Going the poetry route for my first #ThrowbackThursday, as I recently joined a local writers group and we spent a good deal of our meeting (other than catching up and drinking too much wine) talking old poems.
Untitled (September 23rd 2004)
As if cigarettes burned blue
that sad, murderous ash glows in you.
(unknown date.)
Drowning in the
possibilities of a simple
lit cigarette, good company,
and knowing you’re doing the same-
miles away- like we’re talking into
tin cans attached by our history
like a string.
Oh Great History, Fall (10-20-2004)
I want to write something spectacular
for you, for Keats, for the Mozart music that you love.
I want to shake the halls of Poets’ Corner
and drop the stars on Newton’s head
I want the whole world to know this
and the moon to land just in your backyard.
Il Colosseo will fill with water,
and what’s left of Foro Romano will fall,
all of Roma will be at your feet-
you mighty conqueror, you.
Ha! With blue eyes, slightly clouded with a hurt
you can’t describe-
a soft artists voice
and guitar (you don’t know how to play) as your weapon-
you think this place would collapse for you?
Years of strength
built long before your disruption.
You are dust on Rome’s boot,
spray paint on the Met.Ro train,
cigarette ashes.
Romans are a proud people-
patriarchal, opinionated, almost-welcoming.
You are a shy Yankee transplant,
barely educated
Southern accent sticking out around Havahd Yahd.
A former Georgian peach
who still tastes just as sweet
who’s smell sends me reeling, down on my knees,
but trust me, the Spanish Steps don’t bow.
Beyond the ancient city,
hidden in 18th Century coffee shops
there is a whole other world
of siete Euro cappuccinos
and the whisperings of Shelley.
The Brownings lived three hours north and even here
when the wind blows south,
you can feel that warm English love.
You can feel the Catholic love
floating through Vatican ritual
and hanging in the Sistine Chapel
upside down, just like Michelangelo.
Ten more minutes as the sky darkens over
a little chapel just next door-
the fluorescent lights of the Kushling Wing are stark against this gray/blue evening-
and the church bells through Trestevere
ring in diechiotto.
I have visions of Wordsworth’s words,
beauty to make the heart restless and
full and as the night falls I
fear the end of that beauty, I realize
the failure of whatever VIRTU I had
and I miss you.
Rome will not be at your discretion,
Romans may not invite you in,
but I will sneak to the Ring Road
and kidnap you on my Vespa
into the old, stone city.
tmstanton writes 