My poetry, dangerous?
Why? and how?
Tell me, please!
Tell me, NOW!

Reveal to me
Regardless if you be
Catholic, Agnostic, Lutheran!
Tell me, quickly!

Speak in prose,
or verse Seussian*!

(*It’s his birthday today,
by the way!)

She seemed romantic,energetic,
and yet
a few lines of tempting emails
was all I could ever get.

She stayed distant, aloof,
yet was fully aware
that there was safety and protection
so long as she stayed “out there”.

She would honestly open her soul
and let me peer inside
but only for a fleeting glimpse;
then she’d close up and hide.

Promising that more would come; smiling at my persistance.
Staying, still, safe inside her home, protected by distance.

An empty spot/

in my mail box./

A blank way/

to start my day./

A void where u/
didn’t say/
nada/
today.

A blank sheet/
with hope u didn’t meet/
Zilch on it./
An empty sonnet.

(Dave, 3/01/09, 11:10
am)

Jayne Casselman, Huthmacher Hof owner and soprano, sings Elektra at Seattle Opera, Nov., 2008

Spoke an accented voice, from long ago: You seem to be there when nobody else is… And I don’t even know you! And I answered:

Du kennst mich doch.
Ich bin der jenige,
fuer wem Du gesucht hast.
auf wem Du gewartest hast.
an wem Du getrauemt hast.

Der Jenige der,
wenn Du eine Augen
im Traum schlieBt,
da steht.

Der Jenige der,
wenn Du im Mittenacht
etwas neben Dir verspuerst,
da ist…

Deine Hand zu halten,
Deine Gesicht zu tasten
Deine Haare mit seinen Fingern zu kaemen.

Ich bin’s.

The dying
embers of the fire
needed a little poke
to make the flames climb higher;

to avoid the smoke
that sometimes
climbs
into our eyes
and waters them
but, as we cry,
we are cleansed.
And the fire, stirred,
roars passionately again.

She didn’t seem meek
Speaking,
and sitting,
on the banks of the creek

that cool, rainy day.
But then I watched
her thoughts
float away.

And suddenly
she had no more to say.
So, she ran to get them
But fell in
and couldn’t collect them,
nor could she swim.

And I,
like the nice guy
that I am,
leapt in,
reached out my hand,
and

collected her
thoughts.
Thinking
not
of her sinking

on that cool, rainy day,
but of thinks I’d collected
that she wouldn’t say.
And she floated away.

The silence deafens
and suprises me;
the lack of women’s letters
I’d hoped to see.

Perhaps SuperBusyWomen
don’t, after all, have the time
to leave their hurried, rushed lives
and listen to my rhyme.

Perhaps she who I put on the shelf
was right!
But still, my keyboard and I forge
into the empty night.

Where I discover poetry is writ not for she,
nor them, nor thee, but — alone — for me.

A woman wanted to be/
a better writer/
so I took her to the beach/
and walked beside her./

We spoke of the Bard,/
and his poetry;/
It was not hard/
how the words came to me,/

as we danced/
on the sand./
I romanced;/
she held my hand./

It was effortless; the words came easily,/
to describe her fairness and lasting beauty!