wintermuse by Brian Lee (all ebook reader txt) 📖

i.

oh, he is tired
again! and no longer
myself or what I had
hoped to conceive, only
less warm and less elegiac.

I am too cold for poetry; I’ve
been lying under a dusting of snow

how quaint it is to be frozen to the
ground, waiting for a hapless
traveler to have a line or seven fall
from his petticoat and land on my
naked chest. I watch from afar
and smile as we freeze to death.

My hands are numb and dripping ink
where have they gone? Were I not
so frigid, perhaps this poem
would be to you.


ii.

I should be finished by now if only
because I love you, but how cold
it is, and that is the excuse
stumbling from my fingers like a
dazed grin. I cry to my rhetoric, but
it is lost and snowbound, and my calls
fall upon doormats like roses in
winter and wither. How wonderful
a fireplace would be, and a candle-lit
room with a little round wooden table
in the middle of it where I can
write for hours about your beauty
and how I am a fool in love — alas.

the bouquet is on the steps; the doormat
has already been taken by withered rose petals.


iii.

notice the sun setting
why,
he bleeds, he bleeds! or
flutters with the immodesty
of a snowflake;
it nears my head and I
cannot
think, cannot wonder
anything less mundane or less
visceral than you
possibly
reading this poem, these
words! pressed against the
sheet like a lover to a
window. to know, how I
wish
I could! but I am
filled
with that Dantean notion of
love; you are no angel but
close enough for the
irrelevancy of the fact to
be my way home as I walk
south
for the winter.


iv.

The sidewalk is beautiful
on Monday afternoons

not because it shines
in the overcast to partially cloudy

mess of wet footprints, but
because it grabs you by the wrist

and asks you to dance an old
two-step that I hear was all the rage

back in the twenties. And then
you’ll be tired, and it will

ask you to lie down, rest for a while.
The sidewalk is a charming place

for a nap, curled against warm
concrete or even sprawled across it

and facing the clear blue sky
like a kite longing for a string


and what, you would have me
join you? I’m sorry, I fear

that I’ve forgotten that dance
and all of those sidewalks

waiting here or there or just
out of my sight

but if that were true,
would you even try?


v.

it was snowing and you asked me
"will we ever" but I didn't
let you finish because I had
my own mind to deal with and I
was cold and the thought of
holding your warmth to my face ran
circles like I was walking
when my feet stopped and yours
tried to wait but just couldn't bear
how cold the ground was and now
I'm lost in a blizzard, imagine that!
A lost poet! We often lose ourselves
but rarely do we ever get lost

vi.

and they say God is dead!
I could’ve sworn I was at his
funeral just last week the birds
were overhead the doves
wouldn’t stop singing I am
cynical as a rainbow and now
there is a tint of purple in the
sky when the doves and
everyone’s heart stopped singing


vii.

Confrontational? No, just
tired. I think that days
wait for me to pass, honestly. No
one is that well-written.

It isn’t like I have some
secret; I don’t hide things
except for under my pillow.
Anyway you’ll find something
like exactness there. Nevermind
the dreams since they come
and go but mostly stay, and you’re
free to have a look if you really want.
I don’t hide things but I especially
don’t hide things from you.

Where? I don’t know, I’ve
never drank lit vodka either
but I’m sure it’s just as bitter.
Who am I to say, though? Checkmate
in three. Your move.

Publication Date: 01-22-2010

All Rights Reserved

Dedication:
a collection of poems dedicated to the existentialists and cynics and doves