California Dreamin’
California Dreamin’
Cali was a cute little surfer girl from Santa Ana.
She was about this tall, had a sweet laugh, great smile,
deliriously long sun-bleached hair,
and a nice, tight little IM.
We liked to pretend we were in love.
She used to send me photos
of herself in the Victoria’s Secrets dressing room
at the mall with her iPhone
while she was sitting in Physics class.
“There’s more where that came from,”
she would wink.
She took me for a drive one night—
just her, her iPhone, and I.
We ended up out on the beach where
she lay me out beside her on a blanket, flipped me open,
and began texting with a warm, seductive voice
into my ear.
I thought I was roaming.
“Touch me—here,” she teased.
And forwarded me a photo of the inside of her thigh.
I was all thumbs.
I moved my hand slowly up the inside of her LCD.
She giggled as I started caressing her Instagram application.
“Do you love me?” She purred.
“I thought we were pretending.” I replied.
Charles Coakley Simpson
Ghazal
Ghazal
for Triin
Longing is the agony of the nearness of the distant. — Martin Heidegger
The wind caresses me in the winter of the night with the nearness of the distant,
while memory wraps me, warmly, like a blanket of wool, with the nearness of the distant.
Your eyes: grey stars , a pallor in the darkness that leads me through the absence,
a chiaroscuro, an unfolding of shadows, where I meet you in the nearness of the distant.
There, standing with the crows, your hair windswept with the color of the wheat,
I walk alongside you through the forest of the trees of moss in the nearness of the distant.
A great, golden spire rises up out of the fog, and a snow lays lazily on rooftops.
A sea embraces a sleepy fishing village as my windmills turn in the nearness of the distant.
The wind caresses me in the winter of the night, and yet I hear the singing of bees.
I am the sparrow caged by the snow laden limbs of its tree, but I will meet you—always,
In the nearness of the distant.
Charles Coakley Simpson
Nesting
Nesting
We carve a nest in the wheat behind your parent’s house and lay there at dusk waiting for the stars to fill the indigo void left by the setting sun speaking in half-whispers the tender sincerity of your words filling my head with the thought of what it would be like to kiss you pulling your hair gently behind your ear the Harvest moon shining softly on the nape of your neck your mother calling out for us in the darkness the cicadas singing their summer song from the shadows of the trees which line the river of my no return.
Charles Coakley Simpson
Fate
Fate
What is the fault in our stars
that could I have held you but once,
I would have held you forever
If ever I was destined—to hold you at all
Charles Coakley Simpson
Ambiguity
Ambiguity
Are we not meant for mystery
that we wander the corridors of our hearts—
Searching for love
Charles Coakley Simpson
Intimacy
Intimacy
Even in the dark I think of you—
That these shadows have made me long for your touch.
Might that I wrap myself in the soft, white blanket of your skin,
your words tumbling tenderly into my ear.
And yet as I pause to consider the gentleness within your voice
I realize it is only the sound of my heart—trembling
To be next to you.
Charles Coakley Simpson
Twilight
Twilight
The bridge between
dusk and dawn
is merely the distance
transversed
from my lips to yours
Charles Coakley Simpson
Thistles
Thistles
Might the thorn
be as fragrant as the flower,
that the paradox of love is in the irony of its pain.
Thus I am drawn into a garden of thistles
where even the rose is entangled within its vine
that I cannot deny my passion
for beauty
Charles Coakley Simpson
Lust
Lust
To want you is never enough to know you–
What it is to touch you, to hold you,
to wake up in arms of which I do not wish to stir.
As I am neither the light in your eyes, nor the wind in your hair.
And yet you are ever the warmth in my arms at night,
even though I can only hold you–
In my heart
Charles Coakley Simpson
Apricot in Red Wine
Apricot in Red Wine
for Alicia
She lay wrapped in a soft-white blanket,
imagining how warm it would be–her back against his chest,
their bodies curved around each other.
She has this addicting idea that his thumbs will fit perfectly
into the groove of her hips–his breath on her neck.
Leading him by the hand to her bedroom,
she silently lets him undress her, promising to be quiet,
to be quiet enough that no one will hear
Her naked soul
Charles Coakley Simpson
Poetry
Poetry
The moment before the kiss
where I linger in the silence of intimacy.
Thus my eyes caress you with a delicate obsession
as I am smitten with tender anticipation;
that to want you is to need you for I live to adore you,
and yet I never knew I could love you–
Even more
Charles Coakley Simpson
Charles
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