AND MORE POETRY

The Beast and the Girl

He had the longest hair and a fist the size of two hands,

She was copper smooth with the brightest smile.

You can never tell with love. A simple smell. Eye contact across a room. The taste of rum and coke falling over a glass of ice. The sudden change in tempo. The way a voice can carry.

He worked in the coal mines. Thick dust and sweaty. Fingernails old with the darknesss of underground labor.

She worked uptown as a model.

They met and that was that. A party at the Hyatt, Christmastime, the line of men asking her to dance too long for him to even try, and he watched and waited and he heard her say no over and over. He thought not to try, but try he did, and she said, “Yes,” surprising him.

Their first dance was five songs long. He did not know how to listen to music and she found his movements charming. He was soon red and out of breath. This too she found amusing.

“We’ve danced long enough,” she said.

“The song isn’t over,” he answered.

And she pulled him off the dance floor, explained about the music and the five songs and that was the beginning.

Words: Michael H. Brownstein

Moon Pulse

His fingers hold the weight of the moon and all of its fullness, all of the madness in the world, every counter to sanity every thirty days,

Blood rising through the werewolf, the wolfman, the dragon tamer, the killer of lizards, the lovers of osmosis.

Yet he cannot let go. Moonlight knows nothing of the sun’s heat, nothing of a snow burn, nothing of the scars binding one enemy to another.

But he can hear its frantic heartbeat faster, faster, faster until--

Dawn wakes the blue sky with a whisper and the full moon slips away into the shadows.

Words: Michael H. Brownstein
Music and video: Two Feathers aka Korey Brownstein