The Peach is a Damn Sexy Fruit

the Peach is a damn sexy fruit
if I could love a fruit like a woman
I would love a Peach
strong but soft
sweet but tart
the fuzz tickles my nose
and the sticky dewiness
is finger-licking good

you can keep your apples
Mr. Johnny Appleseed
that turn brown in minutes

you can have your bitter grapefruit
the blinder of eyes at breakfast

tempt me not tomátoes or tomătoes!
cucumbers and zucchinis
those transvestite fruit
masquerading as vegetables!
for shame!
be true to yourselves!
do not deny that you were born as
and will always be fruit!

Coconuts require hammers, screwdrivers, or stones
and I am not into fetishes

Raspberries are too fragile
and can not love my volatility

Strawberries went corporate and sold out
now just fruits of the Man

Bananas are too exotic, too high maintenance
I have no patience for their ego

Cherries are but pop culture prostitutes
in everything from couch syrup to antacids to condoms

give me truth!
give me tenderness!
give me consistency!
give me a Peach!
give me Peaches!
give me millions of Peaches
Peaches for me
millions of Peaches
Peaches for free

you can eat a Peach voraciously
diving into juicy goodness
dribbling down your chin,

or eat it slowly in slices – one by one
you can nip off the skin
bit by tender bit
in a slow seduction
and tongue and suck it to the end

or you can rub that Peach into your face
eating it like a drunk starving monkey
and leave the orgasmic dew
on your cheeks and lips for hours

when complete,
no matter how consumed
you have the core
as a reminder that we are all the same
beneath it all
when our flesh, youth, and vitality are gone

yet...

you can bury the Peach core
to be born again
because the Peach embodies hope
because the Peach embodies life
the Peach is a message
the Peach is sensual
the Peach is you and me
the Peach is a damn sexy fruit

Copyright 2003 © Christopher Fox Graham

Letter to my tribe

You never know
what may happen
how fate plays games with our lives
rolls the dice
cut chords or ties them
speed bumps, heart attacks, or heart breaks
the way the words and worlds
shake this fragile etch-a-sketch existence

sixty years is nothing
in the blink of the eye of the earth
cities gone in minutes
remember Pompeii?
and yet we have trouble
with 4-letter words
like miss, love,
and hope
it takes holidays, accidents, and funerals,
to bring souls together
like we were meant to be,
to say what we should have said
when we had the chance
before we stand at graves
or on seashores
or staring out into open skies
with wrinkled eyes,
whispering, "remember when?"

in days before chat-room romances
Technicolor campfires
depressed fireside chats,
before the pomp-and-circumstance of the parliaments,
royal courts, basilicas, cathedrals
before churches
before warrior houses
before town halls,
kin gatherings,
and the great rituals

before it all
the family,
the campfire,
the speaker
was the word,

the thought beneath all our skins,
that although we could never conquer it all,
or understand it all
or even see it all
we could know each other's words,
know their kiss, touch, and caress
and enjoy the birth
dancing, loving, living, dying, and death
like we were meant to be
a tiny tribe
on a tiny world
where we all share a common name
and the word

Cut out my heart and leave it in a gin and tonic on top of a Dave Matthews Band cd

This is beauty,
the way skin bounces off clouds
shouted to a thickened sky
of a heaven too tired to listen
and I feel a step closer to god
when i contemplate our creation

you know we were made in the image
of a drunk deity
who didn't know her/is right from her/is left
tried to shorten our days with death and plague
but we kept coming back
till s/he woke in a hangover
and realized what s/he'd done
was a little, um, crazy at the time
a little short on the why’s and how’s
of how we came to be
left us between two dead soldiers of Sam Adams light
on her/is best friend's neighbor's kitchen counter
'cause s/he was watching her/is figure
tries to hide her/is face in the bar
when we come staggering through,
asking to use the phone.
and begging the bartender to serve us the wine
of the vine that softened judas' loyalty
then asking the gravedigger to bury us
close enough to count raindrops
of the days till judgment
when pulled from the soil like treasure
we can recall our days before it all went downhill
and convince the final judge
that we're worth sparing
worth including in the finality
then sing a song
soft enough to make the towers crumbles,
tarnish those pearly gates
and force the whole mess
to come crashing down
when heaven falls
the boom will resound through history
in our heartbeats,
and the echoes will come 72 per minute
there,
put your hand on your sternum
can you feel the echo in your chest?
the end has already happened
now we're just words arching toward that final
"the end"
before the acknowledgements,
index,
and afterward from the publisher,
characters on a page.
and tonight,
I glimpse the reader's eyes

Wanderer

Side stepping the truth
The poet kept his feet moving
Across the steel and stone
Wandering the back of the fallen colossus
Searching for words that wouldn’t bite back
Like the mosquitoes of the world he came from
Words that didn’t suck blood from his skin
Words that didn’t drain him
Words that didn't itch when they left him
He walked through open fields of wild sentences
Moving in great herds like buffalo,
And packs of phrases hunting lonely consonants
Down by the water’s edge
Clichés clinging to tree branches
And the skies filled with flocks of vowels
Flying south for the winter
He found only one word that didn’t harm him
One word he could keep as a pet
Hold it close to his chest as he explored
Until it grew and became his lover
One word that asked for nothing but affection
And to be kissed softly by moonlight
He knew one day it would kill him
Slit his throat while he slept
Or drown him down by the river
Where fragments swam alongside words
Of forgotten vocabularies
But he was happy
As long as it loved him

How Do You Feel?

i feel like a skin tree
roots that uproot at a moments notice,
limbs that stretch toward to sun
warmed in the morning kiss of sunrise
fingers entending beyond imagination
and from their tips
ink drips new blood
thoughts falling like acorns
to bury themselves in the minds of man
to sprout new poet trees
new poet-trees
new poetries
new poetry
in the image of me

I Want to Conquer the Sun

these hands stay idle too long in a day
they should be freed from this wage slavery
so they can lewis-and-clark the crevasses of my skull
and pull out the stories hiding in the shadows
but without a reason, why write?
bored soldiers grow bellies without a war
the sound of shrapnel and artillery
keeps the skin thin and trim
just like the art of this poet
gnashing teeth and cutting words
the better to invade minds with,
i'm not content with norman beaches
or the hills of anzio
i want to conquer the sun