From the Unforgiven to the Less than Perfect
Rubbing a thumb along raised rivulets
of your cranial flesh, I traced the wounded
history of us, like reading bumps with city names,
written on your invisible highway.
Silence hangs like a low-lying fog
on the asphalt of tomorrow, long after
the years we made love to Styx in the shower,
as water washed sex from our sun-drenched bodies.
We tried not to notice the difference between lust
& love, finding our way from the unforgiven to the
less than perfect, normalized the middle ground
into a place we both could breathe, waiting for the future to speak.
Nothing Wasted
Cobwebs built from decayed
relationships, breeds a silent fear.
She is love’s unkind mate.
Binding terrestrial bodies with
suspended shimmering strands
of silk, she is gravity’s center.
This is my galaxy, pinpoints of light
Threaten to shatter a young boy’s world, while
I brush back the stars with the back of my hand.
Her fine sculptures span the rafters
of my father’s shed, draped beam to beam,
weaving a trap for her latest foe.
I hear my father’s voice from under the bruised
plum, sternly instructing me to sever its
branches, heavy with fruited weight.
Unlike her, I steer clear of this busy work,
pretending life never hung in
the balance. Love and death are
planets, aligned by need and want.
Like her, I learn the meaning of
nothing wasted, nothing saved.
∞
Kevin LeMaster lives in South Shore Kentucky. His poems have been found at The Lakes, Appalachian Heritage, Inkwell, Rockvale Review, Inkwell, Birmingham Arts Journal, Constellations, Plainsongs , Coe Review and others.
He has had recent work published in SheilaNaGig online and Heartwood Literary Review The Slipstream, Triggerfish Critical Review, Route 7 Review, West Trade Review, The Big Window Review and Santa Clara Review.
His work in “Rubicon: Words and art inspired by Oscar Wildes De Profundis” was nominated for a Pushcart prize.
