Has the Train Arrived?

I am sitting here alone, hair shower-wet,
Carefully digging the pebbles out
From the bottoms of my feet
(Where they’ve been embedded)
With the little sharp digging tool
Found folded in a cheap nail clipper.
I think about breakfast in the morning,
Wondering if I will wake up to make it,
Wondering if I will wake up to eat it.
Then,
Going to the window for the tenth
Time
With three questions in my mind –
Has the rain arrived?
How furiously will it fall?
How long will it linger?

I Have Your Skin On My Mind

I have your skin on my mind.
I have your sadness in my eyes.
I wear your apprehension, a pure white cloak
I work day by day to shed.
I hold you in my imagination.
I want you the way I have always wanted.
I long for you and the twisted smile
I see when I close my eyes.
I see it grinning over me as you ease me in.
I see you going slow on top of me.
I feel you dripping down each thigh,
My hands in your hair,
My mouth on yours.
I want to make you happy.
I want to see you smile just like that.
I know you know this wish to make you content is all about me.
I feel your hands going through the hair on my chest.
I shiver in compliance.

I would feel better with your body up against mine.
I have your skin on my mind.
I have your scent in my imagination.
You have me on a string.
Please pull me toward you.
I closed the door.
It’s just us.
You can still be invisible, just not to me.
I promise.

I Long To Be Loved

I long to be loved
And understood
And wanted

And that is why

The moon, the sun, the dirt beneath them

The wind and the clouds
And the depths of the ocean

The splashing on her rocks and sand
And the falling of the rain
Will always be more powerful

Than I

Our Hair Reposed

Our hair reposed on the same pillow,
You face away, I face toward,
My fingers clenched on your hip,
My body heaved to yours.
Smelling the evening in your hair
And on the back of your neck.
Just glorious.
No more worried lonesome blues.
You sigh and turn to me
And our mouths meet again,
Tasting hot and wet,
Just like the first time.
I grow hard against your leg
And your breasts strangle into my chest hair.
Now it’s hands and eyes locked
And tongues and lips,
Bodies moving as one.
The chains fall,
The music begins
And the room is burning
Like a star.
It’s time to show each other
What love feels like
Again.

Quatrains

In these poems I read
I see women compared to the moon, the sun,
A lovely spring morning
And even the ebb and flow of The Milky Way

But whenever I think of you
I just see a beautiful woman
Who is unaware of her power,
Uncertain of her beauty.

Not a force of nature,
Not a season or the impetus
For the growth of crops
Or the cycles of the ocean tide.

No, It’s just you –
A human woman so indescribably gorgeous
Whether waking from sleep or sitting alone
Or looking back at me with such kindness

And unfathomable love.
To me, that is more astounding
Than the movement of the tides
Or the aligning of the stars.

You can find more of John’s work here on Ink Pantry.

List of John’s work.