Poetry from PW Covington

Modesty

Boy-cut panties, crumpled on the floor

Weapons stashed behind the door

Crucifix bedroom wall backdrop for

The sexting pic sent to you,

Un-asked Modesty is a luxury

Hypocrisy

When life is exposed

For all to see

These are poems that never

Had a chance

Shot down, on some city street

At 25

By scared-to-death police

still alive

Scarlet letters and prison terms

Credit scores and carpet-burns

Poetry bombed to bloody shreds

While waiting on friends

At a coffee shop

that never came

Give your life away

Every chance you get

Like Allen Ginsberg’s

Marijuana cigarettes

What you don’t give away

gets taken, anyway

Forsaken and destroyed

Poems picked up

Roaming free in neighborhoods

With no tags

Then, out of mercy

gassed away

Like modesty, like secrets, like shame

What we give away

Comes back again

Like oceans turn to rain

 

San Francisco Postcards

I want to mail you San Francisco postcards

Postmarked Philadelphia, PA

 

I want to lay with you in Dallas

Curtains open,

Neon skyline glowing on your skin

I want to find you waiting there

At baggage claim In lingerie,

Damp thighs and hungry eyes

I want to fuck you from behind in Denver

In some beat joint on Colfax

And grab and squeeze your neck

As your Corpus Christi climax

Washes over us

I want to sit with you in dimming light

On a porch that faces south

And speak candidly, with humor

Of lovers we have found

Taken, made, or used

Let us celebrate the carnal,

With coffee

And consecrate what’s true

San Francisco postcards last forever

The postmarks never do

Spirals

I dig the perspective of poets

Elder professors and age addled

Heads

Beats that somehow survived

The scars of their lives

And sit now

To write

In public places

Since empty nest homes

Have become too lonely

Those that know it is an endurance race

On a circular track

Perhaps a spiral

Perhaps downward

Grey eyebrows furrowed

Above eyes that have never

Stopped searching the horizon

For a sunset or sunrise of beauty

I dig those with no more answers

That can easily see past

The next November election

That can love without

Wagering their own Identity