poetry by Allen Heinrich
updated July 1st, 2008
All poems © Allen Heinrich
You can find my latest work at: Prospero's Books
1800 W 39th Kansas City, MO 64111 (816)-531-9673
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Text selections: (click a title)
Tang We, The Precept Glass Slipper
And You, Being The Rain Outrageous Reckless Abandon
When Comes The Hour Reciprocal Preamble
Cotton Candy Cigarette The Glance
Audio (mp3) selections: (click a title)
Attraction In Each Petal, Some Aspect Sing Back To Me
Candleflight Still, Her Heart Pretext / Wildfire
Tang
I'm fed up with poems
manufactured for astronauts—
the systematically
dehydrated
artificially flavored
mass-produced
pre-packaged powder
passed off as fruit—
Feed me
an earthier flesh,
a natural taste and texture:
peaches for the hands
to find sticky,
and the tongue, tart;
plums I can bite into
deeply, so that after,
I might lick from the corners
of a satisfied mouth,
the tang of ripening juices...
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And You, Being The Rain
Having yet to comprehend,
imagine it thus:
I, assuming the shape
of an imminent world
laden with the seeds
of granite, slate,
limestone, obsidian, marble;
of sand, silt, loam;
of stream, runnel,
brook, bourne, pond, and marsh;
of hickory, locust, elm,
birch, willow, sweetgum, oak;
of finch, oriole, robin,
lark, owl and sparrow;
of root, bulb, leaf and stem;
of skin, fur, shell and feather;
of hop, crawl, slither and fly—
All seed, I—
And you, being the rain...
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When Comes The Hour
Indeed— hesitate;
there is nothing of me
you cannot take part in later,
for my greed is so great that,
raging even against the grim
perception of loss,
I will wait for you,
if need be, through
all conception of cost,
however it bleeds me or
impedes the so-called
natural order.
Indeed— hesitate.
Let this inkling border on
faded; this opportunity,
sour— I have power enough
in my grip to make
our coupling doubly green
when comes the day
that spells the hour
you slip...
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Cotton Candy
She will ask him one day,
when first
love whispered her name,
and for a moment's breath
he will think of ships
raising sail
by the painted thousand,
and the woman whose face
could draw them forth.
He will think how once
a glance
could fire a man's heart
and in so doing, torch
an entire city, and how still
the smallest dart can strike
the warmest embers.
No matter, then, that she
laugh to think he
remembers her first
in the whirl of a candy
cotton-pink, a lightness
reminiscent of the girl—
Already he is building ships…
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We, The Precept
precept (n): a commandment or instruction
intended as a rule of action or conduct.
In the midst of things, begin.
It's no mystery,
our being born here
without having already been;
without having had
some sense of the whirl
and spin that carved us
boy, girl; the woman
and man within.
In the midst of things, begin,
because you can—
Imagine the span
between ages bereft
of beginning & end;
we, the bend between
concept and its inception;
we, the precept,
the direction, the exhilarating wind!
In the midst of things, begin,
because we must, if we are to be
our all. The rest is but
deception, corruption, mistrust—
the fall…
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Outrageous
Brazen,
that I could be so
indecently drawn
by an instant's
impression;
that I should fawn
o'er the least hinted
shape of some future
concession;
that I would pawn
the last breath
of pride for a night-
long indiscretion
with a beauty
I only know by sight—
Scandalous,
impetuous,
covetous—
and ruinously
right…
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Reciprocal
Ideally, we might be two
matches booked side
by side, suddenly alight
in simultaneous
spontaneous combustion,
the flare up and
subsequent consumption
by fire running wild
at perfectly equal
burn rates, one
feeding the other
and vice versa, 'til
the final plume of smoke
and tumble evaporates,
ideally agreeing
from the burst right down
to our smoldering last—
But alas, we're no match
for reality, where one
of us burns not at all,
or too slowly, or too late,
or too early, or too fast…
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Cigarette
God knows it's
habit-forming, and yet
I want the luxury of
being the next butt
you light into,
the paper you put
a scorch to, 'cause
I crave that
seven minutes
of smoldering close
to you, drawn
by the whims
of your lips whilst
I burn straight away
into a giddy cloud
of smoke
and stubble of ash—
God knows already,
but I think I'd cash it all in
just for this:
one dangerous moment
of breathing fire
with the full consent
of your all-consuming kiss…
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Glass Slipper
I don't want her
stepping into the shoes
of my dreams
any more than I wish
having her come to me
gowned in the hues
of so unnatural
a thing as fable; I don't
want her dressed
in the least
like a label, a rapunzel
or some woebegone
briarly rose,
nor any waif
whose ruby toes are
all the tap-dance she's worth,
because I want her
able to bring her own
sweet mirth to the table,
the tales no one else
can rightly unfold,
not just luckily fit the mold
of that cinder-relic slipper—
If I want her at all,
it's because she's her own
pair of covers to unzipper…
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Reckless Abandon
I get the feeling sometimes
most women are afraid of me,
and maybe they should be,
given that I'm likely to cross
any wavery lines they've drawn
in the sand— but I'm damned
if I know what's errant
in my hungering for someone
who's easy and free
with her talons and teeth.
What's unnatural in the belief
that snarls the two of us
in a tangle of one? Isn't
the animal part of us fun
any more? Where's the reckless
abandon that tore us from fate
& rooted us out of our garden?
You know, maybe I do skate
on a different sense
of the world,
but I'm foxed and skirled
and sung out to dry
if there's no one left
to die for; if there's no one right
to fight for—
There has to be some woman worth
getting high for…
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Preamble
What could I tell you
about being roused by your scent,
or moved to the point of having
spent hours with an air
upon which you lent some
passing fragrance,
of my being rent by
the temporal vagrance
in so brief a breath of flower?
What could I tell you
that doesn't sound too feral
or animal in its power,
that wouldn't set you ascamper
for the nearest thicket
or bower or bramble?
How do I 'scape hampering
the gamble, that you take me
not at all ill?
Shall I simply say I smell you still
in the dark preamble of dawn,
when summer's dew is laid out
over every lawn and mist be
shot through morning's air;
or do I just go on biting my tongue
'gainst the wet, because
what I could tell you of scent
would never stop there-
not with every other sense
atremble yet …
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The Glance
Maybe this is the way
it was meant to be: you
always a glisten caught
in someone else's eye,
the not-quite memory
of another sky, another
day echoing an untouchable
music, and me— me forever
on the other side of the minute
you walk past; the door
you never open.
Maybe this is how we pay
for the recollected scent of bread
rising from soft hands,
nights along the coast
of a distant time, hours
too sweetly spent. Seeing again
the laughter on a once-familiar face,
or hearing the delicate thunder
of remembered hearts only bends
you further into the shadows of today;
my reaching out
only keeps you penned
within the darkened shape of dreams.
But maybe this is how we say
that what seems past is never ending,
and trusting the bottle of a glance,
we cast ourselves into a colorful
semblance of sea, whispering
I am well
and nothing need be forgotten.
Maybe this is the way
we were meant to live together always:
sometimes awake, and sometimes
asleep in the iris of another's eye,
waiting for another day,
another sky to come...
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