Bobbi Lurie's two poetry collections are Letter From The Lawn (CustomWords, 2006) and The Book I Never Read (CustomWords, 2003). Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals including The American Poetry Review, New American Writing, and Gulf Coast.
bobbilurie@aol.com

MATURITY

The world leans into me
as I bend to fasten my sandals.
My hair is loose
and the wind materializes.

There is a black flame inside me
when I see his face. There is a floating garden
and a well with a crank.
If only I might bring the water to my lips.

He sees me
and I lower my head.
So this is Maturity!
Death comes towards us in equal steps.


HOW THE HUMAN IS MADE

Radiant light in the radiant shade.
Glorious glimpses but incomplete feelings.
Animal sentience.

A helmet for a skull elevating the fleshy bits.
Forgetfulness of the fact
That the gods devise our deaths.

Ultimate, the eyes keep failing to see.
Routine keeps us solid with schedules.
But sips of coffee still taste like earth.

GRAVE PEOPLE SIT IN THE CAFÉ

Bad histories bring grave people to bitterness
They hover over their coffee in wet raincoats

The men who no longer love them keep silent but do not listen
The women who no longer love them are on the lookout for a new spouse

In the back of the café there is clattering
The waiters are piling up plates to be washed

“GOD IS BLIND AND CAN NOT SEE ANYTHING BUT YOUR THOUGHTS,” SAID THE DISTRAUGHT SOMNAMBULIST

The eye connects to the surface of the seen
and all it sees will be dead some day.

The Invisible that Lives is unseeable, they say,

so that even the stone,
eternal non-existence that it is,
can still be touched.
                              It can be pressed
                    in the palm, felt
like Serenity itself

but it is seeable so
it will face Death.
 

THIS AMPUTATED PLACE IS MY SOUL, LORD

 
Lord preserve me, Lord, I am faltering
Lord, I am Lost in a skull of thoughts, Lord
I am drenched in dreamless hours of sleep
Oh my brain, Lord, oh what flashes before me, Lord
For my heart if you say that it is
If You let me feel it, Lord, if you let me See
Beneath my image is a shimmering Brilliance
Less terrible than whatever I imagine, Lord
Can you feel it, Lord, with no place to let me in
And this lusting, Lord, these worlds, Lord
Such lusting after them, never present in my life, Lord
I can not be present but am made to long for, made
To move my tireless hands
It’s a suffering, Lord
Suffering without a tongue, without a song
I am invisible, Lord, but never to myself
To the otherness, yes, Lord, I am lusting after them
Can’t you collapse me, Lord, can’t you take me deeper Into
Wherever you hover and gleam in the Innermost Light
Can’t You take me with you, can’t You take me out of, Lord
For my Jealousy, Lord, Jealousy
Hiding in my nightgown where I fester at my desk, Lord
Sitting and re-writing my life, Lord, it is unread, Lord
All is unread where my Soul is most Illusion
Fill me in, Lord, please fill this amputated place
Fill it with your favoritism, Lord, make me
An ailment not to be treated lightly, Lord
This amputated place is my Soul, Lord
Dear Lord, vacuous as you are, Lord
Though I fabricate my features in public
I  dwell in Darkness, Lord
Darkness where the trees live, where all is shadowing
Where the fabric of memory is a patterning soon to be lost
And everything is leaking, Lord, you with your blanket of food
And your categories of bags
Which can not grow like people in this realm
You made us, Lord, never present to ourselves
Can’t you see, Lord, even the Trees are Leaking Love
Calling out with their needs to make themselves known
And the Trees have many names
And all this world is Rimmed in Green