I’ve howled at the moon
Rising and shining and twirling
A pale dancer on a dark stage
I’ve embraced the swoon.
I ingested the bay
Travelling many miles
To drink its Atlantic mother,
To live the crash and sway
I belong in the sand,
In the violence and beauty
And severity of her coiled arms
And crested hands.
Am I dying of drought
The rain weeps
In ocean fragments
They runoff devout
And they’ll make it home before me.
And when you loved me, what you loved
Existed in your eyes
It was as real as love is real,
Unconstrained by guise
And what you saw as good in me
Bloomed gossamer in your view
I was good and I was yours-
It was true because you were true.
And when you left me vulnerable
Exposed to harsher winds,
The good and true you gave to me
Could no more make amends
With the whip of gale, and bite of cold,
And absence of your devotion
Who I reflected in your eyes
Wept and died as broken
And the woman standing in her place
Who speaks vengeance in her scorn
Is just the dried and dead remains;
The blossomless tangle of thorns.
When your diverted love ran dry
And you no longer looked at me,
All you loved in me the most
Ceased to be.
The engine idles too low,
And you’d better check the fluids.
It’s been a hundred miles since that was done-
I guess I meant to do it.
There’s a wheezing in the exhaust,
And she sputters and she stalls,
Whenever I hit the brake too fast
She screeches shrill bird calls.
Aside from gas and oil,
Well, not much else gets done.
Don’t bother with her outer shell-
I’m just concerned she runs.
Yeah, I’ll schedule another return trip
When I’m paying your receptionist.
Late October? Will I still be alive by then?
The sky bleeds a violent gray
Like some sidewalk chalk masterpiece
Under the storm’s display
Raining in the depths of me
Rivulets of dread dismay
Is it anger? Or sorrow? Or sin?
Or just a rainy day
Seeping through the cracks of me,
Leaking in to how I pray
Dripping, dripping, each drop whispers,
Eager to join, eager to say,
What if it isn’t going to be okay?
I have no more words to understand,
They have slipped and tripped and
Fallen aground.
They are foreign sounds.
I have lost their definitions,
No more premonitions
Of tangled webs of words
No more using the absurd
To illuminate the apparent.
I once thought them inherent
Not some scheming enterprise.
These efforts do not energize
Under the weight of exposure.
I have lost my literary composure,
And my dear, long friend.
I cannot pretend
I know what I’m doing.
I write to you
No more
When you are still
Just who you are
And the night chills
Me from your far
Shoulders.
I think of you
Just barely
Like a book, ill-gotten,
Neither finished
Nor forgotten
A memory diminished
But not vanished.
I speak to you
In silence.
The faded ember
Has burned my hands
The scars remember
The heart understands
What memory won’t render.
Oh pale moon, swimming
In the inky black, spinning
Always around, and again around
Your gravity’s weight strikes my ground
Forming tides to push and pull
This twirling sphere, swirling full
Of water, earth, wind and flame
While you cower sterile, tamed
Dust and rock and voicelessly
Pace and fret so noiselessly
Mostly covered in shadow, undetected
But only known by light reflected.
When grief cannot speak
She wanders the dark space
Wringing her hands
and scratching her face
and silently beating the earth
From whence she came,
to whence again return
Unchanged, and never the same.
While desperate she roams mute
her tempestuous fury builds
with the tears she cannot shed
Her own black heart is filled
With the desire to kill and assuage
If only to loose her tongue
To free her constrained farewells,
To uncage what is caught unsung
To let love grieve and die
and speak again
and fly.
We dug our toes into the clay
Formed along the banks
The walls of our castle at play,
We watched as clods sank
But we ever stayed.
The tides came in, came in,
And we rejoiced to see them rise,
But they always left us again,
And it came as no surprise
We tarried on the banks when
The final sunrise condemned us.
Selfish, and my love for you
Bounces off the containing wall
And stumbles to the floor again.
I’m familiar with this fall
But I wanted to stand tall
For you.
Maudlin, and my best intentions
Are just romanticized notions,
Heartfelt inventions of my
Over-stimulated emotions
Equipped with devotion,
But nothing useful.
viewingcamelot 