The Heart's Government

Love is both the best of things and the absolute worst of things, depending on the angle. I tend to look through a lens that illuminates Love in brightly lit colors of dreams and possibilities and teaming swarms of sucker fish. However, there have been times in my life when it seemed like a prison. This was one of those times...

Castled Love
   whose walls are crumbled stone,

Tall gray towers that scarred heaven's belly,
built strong the bricks by Certainty's hands,
so you would last forever,
last forever.

See your bridges in golden smolder,
uncrossable and smashed,
Smoke lifts carrying ashen scents
   to your guarded nostrils,
each ember speaking - all is lost.

There is no thing that has been spared,
reduction into nothing,
Drying even now is the battle's blood,
Love's colors lost in the cold and crimson mud,

Trampled are intentions that arose
   before the advance of my armies--

Any day is better than this day of victory,

These thousands who wait under my command,

each a conquered thought turned swiftly into ally,

The sunless sky speaks and the world is drab,
only echoes in my concrete chest.

So in my dreams is this ruined city
   still able to withstand my aggresive assault?
The destruction under my outstretched hands disappears,
mocking my attempts,

Yet my warring ways are left unfinished,

I find a trail of spoils before me still none the prize I've sought...

She defies me-- Love!

Is all that persists,
Anchored with unbreakable chains to the cold stone of an inpenetrable room
   in full knowledge that there is nothing left to lord over,
Still Love refuses to be removed from the stronghold
   deep in the center of this fortress--
My Heart!

COME OUT!

COME OUT!

COME OUT!

I defy you,
my able hands dipped in warring ways pound against the door,
solid in its foundation,
rumbling under fierce blows,
knuckles like ancient marbles in gauntlets of forged silver,
I need not rest,
only to heave this door from its hinges and drag you out by the neck
   I will sever from your body,
mock and humiliate you for the same you've done to me,
I defy you.

COME OUT!

COME OUT!

In vigilance I can wait,
discarding the pain in my hands and
   the dismemberment of the heart beneath my breast,
I will stand the long days of loneliness,
not to be removed until this room is vacant,
Love absent and forgotten and defeated,
My mind set against you,
to outlast you,
This vigil I stand.

COME OUT!

My cheek pressed against the door's cold outer surface,
sore hands useless at its base,
I am all that remains and still waiting,

resting on a dirty ground propped against that which refuses to open,
willing to bargain to spare this eternal stand-off,
There is no one left to spar with and I am he who is all that is left,
no one to see me in my shame,
ruptured knuckles and blemished silver askance.

come out... please,

please,

I am broken,
broken and begging with stained cheeks,
tears beyond my control,
release me from your power,
please,
come out,
come out and leave me alone,
permit me to live,
have all that which I was dellusional to think I pillaged,
ownership of the control I fancied,

The last image is this:
I am battered and defeated,
kneeling before an impermeable door,
my hands are bloody and my forehead is against the door's dark surface,
there are tears but no words,
my lips are useless,
I cannot fight any longer
   and only want release,
from the mockery of Love,
the mordant laughter ringing in my ears,
from the chain around my ankle weighing a lifetime,
overshadowing happiness,
Love's cruelty,
ridicule, exposure, travesty,

A control I cannot rest away,
behind a door I cannot enter,
and I am helpless to know what to do...

please, Love,

please leave me alone.

12.2007

That Place We Used To Go

Those fond memories and lost loves of times bygone and distant, faded moments on precipices of the mind, inlaid within the soul - boat times and all times not meant to be forgotten, nor taken back, but made into fire and cooled into stone - the even fonder foundations of great poetry. Great to someone.

Beyond the Northwoods Waterfall I met Delilah
wearing a boy's tuxedo vest and

smoking a homegrown cigarette that smelled of Northern California.

She screamed and came and went

and I begged her to slow down because

I wanted to taste her peace,

that part of her you couldn't see.

The splash of the falls followed us home like a lost puppy

and we remained wet from there on after.

I was a shipwreck and she was a hurricane,

the damage had already been done,

her winds of fortunate destruction couldn't

topple what had already fallen,

but there was still a very real danger of drowning.

So I danced politely in her presence on

the ashes that fell from her lips,

the aftermath of something that resembled volcanic love,

that reminded me of rooms empty without her,

only a suede vest,

the memory of a full suit, a school dance,

before the Northwoods Waterfall dried up.

4.23.05

Gone a Long Time

I know I only wrote this one back in May, but I honestly can't remember what in the wide world it was supposed to be about. I guess that means I'm in the same boat as you are, reader. Let's enjoy this one together...

It’s over, isn’t it?
James stood motionless,
his heart a conundrum,
Pandora’s box of fractured bulb fragments,
where once a filament glowed softly in a vacuum,
his whiskers flecked with ashes,
soot from a thousand campfires where bled the trails of thin tears,
a man’s life in the scrum below his fingernails,
ten crescent moons,
black and bitten.

She captured him in her heart,
that vacant tomb whose walls were etched with the names of lovers lost,
encrypted tapping in the stone corridor,
her head thrown back and mouth agape,
his memories aloft,
disconnected ripples in the puddle below his boot,
footprints in the mud,
from the trail to her door,
that distant fading trail,
I’m sorry, she said,
you’ve been gone a long time, James.

5.20.2010