Sample Poems by Bobbi Lurie
Traveling North
Though you are dead now. Though I walk covered in dust through this strip mall in Iowa. I remember the collection of tendencies that led me here. The flat landscape. The blazing heat of cornfields. The landscape and body are one sensation.
Everywhere the books of atmospheric pressure. This book smells like miracles. That you were the chapter. That I was the slaughter. That sheep, my inheritance. That you were the shepherd who lead me here. Your hand reaching out to strike. Your hand reaching up to brush the hair from your brow. I never knew which. I never knew when. Your hand.
The cornfields are memories. You can not remember anything. The road is filled with dust haze. Your life is. Your death. I can not find it in this landscape. This collection of tendencies.
Though you are dead now. Though your hand would reach to strike. Though your hand would reach up to brush. The hair from your brow. Though light penetrates this. It is flat. It is frozen in self-image. I must resist the symbiotic wish. I must void the infantile condition. That region. This region. The atmospheric pressure in the vicinity of living.
Though you seemed invincible when your body moved. Though the way your hand. Would reach to your brow. Even though dead. Even though each wave of light penetrates. Even though only seems to slaughter. Sheep of inheritance.
Wake up at 4 a.m. Walk out naked to the porch. Skin shimmering. The way the word porch clings. The creaky swing. Dark lake of the body. What is always erased. The way your hand would reach to your brow and wipe your hair away. And it was always your hair. Always yours. And your face jutted into the landscape. This nowhere. This clicking sound of insects. Late summer.
Your “I” So Much Like Mine
Resting in bed she spreads her perfume like a rumor which mingles with the medicines inside her. She watches the trees. The trees fill her eyes with green. After she says this she breathes soft then sleeps, perhaps dreams. It is not for me to say. It was December when I went with her and heard but now it is June again.
The young physician himself admits to his inability to control dosage. He is nervous about the surgery. “Our genetics are against us,” he says as she sleeps. “A rose hip by any other name…” I find myself saying but what I am thinking is “how much forgiveness is sufficient? When you reveal what you need from the person who hurt you…”
“Your mouth saying, “I” so much like mine,” I whisper to her, “afraid of being erased as my “I” is.” I fragment short prayers, picking at the worded wounds. I lie down quietly beside her and try to be a prayer.
This Amputated Place is My Soul, Lord
Lord, preserve me, Lord, I am faltering
Lord, I am Lost in a skull of thoughts, Lord
I am drenched in dreamless hours of sleep
Oh my brain, Lord, oh what flashes before me, Lord
For my heart if you say that it is
If You let me feel it, Lord, if you let me See
Beneath my image is a shimmering Brilliance
Less terrible than whatever I imagine, Lord
Can you feel it, Lord, with no place to let me In
I cannot be present but am made to long for, made
To move my tireless hands
It’s a suffering, Lord
Suffering without a tongue, without a song
I am invisible, Lord, but never to myself
To the otherness, yes, Lord
Can’t you collapse me, Lord, can’t you take me deeper Into
Wherever you hover and gleam in the Innermost Light
Can’t You take me with You, can’t You take me Out of, Lord
Hiding in my nightgown where I fester at my desk, Lord
Sitting and re-writing my life, Lord, it is unread, Lord
All is unread where my Soul is most Illusion
Fill me in, Lord, please fill this amputated place
Fill it with your favoritism, Lord, make me
An ailment not to be treated lightly, Lord
This amputated place is my Soul, Lord
Dear Lord, mysterious as you are, Lord
Though I fabricate my features in public
I dwell in Darkness, Lord
Darkness where all is shadowing
Where the fabric of memory is a patterning soon to be lost