Poetry by: Nancy Hill


{Easy Love}{I Hate T. S. Eliot}{Opposite Walls}{West of Home}{Safari}{Exit Wound}

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Easy Love

You never thought you were easy to love.
But it is wondrously simple
When I feel your voice
Close upon my neck,
Every tone easing you deeper into me.
When I hear your heartbeat,
Mine vibrates in time with it.
When I see your eyes flare with desire
Amidst the timbre of our passion,
Or feel delicate skin inflame under my touch
Like smoldering embers again brought to life,
Rising flames from ashes.
When I smell your luscious wet
Spiciness blending with mine
And then taste you,
My mouth explodes in
Sensations phenomenal.
Then all becomes clear and present with me. . .
How can I love you this much?
Because you make it so easy.

Nancy M. Hill © 6 April 2002

{I Hate T. S. Eliot}{Opposite Walls}{West of Home}{Safari}{Exit Wound}

 

I Hate T. S. Eliot

I hate T. S. Eliot because he breathed in measured time with his soul's life and I cannot unearth the life of my soul; because he wrote fabulously obscure poetry invoking desert wasteland dreams, summoning children to run naked, shout with freedom's innocence sans fear of reprisals for nakedness or voiced laughter sifting on dry winds to cloudless skies blue as ink dripping from an archaic silver-nibbed pen.

I hate T. S. Eliot because he had the good sense to peer inwardly to the pastiche of his own perversity…and harvest poems that make me weep; because he could tell Vivian essentially to fuck off and enjoy the asylum life while he strolled past stanzas of Rimbaud and up the Thames into his own pearls of life, all the while suffering the Archbishop's every quake in a Canterbury prison as Henry slept.

I hate T. S. Eliot because he left the familiar now for the more familiar then with a wicked gleam in his eye, kissing Adonis…couldn't be (American wouldn't be) British so did both, forever confusing high schoolers and sported laurel leaves, deservedly so—but I know laurel leaves are poison—he wore them and thrived on the poison poet's potion while I suck black ink up like a haggard child sucking the dried dugs of a dead mother.

I hate T. S. Eliot because he dwelled in requiems of pain yet belched out processional verses that renamed an age while I can only bleed a word onto a page and hope it smears into a line worth forgetting. Oh, April is the cruelest month…and I still hate T. S. Eliot because he wore dapper tweed jackets and crisp white shirts and trousers with perfect lines and looked ever dashing and poetic, a poet's poet and a dreamer's nightmare.

NMHill © 11 April 2002

{Easy Love}{Opposite Walls}{West of Home}{Safari}{Exit Wound}

 

Opposite Walls

A time comes when you slip into bed, together yet alone, staring at opposite walls inscribed with the last stupid remark or some petty disagreement over…over nothing.

If even once you let your eyes fall shut upon that opposite wall, it never wants to let you turn over and hold her close or feel her lips on your neck or kiss her tear-filled eyes.

Facing opposite walls, lying back to back, you are more keenly aware of her presence than if she held you captive in the most profound kiss. Even the clock paces to her heartbeat.

RULE # 1: Never go to sleep looking at that wall. If you do, you might as well get pretty damned accustomed to the finer details it reveals to you alone on the coldest winter night.

 

Nancy M. Hill ©1 October 2002

{Easy Love}{I Hate T. S. Eliot}{West of Home}{Safari}{Exit Wound}

 

West of Home

There, just west of home, through dusty green Texas,

Over the Great Divide to just this side of California's faults,

Led onward to a place I'd only seen in movies:

Shimmering horizons, OK Corral shoot-outs,

Visions of blazing six-guns leveled at red skin,

A Real Thelma and Louise drive on highways stretched beneath

Clouds puffing out in every direction.

I stopped, the road map in my heart suddenly without a trail,

I had come home west of home.

We touched souls somewhere south of the Grand Canyon,

Each keeping a tight rein on the sloshing mind fears

That screamed how crazy we were to the sunset-lighted sky.

And you welcomed me gently into your world, west of home.

 

Nancy M. Hill © 3 October 2002

 

{Easy Love}{I Hate T. S. Eliot}{Opposite Walls}{Safari}{Exit Wound}

 

Safari

Brown road signs

springing

from thickets of saw grass

embraced by the foggy night airs of crickets;

I peer out the window of my Ranger into darkness

searching

your eyes,

your legs,

the sway of your hips,

any sign to point me to you.

Nancy M. Hill ©  3 October 2002

{Easy Love}{I Hate T. S. Eliot}{Opposite Walls}{West of Home}{Exit Wound}

 

Exit Wound

I auctioned my days and bought years, you peppering at my soul

like gunflashed powder grains shot into moonless cave shadows.

I willed my eyes unseeing, my mouth unspeaking.

Hearses paused for me outside the cell while I outlived my time,

A ghost apologizing to the wolves.

You painted the cave walls. You sat with the dead, every movement shackled.

You offered me bridles and bits and four howling winds to decorate

This gall-festered lesion of fettering fears.

Unraveling copper (tasting metallic blood) umbilicus,

The rescue mission cut me free. . .the exit wounds are slow to heal.

Nancy M. Hill © 3 October 2002

{Easy Love}{I Hate T. S. Eliot}{Opposite Walls}{West of Home}{Safari}