Once

Still, we artists keep un-healed those wounds that drip not only blood but gobs of creativity...

And now the black top road of fate where once we travelled down together,
divides us,
and we find ourselves on opposite sides,
in the margins of a different candor,
standing listlessly in the fine powder gravel,
 among the disfigured bereft bones of random animals,
dusty dandelions and ditch weeds at our ankles,
a faltering barbed wire fence and the rest of our lives behind us,

Shall we cross to the center and shake hands,
the soft skin of your child’s fingers,
your obsidian shark eyes watching me twist across that eternal yellow stripe,
as if our deal is concluded,
and the broken bond that eludes to other distant freedoms
does not represent the shattered remains inside my chest,
to turn and go about our way,
when that way was a shared path once,
where “once” is but a word uttered in echo to the cadence of a memory,

You were bent over piles of your own clothes,
laundry I later learned you loathed,
you said your name and I said mine but you swear I was looking away,
and for years you worked hard at readjusting that gaze,
where it strayed you waved your arms and bade it return,
we were wise guys,
we were lazy bums,
we were skinned and held each other’s entrails together,
you first gave love a voice when I wrecked your car,
I returned that holy affirmation much later after you had washed my hair enough,
small words,
but it was time,
and we were good for each other,

The road shimmers into indefinite distance in both directions,
fading at a horizon of unknown possibility,
and at another marked by the treads of our dancing shoes,
God, how I loved to kick around with you,
we were good for one another,
and no distance dampens that,
so don’t you dare say otherwise,
use some other beguiling and imaginative words to explain your outstretched hand,
if there must be a parting,
such origins would be fanciful,
and at best invalid,
because there is no truth in love,
there is only love,
the power of such a concept that which holds me still,
which roots me here,
unable to shake your hand,
smile sadly,
and disappear through the weeded ditch of my fractured life.

3.2011

Where None of This Ever Happened and You Still Loved Me

Where raindrops,
heavy as every dog-legged and indiscriminate sin I’ve had the chance to enjoy
and cast out like disavowed children of shame from their brooding mother thunderclouds above,
turn clear-cut sugarcane rows into miniature rivers,
overflowing their troughs and swelling muddy ditches,
where muscle-bodied eels come to call for the crawfish below
and islands of ants defying death ride the currents through culverts along lonely gravel roads,
water colored forests where palmettos stand guard at the gate,
barbed wire fences and horses who stand miserable with their asses into the wind,
fat blackberries clinging to violent thorn bushes wrapped around the base of every utility pole,
stabbed into the loose top soil by the hands of men,
so that a warm kitchen window becomes the warning lighthouse beacon
distant in the downpour across soggy fields,
basin catcher to the tilted heavens,
deluge in every direction,
where I am left to watch the underbelly of a pocket-sized waterfall along my windshield,
each expelled lung erasing the scene outside the glass,
until I am and nothing else,
fog on the radio and the world soon submerged,
 torrid heat humid where the AC cannot offer help,
though it may cool my skin my heart is on fire,
if I but had you here I would bathe you again and baptize you with my long dead fingers,
until in mad revival we flew away from this place,
high above the anvil heads of summer thunderstorms,
where on your couch beneath the copper light of the lamp my hand found rest on your knee
and your head fell into my shoulder,
a thousand miles away from here,
where you still called my name,
where you still were mine.
5.3.2011