Tag: #commitment
Evermore
Do you feel me touching you through time?
Gentle the light shines on worn wooden board
Where you dance unseen
Yet I have always been, closer for holding in my heart, your motion
Through the filament of hours, our bond unbreakable
You … as long as you breathe and afterward too
Shall ever feel me standing, holding you up
Not the string pulling you to act
I am instead, arms supporting your effort
To Slough off the grief and find surity in one heart
In this ransacked world we call ours, you are home
You are the northern star
You burn behind my eyelids when they are shut
You tattoo your pigment into mine
We are woven together throughout time
When I reach, you leap, light as startled spring deer
Joining beneath the shade of night, mixed into each other’s color
I know nothing of being without you
For all of myself began
The day I saw you turn
And smile with knowing
You
Who is dearest
Shall never long for nurture or companion
I am the locket around your neck
I sleep in your dreams guarding yet
Any that may hurt you, let them try
For you are
My celestial bride
No distance or passing shall thwart
Energy recognized, even in death
Behind you I shall evermore walk
Against the unknown world
They move together like quicksilver
indisipherable in pursuit
there is such a love in his eyes
her smooth hands cup his mouth
drinking the words he would gush
if they were not pressed tightly, one to the other
locked in an embrace
that gives life
quickening as signature is fluid
when she finds out, she imagines telling her daughter twenty years hence
the story of her conception;
your father and I loved you very much
we lay down by the fireplace, he took me in his arms
from this passion you were forged into life
clay breathed upon, bearing breath and soul
you were wanted, even before you chose
to fill us with yourself
my stomach grew and grew until
it was a tight drum on which to paint
the symbols of your dream
**
He moved in her, his eyes tightly shut
he thought of other women, he thought of touching himself
in the office toilet at lunch with folded magazine
and why such things happened when he had all he could ever want
here in his arms, still he betrayed with desires, ill-tuned to eternal love
when she grew fat and round he did not
wish to hold her quite so tightly, or touch her hot flushed pressing flesh
he thought of others, he got up early, and jogged his frustration into sweat
**
Don’t worry the doctor smiled, with a savage wink
as she labored and her face grew red and her hands sought his
and he wanted to run from the room and shove well fed nurse
against the wall and pour his horror of birth and future into her lipsticked sighs
don’t worry the doctor smiled, with a savage wink
i’m going to sew her up even tighter, it will be like
Christmas day when you unwrap her again
the quintisential “husband’s stitch”
and over his starched cloak and gown, the doctors grey eyebrows
went up and down and he, who was lost
lurched and threw up at the violence and the shame
of men and of women and of life and death, inequality and lust
**
then his daughter was born
fat and round and squalling loudly
if he could have interpreted those words, he felt they spoke to him a repromand
for his cowardice and his fears, imagining being a father
of growing up and settling down, of love and impossible challenges and joys
he saw his wife’s face, wet with sweat and hair plastered down
he felt more than he had ever felt, the emptiness of the past replaced
no longing to empty himself in the coldness of pornography as she slept
a lifetime from the day he first took her to bed and
stripped her of choice with impregnated seed
and now he knew
the fear of men is the strength of women
his daughter fixed him with swollen red eyes
watching him with a stearness that seemed to say
you can do this, you got this, you are not your worst thought
you can be who you want to be, you can be my father, you can love these women
you can direct our future, reshaping mountains
or fall into the arms of least resistance, worship the emptiness of hollow gestures
she seemed to be saying with her tiny fists and pursed lips
turn away from your shallow sport, take this road with us
he who once was weak, grew with love
those things that once were, no more
his resilience, their armor
against the unknown world
Of needing
When the capture
is weakened
when neglect owns
no name
but like paint
faded by days
needful of coat
then you listen closer
not to temptation
and her guest
but the soft rummage
of needing
notice my new dress
or the turn of my hands
as I clean and wash and pour
these invisible chores
chalked over by repetition
the line between your eyes
a quickened thunder
didn’t you buy more nutella?
this is not ironed through
holding an outline of wrinkle
oh so true
when love is new
we inhabit scarcely
that fantastic vaunt
slowly to fall
in little unmendable ways
like gathering wool
rubbed by barb
a trick of light
words shared like jewels in dark
oh the power you manifest
in one observation
worth all a stranger distorted
for it is not in the arms of replacement succor is found
but the sure tred through years holding our hems above us
strung in purposed knots, hand over hand, over hand
rubbed against stone til transparent
*I wrote this after hearing a few sad stories of people in unhappy relationships, and my wondering why they were unhappy together and why they couldn’t last and be happy together and how sad a world filled with people who no longer want to be together anymore is. I may be a dreamer but I’m not the only one who believes we hold the answer.*
Full
My hand
resting a top yours
the same size in our shadow
you with little feet and longer ties
inheriting portions
I see in your eyes
the easement of life
as if you are in slow motion
falling gently behind yourself
going back in time
I think of the local cinema
being old enough to see over the railing
a film about a man plugged to a machine
all his memories flickering in retreat
until he is a fetus a heartbeat a blip
so far back he does not exist
is that you?
dissolving, reducing
I watch bread rise and moon’s sink
wonder at the circular motion of things
how I slept with a light on
now you remind me
not to close the door
my chest aches for what I long to give but cannot
it is as if you were born of me
my longing to love
I cannot make sense of why
but you were always the only one
my arms reach at night for your surround
I hear your voice on hungry chime of wind
all the pain blooms around me
like cancan girls frothing their scarlet hems
I remember bougainvillea climbing up the walls
can see you with your hair slicked back from the bath
steam rising in dark breeze
you made a circle of me and wore me around your neck
where I lay far too still listening to your heart beat
now we are divided by wire and thread
two half-made mannequins
no matter how far I stretch
I cannot reach your gaze
it stared listless at angry waves
as they build and recede
in the abyss of your memories