dirt

Fingertips and the point of contact

beneath her nails

where she stored the memory

of gardens she had muddled

and other uninvited visitors.

the sharpened pricks of hardness

and the cold sweat of Prison.

I love the dirt that’s spurned

by the cleanliness of order

adore delicious damage

done in rejection of ease,

give me people peeled in

pursuit of other truth

pilloried for chasing whispers.

I can only love what's broken:

from my own feet and all I've ever touched

to the stomping boots that visit in the night

and then

there are the sweet scents and colours

children's clothes and gardens of herbs

where anyone can rest

Jack

Jack had large fists

curled to a curve

from grasping at things and people

his fingers seldom relaxed

and never now stretched

to make his hands

visible to the world

or those that thought

they knew him.

Jacks tendons shortened

by repeated hurt and

his aversion to the emptiness

that guards relaxation

gave his body a roundness

that those who work 

sweat or slave

for others know.

Whether jack stooped

or crouched it was hard to tell

no man in the forest

in living  memory went

close enough to check,

no one touched Jack nor

witnessed Jack touching another.

things that didn't work

he fixed or kept for parts,

people that didn't work

Jack dismissed  

a man should not seem desperate

a man should not seem desperate

but I would write you poems

I would make you laugh

I would cook you food

and read you stories

and  play songs by Joni Mitchell

where everything is blue.

Ships can pass

but I won’t let one pass

that catches.

I will write new poems

maybe in march

as  buds unfold

and winds on beaches

here begin to soften,

grey waters turn blue.

And as you change the face

of summer starting

I dream an end to longing

I look in your eyes

in hope that you are her;

the her I hope can see

inside men who want to look

and wants to meet one.

A her who holds her heavy lust  

In gentle hands and

the strength of her thighs.

A her who wakes the sun in winter

and holds it back from hell,

who carries the wolf howl

in her smile at autumn,

she that knows the tears of men

are wetter than any other water

on the tip of a finger

that kisses a shoulder

lately bitten.

A woman

that wants

to know