John Paul Davis writes poems.

Archive for July 2008

somebody else’s wine

In Poems on 28 July 2008 with no comments

the sky’s a solid gray
that keeps moving north
we seem to have borrowed
warm air from another climate
the rain falls today
like it does on somebody
else’s town. evening
on the tip of our tongues,
it tastes like somebody
else’s wine. close your eyes
dear. let’s go out and hold
on to a cocktail. we’ll find
what we’re looking for.

today the thing i miss
about you most is your thoughts
as they climb silently
out from your burnt coffee eyes.
little ghosts, they can fill a room.
where are you? I want you to look
at me. I’m the house
your thoughts should be haunting.

Tell Me A Different Story

In Poems on 10 July 2008 with no comments

Is there one book in which is written
the shape of my destiny
or many, and many destinies,
as many as there are stories?

Tonight I’m in the story
where you’ve sent me away again
not because of any crime,
but because owls have stolen away my words
and can only say things wrong-tongued.
The trickster monkey tugs
at the thread of our love
and it spills at my feet,
unwound, a useless pile.

This is the story where I toss
and turn through nights;
the stars rearranged
so I lose my way. I battle
the sea-serpent whose venom
fills the veins with fear.
When I wake I’ve strangled
my twisted bedsheets, hoarse with dry
poems shouted into my pillow.

So tell me a different story,
beloved. Kiss my eyelids, circle
your arms around me like wings,
wrap me in kind words.
Tell me the story where the desert
sand cooks my feet but you’re there
at the oasis with aloe and spring water.
Tell me the story where the sun
reaches a tendril down to earth
to scorch me but the song
you sing bends it back to cold, cold space.

Flutter your kisses over me, shoo away
the biting minutes, burn your love’s lighthouse
out across the barren sea,
sail down to me, glorious lady
of my mind, from the seventh sphere,
and guide me home, guide me to love.