Lana Bella poems:

Lana Bella

1) IN THE BREW OF LEISURE

from the outside,

the house was painted rose salmon 

with blue shutters,

in what silver stains lived another life,

I stared at my shadow on the wall,

its gaze traveled where hued runnel bled into 

the yolk-sun overhead,

then earthward

to a pair of feet standing in the brew of leisure,

what wonder drug was this

when I let idleness become a river of two suns, 

one was the leaving moon drawn closed and dark,

the other, the wakeful one,

seared imprints where my shadow 

gave chase into breath's filter, 

conspicuously near,

just once beneath this heat's imprint,

I would like to be 

on the side of a place where leisure went to hide, 

and not be felt or seen--

2) AN IMPOSSIBLE WOUND

an autumn pine cone laden of sap drove

down my prayer balloon, then inside my 

fingers it stretched heavy like a wrecking

ball yawn, her mouth, red and upturned, 

snapped my impossible wound in two as 

a forked bone,

I held within the songs she sang to me, 

remembering an ocean parting between 

us now--her sand-paper words that still 

rapped my knuckles into bend hastened 

like a storm tearing through my flesh, 

I stood on a tale which went untold, dim 

in the autumn breeze that traveled the 

narrow turns of her cinched chiffon robe,

it was a brief indulgence, I knew, for the

end came ever so keen and fine, 

her gaze rose over miles of shifting planes, 

and upon the fickle skin of these nimbus, 

my love restraint laid down in mourning, 

orphaned like a shrapnel dispersing along 

the unforgiving soil,

I became a stone lay unobstructive, stoic

to her leaving over then round the carved 

landscape, even when everything that grew 

around me pinged of twin emotions: her 

baptismal stamp and my elegant sorrow,

so wherever or however long I will live, I will

tuck myself carefully away in a place only

known to me, without her--

3) WHEN HE IS MOST LOST

an old man wraps himself in familiar threads 

of the garden's atmosphere,

with his bad hips and worse eyesight,

he folds in two as if a bent dollar bill, 

it is early spring,

sunlight and birds make their descent

below the window sills,

where he is knuckled deep in dirt,

a handful of clouds and blue daffodil

plunk down besides his burnt-brown skin,

he breathes them in,

leaving shadows like an angel's nimbus,

looking about the garden,

he wonders how little things like bird seeds

and fertilizer

could release the pulses of emotion,

when he is most lost.

4) CATCH PHRASE

if I could reach out, 

and take hold of

the first word you spoke as it was then,

because at some point 

I became just an empty catchphrase

that traced your skid-marks

with my eyes--

I let your ghost settled the weight 

on my body,

a thin stale leash of smoke

tethered me to the earth

as I dug with my hands through 

the russet dirt,

for your messages 

from the grave--

5) DEAR SUKI: LETTER J FOR JEANS

Dear Suki: Los Angeles, December 2nd, somehow, just now, 

I find a memory of you in that old pair of blue jeans, the one 

that tears awfully at the knees and fades from front to end. 

My melancholia, this, when there is nothing to lean back to 

unless I am holding on to some visible threads with your 

invisible glue, how steady the ligaments, how imperishable 

the starch. This may seem silly but it is not my intention to 

make you sad, at any rate, I think I will don your blue jeans 

over my wool leggings, to add an extra layer to ward off this

December cold. So that my stirring moves just so against the 

memory of your body.