Close Up: Lawrence in April

"Missing You in My Own Way"

You're off to Texas
and normally I would feel relief (even secret joy)
at all the space and time and solitude
allotted to me,
the girlfriend left behind.

But there's a quiet mistake
when I go to the usual places,
the coffee shop
the bookstore
the park;
something is brilliantly wrong
with my empty demitasse.

And the house!
A freakish dream
of ghosts and shadows
that arrived the day you left,
reducing me to a nervous widow
confiding in the dog.

These are placid, long days
with you off to Texas
and me in our lonely house
trying to keep up the garden
and dishes and clutter control,
my mind cramping with books
and useless television.

Drifting and wondering
about inane things,
suspended in a blackhole
two mere feet off the ground,
lost in a feeling
without a name.

When you call at 9am,
asking 'how are you'
and 'what are you up to'
I can't push out the words
that I hate your absence.

I'm just drifting and wondering,
lost in a feeling,
fiddling with poems
and notes on the keyboard,
and missing you
in my own way.

"Driving Alone at Night"

How strange
to be driving alone at night,

arriving, alone,
at darkened windows.

Snoring relatives
in their separate bedrooms,
soft, sinless eyelids
shutting out dark,

and I'll have to say
goodbye someday.

How strange,
turning off the engine,
creeping up unsteady stairs,
I hear their rising falling chests,

and someday our divide
will deepen,
breaths will rest
without understanding why.

Swallowed,
as they breathe
and dream,

strange,
like driving alone
at night.

"My Mane"

Curling, long, crunching ripples.
Twists and spirals,
a tripping pirouette
that catches itself
in a nest of tangles.

The swirling spins
and bedhead angles,
the thick mop
of baubles and bangles,
tickling my skin
in a whirl of twirl.

Crazy
kinky
frizzy
crinkly...

A mess of waves,
a sweep of swing,
wagging my hair
in the new fresh spring.

"The City"

the city is stars.

strolling in her streets one night,
she shook me up like a double-shot espresso
just posing there like Grace Kelly
all draped in evening gowns.

when it snowed the glamorous girls looked better,
stumbling through her high-heeled streets
and the city twinkling and reflecting
in their painted kissers.

she was cussing and crashing,
applying smoke and cooking oil
like swanky perfume,
and I just missed getting sprayed.

she was dizzy and bright,
with potholes like buttons.

and she, the city, all but got me one night,
her summer music clinging
to my sleeve, catching
in my curls,

her neon notes
making streetlamps
glow brighter in my wide
glitter crazed eyes.

she all but got me one night
until home called my name,

and the city is stars,
the city is stars
but i don't want
to live in the stars.