A softer touch may be enough

To rescue me from schemes of love.

I do not know the times I’ve been

Lost in plots that lead to sin.

And still that book sits on the desk.

Its verses all point to a test,

Where joy is found inside the teeth,

And those sweet words, and visions seen

Evoke the smell of blooming Rose.

I’ve had my taste, and so it goes.

I choose to swear my heart to you,

Not to some set of ancient rules.

Switching, twitching mind

Who calls out every shot,

Breaks open all the time,

And points out all my rot.

If only there was a friend for meditation,

To bust the lonely breathing,

I’m forced to focus on the intake,

Empty out my brain, but wait,

There I am, sitting, talking to myself

Who is listening,

Pulling off my fingernails with pliers and a socket wrench.

Let the tool do the work

Or something might just strip.

Then all the screws will stick.

My only good friend,

The one who tells me the truth,

Keeps forgetting her key,

And I sometimes cannot hear her knocking.

Your teeth are cut so straight and even.

You’re wondering how we got out of Eden

So innocent.

Some portraits are painted without faces

Like Angels fallen far from their graces

Not knowing it.

I sold a whole town to buy you some time.

I caught the Devil to quiet your mind.

Now look at it.

And as if on cue, you just turn your head,

Take off your slippers and slip into bed.

That settles it.

I saddle my fears and ride off at dusk,

Feel the thundering of hoofs on the dust.

Magnificent.

Lover, time has done some damage.

I keep checking my skin for cracks,

Flipping through journals, separating acts,

Picking pieces to weave into a bandage.

I’ve taken classes in writing stories,

Searched my mind for inspiration,

My past for characters and sensations,

Found myself several filled inventories.

And we can fit ourselves in some of them,

The half-pained, half-seen smiles,

Apologies that can stretch for miles,

We hid intentions like frowned upon sins.

I’ve watched as the flower of our love began to cry,

And all around her, the grass would bow

Like penitent singers, asking how

Such a beautiful thing could learn to die.

So let’s unlearn it all and start from scratch,

Forgive the other their grand mistakes —

An easy thing to say with such great stakes.

Perhaps find a watering can and then the whispers of Spring attempt to catch.

I suck my fingers until they’ve cooled.

The fire logs are barely moved.

For just a moment, I forgot the heat,

The glowing red, the burning meat,

Had changed to ash and broken dust,

The pain begins to flake like rust,

And since all things must truly fade

I feel a question I can’t evade

Rise up into my fingertips.

It leaves a taste upon my lips,

Like words caught in saliva soot,

It rests and steps down to my gut

Where acids break down dreams,

Where enzymes make me mean.

My fingers hurt, and that’s okay.

I’ve realized life inside a daze.

That sudden moment when I awake,

A sweat-stain in the shape of a palm,

The sheets clenched tightly in my fist.

I dreamt a night that felt like years.

I found a love and comfort between my ears.

Do you know the kind I mean?

A stranger in that realm becomes true love.

I find a soul so well-aligned,

Yet I do not stop to question why.

A hundred truths shared between

My unconscious self and a half-lit shade.

Well she does not shy away when I

Run my fingers across her cheek,

Her hair and neck and perfect lips.

She blooms like all of nature under my touch,

And I feel the dams of myself break and give.

____

I want to stand up and scream.

Accuse the day, the sunlit world,

For ruining any real chance I had.

But if I’m being honest,

I will just curl up, fall asleep,

And start searching for her all over again.

What sense will come

Upon the backs

Of salesman tongues

And clothing racks?

Is therapy

A slowing down,

A purchasing

of quiet sound

Inside the mind

That overheats

From lack of time,

Work’s entropy?

I have a guess,

But in that lies

The patient mess

Of missing trees,

Their lovely dance,

The taste of Spring.

To rest one’s hands

Among the green,

To substitute

The work of God

To force the brute

of a lover’s nod.

With every inch, a changing shade,

The Moon will strive against the ground,

The stones of cliffs and grass of glade,

The fools beneath and all their sound.

And in her heart, she will refuse

To ever cease her Heavenly lift

Near towns or rivers or even you.

If distance was but just a gift.

She moves, but slow and beckoning.

Her red now yellow, now going gray.

And She will call us Reckoning

Only when we touch, only on that day.

You and I will flicker past

The sloping edge of our sprinting Earth

Like moths just chasing dying laughs

Drying out in ancient dearth.

All the while, when snow will melt,

When the oaks decide to graduate

And shed their leaves like a hard-won pelt,

We will call her love until ourselves, exasperate.

Still on that day our graves are filled,

The Moon will be shifting through her shades,

Casting cloak like it was our will

To hold her til the morning came.