Confession

i ran my hands across
your sweaty naked
breasts
stopping only
briefly
at your nipples
swollen
sticky
freezer burnt
gumdrop's

dismissed

shoulder
smoke
you've finished with me
and begun working a
marlboro.

i keep the souls
of twelve
catholic priests
trapped
in a shoe box
under the bed
for moments like this
when i lay naked with a
woman who hates me for
loving her
and i have enjoyed it

i must confess.
i must confess.


Michael Lorne Leard

90 words, no more.

Tonight I write to picture you,
arrange words to resemble lips,
margins as braids.
I write skin - set in spectrum soft serif.
Black type on crisp white brings clarity,
I know this now.

Spanish guitar does this to me,
on nights like this - leaves me lingering
in hallucination.

I want to write your eyes looking at me, through me,
I'm out of words -
(this was meant to be a short piece,
90 words, no more)
leaving you blind on the page, unfinished,
and slipping slowly from memory.


Michael Lorne Leard (published in Quills, summer 2005)

Calm for a time

at Midnight
change came with
silence in its pocket
the shake and shiver of fear
the usefulness of loss its anthem
as it approached

i found salvation in
wild of thought
splashed to page
a slather - rabid mouth rain
honesty expelled as words
and I am
for a time
calm

another midnight
i preen you
a bouquet of flowers
unwieldy
i beg you stubbornly to a
vase you’ll never comfortably fit
nor would ever wish to
that’s the Gasoline in the sugar
strange therapy

touching your anger
i call you poem
give you a title
a purpose
and though I know
i have no right to wish for anything more
i sit facing the falling sun
and am
for a time
calm


Michael Lorne Leard