All posts in verse

Dearest daughter of all daughters, beautiful apple of these eyes
It is with much longing I that write you through blurried words and lines
My transgressions and digressions and diversions are allayed
That you may hurry to me quickly that my heart not lose its way

In the darkness I sit loudly while thoughts and images are my home
In the light I scream in silence amidst a crowd I’m so alone
Calamities and tragedies, if advance me to you then I embrace
These forty lashes and weeping gnashes just to finally caress your face

Impatience does not become me but then neither does your void
Deficiency of you and me has made me apprehensive and annoyed
Yet I repent this near lament for you are worthy of finer muse
And that I’m stuck on temporary, well, there’s really no excuse

True love waits in haunted attics and the most unlikely of all spans
Dearest bride, begin this circle synonymous to our unbroken hands
Strangers, suitors, lovers, and less that may delay our rendezvous
Have mercy on their souls, dear Lord; I commit their souls to you

I will rub your tired feet and rest your weary head upon my breast
I will hear your unfiltered thoughts and massage your much-neglected neck
I will say, “I do” and do I will and will do what you will
I miss you, need you, want you, plead that soon you be revealed

Dearest heart, I save the best I am and the man I have yet to be
That I might carry you over the threshold and consummate what is eternal thee
I intercede now for the seeds of us unborn and/or already here
To bounce our babe upon my lap or to show our teen how not to fear

Firmaments, expanse, and destiny declare it’s written before its played
Before seeded in the womb while being fearfully and wonderfully made
Dearest Love, come to me quickly, tarry not I do implore
One day I will look in you deeply saying, “He encontrado mi amor.”

love always and © 2006 kenn bivins*

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* While this piece has a romantic beauty about it, it was written one Saturday evening at the realization of a bitter loneliness that I was experiencing at the time. The original title in my journal was “suicide note” but I figured that to be a bit dark for most people’s sensibilities. I renamed the piece to more positively address the woman who I have yet to meet, who may one day be my Wife.

Hand in hand and flesh to flesh
Entrapped am I beneath your mesh
We take our time, breathe deep and slow
Pure ecstasy, our adagio
The clock has afforded with her chime
The sunset has deemed this is the time
Waxy, oily, balmy, wet
So unlike the runner’s sweat
Cool breeze caress our moistened skin
As I meet you, out then in
Wearing you as some dermis or suit
While suckling nectar as from rare fruit
Sip and lip and drip this wick
While flicker soft, the candles lick
Our shadows dance and lance and prance
As we are held in frenetic trance
Mellifluous is this pictured state
Onlookers would weep and salivate
Museums might have you if I were dead
So I’ll linger long and keep my head
Blessings and doorposts covered in red
God bless this bed from which was wed
I’ll feed you bread, repeat what’s said
No dread, misled, or worn down tread
Aroused from dead, once atrophied now fed
Ensnared am I betwixt your thread
Tenacious, lubricious, moist, and torrid
So much like the protected Forest
Where became my rib when I was sleep
This one I love and eternal keep
We proclaim forever, low audible pitch
Our adagio, our forever fix.

© 2006 kenn bivins

I think that if I’m nice to some stranger, he will reciprocate. Too often I’m reminded of how naive I may be in that thinking. Today I spoke to a group of obviously gay fellows in passing and got cold stares for my efforts. I wanted to pause and say something to one guy in particular who seemed to have the most disgust for my jovial greeting (I guess gay doesn’t mean happy). Instead I wrote about it. Enjoy my vent.

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Muscle-bound black and brown
No hairline with just a frown
Hail midtown
On the low be down
Pants around the ankles
Tips touch the ground
Ripped and round
Free yet bound
I said, Hi – he look around
Dude be rude
Ain’t no excuse
You all collude
Provoke this muse
Walk around
Self-loathe confound
No eye contact
No gimme a pound
Not a sound
Broken crown
Swish and swish
As fox to hound
I’ll verb your noun
I’ll loose your wound
I’ll flat your mound
I’ll help you drown
You muscle-bound
Black and brown
Low be down
Insolent clown.

(c) 2006 kenn bivins

Consciously and mindfully and fervently I make my choice
To utter a word and ardent verbs with lack absurd behind this voice
This choice to voice my choice mere hoists, my right and droit and still my choice
Rejoice I voice, fear is slain and moist neath our treads and exploits

So this choice I speak of so literally and deliberately
Is to say something others say so easily without thought or think
Or they’ll wait several moons to allege or to speak
As if the passage of time makes it truth or replete

This thing I choose to say I swear I do mean
And daily renew the vow with the signature of a keen
I feel it, I do it, I want it, don’t rue it,
I will remain true to it, tres palabras renew it

Idioms and dialects and tongues can articulate
Luminous yet simple words that linger and still emanate
Out of mouth yet in the mind and heart and being all around
Vexed, perplexed, and second-guessed, its origins still seem unfound
Enveloping the tangible and vanquishing where I once did shrink
Yielding to express my heart while acting on the words I think
Omnipresent beckoning and vertical lines exploit the voice
Unanimous and magnanimous I consciously have made my choice.

kenn bivins (c) 2006

Gravity like lead, could I be dead?
Can’t focus my mind, can’t feel my legs
Worn down to the wire and way past the treads
I’m beginning to think I’m whatever they said
Eyes half-closed, can’t get out of bed
What faces me otherwise or stands in my stead
Fills me with fear that I’m frozen to dread
What grade would I get? Is it marked up in red?
It’s getting harder to breathe, someone please call a med
I’m in a crowd full of grooms and the only unwed
Away from home for weeks and the fish haven’t been fed
Maybe manna from heaven or just molded old bread
Perspective is vigilant if I can just lift my head
No more squares to triangles or tents without pegs
I’m sure I’m not dead and my Dad has more than once said
This heavy expression is all in my head.

(c) 2006 kenn bivins

Reading an old journal entry showed how deeply someone close to me once hurt me. I chuckle at the intensity of some of my words and how I have a more sunny disposition in my writing these days. Enjoy the words of this once-angry-black-man.

Without me, she’s without kenn
Fettered, unfit, and dark within
Going nowhere and hope so slim
Too deep to tread, too vain to swim
The stench of vomit and rusted sin
And dark and dank and bleak and dim
Her dirge plays like unfamiliar hymns
No sing-alongs nor hopeful glims
Without me, no weeds are trimmed
Her moniker lies, her smile still sins
Like windows and mirrors with broken lens
Or brothers and sisters not akin
Or bleeding organs ‘neath swelling skin
The rainfall floods, the speaker is grim
Hope once had, from my grasp she rends
No apologies nor attempted mends
One day she’ll see but until then
Do cry for her for she’s just… sans kenn.

-kB!

I wrote this not too long ago and recently shared it with a friend. It had been some time since I read it and upon reading it again, it revived the feelings that wrote it… and it is Spring.
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Before autumn and you, all my countenance beheld
Was decay and the podium from whence Hope fell
Stenciled silences and empty faces would pretend,
Lifeless bodies slept ‘neath stoned etchings and then…

I hear you…as an inaudible breeze
Evident by thawing a posthumous freeze
Where once charred birds could no longer fly
I exhale before you as distant lovers sigh
These callouses once protected and fulfilled a need
These callouses now soften, am willing to bleed
To caress, to feel, to sucumb and to reel
To live therefore to heal, to be within your will.

Your will, unchilled embraces of be
Ying
and yang
and you
and me
Balanced…beautifully.

If only you’ll believe
For looking to spring we’ll plant the seed
With you, I shall be freed
Meet me in fall.

Ribbons of orange and red and sky and all
Bereshith, my Love, when we meet this fall.

kenn 2005