NEXT DOOR

You're next door.
I can't heal.
You're next door.
I can't feel.

I can't write.
I can't move.
I can't mourn.

When you're feeling too hollow
to sleep or to pray,
and it ruins your day-
Please don't call me.

When you start aching
the way that you do,
For something that's real
you can burrow into-
Please don't call me.

You hand me your grief
when you find it's too heavy,
and you leave it inside me to grow.

It isn't a gift,
it's a torture device
and it renders me hollow and slow.

I have done it again
and again and again-
And I'm crazy,
I'll do it once more.

So please-
Please don't call me.
It's the last thing I'll ask.

Please don't call me when you are Next Door.

- Tess Hunt

(featured in the poetry forum 09.03.09)

reflection

my poems are short
and they are lazy.

they are nothing more
than a metaphor
for me.

- Tess Hunt

(added 03.21.09)

punishment

forgive me, father,
for I have punned.
it isn't rumor.

they line up ready,
they are so easy-
the whores of humor.

- Tess Hunt

(added 03.21.09)

Death Gossip

Love doesn't kill us.
Only death does that.
Love is a very tough bird.

She can live in cities,
in the desert,
in a morgue.

When death kills a branch,
she is the tree.
When death takes the tree,
she's the forest.

Love is a very tough bird.
And when she croons
there is a moment-
when time itself forgets which way to go.

- Tess Hunt

(featured in the poetry forum 03.21.09)

Funny

Of them I'm known,
the saddest men
are those we call
'Comedian.'

- Tess Hunt

(added 03.21.09)

Over

How do you know?
Is there an angel who carries it away?
Is there a time when the dust of my thoughts
will cease to settle around your image?

Is it a moment,
or a weekend,
or an orgasm...

or is it the gradual realization that it never will be.
Over.

- Tess Hunt

(added 03.21.09)