Sometimes there is an unbuckling of
temper and fear and loathing
mixed into indigo and strewn
in furied air
we pick it up as
a smell long forgotten
taps long dormant senses
and despite the years, regain
a moment mislaid
your arms doused with powder
glittering like another being, turning,
you, spectral and otherworldly
an afterglow of fiesta, a street
littered with signs of party goers
their tossed colors, a mélange of remembrance
we grind and mash and rearrange
clothes strewn in multi color love letters
on unpolished floor
seeking to find in electrified connection
that dizzying light
buoying briefly from surface
telling of depths few venture
where usually we rest, bobbing and sailing
absent of passion, thinking like the face of a clock
about slow steady movement, predictable pauses
spasms only in the imagination
or when a familiar song stirs a disquiet
whilst below, in regions beneath our reach
gained access through mutual need
briefly like the flick of a match
sets sulphur stalking cold corridors
only there, unbeknownst to the world
and her grave tick-tock visage
we earn closer, sloughing skin, molecules
separating individuals, ages, castles, skies
until on the windswept summit we fall
clutching each other in entreaty and relief
fading from sight, resisting wholeness
becoming starlight
only then, your damp hand caught
somewhere inside me, my bruised
lips smarting with the pressure of
cascading into earths center
do we know a place that is only ours
where we are pre-Denisovan and
holy, beneath the candle of a human’s
little watched life
that shallow wick, curved in entreaty
for meaning, for Gods, for monsters
and your rounding stomach, wet with tears
salt and oxygen and loss like a tableau
of everything, a table set for two
we sit obedient and fatigued
the lines of us, drawn before we arrive
breaking outside the cast, little cracks
small fizzures
with the fixation and vexation
of mortal love.
TheFeatheredSleep 