Blue Poem by Jack Oates

blue -
I followed you
down reticulated avenues;
past shamans lurking like omens;
leopards in cheap suits,
peddling junkets and dishcloths.

I carried you like a casket of gems -
allotropes with dope fed irises,
those beer brown pools
that soused my laggard limbs.
You had floral print and bonhomie;
legs so smooth they sliced the air.

You never saw the broken tip;
snapped graphite blighted by the urge
of my white knuckle,
cramped and cursed,
that scattered the counterpane with coal dust.
Your smile was like a gold rush.

It's like a painting on a wall I never took down.

Words - words are like pennies,
cheap tricks cast in bottles,
or guttered and railroaded,
or blent in leaves,
or bitted by clefs,
their deaths like tears in the falls.

Yet, gathered and glossed, they purchased an ear;
pearl tipped, honey soaked buds
tongue flecked silver in the lamplight.
Made an eye seep -
dumb notes stuck to the door,
curled and cute like a wrinkled nose under sheets.

It's like a photo I used as a book mark.

blue -
here is my song for you:
Crow's feet,
ancient runes sketched in the render;
the cool hall still waits quiet
for kittens on the parquet.

We painted lilywhite promises,
scrubbed our rosy loke;
canned the cavalier that pierced her blaze
and branded a cross on the empty cot;
girded the glistening dials that shed blades
and cut my silhouette to pieces.

You put the shell to your ear and she spoke:
it is done.
Like a nun you crossed your ample chest
and blessed the purple wail,
slapped and tapped in the Cumbrian cold.
I was in another place -
bleak streaks yielding to the chamois.

It's like a stylus on vinyl I never lifted.