Vow
The noise broke
by the garden where I loved you
like I loved the truth,
where my bones drowned in your darkness
and my war was unlocked like the need
for completion that you promised but never
could attain. This wilderness
of power, purposelessness and extremes I laid down inside of
to be beside you and the softness of your mouth
and the elixir of your touch
became mine, grew like a second body
merging with my own like death does
with cold eternity.
Detour
Bobbing for apples under a raincloud.
Soon what was planted will flourish
and the empty casket under the bridge
will be a nest to weather out winter’s storms.
I will never know you, not as
a weak-kneed dancer or as a lover,
blurred by idealism. I will be in the dumpyard
with the rest of the dead flowers,
caught off guard by your morning song.
My shadow rises like a weed into a tree,
simple company for empty days. You are skin and fury,
a shore that is quicksand with many mosquitoes lingering
around. I was stuck on your butcher’s block, smelling of
musky ambition. I was predatorial, though myself, never
a match for your strengthening spikes.
Honesty is a Sunday summit, punishing to pursue,
dropping undergarments for a glimpse at purity.
Wings are hallways I have lost track of. Like circus lions
they struggle, beaten, chained, with useless magnificence.
I flattened my folds for you, spread myself as a net
over what was precious and wild
to work for your children, to maintain the belief
that the back-mirror-reflection would come alive.
Half way into eternity, building in me like the scent of salt water.
Another lifetime I may be in motion, with you, joyfully rolling down hills.
Today what is natural is inside the cupboard.
I am learning to accept the mice-chewed boxes,
gradually forgiving the distorted shape of these and even other
make-due flaws.
The noise broke
by the garden where I loved you
like I loved the truth,
where my bones drowned in your darkness
and my war was unlocked like the need
for completion that you promised but never
could attain. This wilderness
of power, purposelessness and extremes I laid down inside of
to be beside you and the softness of your mouth
and the elixir of your touch
became mine, grew like a second body
merging with my own like death does
with cold eternity.
Detour
Bobbing for apples under a raincloud.
Soon what was planted will flourish
and the empty casket under the bridge
will be a nest to weather out winter’s storms.
I will never know you, not as
a weak-kneed dancer or as a lover,
blurred by idealism. I will be in the dumpyard
with the rest of the dead flowers,
caught off guard by your morning song.
My shadow rises like a weed into a tree,
simple company for empty days. You are skin and fury,
a shore that is quicksand with many mosquitoes lingering
around. I was stuck on your butcher’s block, smelling of
musky ambition. I was predatorial, though myself, never
a match for your strengthening spikes.
Honesty is a Sunday summit, punishing to pursue,
dropping undergarments for a glimpse at purity.
Wings are hallways I have lost track of. Like circus lions
they struggle, beaten, chained, with useless magnificence.
I flattened my folds for you, spread myself as a net
over what was precious and wild
to work for your children, to maintain the belief
that the back-mirror-reflection would come alive.
Half way into eternity, building in me like the scent of salt water.
Another lifetime I may be in motion, with you, joyfully rolling down hills.
Today what is natural is inside the cupboard.
I am learning to accept the mice-chewed boxes,
gradually forgiving the distorted shape of these and even other
make-due flaws.