analogies for a thunderstorm

my first poetry collection.

analogies for a thunderstorm
scott cohen | selected poems 1999-2001 (revised june 2002)

huge
Squinting my eyelids just so
I was able to mold with wetness
a red zero to a blinking one.

Bending two dunes distant:
The mirage of fine conversation
If I might untie my arms (reflex-closed)
And find other than huh
semantic filler
so long as there was enveloped;
try hotel-bathrobed girl,

There's a radio crescendo
in harmony with my cringe.
I’d like you saying what’s wrong
wish i didn't speak in punctuation.

I’ll bed down in a tent
with my own idea
of what might be only couches and blanketfolds
or attempted connections.

smaller bites
So with feet planted down,
I began dishrag-wringing from your eyes
bits of secret, muttering of an average life
shadows to consider in the next first glimpse

what I'll regret is your memory
some pieces lack duplicity.
(I couldn’t say which)
just that we're less than I claim
or i'm just
getting off on your contentment.
Whether i am the considerate half
Or maybe just want your smoothness
look up and say
beauty keeps me, my giant.
Blow me out softly, pretty mouth.

maps
Stained by leaked ink
and passed-off scripts
chest, palms, eyes, throat
rubbed with road maps, blueprints
directions

My fingertips are nearly gone
blackened from letters typed and penned
burnt clean off where they touched another
where I'd felt something pushing in them
tracing Ash Wednesday on my forehead
Life, hypothetically, was lined with hard truths
but this far in
eachis rubbed blurry
what you say gives me pause
thoughts become the smokey curls
of a burnt foundation
resolve blinks
and love?
It has a way of making one
swallow his resolutions

ingrid and the sierra madre
Candle stubs prevailed upon
our monogamy depends upon
the Jolt left in the bottle.
I left, coughing,
brushed your thin arm.

Lips reflected and checked in my sunglasses
relegated or elevated, blinking
a phone left out of the cradle.
Blink and kissing ridges of tone

Magnified in dinnerware
we're waves of gravy
potatoes seas and
specks in your eyes
cleft plains

This clammy palm, fisted ‘round
a Blistex tube, loose change
My masterpiece, my coup.
Our best slideshow.

shooting the carrier pigeon
Once doing stomp dance steps
in an empty corridor
I hallucinated aw.
realized a figure down on the other end
crouched up against the wall
finished off a two-step -I—
walked down
n' eyes came out first. Greenlooks
was ridiculous me redfaced
noisyyou breathed stranger
tenor and scorpio
possibly will be mine.
one pithy thing well
you sat at eye level
brandedbrandedbranded

two swings
Red hots in coke.
were butterflies
set against
my useless cologne
and sideburns.
Walking off was easy.
Getting to my feet
proved difficult.

captain charisma
you can test the waters under your feet
and once you smack down hard on the wet black asphalt
or rub your open hand against the rough veins and ravines of a stormtree
you realize how much better is full-on pain
you're missing no nuances of your pleasure
and i pulled the cat hair off my sweater with a band of duct tape
i ran fingertips over matte binding and picked up a pencil by the point
by this time it was still hours earlier than it had to be
and i just thought about ska, spanish, and soul coughing
the common spaces between horns, language, and lyrics uh
white boy. lists of bad inkjet on nonrecycled white paper
i am unmarred
more music too loud
but i have no remote
a shedding cat, a furnace and an empty wallet (actually,hay $2)
there's still no magic
riffage in my veins
you're not here when i want you but when i do
see you cus i was hopin to you're quite
disinterested - the same as you might be if
i was coming back from some football and
was sweating torn and tired
but not too tired,
never
gray wasted days out of london. Freezing
snow and rainwater and eaves
watching pencil shaving worms and the something shining
wet and running low
coming from above the underbrush
still things i
still
i have no grip on the sliding, twitching stuff of time and of experience
which all seems so lucky
if only if i had someone again - not so
fun just provoking and wanting
knowing it may be worth it to try something like this.
i know i'm not the right one
but being a step the right way
still, that's something.

my cummings
headi n
ready (pursing) gung-ho
for company
lips not so frothy like a&w
not much cleavage swells
mind own mine my I
more freckles on your nose
not much string-strap tops
can't but imagine you riding that denim seam
getting wet and all (even if
that doesn't happen)
not too much
more when with me
your littles are mine

(untitled)
At times, I can’t feel you.
Chilled underneath,
your touch has curled up in itself.
Walking through winter in sandals
Stinging my fingertips.

You’d like me today
we’re both duty-free,
but being yours, it’s less than half
I’ve come to realize
I cannot mean enough or hurt you
Only wish to exist naked, in this moment
In all eyes smooth before your clothing breaks you
Studying your face against your wishes

Shamed in thinking of it.
Something freezing hot under your skin,
it takes all my will keeping check
shuddering when i'm touching you
I gasp to prevent it.
No demurity can touch what you have
that breaks me
breaks me away from your skin.

At times, I can’t feel you.
Writing and drawing my recollections
but when you're somewhere here
the same building, nearly always
you could be thinking of me
maybe calling, so I lose a word
or smudge the paper.
It makes me realize my reliance
now I can't do without a hope
a chance that you are considering my voice
I never understood what you saw in my face
but was glad for it.
first all I wanted was comfort
which became only company
it tore me down
all I could believe I want is you.

I don’t wait two rings anymore
my shiver of an arm reaching.
All my messages are hang-ups.

At times, when I feel you
I melt into my sneakers
for your beauty
At the end, in my pillow
I couldn’t stop trying to find you
Surrendering, running back
being for no one else.

You, love, are my perfect curve
when a spiral of doubt
or just words along the lines in you
I will not be angry with you ever anymore
and am only bleeding to adjust myself.

At times, when you leave
I feel only myself
but seem to lose the walk upstairs
At times, it feels as if
i've always found you
but can’t remember.

how to fake your own death
Sittin down, I think I can see natural light
i perceive i see the sun really coming
through flecked curtains
and i dig my fingertips against the insides of my legs
it's how i scratch my balls
i find them in the sunlight.
stickers peeling off of whatever stopsign you stuck them to
decorations seeming to curl up at the edges
even as I watch the walls.
I love looking at people intent on something else
maybe that's a manual fixation
working with their hands. God.
I touch myself
but just with fingertips on the little hairs of my arm
not sexually really! O i implore thee do not judge me
i am no whore
and just because i am nearsighted and have hair on my arms
does not mean i spend my hours choking the bishop
no. I write! I am an author, that's right. And an artist, too.
A conversationalist not a purrvert
Who can hear the twisted designs of my own roommates head
in the speech of those passing under my window
facing dining service, you know. Traffic heaviest between 5 and 6.
The world doesn't fool me and neither do you
passing under my eyes
and just because you don't look doesn't mean i can't see
i just cleaned my room and don't look at me
like i don't know what i am doing
or that i don't understand chains
i get that bu am d dde d
i get it.
i can read motives like my dick is bigger than yours
it's hot in a room when the fan burns out
and i don't take off my sweater and try to keep
from sleeping naked all my crevices leak on me and my bed
and i lay prostrate
i couldn't sleep last night.
Thinkin about yoooooooooooooou.
Darlin'.

style points
Lickspittle has a hunch:
as much as I like these stubbly sideburns
and how he looked when his glasses broke
there was an armistice coming
and dying at the end of the summer.
harm this is coming
we're soaked to the skin all year
showing off my own nipples - as many pushups as I do
they're as clear as Jean's.
enough scenery.
I know about all of the people I love
and most of those who've loved me.
I still smile and imagine my name in a shy mind
I'm pale for a crush
and like the rain
and something about that girl reminds me of shiny asphalt in a
streetlight.
or those words were at least like a passing car.
playing I'll die if those headlights touch me
playing "Summer Rain"
once I get myself a girlfriend again, I'm going to have her run clippers on the back of my neck
because I love that feeling.
I'd been hoping today would go more smoothly
It should have been a better year.

more proof that i am the man for you
I’d take you on up
and i'd kiss you soon. i could never wait so long
because a Goodnight Kiss equals anything
and there's only one a day.
so i have to start right away
i start immediately.
what will you get on your ice cream? vanilla, certainly.
i want someone who gets the same toppings.
even if that makes your mouth taste less foreign
but it might not scare me as much
i don't think with my penis! i think with my lips
before i've thought it through (mouths are a bit rash)
and when i realize that an analogy and you won't work
(that would be food, fun, or money)
if those won't work, that's when i realize
i need you to be not quite right for me.
getting some different ice cream toppings
and owning different albums, liking
different things about me than i like best
or all of these
so long as you make me shake a little
make me sweat a little
and prey on my insight.
yes, so long’s that.

Jenga
There's something in the way you movesss me!
You're a subwoofer kit, making me burp with bass.
I build up all these little balsa wood tower foundations
and then you walk past without saying a word
and all of a sudden, it all falls down
as if I'd been working on a gravelly surface to begin
with was i working on sand?
They say clay's good for house foundations
cause you can't get water through it

damn, you told me i had piercing eyes!
Yours play Jenga with my soul, sweet.
Yeah, i think that was what i was always starting from
when i reached the last lines of melancholy poems
i was starting from uneven blocks –
how could i expect truth in those resolutions?
We see our beginnings in our ends anyhow.
Like when i started trying to write Before & Afters
like I Go Limp Clothes By The Bed
giggle. And the funny part is discarded clothing
does make me flaccid
reminds me of bodies
or leftover carapaces
bugs, yumyum. There goes my erection.

I didn't ever see you naked, remember?
We did that one other thing that seems a lot more personal in retrospect
but though i touched your breasts i never saw them
and i told you later on that i wish i could have.
Breaking up is like having the wind knocked out of you,
but for longer and in spurts
Panic is when you try to breathe air that is in fact
rich, chocolate fudge.
You can't breathe that!
Why are you my beautiful regret so afraid to make eye contact?

meeting girls is easy
I met you hurrying over your collar.
Couldn’t help but hold you hard
until I could make you out through the coat
I met you in the whites around then your eyes
and it wouldn't even matter what color they are
they'd be the best of
again you're the best everything that doesn't need qualifying

2 (garbage bag elegy)
cannon shot stops at my feet
fallen out of a starborne bag of garbage
those stars glittering in plastic creases
these faces sagging as it's dropped to the pavement
i stopped you with raised toes
and sucked in a breath back against my grille
you vortexed my muscles around me under this scarf
you are the backs of these boots
and would be acid rain
if that were as cool as it sounded
you could melt my umbrella
and make me throw down a metal skeleton
and yell up and back at you
'it was only heat i wanted to
give you'
that i could give you in all the ways i'd seen someone kept warm
but maybe i would stop yelling then
and recall to your direction that i'd just felt sweat
freezing me as it cools down my side
you finished my trap door.

um.i found out
(just a little
out that you might even be less than i
had dropped to believing
i found you to love me that part i
hadn't seen coming
not now (at all) at least
i am so lucky
all these worthwhile souls
finding something to catch in my own
faked uncertainty
am i so irreproachable?
rain on my back
give me snow down my neck
give me time!
a step with you in this damp January
is a cloud break in your eyes
just the cloud burst of mine
i think maybe I'm not after some truth in these10-minute songs I'm buying
i just want filler around the symphony with you
this is too easy for me
it's too easy for me
i've got it just as hard(you don't need to assume)
boys have to want to be what i want to be
i want to be something yours
that you would ask to be mine
ever
pull out!
and the word breaking down
force fed force
i pushed out all the buried pus beneath my face
every bit of your contour swam
such grit in you denies me
because you really are nothing but smooth
manage
your face far away
coming towards me i avoid looking straight
til you're here
your face from the side
from three quarters around
from below you now + before

what day is it? (& other waking snow)
In the camper by the side of the freeway
and in the head of gasoline fumes will seep
into my head and transverse
for the dry-eyed and sweaty
and the white scuzz on an Arizonan tongue
a dog tongue flapping
like stars and bars out the windon't
take the wind and hold down the pages of the paperback in your lap
hold down the warmth of the cigarette
and warm vapors down the throat of his dog
and my glasses are black with the white sky
and his turkey neck is brown and orange
and the clay crawls into the tires
and we scratch FUCK in the dirt
suck on the stick of a chesthairy desert
biting spit back from the butt
lay the rod down in the hatch
and catch the twitch
as i squeeze the handle to 10.02
threehundred feet away his dog lets the air pull the bugs in
threehundred feet closer the dime glow off my shades
catches license plate number RGE-098
ten zero two.