fleischer art poetry teresa fleischer

W A R E S

Bargaining is toilsome drudgery

Bargaining is toilsome drudgery
a maze of perplexed wailing,
like limping through weeds in a saltwater pond,
sobbing through sorrow
with sodden temper.

Sitting around aging the tapestry

Sitting around aging the tapestry
for more use has it than I,
I’m not suited for staple décor of any kind calculated.
From fashion I tire and pleasantries are bruising.

I’m to panel the fundamental,
to haul the framework.

No thing that passes before me

No thing that passes before me
is like the thing that passes through me.

I am a country coloured in shades of September.

What far away dream skirts my heart
with endless tides,
what carries me in colgate of sentences
spoken unrehearsed
with punctuation extreme
exposed in seams of well sown stitch,
what barren pattern fields itself in torn skirt
across the landscape of me.
May the mountains stand still
for only as long as your heart lay upon my soul
scraping for the chase of my foreskin.

there is no mound, there is no stroke,
there is no hand that can reach me

there is but one single element to puncture
this wound I bare naked to you

know me by name, know me by blind rule
for I am not spoken to parallel,
I am soaked by the memory
of my skin bleeding onto your skin naked.

Thirteen times and twelve dresses

Thirteen times and twelve dresses run to ruin
in the midnight sun…
one was fair enough to stay wrinkle free
but in the rain you could still not wash away the stain.

Once dry, ready to be pressed…
she did not care,
she turned it around
and put the pretty mess behind her.

Who would feel the ruin as they caressed her,
as they feverishly fondled for her hunger…
no eye could see her discolor.

What mess this dress,
what spoil this soil.

I do not know how to write in sentences

I do not know how to write in sentences.
I peddle in infrequencies
because all I have are fractions
fractions of sentiments,
fractions proportioned,
well thought out novels in quick parades,
to make me get the urge
the rush of you
in my veins, like shooting euphoria
only to know your absence,
only to long for your heart’s tender watered down kisses,
soothing yet cruel.

Skip the rhetoric for I am mature and dated.
Sounds move me the way the wind carries a wake
yet you only speak to me in rehearsed compositions
and my heart is sent to wayward places.

Longing is not forgiving, desire is not reward
they are eager parallels to wanting solitude, so as to justify being romantic.
Love is existent, not promoted, and not erect for bidding
nor for pouring out in erotic panorama.
It wares me well and I am well worn by it.
Yet not because of the threads torn by these branches, these vines,
but because it knows how to spell me in millennium
without an edge of prejudice, without a count for the brown on my knees.
It is there because it is sterling, not canvas.

The moss between my feet

The moss between my feet is wet
and it is not from the rain in the sky
it’s from the deep of the earth
and I am digging to get the mud on my hands, under my nails…
I know the taste in my mouth, I know the dark on my face
it spills from my nose when I breathe.

I am awake under the endless sky, and the stars are smiling
while I am chasing the moon with my eyes.
Nowhere is everywhere here and it is endless,
this infinite washes me like an ocean,
bruising me careless
and I have no thing to color me,
to taint my breath
from what is the flavor
drowning my mouth.

Nine little leaves

Nine little leaves blowing in the breeze,
off of a birch tree they had fallen
onto the bed of a pillowy wind,
feeling like a feather floating
eight times plus one,
and the same they were all
by weight and call…

but there in the light, in the landscape of the sky
they colored blue
they colored greene,
they colored red and brown, but yellow only one.

How count them all,
eight times, plus one?

but none the same at all.

I can scatter this gale

I can scatter this gale
yet it gains me nonetheless.

I am at war with crumb language.
I elbow this dribble from my wound
but it trails me like fine talk I cannot wipe away from my skin.

I am where words cannot be written,
I haven’t the letters to spell these notions
that have hung themselves upon my frame.

These days are not quiet,
they are like the numbers one hundred
and when I’ve finished the count
there is one times more.
Large, far too large to spell,
to riddle,
to prod,
to probe
onto paper I’ve made old
with simply the thought of a letter poured upon it.

Matter is fact for the fair

Matter is fact for the fair
and cheaper to stock.
Faith is undefined
and impossible to contain.

I am not observation

I am not observation, I am not character sprawled,
I loot, I am crude.
I have spikes of steel that tender you into submission,
that lull you into the lullaby of lust
that service you with cardinal love
with unsuspected consequence.
What will you sing for me now.
Pebbles? Rocks? Stones?

I can hear them bruising my soul,
I can feel them dancing drunk with wine from your lips,
because you know not to cease your pith
because you spirit me only in shadows of your mystic cry.

Because I can hear every passage
without the splash,
without the movement of your lips.
You are kissing my insides with venom of fever,
with carnivorous urge, with murderous tongue
only to disguise from yourself
the bitterness of suspicion,
that you are bleeding
and I am solace to it.