The crocus of my heart (2)

She is a pearl, a night pearl left on shore

to enrapture moon

her glow infinite, beneath water, o-er ocean

she turns, a velvet ribbon and I follow

possessed by singular vision

her irregular grace and

the dystopia of instinct

loathes the outline of her leave

with ferocity

she surplants my own gaze

by watching her, I find loveliness again

our language intuited

keys in a fruit bowl

picked at will

flash of silver and her hand

shaped in intention, shifting gears

knee down on gas, slivering through night

was it then?

Harpsichord of need gathered like penitents at wake

wishing themselves beneath earth

if it would evoke feeling, would wake sleeping

outliers of faith, to disturb solemn procession

to forgetting, our tempura hearts

beating in fragile unison

was it then? Testing breakable surface

I chose to dive, collecting your solvent depths

in pollinating gown, as I could taste

grace in my mouth, a melange of unspoken

longing, bursting beneath my blind swallow

I would lie here, my hand in yours, the

curve of us indistinquishable, skin hot with

persperation, a thruming channel of

love coursing my veins

you, in the center, a delight cresting and falling

waves of us, feeling for shoreline, that last cry

holding me to your quake, as passenger will clasp

her bird in descent, flat feathers, going deeper

find another place, as yet unopen to

entreat with the crocus of her heart

til you open again

and a river runs

no words

only felt

that latch lifted

and you place the key

deep within

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Two cars going in separate directions

What is contained in motion? In separation? In the fluid trajectory of two cars

driving in different directions

when once they drove together in one, singular and twice

with music playing like a warm stove in Winter

watchful eyes glinting at the movement of her soapy shoulders

inhaling a song they both liked

was it really so long ago? time can be a fickle fellow

you believe things have not changed before

the car wreck distorting metal into specters, and then mangled see

all the signs and wonders leading to your loss

glaring and obvious as they were not before

I would say four years, six, maybe more

since like powdered sugar you shook her

out of your system and changed the channel

you think she couldn’t pick up on the dull flat key of your promises

or the way you did not meet her pleading eye

and had someone else nearby

parked with engine still running

waiting her eventual hot buttered turn

you were bound to return to the past

as your memory dissolved through gauze

that is all that remained sharp

like a knife on my chest will cut

only so deep and then retreive

sticky piecemeal

baking it into cakes and giving alms

when we are neither penitent nor dead

but live on

in seperation

as time comes and goes like a trance

one moment I am holding a glass

of your words

believing myself loved

the next the house is being emptied

sold for next family to inhabit, my footsteps

there was a time I held onto

boxes of memories like a kite

I saw if you let go of the string

they rose higher and higher out of sight

more beautiful for freedom

now I can pack the entirity of me

in one small bag and still have room for heartache

this is the season of change

the radio host warns us of impending rain

another storm like last year and the one before

we threw sharp glances at each other until there was no more

blood left inside to keep warm

I feel no regret, only the beckon of movement

on to the future and maybe

I will not need a car where I am heading

watching the horizon bleed

its first bidding autumn evening

and I remember laying with you watching tv

in the dark, the feel of your fingers on my neck

remember reading Bridges of Madison County, thinking

surely people do not live like that

and the car

waiting at the stoplights

long after they could have driven on

blinking in humid downpour

blinking for her to get out and run toward

something already buried and underground

I hear the gear shift

watch in rear mirror

the outline of you

grow gradually thinner

against orange light

and the sound of someone

crying out

https://youtu.be/voZI8NXEO6M

Carta

A letter

Is no letter

If it’s written at night as you lie

Staring at oscelating overhead fan

Hearing in its medicate purr the things you cannot alter

A letter

Unwritten

Is simply a wish

Searching for diety

Perhaps it will never find

A God willing

Or time will dissect

Impulse

Those words, carefully written out

To articulate the sounds

You hear chiming in your heart

Continue unheard

So instead, you join the mass of humanity

As they embark

Every morning with first train

A legion of

Unwritten emotion

On the tip of their

Blistered tongues

Guilt

Guilt

Is a rare bird of shame

Its plumage

Breathtaking

For guilt

Captures the beholder, willing or not

Averting gaze from all else

Guilt will render paradise dowdy

Comparing freedom with the chains of its capture

Guilt is an old, fond bruise

Reminder of moments left torn to shreds

It will piece them carefully back

Twice as convincing, twice the weight

Strung round your neck like noose of sea pearls

Begging to be drowned

Guilt is a rose bush with bleeding thorns

A shudder as you catch yourself thinking of

Those pursed secrets you’ll never disclose, even to yourself

Snapshots you expunge, that still, listlessly, rise from the depths

Never speak of it, even to the merry faced doctors 

Plunging their needles as far as they’ll go

Guilt

Makes you sick

Wan faced, old before your time 

Aloof in the varnished secret

Guilt

Steals your liberty 

But like a lie

Guilt is not vanquished, even by truth

There are things better never admitted

Keep them so deep inside you start believing the deception

Until

Like a wide eyed bride

Guilt takes your hand 

And plunges you back where you’ve been all along

There’s no solution to shame when it’s too late to undo

The poison that you drink, the person you’ve turned into

Guarding yourself like a wreck against sharp rocks

With less and less by the day to salvage

If you spoke it out loud

Surely the very sky would catch fire

How many of us must carry a spark?

Burning in our secret hearts?

And maybe this is why

You never know another person by what they share

Instead

It is the unsaid

Electric in the air

We recognize in others

The tarnish of shame

As clear as promises once given

Cannot be refunded

Unrequited love longs

I didn’t know you felt that way

just as the golden-haired girl

with bleached French roots

didn’t know I felt for her

(or worse, knew, and felt

less than dismissal)

we are ebony dominoes

pass the plain papered parcel

our affections whittled and sharpen

by the smoky knowledge we can never

confess ourselves or pardon

to objects of secreted passion

so remote and out of touch

the girl who falls for

a woman who loves men

the heterosexual who has a crush

on a flamboyant boy

things get broken without throwing

why is emotion so deluded?

I will never tell her my secret

just as you will not reveal yours

in our actions and what we do not say

there is the truth

explaining the easy pain of social discourse

masking itself behind awkwardness

when she talks about the men she dates

I dare not say … choose me you fool

I could make you dance

in a way you have not yet discovered

some people hang out of reach

even for sailors

leaning into the confessional surge

I can empathize

I would never have said yes to unwanted

dinner guests

so why should she entertain a cliché?

girls who like girls fall for those who

cannot be reached across life boats

better I hold my green tongue

admire from afar

the provoking shape of her

the way she knows

people are watching

her sway to

unrequited love songs