in morning’s coral light
truth has interesting packaging
she doesn’t point to destiny
claims no more promises
than yesterday

I still search for
your unabbreviated breath
moist on my shoulder
and am met by
my phone-alarm in its stead

a year of origami ballerinas
waiting to be unfolded to a
certain wrinkled flatness
stories to be written on
those pages so openly blank

my sallow face awakened
by my coarse finger’s rub
my mind tries to trick me
that you’re there, just down the hall
brushing and humming… safe

weary hands grasp the
moisture from the air
draw shallow gulps into my lungs
not this time either
holding myself softly

you said I was amazing
in the clear voice

so far away from now

© Tom Watters  9/10/07

mindshare
something that
craves its own kind
I can not hold this
in my strong hands
…either

for lack of desire
I accept this
sweeter fate
of dismissal

awaiting communiqués
reading meanings
creating alternate endings
loving in a secret
void of senses

I think of your sweat
given freely to him
deserving in a hard way
the prefix “boy”
attached to
friendlessness

greed attaches itself freely
so I raise bedsheets
that I should not
putting into these hands
what I wish to illustrate to you
spoken so freely into the air
falling cheaply

the sword of my pulse
wants an end to this war
to lay down its arms
to create a garden
and to watch it grow
under your prismatic eyes

© Tom Watters  9/3/07

this product
is a service and
not goods

milk left
in the refrigerator
long enough
to be suspect,
not long enough to
throw away

who will have hope for me?

who will drop the dime on me?

reports now have
a weather system challenge

compasses detect direction
moral or not

fuck.

I cannot believe the lies about
beauty

morality

children.

be well indeed
look in the mirror and
please GET well

in the meantime
I will bow to the ruling dark lord
living in the trenches with
other neophytes

I will bide my time
remember the name that
genetics goes by

remember the stories
of false witness
and the stories of
the prodigal son

fair is what you go to
not what you are
not what this time is.

answers are made
of time and vision
subdivision

breathe deep with the crisp
air of someone else’s hope

my vanity
spent at the feet
of the blind
and of the seekers

foul, fetid and
ultimately fair

© Tom Watters  9/1/07

permission
I forgot
to ask that color

or perhaps
desire cum flippancy was
harder to claim

so I sucked down
what my imagine
could prove

bare and innocent
not marked up with knuckles
truth with no teeth

there is no
agony in the gutteral
cat fight song

a fight after all
is just an
impassioned script

a play with
dramatics and
makeup after all

far beyond center
and/or the core
values held in the tabloids

and you let your
hair down at the
handcuffed moment

I can’t help
this crease
the hard grin

that dress so…
holding my thought
and your hips

thirty eight
is but a number
and it grows on trees

I can’t see the
forest either
blinded by inequity

and fucking hope
e-fucking-ternal
simple enough

© Tom Watters  8/14/07