"My mistress' eyes are nothing…"
She wrapped me in her quilted smile,
then torched the salty fabric of us, tear stained and aching.
She knees cruel in the balls.
And I love her that way just the same.
She hangs me up to dry,
then cuts me down for air.
The breathing windows of us,
pulsating walls setting chairs rocking, us inside,
lulled in four-arm sleep.
Daylight friezes trim heights,
Stony edifices still standing
Ancient decaying battles,
Fading listless gray above
Technicolor tile mosaics.
When darkness comes daylight
Photoshopped to his taste,
Scrumptiously thin-thin waifs
Adorn full fashion billboards,
Eye-catching corners round
Apartment ledge jumpers.
When darkness comes daylight
Poised for the leap, these
Downers decorate the city
Like gargoyle guardians,
Villains to pop protagonists
Puffing smokey smile rings.
When darkness comes daylight
When sirens slice vulnerable
Sleep like death opened out,
Who can hear the whispers,
Tunneled mice scampering,
Twisting babies suffocating?
When darkness comes daylight
In frozen wincing skies hidden
Behind baby blue blinds drawn
The day’s delusional dreaming,
But when the darkness comes
Noble neon lights us illuminate:
When darkness seizes day’s night.
One more I honor and pray will not be the last,
This poem, your day, awakenings to more days
Filled with complaints, facts, lies, jokes and sighs
Those last with mortal grimace and existential pain–
And celebrations.
No one fills your place, not before or after,
None who sits just where you do in my house,
Or my car, no one quite like you who inherited and grew
status, class, gender, race, trait, stance and ethnicity.
You made me.
One day you will unmake me just like the sun and earth,
My fiery Death whose smoke will awaken the ravens
Loosen charred Regret and Steam, neither life companions
On my walk, my rise and fall, blossom and decay, my stain
After you.
Painting: “Separation” by Edvard Munch 1898, oil on canvas.
A smoldering heart weakens,
hunkers him down gut deep
inside separation’s burn.
When distance collects between
a lover’s love and loving hand,
the road span widened, dear doves,
a brooding beat blackens fear,
rends aortic drums split sideways,
burst blood pooled and anchoring.
Longing’s weight drowns victims,
pins their boots to muddy bog,
only sludge and sink might free
the ache, loosed from bony cages
as echo moans sorrow’s sympathy.
Severance maims this lover’s heart,
rendering touch crumpled amputee:
grip-shattered, shivering despair.
No more apologies:
I disappoint.
Not enough, not long, hard, gentle or
joined in heart when I hold you,
I hear your silent reproaches.
A lip corner flick.
No sorries in my storage.
Unrepentant lashes,
un-sick over baggage.
Time I give is all the buzz
I have, all my life,
before run before hide
–before–
and composed thus
I always was.
Heaving breath,
the sigh of it all,
sense-fire hearth,
shorting electric
with your, his, her, their
expiry utter other grunts, twists, glances or
dances belly deep,
and all I beg is a bite of sleep.
My gutters sag under the weight
of leaves and leavings and arrivals,
the spinning door rotates you for you
and him for her for him for them,
and back again,
a reversion ahead of me, the fool
to believe in words
deployed poison control tools–
bright, early, sunny-gregarious
gets the worm–
the norm of help-me-happy right
keeping the dark ones light.
And so I sit before you, father-mother missing moon sheltered from the rain above the clouds, intuiting the vacant stare observant.
Though core-less we two, you cold, me warm, a higher vantage point edges your sight supreme at such a remove.
Like you, I borrowed neighboring light lent unwittingly, beneficial excess of the mindlessly ebullient glow of splashing smiles.
Sprayed sunshine at the concert last night in a stranger eye-lock and motionless high five link, praise to musical gods enchanting.
Leaked light of courtesy in rote rhythm of seasonal cheer upon all us retailers and commerce night keepers: “Happy holidays!”
And idle conversation in endless express lines as I count the water meat drops in frosty plastic packages while checkers chat up customers.
Reflect now, we two lunatic hollow grims of burnt out starry stories–so many–whirring past like molten lead dripping burnt passion burst.
For we watch the rain the same, you above, me below, cool companions invisible neon in the night, filtering nothing, just bouncing rays.
In the gaze of the other 