{"id":10254,"date":"2014-05-18T12:56:58","date_gmt":"2014-05-18T10:56:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=10254"},"modified":"2014-05-18T12:56:58","modified_gmt":"2014-05-18T10:56:58","slug":"poems-by-kenneth-p-gurney-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=10254","title":{"rendered":"poems by Kenneth P. Gurney"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kiss<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I lifted the September soap<\/p>\n

and began to sponge<\/p>\n

my closest companion<\/p>\n

that I knew all too well,<\/p>\n

but never in this manner.<\/p>\n

As my fingers touched<\/p>\n

small scars and other imperfections<\/p>\n

her body quivered<\/p>\n

with a blackness awoken<\/p>\n

from some mindful place<\/p>\n

and gravity pulled the air<\/p>\n

tighter around us.<\/p>\n

I did as she asked<\/p>\n

and stroked her back<\/p>\n

with a pine bough<\/p>\n

and the expansive aroma<\/p>\n

worked the trick of white light,<\/p>\n

illuminating emotional curtains<\/p>\n

clinging at the edge of an exhaled breath.<\/p>\n

I, too, felt the inadequacy of words<\/p>\n

in moments like this,<\/p>\n

felt my body\u2019s imperceptible leaning<\/p>\n

toward her, before our lips pressed<\/p>\n

gently against each other,<\/p>\n

once briefly, then<\/p>\n

a second time<\/p>\n

for an unknown duration.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Overlapping<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Thank you for crowing over my drawing<\/p>\n

of a window as wrinkled as a prune.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Thank you for your blighted, bittersweet lips<\/p>\n

and any ashen complaints they belayed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The dog\u2019s stump of a hind leg<\/p>\n

speaks of a motor car and a day too cold.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Thank you for expanding the horizon<\/p>\n

so the sun sets much broader.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The woman standing in the nude<\/p>\n

expects your drawing to be an accurate reflection.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Thank you for the mirror image<\/p>\n

of her breasts in a placid lake.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The lightning strike of your inspiration<\/p>\n

burns and blackens the sand dunes\u2019 tears.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Thank you for adding green grass<\/p>\n

encroaching on the barren places transporting snowmelt.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All your color commentary cannot lift into the sky<\/p>\n

the bird who hit the window too hard.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I love the plot paintings relate<\/p>\n

as they tell me their creation stories.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Thank you for the silent photographs<\/p>\n

you stole from a bygone era before film making,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

their sense of the everyday,<\/p>\n

the tangerine on a highly polished cherry table.<\/p>\n

 
\n 
\n <\/p>\n

Explain This<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Imagine the late passenger<\/p>\n

whispering psalms<\/p>\n

to disperse depression<\/p>\n

and a tangerine melancholy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You would think there must be song<\/p>\n

somewhere nearby<\/p>\n

and a chorus dressed in hymnal white<\/p>\n

or cross-bearing red.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I entered a wide, calm lake<\/p>\n

that resides above the tree line<\/p>\n

in an attempt to cleanse my limbs<\/p>\n

of sorrow\u2019s deep root.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The late passenger took off her clothes<\/p>\n

after she set the swinging lantern of the stars<\/p>\n

upon the twenty-third psalm<\/p>\n

disguised as a weather-smoothed granite rock.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

She entered the drowning chill of the lake<\/p>\n

and explained the joy of swans and dogs.<\/p>\n

She asked for a guide home.<\/p>\n

She asked if my countenance<\/p>\n

is the oft-repeated trench<\/p>\n

where atrocities are buried.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kiss   I lifted the September soap and began to sponge my closest companion that I knew all too well, but never in this manner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1044,77],"tags":[1166,1123,867],"class_list":["post-10254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egophobia-41","category-english","tag-egophobia-41","tag-english","tag-kenneth-p-gurney"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DakB-2Fo","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10254"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10255,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10254\/revisions\/10255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}