Three Titles from Genevieve

It being Tuesday, I did my Title Tuesday feature for the Facebook group Poets All Call. This time round my fellow moderator Genevieve Lumbert offered three of her own titles as well:

The Great Falling Away
inertia
hope

My thanks to my lifelong friend. These titles helped me write some poetry that went beyond puzzle-solving and into exploration of matters of the heart.

Here is how I responded.

The Great Falling Away

A clumsy man heard surf
Felt love
Listened to a story about cowhide
Flung over a cliff
And kissed a woman soundly
And kissed a woman softly
And kissed an opportunity
Goodbye.

We don’t always fall down
Like Lucifer.
Sometimes we fall away
Like a vagabond
Or a brisk wind
That shifts direction.

Sometimes a man dies
With a private chamber of sound kisses
And tender sentiments
Still in him.

inertia

the clutter of a litterbug
a scattered realm of shame and love
a stutter step a tale of woe
of habits formed that won’t let go

the butter of another’s lust
unshuttered cluster’d stars unfussed
pull/cull the interstellar dust
and slowly come unwound

the mainspring of eternity
is neither wild nor full unfree
mere cutlery manipulating
flesh of roasts anticipating
guests to sink their teeth
and flee
or saunter through
infinity

hope

we are vertical
and we breathe.

so let us believe
life contains a goodness
our thirst to slake,
the warm embraces
we want to make,
the hikes and climbs and jousts
for whish we roustabouts roust,
the heldhands nightwhispered
plans d’evasions
we wish to conspiratorily make
and then unleash…

hope like a sprig of a sprouting bean
makes a fat man long to lean,
makes two journeys intersect
and lovelorn halves
at last
connect.