Condemned

By Bud Koenemund

For Lindsay

Desire for you
will damn my eternal soul;
My lust condemns me.

Lessons Unlearned

By Bud Koenemund

For "The Three"

My inebriate
heart too often overrules
sober intellect.

All Over Again

By Bud Koenemund

I think about you

every day. And, miss you

all over again.

Mute

By Bud Koenemund

For Tahni

Thoughts of you persist;
Impure desires o’erwhelm,
yet I remain mute.

Two Haiku

By Bud Koenemund

How Long?

How long does it take
to identify a face
you know like your own?


Forever

Someone tell my heart
Forever is a long time.
It won’t heed my brain.

Santa

By Bud Koenemund

For Lindsay

Crawl onto my lap.
Whisper your naughty wishes.
We’ll make each come true.

Love

By Bud Koenemund

I'm constantly torn

between revelation and

self-preservation.

Madness

By Bud Koenemund

Images tease me;

driving imagination

closer to madness.

Modern Muse

 By Bud Koenemund

Each time my phone “dings,”
my heart hopes that it is you.
My mind knows it’s not.

Abyss - A Haiku

By Bud Koenemund

The voices whisper
constantly, dragging me down
into an abyss.

Muse Rejoined - A Haiku for NaPoWriMo

By Bud Koenemund

Muse Rejoined

For TK

Would'st thou write for me?

Confess thy heart, and make me
a muse to a muse.

Language Lessons - A Haiku for NaPoWriMo

By Bud Koenemund

Language Lessons

My tongue drips with words

I long to leave on your skin
in the prose of lust.

A Haiku, for the Start of National Poetry Writing Month

By Bud Koenemund

The Better Part of Valor

For Chelsea Cohen

Often, the plain truth

is best left unspoken; it

only causes pain.

Vulgar Divinity

By Bud Koenemund

For Kitty

The words – vulgar – not for use in polite company.

Yet, somehow beautiful in your mouth…in the moment.

Arms embracing…

Bodies superimposed…

Penetrating…

Fingers searching…

Intertwined…

Mouths touching, each breathing in the others' breath…

…and your moan in my ear, urging me on.

In the physical, we're not "making love,"

or merely "having sex." No, desire for one another has driven us past that.

And, as our little deaths approach…

Inevitable…

Unstoppable…

"Fuck me!"

This plea, paired with endearments, becomes divine;

a connection to some heavenly thing I reach out to grasp

before plummeting back to Earth.

Healing

For New York City - December 2001

A multi-ethnic mass of humanity
on the street; scurrying, bumping, jostling
without even a mumbled apology.
Bodies rushing everywhere; and nowhere.
People from around the world; here now
the artists and the crackpots,
the addicts and their crack-pipes,
and half-naked cowboys in Times Square.

Visitors craning their necks, looking skyward,
walking slowly along the broad sidewalks
taking countless pictures of the Big City;
holding hands tightly as if it will swallow them up!
They take in the fantasy-like glimmering
beauty filled with blazing neon signs
hiding the dark reality underneath
with their glowing sensuality.

I feel so perfectly at home here
in this place of bold, black strokes
and colorful, wildly psychedelic metaphors
here at the crossroads of the universe;
where even the wildest of dreams
can come amazingly true.
A place where I can find myself
and become lost in the crowd.

The power of this city radiates
up and down the wide Avenues of legend,
across the Streets of lore,
and through every building in between.
No place in the world can compare
to all of its glitz and glamour,
or to the always exciting hint of danger
hiding just under the surface.

The real strength of this great city
rests not in its buildings, but in its people!
It lies in their diversity and their character,
in their determination and their resolve!
It is the weird, and the wonderfully strange,
as well as the everyday normal people
that make this city what it is.
I love this City!

A Simple Desultory Poem for a Friend

For Sonia

"To make it burn you have to throw yourself in." - Galway Kinnell

We are left with only memories,
and the bitter pain they bring;
like the gentle recall of a perfume,
sweet as the first breath of Spring,
and skin, warm as sun-kissed grass;
as the course of human events
ebbs and flows through our lives,
ceaselessly pulling us farther and farther
from the place of peace we seek.

While the mind can imagine new love,
taking delight in the unknown and
living in the vicarious illusion of dreams,
we awake to endure the cruelty of solitude
and the numbing entropy of hope.
Despite the desultory touch of discontent,
your heart, repaired, though brittle,
will love again; trusting, like Sisyphus,
in the eventual success of its labours.

What could I promise you
that you haven’t already heard,
from much better men than I?
(Though their oaths, long shattered,
now lie strangled in the dust.)
I can not erase my human flaws;
only endure a Promethean fate,
while praying for the pure flame
to finally free my body and soul.

I could love one such as you,
anointing you as my Muse
and spilling my ink in praise;
if I were not already broken,
and the world were not as it is.
I’d reach up to steal the stars from Heaven
and wrap them in a box for you,
but you’d only make me put them back
so that all the world can see.

Poets Never Really Die by Suicide

The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry. – Ernest Hemingway

Poets never really die by suicide,
The sad victims of self-inflicted harm;
Though it’s often the cause the Times will cite,
In obits written while the body’s still warm;
They do not succumb to mere oven gas,
Single-car “accidents” on long, straight roads,
Exposure, starvation, or shotgun blasts;
Nor to drowning, slit wrists, or overdose;
Sadly, many fall long before they jump,
Or break their necks at the end of a rope;
They die when faith is lost and spirits slump;
When this mortal life leaves them without hope.
The cause of death need not be picked apart,
For poets only die of broken hearts.

Ethereal

For “Her”

You come to me again, ethereal,
in the gathering mist of my slumber,
a vision so vivid I reach out to feel
the warmth of your skin under my fingers.

I should be used to this dream by now,
but I am fooled once again; thinking you real,
as you float, always, just outside my reach,
like dust motes suspended in the afternoon sun.

Your perfume wraps around me like an embrace.
The scent wounds my unguarded heart,
but I close my eyes and breathe it in deeply,
as if the smell could help me hold you again.

I move closer to you, to look into your eyes,
to hold your soft body once again in my arms,
stroke your hair, and taste your sweet kiss…
and to find the answers you always had for me.

The world stirs and you slowly pull away
as I reach out to gently touch your face,
still luminescent in the dying moonlight,
one more time before I open my eyes.