Category: Poems

Why do you say you love democracy?Democracy will never love you.
Yes, it feels good when you’re lonely
But don’t expect tricks for free.

-T. Weeks
(A response to “For You, O Democracy”)

The desert holds a quiet disappointment,
The loan tree, silent misplaced hope,
A jackpot almost again and again.

Do poems tell anything about the poet,
Or just the transient passion of one night?
Do they also bloom in splendid desolation?

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand”)

In a secret lonely place
Death will come to me
With a trowel not a scythe.
For what I leave is all I am
And I hope that’s fertile soil.
See the happy Sugar Skull
With blossoms and buds
Filling its empty sockets,
Painted naked bone
Vibrating in electric color,
And that long toothed grin
Cast in blooming satisfaction.

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Scented Herbage of My Breast”)

Mischievous twins before me,
Option one and option two,
Both claiming black and white,
When I see only shallow gray.

How precious such ambiguity,
For I am free to paint my path.
If the wiser twin were clear
I’d be a prisoner to propriety.

-T. Weeks
(A response to “As Adam Early in the Morning”)

• Hello?
– Oh, sorry, wrong number.
• You sound familiar.
– Really? That’s weird.
• Have you called before?
– Not that I know of.
• Hmmm, maybe I called you.
– Maybe.
• Until next time…

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Facing West
from California’s Shores”)

There’s that lonely broken survivor, nonchalant guitar,
Rowdy frets smoothed by riff upon riff of notes bent blue.

Feral anthoms sublimate into a downtown afternoon,
Liberated from the lazy watch of the faded pick guard.

Soulful impulses, puddling in my passing ear,
Rehydrate dormant victories as I walk on, a thief.

-T. Weeks
(A response to “I Heard You Solemn-Sweet Pipes of the Organ”)

Choosing what I’ll remember is like choosing what I’ll dream.
The moments, the people, the feelings, and places
Surface in a sieve, drawn from the fines of life impermanent,
A scattered totem of anecdotes pretending purpose.

I puzzle with this anagram of souvenirs tumbling inside,
Arrange and rearrange, arrange and rearrange,
With each iteration I laugh or cry or regret or feel reassured.
Oh look, a new piece, where does this one fit?

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Once I Pass’d Through a Populous City”)

Tomorrow never was,
Yesterday never will be,
Now is the universe:
This moment, thought, and me.

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Native Moments”)

Bodies massive locked
In tandem dervish arcs,
Drifting in a cosmic tide,
United on the fabric time.

More massive orbs yet,
Sitting deeply in their well
Distort the membrane,
Drawing the dancers in.

Orbit upon orbit twirling,
Dimples in the cloth
Merge in a vast funnel,
The sloped rim calling.

-T. Weeks
(A response to “I Am He That Aches with Love”)