Dusty Calcote Poetry

I saw your oceans,

The way they met the shoreline,

Moving with Passion.

There was a stone in

The same bag as my childhood,

It’s weight has lost me.

I hope that one day

The shore will meet my best throw,

And I’ll remember.

I had a dream that I found you.
I was walking alone when your trail met mine.

“I’m glad I found you.” you said
“So am I”
“My trail was getting lonely.” you said
“So was mine.”

Words couldn’t stand up
To the way our smiles stretched, contagiously,
Reaching further than the cracks forming under our feet,
I knew who you were before the ice broke.
You held my hand like a jumprope
And we danced
Through wheat fields golden.
Picking up loose ends like flowers,
And tying them like the knots in our bellies.
I lay you down in time with the sun
In a field of grass up to our shoulders whispering, “closer”
Love, I can feel closure
In the composure of your hips,
The hush of your finger across my bottom lip,
Soft breathe on your kiss tells me love was never a myth

We wondered if the trees
Could hear over our swooning.

If the anticipation felt by the sun
For the moon’s bloom meant anything,

Your patience is the night.
My heart is a waning crescent.
Trace the stars on my back and watch the way they turn over
I swell and fade just about as often as the moon does.
Just don’t toss your matches every time the tide breaks,
Because I’ve burnt the wick down to my fingertips
Trying to keep the lantern by my bedside burning.
Dance me,
Like a candlestick in the dark,
Melt my palms into the shape of your greeting,
Feel the slack of my waves lapping over your landmass,
They crash like an apology for the days I disappear.
And for the days I swallow you whole.

I wake up to the sound of empty bedsheets
Tuned to what seems to be
The slack of your ardor still stuffed in my memory.
The wind cracks my shutters blindly
As if cackling at the uncertainty
That I’ll ever keep your stars under my covers.
Rollover and curse the sun for making me a martyr,
For seeing you flee my sheets like fever dreams

Your patience is a lighthouse.
My heartache is rowing.
If I never find you, leave a light on.
Don’t stay up waiting for me to find myself
Standing on the front porch of your honesty,
Knocking at your thought of my presence.
When I get there remind me,
That my hands will always find you.

I once tried to follow a single thread on a ball of twine;
Around and around, in and outside of itself,
I never found the end of it.

This small gem was infinite

It starts in the Sacrum,
A patient push of innocence,
Let it spin you like the best record player you ever heard.
Let it hold you like a needle on a wire.
Feel your spine hum like a summer night.
Hear the bore of your lungs like bag pipes,
Let the universe sit just above you,
Just as it’s always been,
Just above your head.
And rest assured Mother Nature will surely keep you fed,
Because when the lens is clean man knows not of death,
But of the softest melody of things,
The steady pull of wire and strings
That saw the stars when they were birthing us.

Sit in silence with your palms open-upward
Forgive every thought that enters,
Then let it go.
Hear the earth flow like rivers in your ears
Like your circulatory system was an ocean
Reflected when you’re near with it.
Step close to it.
Dip your big toe in.
Swirl it around and see the way the fish swim
Stop the chatter and start listening to the choir singing,
So quietly singing.

I’ve seen a million one dollar bills
Featuring a million and one George Washingtons
With faces painted by ballpoint pens.

Most of the time he develops ink black attachments;
Fancy hairdo’s and mustaches,
Silly hats and eyepatches and I’m ok with that.

But just once I’d like to write your name on a hundred dollar bill,
Take it to the bank and tell the teller I want it all back in singles,
So I can stand under a streetlight
And pay strangers to listen to stories about this girl I know.

She made me feel like a hundred bucks, I’d say.
Like I wasn’t some schmuck
Making friends with lady luck for the night,
But like I played my cards right and the chips are stacked.
Like all is fair in love and war and my guns are packed.

So we played black jack with a deck of laugh tracks,
Hit it off like peeling back 21 year old nap sacks was something abstract,
Took off down the strip in a mad dash,
You were all hips and I was all but cashed
So I let the night last as long as you’d allow me to
Closed your door without a kiss,
Out of money aside from a pocket full of poker chips
But no one gives a flip about my coin stories.

When I call the next morning no one answers.
Seems a night full of chance has turned into beggars
The chips I stacked in my pockets turned to anchors
I’ve got my hands and feet tied up in the same knots as my tongue,
Walked the plank without a word of resistance
I always knew I’d never stop taking a gamble on you
But the house always wins and I’m tired of going home broken
So I’ll let myself sink this time.
And what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas so I’ll come back from time to time
But I’m done taking my chances on taking it all home with me.

So I’ve decided to create a separate blog for artwork, and I need some friendly fellow tumblr ans to help me get some followers, so go check it out and tell your friends!

www.dustycalcoteart.tumblr.com

I’ll post a small collection at first and then gradually start adding more as they come.

-Much appreciated

I want to hear you speak words like flowing water.
I want to see you shine like the glow in your smile.
Let me dance you like a candlestick in the dark,
So that I might find my way home,
Just don’t stop burning.
Just don’t stop glowing,
Just don’t stop showing me that we are still children,
Dancing in wheat fields golden,
Picking up loose ends like flowers
And tying them like the knots in our bellies,
Until the beginnings of broken sorrows
Blur like bokeh caught in perfect aperture.

I once knew a God
Like the backs of the hands that blinded me.

His rings fit my fingers like a marriage,
And I could see the perfections of the heavens
Strung out like star-scapes on the inside of my eyelids
When I closed them.
I was close to him.
I fell in love with all the gospel hymns and river bends
Where we baptized brothers and sisters from sin.
Taught to rub the skin raw until it bleeds again,
So that when the skies open up
And the sound of trumpets starts shaking Jerusalem,
The truths in my veins and the specs in my skin
Won’t show up under the black lights.

Hope God forgets about my dark nights
When I was face down in revelation debating destiny
For the bible tells me so I must agree
But these days I seem to wander

All

over

the

place..

.
I wonder,
Why was I so surprised when the curtains ripped,
When the lead dancer slipped,
And the extra’s went crashing into the orchestra pit,
Just as the director calls for Romans and a Crucifix.

Mary wants to know why her boy can’t just be a carpenter,
Joseph swears he’ll never give up another son,
Eve can’t stop complaining of hunger pains,

And Jesus is sitting quietly.
He runs his fingers tenderly
Over the scars his father gave him
In the middle of his hands.

Staring blankly at his sandals,
Wishing he could bury them in a beach somewhere with Mary Magdalene,
He looks to the stage hand placing a band of bloody thorns over his head
And says

You know I never really wanted to do this.
I mean I’ve always loved helping people,
But the world won’t get any better if they can’t help themselves.

Shocked, the girls hands freeze.
She drops to her knees, looks up to her King
And with the stillness of the answer to the question
she never thought she’d get to ask
She says,

So why did you do it?
Why didn’t you leave?

I guess I was afraid of what my father would say
He mumbled.

God damn it
I just couldn’t bear to break
That he’d missed the point of his own story
Got wrapped up in all the glory and couldn’t let it go
Sent me here to sing songs about the holy ghost.
But I just can’t hold things like I used to
So let me tell you the story my eyes are telling me
And hope you believe it.

Because I can see all of you.
Bursting like brilliance on in the back of my eyelids.
Your beams are straight lined for my pupils.
Captured by my iris,
And shattered in the cross over
Into a thousand particles of light.
Where they are burned
Into
me.

Swallowed in skin
Sending signals to my senses
Spiraling electric currents of kin through my body.
I keep your memories locked away inside this suit of armor
Guarded by skulls and upside down cross bones,
Because you don’t need religion
When you can see for yourself this miracle we call human.

I don’t hate your God,
I just think all Jesus wanted to say
Was that you’re worth more than this.
I hope Mary was most proud of the carpentry her son did.
I hope Joseph knew things about Jesus his birth father didn’t,
And I hope that when Eve ate the apple she was satisfied
Knowing she didn’t need to trust anything but her own appetite,

See I fell in love with Gospel hymns and riverbeds.
But with Oceans like wine and Earth like bread.
Forget God I’ve got a stomach that needs to be fed
So let me feast on your beauty,
Raise a toast to circumstance,
And say cheers,
To being human.

If I knew the things I do now
When we were rolling in bedsheets like tap water,
Sinking,
I could have told you I love you back.
But sometimes we’re blinded by the backsplash
Of swerving ocean and shot glass
With late nights and cut class,
We were changing.
The roads were rocky.
We spent too much time tumbling through our back trails
Trying to cover footprints we both knew didn’t need to be there.
Baby,
Walk with me away from this.

Burn a match and watch the smoke hiss like lullabies,
Singing, this ship slowly sinking.
Don’t wake the harbor with your questions.
Don’t give the hurricane a reason to get you.
The waters are calm and the sharks haven’t smelled the blood yet
So whatever you do don’t hold your breathe,
Because darling you promised me you wouldn’t do that anymore,
And when the ship finally went down I saw you,
Hanging from the mast with the sails ripped.
But while I was busy signaling safety ships
Making sure we never got our signals mixed with distance,
I saw the leap you took.
Away from me and every book I could have filled with poetry for you,
Falling towards the water with a prose that knows no boundaries.

So I threw a key in after you.
To the notes I’ve been keeping inside my teeth,
I try not to grind away my memories while I sleep,
But don’t let me keep you.
Don’t let these lock boxes of mine fool you,
When my teeth rot from holding all the truth back
And all my message in a bottles rattle their way to my voice box
Don’t think I won’t stomach my words.
The hangover might hurt but I’d rather not disturb you
I’m just a little drunk from all the sailing.
You see I took a few shots of Jerry with Davy Jones
Because I’d rather be cursing lock boxes with someone who knows
What it’s like to feel the ocean in your ventricles.
Swerving madly with the way your tide pulls
Than be alone with you,
In a tight room just trying to hold these bottles back.
Clenching my teeth so I don’t have to tell you,
That I love you,
For the leap you took.
The way your body broke the water
Made me take look at my own reflection.

So I decided to write a poem for you,
About a boy who uses the truths in his teeth
To never speak the same mistakes twice.
I might leave the harbor with ripped sails
But don’t worry.
The water isn’t deep enough to drown me
And the sharks haven’t smelled the blood yet.
Besides, Calypso left Davy for somebody else,
And I’ve got some plans to see the ocean with an old friend.