Typo Negative

July 12, 2019July 12, 2019 ~ G. Paul Randall

I wrote that your face was
The source of all light
But my maladroit fingers and
Two spastic thumbs

Bungled light into ‘blight’
In the draft, late at night
And hit ‘send’ for good measure
From this, no good comes

Swingers

June 29, 2019 ~ G. Paul Randall

the way doors swing
things hinge upon things
the piano lid of the world is
like a canopy for our unhinged lives
swinging in the trees below
hangers-on learning the grips

I held you once, like that
like a hinge bearing the two halves of us
and the pins of it released
the sweetest, breathless refrain
like a sprung garden gate
whispering open, then close
swaying in the greens

The Sheeted Bed Did Squeak and Gibber

February 14, 2019February 13, 2019 ~ G. Paul Randall

A face print on a
pillow, still-warm sheets

the craft-of-us, it blossoms
in our every scampering

thought, we will pester the
day’s frame maker for more

pinches and squeals, yet
draw from depths a love

that ever comes, even
as we sleep.

a dimpled morning light crawls
up the arm of another day, advancing
like a rash, and the bathroom mirror
scans my face, while my mind’s eye
scans yours

forgiveness, like a parade with floats
sure, but the slope of this patch
will drain and pool somewhere
a tepid steep of contrition
that’s what it reminds me of

when we pretend to agree
I zip my face closed and cough up a
smile, perfected in its shambles
and relaxed, like a prickly thing
warding off the bothers
with preemptive skin

III

the thread of these laundered sheets
that can’t retain the lay of her land

I pull the lint filter from the dryer
and mount it, framed, to the wall

bedposts still lean to the slant of her
repose, window-light leering, wants

are cooing and teasing in the heat
of breathing, I awaken to the elbows

of memory and cool wet spots
the small talk of exquisite missteps

a specter haunting the big tent
with its randy elephants and clowns

(g)love

February 11, 2019 ~ G. Paul Randall

Stacks of plastic containers
and lids that don’t fit
—I don’t quite fit her
containers agape, lidless.

Containers sitting open
—she doesn’t love me
and what was contained is
open to the air and spoiling.

reassembly line

August 29, 2018 ~ G. Paul Randall ~ 1 Comment

remixing memories for
a new take on a
shuffled past
(but there’s some things
I just can’t do
about you)

Root

August 13, 2018 ~ G. Paul Randall

in root love, in fulfillment
sudo untether the world
and its conceptions of you, me, of places
we might withdraw, finally together
never apart, it will shake space and time
free of its dreamy, contrived bandwidth
of heartbreaking denials, and let us
download all the forevers that have
so beguiled us lovebirds

Too Cool

August 1, 2018 ~ G. Paul Randall

in all this heat, the memory of those
cold looks you used to give me
come packaged in a little comfort
but there’s a kind of cool that sidesteps
temperature, like a fever chill that only
makes the burning more unbearable

you used to really cook my oats in
that dazzling cool, that face of yours
an entire opera in there, the allure of
an unsolved codex, just waiting to
spill out a heart-rending aria
after enough of us have died