scarecrow poetics/essays
Sunday, March 19, 2006
Coffeehouse Poem (to Michelle)...
What if I were to place my head in your lap
while we’re lounging on some coffeehouse couch
and you were to begin running your fingers thru my hair
with great understanding, and this was to go on
for a full hour without either of saying a word
because we simply felt no need to talk?
Would this make us lovers, or would we have
to actually fuck before it became official?
Most people I meet seem to be living their lives
hemmed in by layers of rules they never question
while shooting for benchmarks carved by the averaging out
of generations of dreams—by the dilution of each of us,
in other words
But this would all crumble on such a coffeehouse couch,
with such fingers caressing in silence—and we would find love,
I’m sure, in the simultaneous understanding that love reveals rules
to be non-existent, while also seeing that this knowledge can make
our lives truly different than the lives of those who surround us,
at least when we’re together …
Richard Woodard © 2006.
while we’re lounging on some coffeehouse couch
and you were to begin running your fingers thru my hair
with great understanding, and this was to go on
for a full hour without either of saying a word
because we simply felt no need to talk?
Would this make us lovers, or would we have
to actually fuck before it became official?
Most people I meet seem to be living their lives
hemmed in by layers of rules they never question
while shooting for benchmarks carved by the averaging out
of generations of dreams—by the dilution of each of us,
in other words
But this would all crumble on such a coffeehouse couch,
with such fingers caressing in silence—and we would find love,
I’m sure, in the simultaneous understanding that love reveals rules
to be non-existent, while also seeing that this knowledge can make
our lives truly different than the lives of those who surround us,
at least when we’re together …
Richard Woodard © 2006.
ROB WOODARD was born in Anaheim, California in 1964 and raised mostly in the nearby Long Beach area. After graduating high school, he dropped in and out of various community colleges and worked mostly in restaurants in southern California, Hawaii, and Australia, while taking breaks to wander aimlessly across big swaths of the globe. During these years he wrote consistently in search of his voice as a writer. Frustrated by his lack of progress, he returned to school and eventually obtained bachelors and masters degrees in anthropology from California State University, Long Beach. After a brief stint as a college professor, he returned to working in restaurants and writing. Burning Shore Press recently published Heaping Stones, his first novel. What Love Is, his second novel, is scheduled to be released by the same house in the summer/early fall of 2006. He is currently writing poetry, book reviews, and a journal.
Contact: bsp@burningshorepress.com
Contact: bsp@burningshorepress.com
posted by scarecrow # 12:11 PM 
