Gabriel Gadfly's Blog, page 19

January Crickets

The year winter decided to play

in the sundresses from spring’s closet,

we left the windows open

to enjoy the breath of January azaleas

blooming in the flower beds.

A cricket snuck into your craft room,

and sang to us for hours,

somewhere under the stacks

of colored paper, under the bottles

of orange paint, the bits of curled wire,

the forest of projects you grew

behind a decorated door.

We searched for it for hours,

until my hands were glittered

and red yarn tangled your hair;

we even let the old mother cat

try to flush it from its artsy haven,

until her white fur was chalked

to pink and blue cotton candy,

and the cricket chirped at us.

That night, I curled beside you,

my hand on your breast and

your breath in my ear,

awake with a winter spring song:

cricket song, white azaleas asleep,

you asleep, a last jewel of glitter

bright on your breast beside my hand,

thinking I might let more crickets

sneak into the walls of our house.

The post January Crickets appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

Buddha in the Garden of Waste

You go inside for more drinks,

and I wander your garden.

You have left it to weed over.

Old perennials suck desperate

at the slums of the soil.

A plastic windmill sways

on a rusty stem, one vane lost.

All the rest hang their faded heads.

I found a fat Buddha

in a tangled flower bed;

hands upturned,

he invites the seasons back,

ever the optimist;

he laughs even as a vine

wraps her hands around his neck.

I’d like to reincarnate this garden.

I’d like to pull up

the clotbur and the crabgrass,

lay down fertile new soil,

plant dozens of little bombs

ready to explode in spring.

I’d scrub fat Buddha

and let him breathe. I’d fix the windmill,

I’d make barren into beautiful

but when you wobbled back,

with drinks in your hands,

I decided I always try

to fix wasted gardens,

and not this time, not this time.

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Wash

After dancing all night,

you left open the bathroom door.

I can see parts of you in the mirror.

I watch you unpaint yourself.

You stand at the sink, unbloused,

you remove the tiny baubles

of your earrings, you remove your pearls.

You take the pins from your hair,

you let it tumble down —

I wish I were the shadow of your hair,

full of the fatal scent of you,

guilty of tangles, guilty of a murmur

on your shoulder, your neck.

You wet a cloth.

You wipe away blush and eyeliner,

cleanse foundation and contour,

dark mascara,

the sinful deep rose of your lips.

You confess your skin,

you whisper the truth of your skin.

You step out of your heels,

tired ball and arch of your feet

uncradled and returned to cool tile.

You tiptoe from view

into the hot susurrus of the shower,

and leave me only with imagination:

I imagine you, enveloped in downpour,

in suds, in scents of sandalwood and wild orange.

I imagine you sponge away sweat and perfume,

soap and heat tumbling out of the dark

confession of your hair.

I imagine all places you wash:

hungry rib and live collarbone,

kindled breast and hot belly,

thigh, fevered vulva,

imagine my hands as washrags,

my hands as steam.

I cannot wait for you to finish.

I lie and listen to you bathe,

I am tense with desire for you.

Bring your body back to me,

its blemishes uncovered,

its shape adored sans adornment,

let me untowel you,

let me lick the cleanliness from your spine.

I want you without decoration,

without pigments or jewels,

only with the red flowers

only with the purple gems

my mouth will paint on your skin.

The post Wash appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

Companion Plants

I have picked up so many books

lately about compost and gardens,

about how seed take root,

about the systems of life:

insect and loam, vine and water,

aeration and mulch.

This morning, I told you my plans.

You asked me if I wanted to

plant flowers or fruit,

something delicious to look at

or something delicious to eat

and I decided, if you were a seed,

you would be both.

I would make for you a bed

of decadent soil, sweet earth,

and bathe you with clear water.

I would blanket you in winter,

tend your fresh seedlings

and your first green shoots

just to see you bloom in spring.

One of my books taught me

about companion plants:

species that flourish best

when grown together.

They shield each other

from wind and blight,

roots intermingled,

a nourishing symbiosis

that yields healthier growth

for both.

I’d like to plant myself

beside you and see

what kind of garden

we could become.

The post Companion Plants appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

Bucket List

You asked me once

if there was a list of things

I wanted to accomplish before

I died.

My list is so long.

I want to wander it all:

Arashiyama, Giant’s Causeway,

the glowworm caves of Waitomo.

Even the old coal mines

of Bibb County, Alabama,

even the cracked streets

of backwater towns no one

visits anymore but coyotes

and weeds.

I want to explore all the secrets

this world tucks into her rocky deserts,

into her wild grasslands, into the valleys

and caverns slung beneath her blue sea belly

like stretchmarks three days after

a new mother gives birth.

I want to write a thousand books

about all the beauty I’ve discovered,

about all the raw ugly beauty of us,

and buy with them a place

among my idols,

and if I can’t,

I want to subvert them:

to scrawl 10,000 poems

like graffiti into the walls of buildings

on every continent on this planet,

even goddamn Antarctica.

I want to hack the airwaves

and interrupt these

regularly scheduled programs,

to interject poem

after wild guerilla poem

between the nightly pundits

and the shitty sitcoms

and the car insurance commercials.

I want to experience weightlessness,

to slip the chains of orbit

and see the world the way asteroids do,

to fling my poems down from satellites

and watch them burn up like cinders

in the atmosphere or crash into cities

leaving craters so smoking and wide

they can never be forgotten.

I want schoolchildren to know my name;

I don’t give a damn if it’s for greatness

or for infamy.

All these grandiose things

are never going to happen.

But truth is, I don’t need

any of them to be content:

Let me hold your hand every night

for the rest of my life, even if

my fingers grow arthritic and gnarled.

Let me kiss you every morning

for the rest of my life,

even if, in my old age,

I forget the sound of your name.

Let me write for you

one little poem every day:

a haiku, a cherita, a rhyming couplet,

if that’s the only thing I can muster out.

I just want a poem for you

as the last words

to breathe past my lips.

That’s all I need.

The post Bucket List appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

Valentine’s Sevenlings Have Been Delivered!

If you ordered one of my Valentine’s Sevenlings, please check your email. All poems have been mailed out, so you should have them. If you didn’t receive yours, please contact me so I can find out what went wrong.

Buzz

My brain

buzzes with poetry

all night and all morning,

but is this bug in my head

blow fly or honey bee?

The post Buzz appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

Arborea

Wash in the scent of earth and leaves,

in breeze; breathe and remember

why the forests and their trees

ought to be kept safe, kept sacred

from moguls, from thieves.

The post Arborea appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

Wasp

I finally have words

for the way I love you:

you are a red wasp

alight on the doorknob

of my front door.

I don’t dare reach out.

I don’t dare let you in.

I try to creep close

enough to get a good look

without getting stung.

I am trying to see where

in the eaves

you’ve begun to build your nest

trying to judge

whether I should poison you

to save myself

or leave you be

and hope you tire of me,

hope you drift off to catch

someone else’s heart

on your stinger.

The post Wasp appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

Coming Soon: Gabriel Gadfly and Kyle Weems collaboration

Art by Kyle Weems

A piece by Kyle Weems, a fantastic artist I went to college with. Kyle and I will be working on a collaborative piece soon fusing art and poetry. I can’t wait to share it with you all. Check out more of Kyle’s work on his Instagram.

The post Coming Soon: Gabriel Gadfly and Kyle Weems collaboration appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.