I think about you all day long,
In quiet lulls and lilting song,
I think about you all day long.

I always ever have so thought,
Before I knew your name I sought,
I always ever have so thought.

The silences redound with song,
Those cataracts of thunderous throng,
And I think about you all day long.

Years come and go, an avalanche,
Days sprout like leaves that spin and dance,
Years come and go, an avalanche.

And on that day that is my last

The culmination of my past

I’ll think about you…

All Day Long

Sleep is a thready nuisance
That separates me from my heart
My heart.
Dream-clouded Prison walls lock me in
This world.

Liberty hour comes again,
and I
Can walk the yard until
The guards…sleep…setting…others…
Shout “Back inside Yardbird!”

Someday I shall fly and follow
That same path my soul flies,
My Heart leaps up like the stag,
Like a falcon unhooded

Rises, and rises,
Like Icarus to the sun drawn
OH!  Would that the Sun melt my waxy wings
That I would plummet and fall
Into myself, into my place
Like homing pigeons returning to
The Long Loved Last Home.

At last, we shall meet and meet and meet
And I shall wake
And be home.

I hide behind the simple things
(not the easy)
so you’ll find me;
If you don’t find me,
you’ll find the things
You’ll touch what my hand has touched,

Our handprints will merge…

The august moon glitters
In the kitchen
Like a tin plated pot

(it does that because of what I am saying to you),

It lights up the empty house
And the house’s kneeling silence
Always the silence remains kneeling

Every word is a doorway
To a meeting—one often cancelled—
And that’s when a word is True:
When it insists on the meeting

Untitled

At last, I am with you always in the peaceful dreams
Tokens from Flathead, hot-tea hopes, all have driven
Wedges through blankness
Towards that oneness that I always hoped we
will achieve,

Where you are is where the Rose unfolds
and brings an answer
men have watched for from the
now of time
I feel I must dance and sing to tell of this
In a way that, knowing you,
You may be drawn to me.

I sing amidst despair and isolation,
(those seeming entities…HAH!)
I sing of the chance to know you, to sing of
Me and you.  You see, you hold me up to the light
In a way that I never expected, or suspected,
Perhaps…

I am yours to die with, to desire—I must not
Ever think of me.  I desire you
If the wild night of a February day be true.
I pledge to be truthful unto you,
When I can never stop remembering…

Remembering to pass beyond you into the day
On the wings of the Dove.
Take me from myself in the path of the Day assigned!
I prefer “you” in the plural, and
I want you to come to me
All golden and pale
Like dew and air

And then I start getting this feeling of
EXULTATION

“What Do Women Want?”
by Kim Addonizio

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.

I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what’s underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their cafe, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.

I want to walk like I’m the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.

I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I’ll pull that garment
from its hanger like I’m choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I’ll wear it like bones, like skin,
it’ll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.

And then,
from the beauty
of the distant and pregnant horizon,
full of feeling and love…

looms a tower stark
Pillar prick into the sky
that twists or numbs

and love turns sideways
and shunts to the drain
guttering and skuttering
into the dirt.

And once again
love lies discarded
and untouched.
Babel,
alas.