I wrote a lot of poetry during my teen years in a free-verse style that became coined “Naked Poetry”—a type of poetry where words and cadence are more important than rhyme. I believe the term came from the anthology books Naked Poetry: Recent American Poetry in Open Forms (1969) and The New Naked Poetry (1976). Both books are authored by Stephen Berg and Robert Mezey.
I prefer free verse over rhyme poetry because many writers of the latter use weak words to force their poems to rhyme.
The following poem is an old love poem of sorts, called When Dawn Came. Enjoy.
It was here one night among white blossoms
that we lay and were touched
while the rest of the world snored
in their small beds.
We breathed frost words on branches
breathing deeply in the deep woods
with no earthly destination,
hidden behind the pulse of dawn
throbbing upon a trigger’s touch.
You were delicate incense I lit alone.
In silence,
my fingers found the sweep of stars on bare skin,
house-warmth murmur like gold when you breathed.
You were a bird
whose only cry came in color in the company of starlight
that whistled up the violets
on a garden-full wilderness of new-day light,
the yellow flowering into streaming pinks
and fleshed with rose petals when dawn came to us.
Thanks for reading. That’s all for now.
Steve, 10/22/2022
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