Isle

 

Root of names:

I dig at your source.

A birthright almost,

your name should be

pronounced,

called to all corners,

in every direction.

Your

mother's

deep

rolling

gift,

flavor ancient

as the desert.

Denouement

 
It is no mere reflection:
The brown depths of your eyes, gleaming,
Alight with some new passion.


Almost odd, they are casting
No shadows. Such pure light must
Negate ore as origin.


You stir my basest impulse.
Craving for your intellect
Floods through me, can it be lust,


When I desire your wit?
Your silences too unnerve me,
Give melody and lyric

 
To my insecurities.
They write their own symphony,
On fire with what you don't say.

 
I am your adversary
And your victim. You started
This, finish it. You have a


Way of listening, quiet,
A way of placing me in
The center of your drama.

The Competition  

If Jerusalem drew breath, she would resemble you.
You have a similar effect: of lodging in the mind.
Both of you are breathtaking, but terrifying.
Her white brick reflects brighter light than the sky,
Your dark humor cleaves apart all complacence.  
And once encountered, you are not easily forgotten.

I dream a confused vision. You appear,
Weighing my weaknesses on a silver scale, watching me guardedly.
Impassive as a statue, but not so expressionless,
And determined to have the last word.  

Jerusalem too sits in Judgment
But today she refrains mercifully.
Your silences, on the contrary,
Never abate their critique of me,
Brutal and scathing, crueler than words.  

No day is safe from the absence of you,
Living peacefully maybe, but haunting me.

Crescendo  

A litany of voices
cascade,
falling tides,
in rhythmic cacophony
from the fugue
of your psyche.
Disturbing cadences
ebb and flow,
weaving disharmony,
a desultory waltz of sounds.

Organza

 

Cars

on an empty street

collide

and I walk through the center.

Bitter currents

undercut the wind

my gauze skirt

rips across.

Calf bared and bleeding

I fumble for the anodyne

bandage, my pen.

I need

to see you,

Reassure me.

Polyphony  

Men with paint stick
swords collide
in center stage -
a metaphor
for your
bravado?
My words
versus yours -
which would win?
A little light verse
accompanied
by organ music,
sparkling wit,
lyricism,
plays out calmly.
May your name
be wiped out
from the tomes
of my mind
and rewritten
softly
in feather weight
ink
light as
your plays on words.

Soliloquy

 

You approached me

in stride

demanding

whatever information

you could get.

You were beautiful,

intense. Desperation

flickered in your brown eyes.

 

Your tensions

confronted me

before I could form

any concept

of you; any illusions

that you were

just cute.

 

Perfection?

I never expected that;

I knew your unease.

Your words guarded

an elemental hurt.

You smiled at me once:

a defensive gesture,

then you fled.

 

Comfort?

Your jarring cries

set my nerves on edge.

You exposed a dissonance

that stung me deeply.

You accosted me

with sardonic lines.

I baited you;

we played mind games.

 

You said you wanted

to be a writer.

You voiced the possibility

I resisted

but I heard.

You taught me

everything I know

& left me

to face the world

alone.

 

Your absence fills

the spaces

of this city,

steals into my sleeping ear

to whisper your nearness.

What I snatch upon waking

fades and disburses.

 

Transparent greys of morning

break the night

in which I hear

repeated

your

rejection

of any lasting

bond between us.

An Absence

 

My dreaming world is formed by your absence.

I wake to a city built on echoes.

Time stiffened the era you abandoned.

All the corridors I roam are empty.

I need to see, to feel that you exist.

Without you, every move I make is false.

 

My poems start to flow in your absence,

Pouring from my hand, filled with your echoes,

Surging out of me though I'm abandoned.

Every page I pen is strangely empty.

I fear I've stopped believing you exist.

It seems the values I build up are false.

 

How have you developed in my absence?

Can you escape the weight of my echoes?

While I'm here you'll never be abandoned.

Rooms of the mind, silent tombs, sit empty.

I wind the spiral stairs. Do I exist?

The scenes that loom beyond thresholds are false.

 

The clock, my foe, stretches out your absence.

I crush time or it stifles me with echoes.

My words decline, by movement abandoned.

If you seized my days, would they still feel empty?

And convinced with every breath that you exist,

Would I still feel my universe was false?

 

You move in time, sheltered from all absence.

Forward, you march on, leaving your echoes,

Without concern for what you've abandoned.

The life you've left behind is nearly empty.

I've dredged it clean of all proof you exist.

The hollow shellac of its walls rings false.

 

I'd like to find a world without absence,

Where no one's persecuted by echoes,

A place no soul has yet been abandoned.

You stay and do not leave me here empty,

Create a state where we can both exist,

And you proclaim all other worlds are false.

 

Tell me absence is a façade, empty.

Don't leave me abandoned amid echoes.

Together we exist, nothing is false.

Reciprocals

 

To me you come, evasive, cast your spell.

So gently place the paper in my hand.

You ask the question of reciprocals.

 

I took the chance, became a spectacle.

I need you more than I need oxygen.

To me you come, evasive, cast your spell.

 

You break the silence, disregard my rules

And give me what I never thought, an answer.

You ask the question of reciprocals.

 

Your written words betray their parallels.

They wind around my name. I understand.

To me you come, evasive, cast your spell.

 

How easily the emptiness is filled.

Can you mean what I would not imagine?

You ask the question of reciprocals.

 

The warmth you give defeats the frostbite's chill.

You reach for me and show me that I can.

To me you come, evasive, cast your spell.

You ask the question of reciprocals.

I Lost You

 

I lost you, what a cruel twist of fate.

You took away the day, the sun went dark.

The whole wide world could never compensate.

 

I cannot eat or sleep in such a state.

The sky's fire paled, you broke apart the clock.

I lost you, what a cruel twist of fate.

 

Let all the world cease knocking at my gate.

How flat the forest's gone, how grey and stark.

The whole wide world could never compensate.

 

What dreary nooks such shadows can create.

The birds fell out of tune, and now they mock.

I lost you, what a cruel twist of fate.

 

The candle dwindles down, my hopes deflate.

The water rages in, I have no ark.

The whole wide world could never compensate.

 

I do not care to know the time or date.

In night, day, hour and week I take no stock.

I lost you, what a cruel twist of fate.

The whole wide world could never compensate.