Outpourings of volatile
I am incendiary.
Light a match
and lignite.
Mucous membranes
peel
like old paint
under a blow touch.
Blue flame,
tendrils of sere,
curl,
circle my head,
lodge in my throat,
words
which mean pity,
escape me.
poor wee soul
Are you me,
or my body
which shelters you?
Like my heart
you are all sensation,
prepared to laugh,
or weep,
at the slightest provocation,
yet you cloak yourself
in invisibility,
even to my inner eye.
Are you mine
and mine alone?
Do I need to learn your landscape
before I've even learned my own?
Yes,
my darling daughter,
I am yours alone:
singular,
though not immutable.
At the very least,
remember that.
high noon
high noon
I tried the stand-off,
John Wayne against
the Big "C",
but it was an off-day
and he didn't stride away
into the sunset
or even the noonday sun.
Pity!
Another fantasy
up in smoke.
I'm considering
a change in tactics
though I have reservations
about befriending this presence.
On the other hand,
we share a degree
of intimacy,
it having co-habited
in my body
for an undisclosed period
of time.
The sneak attack
included scatter-bombs,
awide-ranging assault
on every thing
I/we held dear.
I add "we"
for inclusivity:
no thing touches me
alone,
and these were wrecking balls.
All my walls
came tumbling down,
burying tender hearts
under a rubble
of the unforgiveable.
I collapsed
under the sheer weight
of blows.
How much can you take
from me
until I no longer recognize
my self?
Is there a middle
in which to meet,
a peace accord
so to speak,
a negotiation of
what may be taken
and what will remain?
So far,
an answer eludes me.
April Iris
I wish I'd been there
at your birth.
This disease crowds out
choice,
and this year
I needed your glory,
your yes to life.
imagine you
happy.
How could you not be,
the earth broken for you
in spring's sacrament
of renewal,
and you
reaching for the light.
Revenant I call you,
revenant.
It depends
I want to believe
that my mind
is arbiter of thorny issues,
that truth is always
as obvious and immutable
as one plus one makes two.
But the soul,
the soul makes choices
based on a certainty
that nothing is certain,
that very occasionally,
one plus one
can equal two and a half,
more, or sometimes, less
than half the time.
"It depends", says soul,
"on whether you have skin
In the game."
I bow to all things fragile
to the end of the wild,
to lark-song past remembering,
to all those
who howl at the moon,
in pain or ecstasy.
I bow to the daffodil
bending under
unexpected snow.
I bow to Emily's
flighty, feathered wing,
to all hope that defeats
rage and evil,
and that confirms
our universal need
for love.
Zerrissenheit
no one comes back,
except in pieces:
shell of the body first,
skeletal approximation
of what used to be.
the heart is next,
occupying only half
its usual space;
the other half remains
somewhere
on the killing fields,
an imperfect memory,
but the eyes, arriving
one
by one,
cannot see
outward:
an unknowable trick
of half-light
has focused them
inward,
unable to loose their grip
on visions which arrived
just moments before.
we return
as shadow,
trying to reconstruct
body, and improbably
soul,
from off- cuts and shards
of an other self.
not me
I no longer recognize
myself.
A mirror shows
only a blank space
where my face
should be,
and my body
when did this strange apparition
take its place?
How much can I change
without my self
recognizing | am not
who l used to be:
when did I become
"not me"?
What alchemy is needed
to convert gold to dross,
or, more challenging perhaps,
dross to gold?
Peregrinus
Today,
nothing speaks
of home:
fields smell of heat
and fire
and ash;
the air reveals
nothing-
no other scent, or sound,
no pathway recognizable
to my feet,
though I do remember
how to place
one foot in front of the other,
to move on
without a map,
to not know who,
or what, I am,
to give myself up
to the kindness
of strangers,
with nothing to give
in return
but my lost self.
Only darkness
offers refuge.
Not even moonlight
can return me
to me.
I burrow into the arms
of shadow,
fearing the light,
what it might reveal
to me,
of me.
*Peregrinus (Latin for someone not at home
where they are walking.)