The belief here: lives
are ruled by energies, that an empty seat
can retain an essence of its occupants
malevolent, benevolent. A found knife
casually taken; even a stray cat may tiptoe between
gods and the transient; messages. In the wind,
words that bring life or finality,
bring love or heartbreak.
I swim in your eyes;
pools of mahogany and fluid ink
I swim in your mellifluous voice,
wrapped around me in syllables, tentative
sentences, paused in question.
a river, descending the high planes, continuing
through jungles of vines and
leaves larger than my face,
Vines wrapped around my heart,
reaching up through veins and aortas
to the blue sky above the darkness,
You are the deep lake
in which your ancestors cast
their brilliance, their glow.
adorned in the dusting of gold,
descend slowly into you,
emerge cleansed. For hours
I sit by your side,
looking down into the receding waters
reflections of clouds passing slowly above.
This morning, awakening, I find
myself in a dry land, the waters receded.
We pray for rain.
Two disparate systems ribonucleic jiggledance,
conjoined through lightflash distance medium; filtered
through honeycombed pollen patterns.
You are the sky, the mud, the air porous
shining down between leafless winter branches,
filled with ghosts of milkweed blooms;
confusions of acorn caps resurfacing the forest duff.
Breath, breathing, sinus nose to lung bottoms,
Prayanama.
Luminous hemispheres glower reddish, then
Coalesce, shower sparkles white, then tinged
blue sputtering on the tangling filaments.
You ascend the tumbledown escarpment,
scapular musculature clambering,
Over then behind conglomerate impediments.
Subject to the inevitable gravitas, I search upward.
Only later, you return from another direction, diosa del sol!
That there are spring days in Central Park,
where the world rushes in, where
underworld choruses summon,
cinnamon dancers in the shadowed arches,
fountain splashes simple, easy laughter
the light touch of a seasoned busker’s
hammer dulcimer.
There are spring days in Central Park,
that span an imagined landscape where
unrestrained lovers didn’t envision
the inevitability of not loving, not feeling
that quickening of heart and breath from
just a simple touch.
There are spring days, even on the field of Issus
where bonebits of Darius’ startled army
plowed for centuries later or simply disintegrate
testament that a smaller force can prevail.
And passing the boat house, followed
by the eyes of a brother, the voice of a sister,
the immutability of a mother,
in parting what was not really together,
a weathered memory in sandstone.
At each frozen corner, pauses
[ice, snow impediment, protrusive and concave]
considerations in passing
[slippery, slick, slide, slush] Continue reading “Surmontrose”
Pantomime thief, music box angel,
mask of a face.
Lips wore red.
with too-small wings
you dance the buds on the tips of trees, branches
pirouette
Through subways, with screeching iron and popping sparks
finally caught up with her, cornered.
in the pavement where the
Blackened bubblegum splotches
a more tender moment
When I do finally lay my head down, close my eyes, I see you
looking downward, quietly, lips
suddenly forming a broad smile.
I kiss you, and close my eyes again, and fall asleep.
Kiss. Close eyes. Fall asleep.
There are the light, new kisses, tentative
in both the giving and the receiving, perhaps softly
at first on hands, then lips,
asking, inquiring, is this my place?
There is the kiss, deep, where our faces
not only reflect one another, but where governing powers
eradicate all boundaries, removed
all obstacles, and tongues dance and caress
and we cospire, breaths encoupled.
In dreams I open my eyes and kiss you,
and in my dreams, fall asleep again. Over and over,
a tumble of kisses rolling across the rose-lit landscape of sleep, uncatchable.
Whistling, splashing, humming
I can hear from your Magyar lyre lips,
Russet harmonics, melody, rhythms,
tambourine jingle rattle swap.
Gypsy waist engirdles words of desire
murmuring awake slumbering crumbled clay.
Pomegranate drips, ripened pears, baskets
Woven from reeds encircled and touched upon by bees.
It isn’t you, like Jeanne D’Arc on the pyre
but this space between us
that opens and closes, a foamed surf
that brings and takes away Continue reading “The Space Between”
Vastness can be a thing, palpable,
touchable, an object that can be grasped
in the hand, a fragile parchment, where
if unrolled would reveal secrets.
In cupped fingers as an injured wren, with a heart
beating in persistence out of proportion to it’s dimension.
Vastness can be an icy landscape, where
the only presence is that of the implied bodies
now gone. The survivors ferried
to warm kitchens, where they sip tepid coffee
and their minds slowly unclench their proximity to death.
Taking a squeegee to the still-wet painting,
all of the trees and clouds,
the crowds and awkward nudes
painted in night classes, the
still lives of rusted pitchers and lemons,
and wipe/smear them with a single stroke
into one vast moment
where all of the cars and lights, and
honking beatboxes retreat beyond
the fresh, cold just begun.
