Poetry: Rp Verlaine

Rp Verlaine

Missing Cold

The bare branches

bare witnesses

and frost of our

exhaled breathe

between kisses

small talk

and cigarettes

we did little more

than pose with

I miss.

These nights

I question stars

and the moon's

dominion over light.

Missing extras

in a drama time

directs through

the seasons

especially cold ones.

Even as each day

we're faced with the

calculable loss

of the light

inside us.

You went back to

your second

husband. And I to

a calendar marking

each day since.

I wait for the winter

to numb to chill

new ice over

a widening gyre

of my rapacious need.

Dissimilar diagrams

of thought all

truncated to a

straight line

to my door with your

footprints in snow

missing...

Shot glass by shot glass

increase of the once

rare sips of vodka. Just

to see or imagine with

new detail your

shadow over mine.

Reliving past

conversations we

had between 

cigarettes that  now

I smoke to the

end.

***

For Melissa

 

(A)hhere

soft (quiet) ly
her lips disarm
ingmyreserve (hold)
faint then firm
(up) my
heart 2 in lock
step
yet unquestioningly
asunder
i guess/this
yes
(is love.)

***

 

 

Ennui And Pickpockets 

Long embrace

casts a
Sp(el)l(egant)
as (a) necromancers
dark (m)agic

her laughter walking away

to tell me she's the devil

J(ust) tonight no strings
Or false falsetto (no)tes
she (j)ust turns al(ive)
with snake tongue
viper hisses kiss

tosses me my wallet

that she'd just stolen.

*** 

The Kiss

Her kiss
the transfusion
I was dying for.

Outside
by the leaves of autumn
clinging to hope.

I watch old videotape
break with us in mid-kiss
ten years too late.

***

Bio: Rp Verlaine lives in New York City. He has an MFA in creative writing from City College. He taught in New York Public schools for many years. His first volume of poetry- Damaged by Dames & Drinking was published in 2017 and another – Femme Fatales Movie Starlets & Rockers in 2018. A set of three e-books titled Lies From The Autobiography vol 1-3 were published from 2018 to 2020.  His most recent book, Imagined Indecencies, was published in February of 2022. He was nominated for a pushcart prize in poetry in 2021 and 2022.

---

Setu, September 2023