August 28 (Ode To – -)

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abandonment, Alexander Frost, alone, author, birthday, blame, break-up, broken, commitment, creative, depression, development, devotion, dreams, fiction, form, girls, heartbreak, hope, literature, loneliness, longing, Love, Love Anchor, love at first sight, lovers, meaning, memory, meter, missed, non-fiction, outlook, poem, poet, poetic, poetry, relationships, release, romance, romantic, self-improvement, sex, sexual, structure, sunset, time, uncertainty, unspoken, verse, women, words, writer, writing

                              I

‘Tick-tock’- the hands of the clock cruelly sound

Like a blade held against the whetting stone

Each second seems some new spark now rising,

Vaguely phosphorescent, disappearing

Like souls passing into infinity

Striking the hearthstone, then- into nothing

 

Streetside the scarlet-colored cyclamens

Sway with the weight of the wind’s warm whispers

While the slow fall of the night’s first fireflies

So strangely flickers in the vast expanse

Of the ever-darkening western sky,

Flitting like your recently struck match heads,

Blooming, instantaneously beyond

The pale recognition of their blossoms-

Those freshly plucked petals, faintly falling,

Lingering like fingers of heat lightning

Surrounding you in a velveteen gale

 

Darkness creeps in like a quiet lover

To brush away the pale blush of blue sky,

The delicate cobwebs of the last clouds-

White fluff, intricately woven with jewels,

Where each star hangs like a frail drop of dew

Encroaching night whispers a wine-dark flush

Along the expanse of the horizon,

Kisses the day into unconsciousness

(All is enveloped in this quietness

While we hold our breath for the moon to rise)

 

                              II

I get so god-damned depressed when I drink

That sometimes I could just drop dead, except

There is something hidden in your sly smile

And the way you dance makes me feel relieved

Just to know you are breathing I suppose

(Although a hundred pairs of hungry eyes-

Lights dimmed by the virtue of drunkenness-

Stare straight through me to steal a glimpse of you,

To somehow satiate their cold desires)

And there are of course your glimmering eyes,

Glinting with the mischievousness of drink

 

Your body sways like the hypnotists chain

So I stand transfixed, tapping out the beat

With my free hand as the band rambles on

(The other is still tight against your hip-

Two fingers through the belt loop of your jeans)

As I watch you sip your whiskey and coke

And smoke cigarette after cigarette,

The blue haze of your exhalations hangs

In relief against the late-summer sky,

Each breath falling like boats in a harbor

Rising again with each whim of the waves

Ebbing to and fro amidst the moonlight

Floating me headlong into elation

(My heart swells up like a birthday balloon)

 

(This somnambulist strains his tired eyes,

Opening them like a revelation:

I know that I shall spend my future days

Waiting to climb into bed beside you

Dreaming only of the way you would kiss)

‘The Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy Concert (The Buskirk Chumley Theater, Bloomington)’: A Poem

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afraid, Alexander Frost, anxiety, artist, blame, bloomington, blues, bonnie, college, composer, composition, concert, connections, creative, crushes, dating, depression, distance, dreams, events, expression, fate, feelings, fine art, folk, form, free verse, girls, growing, guilt, healing, heartache, heartbreak, hesitancy, hindsight, indiana, isolation, knowing, life, literature, live, loneliness, longing, lost, Love, Love Anchor, love at first sight, memory, misery, missed, model, Music, musician, nervous, Norway, one that got away, opportunities, past, photography, poet, poetry, prince, prince billy, recollections, regret, relationships, remorse, rhyme, sadness, scared, separation, shame, show, silence, sunset, theater, thinking, thoughts, time, timid, uncertainty, university, unrequited, unspoken, verse, wisdom, women, words, worry, writing

Then as the lights dimmed in the theater

a hush began to fall like a first snow

and silence soft and cool like eiderdown

blanketed us all in every row

As we sat there waiting in the darkness

for the players to emerge from the glow

that lingers like fog when the curtains part

I could not help myself once from stealing

an intermittent glance of your profile

from the safety of my periphery

In all these interminable moments

my heart brimmed with adoration until

it overflowed and made my palms perspire

I longed to reach out for the tiny hand

that you had rested upon your left thigh

to enclose it and clasp it in my own

like a locket hides a wordless promise

but i burned with the question left behind

by every word we’d not yet spoken

or had thought of but swallowed hard to hide

thinking ‘we’ll get around to it…in time’

but we never did and then here am i

wondering to myself ‘have i the right

to even dream of all that skin of yours

i’m swimming in each time i close my eyes

and even when i open them to find

that now every moment of my life

only feels like i’m drowning in your wake

catching fragmented glimmers of your smiles

from below the waves while you pass me by?’

We sat there like tourists among natives

at times chattering away with the air

of insouciant explorers, but at times

eyeing each other through the silent haze

only staggering suspicion sustains

all the while harboring a winsome hope

that the words we were leaving unspoken

would not now and forever want meaning

We were stunned, somehow ashamed that our eyes,

two tiny lights misting like windowpanes,

served as our foremost means of expression

And so we hung our heads abashedly,

stunned schoolchildren flush with embarrassment

caught in the act of uncovering that

It’s for a rare breed to savor silence

So silently we let that remain that

Though this is all I’ve ever thought about

Poem: ‘The Shower (You Are Never Really Alone, Are You?)’

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afraid, Alexander Frost, art, bathing, body, broken, commitment, composition, confidence, creative, dating, delicate, depression, development, devotion, dreams, evening, events, fiction, fine art, form, free, girls, Goodnight Lover, guilt, heartbreak, image, intercourse, interpersonal, intimacy, isolation, learning, life, literature, loneliness, loss, lost, Love, Love Anchor, meaning, memory, men, missed, model, Music, musician, non-fiction, Norway, nudity, past, poem, poet, poetry, presence, promise, recollection, regret, relationships, release, remorse, sadness, sex, sexual, shame, structure, thoughts, time, timid, uncertainty, verse, volume, water, women, words

She shall sing the song of my arrival

Like an old sea-shanty as she showers

And I am left alone to contemplate
The mysterious nature of her room:
The thread count of her blue cotton bedsheets
Why falling water, whether from faucets
Or the clouds on high, reminds me of rain
But I hear the handles begin to turn
I am stirred from my evening reverie
Listening for each stray drip as it drops
Drainwards from the top of the shower head

Your form is still faint and fragmentary
As you take two steps across the threshold
The steam rises, and billowing above
The vague outlines of your bare arms and face,
Follows in your wake like a graveyard ghost

Now you stand disconsolately before
The cold, dead stare of your own reflection
In the impartial glare of the looking glass
You gaze through the mirror towards your epitaph:
Perhaps ‘Here Stands the Fairest of Them All’
You turn around to ask my opinion
As if you did not possess the foresight
To finger my stops when I move to speak
To pull from me the words you long to hear
As if I would not say them anyway
But we both know before they leave my lips:
‘You look wonderful with your towel and robe
Your eyes are twinkling like two falling stars
But perhaps you would look better without’

Your hair hangs bright-brown like sycamore boughs
Concealing your chest like a waterfall
Behind whose curtain the buds of your breasts
Rooted beneath the damp soil of your skin
Have bloomed from the bulb of your beating heart

Rouged to red by the birthing doctor’s hand
Something of your skin relies on fever
A flush creeps across your cheeks when we touch
Lip-prints linger upon your still-wet skin
In all of the places I have kissed you

I cup your breasts from behind like a thief
Or a schoolboy afraid to meet your gaze
Still embarrassed by his own nudity
Blushing for the sake of both our bodies
(At least for now as the lights are left on)
In the dark I develop my senses
Letting the tips of my fingers tip-toe
Down each vertebrae of your naked back
Like each is a step on a walking path
I fit your body like a puzzle piece
Like a hand slides into its winter glove
Let our tongues twist like two sleeping serpents
Hidden away from the dry heat of day
Buried below the depths of desert sand

After the eagerness has abated
Sleep rolls over you like a gentle tide
As your breath begins to slow and settle
Into the tender cadence of a snore
You dream something deeper than my madness

I leave a note where you’re sure to find it
In the breast pocket of your suit jacket
So at least you know that I think of you
Each and every time you go away
Whether for the few moments when you bathe
Or for the eight hours of the working day
(‘You are never really alone, are you?’)