death – novamartinpoetry.com

She Sees

She sees I’m looking
for love.
And she’s scared.
Scared that someone could
look for love that bad,
that the world could make
someone so hopeful,
though so needy,
held on this cosmic ocean,
a sand grain
whirled before infinity and
annihilation.
She sees the annihilation
that my heart beats
every time she looks at me,
into my eyes,
and she sees all that’s been
lost and all that will be lost.
She’s scared, so she stops
looking and forgets in time.
But then time forgets her
and everything else.

Poems

The Cats Who Loved Me

I miss the two cats who

loved me deeply.

I tried my best to do the same

for them and I believe I loved them

deeply as well.

They’re gone now.

They’re both dead.

And I live alone.

I talk to them still from time

to time.

Empty voices in a wooden house.

I feel them here with me.

Or want to feel them here.

Or need to feel them here.

Maybe you’ve had a pet or

a lover or a loved one before

who’s no longer there;

either deceased or moved on?

Maybe you can relate to this

kind of vacant feeling?

And maybe, just as I,

you still hope and believe

in something…

because you have been loved

bigly.

Poems

One Transwoman’s Way

I will grow old and die.

My body might slowly

lose its life and energy.

I will lose my beauty and

my youth.

My revival won’t go on

forever.

I will be in pain, be tired,

feel ragged and worn out.

I could die sooner, from a

sudden illness, accident, or

heart attack.

But however this inevitability

happens,

I will have lived life on my terms,

with joy, believing in kindness

and leaning into other

people’s joy

regardless of what passes

around and within me

and how my fate peters out.

Poems

Asleep And Alive

When you

are asleep

I go and

look at

pretty girls

behind a

bar counter

and watch as they

slice the air

with the curves of

their bodies.

And when I am

softly buzzed

I go home,

roll up a joint

and smoke it,

then drive out to that

country road

that heads northeast

out of town

and blast

Pink Floyd’s

“Great Gig In The Sky”

while I think about

my dead cat

and remember how

he was there

to watch me

transition into

a woman

the last year

he was alive.

Poems

My Forests & My Wizards

My forests and my wizards
lead me in my days.
The living network
and the Dead.
My days are bound before
the sunshine’s chords,
the spirit clouds,
the respirations of oaks.
The calls, the draws,
herald my fate,
their listenings and their vibrations,
become my tongue,
my way, my steps forward.
My heart is like the forest’s roots
and my breath is the endless vapor
of the unliving,
their expanse across all time,
it shapes and fills my
now-woman body,
and rings my now-woman soul.
These curves
do the work
they were meant to do
… thanks to their conception
from the woods,
the lichens,
and the moss
as my ghost loves
hummed on.

Poems

Scent Of An Oak

The scent of an oak
can heal you.
It’s presence is now and forever.
The time of a tree
stops and continues.
Ways that we mostly cannot be
though the universe curls its mystery
all around and all around us.
Weep, weep, weep,
eternally child-like human.
Kiss the hard, tight bark with
soft lips and
touch the trunk with
tender hands fated to age.
Outliving the creatures of
the forest,
she breathes so much slower
but deeply gives her respirations
to all those kinds of Earthlings,
the kind and the despots,
taking their spirits
up to her tops
and lifting them to the winds
of the sun,
whether in hope, metaphysics,
or death,
sail them on to white-light and
never-ending kingdoms.

The scent of an oak
can heal you.

So breathe, breathe, breathe,
kiss her hard, tight bark.

Poems

Melting Time

The snow will be melting soon.

Then it will be gone.

You and I will be different
after the snow is gone.

And we will not have walked upon
the snow together,
hand in hand
after the snow is gone.

Poems

When You Kiss Me

When you kiss me,
yes, it’s luscious, succulent, sensual,
calming, inspiring, breathtaking.
But what I haven’t said
is that when you kiss me
I can see that kiss on my or your
deathbed,
if we get that chance.
It seems to fit there.
And I’ve never felt or seen
anyone’s kiss in that manner.
So I’m not sure exactly what to call it
when I feel that when we kiss.
I guess that’s what I’ll call this poem.
I’ve never known love where
I could or wanted to see
myself or the other person
in elderly life or terminally ill,
but for some reason I have with you.
I don’t know why, I just have.
I mean, I know why I never experienced
this before.
It is, or was, called fear of love.
But I don’t know why now,
I’m experiencing it with you.
Maybe you know?