and a tapestry
of testaments to
bibles of eternal love.
I worry a bit
from time to time,
a passing sneeze
from plugged up
sinus memories.
Our ceiling fan
is spinning
moonlit air--
centrifuges
boiling down
devoted blood
to test the fabric
of its quilt.
The way we sleep:
like paintings unfinished,
awaiting strokes
from tender brush.
I know we’ll meet
the meted gray
of aging’s palette
with fulsome grace
and fuselage.
Green leprechauns
as strong as ivy
dancing on
macabre ground.
by Janet I. Buck
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Hard-bound Books
“Don’t be scotch and save nice clothes
for fancy parties months ahead.”
You carried such a fragrant dogma,
lecture slipped between the cracks.
“Selfishness is practical but unrewarding--
reading Braille by candlelight.”
You’d laugh like a wadded fist
going through death’s bolted door,
dry your puppy with embroidered towels
when she ran through a patch
of freshly planted geraniums.
“Never buy a paper-back
or pre-mixed eggnog in a store.
They’re both some kind of travesty.”
All these bookmarks loomed from
living smoking incense off of art.
Your graciousness--a stucco wall
around the soil of matter cliques.
“Those who swim near ragged reefs
catch bigger fish because they dared.”
What’s left of you in plain gray urns
of poetry I sprinkle on my evening meal
like tarragon in tasteless soup.
by Janet I. Buck
