A New Poem: “Street Car, Sweet Heart, Sweat Hard”

by Stephen Pickering on July 8, 2009

I love your Spanish talk.
The soft ground around you
Hovers as you walk.

Chinese flowers grow out of me
like dreams lifted under a bed
of yellow Lantana and grapewood rosevine.

Midnight and a sleep walking Sun
dip its claws into the milky Moon.

She blows a serenade and makes a note in her diary: March 14th;
Or was it the other day when we played through the woods in the synagogue’s court?
I kept my diary clear with liquor
Hidden there.

All those cars have resisted, and those children inside us have died,
but the moist oil still grasps at the roots of the darkened cells.
(It’s old, and the unmarried couple inside still snuggle closely to the foot of her screaming limb.)

Once a bold, minted Moon
struck the head like a bell and turned us red,
And the merry men of the next town whistled “Dixie” all the way down to the smoothed River’s bed.

A maestro, that dark little secret, always dancing and standing still.
(She, seh, was the dear. May we call you dear? Take our collective blue beard hand.)

Governor rubs the chocolate chip lips of white faces that read: “never washed hair.”
Steers calling sisters for dates and the narrow alley was our field with its
one chilling little blade.

All the sorcerers were baked
Inside a street lit with humiliating desire.

That moment never turned or backed up when the future,
blinded, uncaring, unknowingly,
decided to run us over.

Someday they will tell me she still lives there,
every soaked board still crying, trying to pull out the rusty nails
of the last conversation made,
and yet, still, even with all the talk,
That she is never at home.

Related posts:

  1. A Poem: “Where the Ring Comes Together”
  2. Little Night Poem
  3. A Poem | Scarlet Fever
  4. Poem | “9 Miracles”
  5. A New Original Poem | “Will We Dance Again?”
  6. Poem | “Thunder Painting”

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