The problem with reading poetry aloud is we
do not listen to punctuation anymore
Let our lips lock
like brake-pads on rotors
stopping time and preventing
an accident
INDENT
The first time I saw you
I knew I wanted to lip wrestle
No-holds-barred and biting permitted
like Vietnam vets fighting in taverns
sloppy
rushed
and uncoordinated
Wet with sweat beads
glistening like lit cigs and broken beer bottle glass
shattered on pool hall floors
until we are exhausted
and in need of water PERIOD
Your mouth reminds me of a cookie jar
disguised as a glass of milk
always leaving me parched
This kiss would make Mick Jagger jealous
I want to rake my facial hair
on the garden of your face
as you clutch my bottom lip with your white plow
Lost in the passion until
sunflowers blossom and corn-cob rows stand
and sway
HYPHEN
We could farm moonlight from your mini-blinds
Numb with desire SEMICOLON
chapped from the winds we exhaled COMMA
like tornadoes in a Texas trailerpark
I survey the damage checking to see if I can still live on your lips ELIPSES
Eclipse these lips softly now, please.
After that I’ll use your face
like a constellation map plotting
the stars in your
eyes
skin
and chapstick
to find my way back home
I want to coast on
your tongue the way messages
float to sand slowly
being buried in tides and silently pleading
for salvation
EXCLAMATION POINT
Is it so bad that I think
about kissing you
so graphically
QUESTION MARK
This is what is known as a rhetorical question
it has a question mark at the end
but I don’t want you
to answer
INDENT
I’m not going to edit the content
INDENT
until you check my spelling
INDENT
and make sure
everything in my dream is
grammatically correct
QUOTE
I think about kissing you the way poets should think about punctuation
END QUOTE
From: Chainsawsmoking: Poems Wrapped in Cellophane
Summary
“Punctuated Lips” by Aaron Hopkins-Johnson is a poem centered on love and relationships, mortality and loss, aging. The poem develops its subject through recurring images and shifts in emotional pressure rather than reducing the experience to a single statement.
Analysis
Voice
A personal, first-person speaker combines recollection with direct emotional address.
Style and form
The poem is line-driven, compressed, typographically emphatic, first-person. The poem moves by accumulation: images, references, and tonal turns build on one another, so meaning emerges from their relationships as much as from narrative sequence.
Themes and imagery
Its strongest thematic currents include love and relationships, mortality and loss, aging, nature. Concrete images give those abstractions physical weight, while changes in diction and pace keep the poem from settling into a single emotional register.
Reading the poem
A productive way to read “Punctuated Lips” is to watch how its images change function as the poem progresses. Details that initially establish scene or memory become emotional evidence. The result is a poem whose argument is carried through association, rhythm, and image as much as through explicit statement.
Explore this poem
Source & rights
Source: Chainsawsmoking: Poems Wrapped in Cellophane (Lawn Gnome Publishing, 2016)
Rights: © 2016 Lawn Gnome Publishing. All rights reserved.