Poems February 16, 2007

It is not your name that I find

Embedded in song

And carried on the unfurling wind

Beneath the brackish sky.

Sobered stigmas of empty places

Bottles and futures stitched with barricades

Placated by smoke and just-one-more-day.

Angular amber lights that watched

Bitter saline mingle with concrete gray.

The solvent could dilute the concrete,

And change the composition of the passing wind-

Add humidity, add salt, add:

enumerable echoes and

imperceptible sound.

Here I am, I tell you again.

—

Winds

The moonlight casts a heavy shadow on your face

I trace your profile with my eyes,

And I am searching for release

In the backdrop of lounge music

Soft yellow lights fringe my defeat:

You seek something in my eyes,

But they will not betray me this time.

I cut my eyes away.

‘Knowledge is a double-edged sword’, I begin

‘And you permeate me already.’

You tell me simply that you love me

Your voice reverberates with an invitation,

But it is the undertones of a plea that the wind

Carries to my ears and I am terrified.

‘And what of gods? I wish not to tango

on this black-and-white floor’ I add hastily.

I look down to hide the single drop of saline

Tethering on my lashes, trying

To tell you I needed a rescue.

‘Let’s put things in perspective,’ I reason bluntly

As I hand you a prism.

As I hand you back your broken heart.

As the Absolute sinks in: heavy, dull and unaware.

“It is true, therefore, that it is always cobalt blue with you”, you say

I find your eyes for the first time tonight

And it almost brings me to my knees

Alone again and in my room

I open my palms and

All my nightmares unfold before me

And I finally crumble

And I howl and I cringe

And I bite my lips as gravity paints them with tears.

Love you, love you, love you, yes!

And it was a cliff I stood on

The wind peruses my face and tells me:

“See how wonderful, sublime

Much like the sea:

Always in your heart

But never in your hands.”

‘And what of your kings,

who bleed out on your checkered floor?’ I ask.

‘And of your elegant evening breeze when

hearts are pounded by your wanderings?’

And then God created silence.

Bereft of choices,

Nothing left to articulate,

And the language has left me since

We outgrew the need for questions

As I stumble through my silent reverie

: we knew it from the start.

Beautiful but insufferable

The universe will not sway to the wishes of man,

For the stars are enumerable and we cannot conceive,

Let alone lay down a desperate wish for them all.

And I am confined to what bare words language can offer

Which are never enough, beloved, never enough

Must I stick to its hasty structure,

Which round out the corners of my wreckage?

To tell you but never to let you know.

I lace you with the paradox,

As you pass from myth to reflex to habit

And I will never forget

As my soul is broken a little more

By the gentle intonations of the wind

(As a final favor, I ask of it:

‘Will you carry in your arms tonight,

the syllables you maimed,

into his ears,

into his thoughts,

into his heart?’)

I shut the window before an answer is heard:

Obedient child, I watch as the World passes me by.

—