Agni
Her Eyes
There is a green pasture in Italy
littered with Vestal columns
-broken and profane
they point back to a community
that no longer remains.
That greenness surrounds obsidian
with its verdant Sylvan bloom
with more authority than kings or even Gods.
The center of this garden recalls a deeper doom:
A rock from which flight is impossible
The child of Tarpeia’s womb.
And when she blinks poetry is silenced.
Her Skin
There is Dresden porcelain in her skin
forged from Augustus’ private stock
of the cleanest white and softest soft.
Her heart beats shyly within -
I trace the master sculpture with an eye
if not a hand. A brief passing by
to sooth the conquering demand.
When we touch, she averts her eyes.
Her Lips
She never blows bubbles but
She chews cinnamon gum
So her words come with the distinct taste
of sacrifice from Volcanal.
It is a brief reminder that she is ancient
and naked somewhere under there.
Sometimes she sings to the delight of the world
and her heart pours from her mouth
with the molten golden words.
She doesn’t smoke because it gives you wrinkles.
Her Hands
Her hands have the curious habit
of touching everything -
They are constant vigilant explorers
searching for any light
to break the thick dense fog
of unimaginative reality
that clouds her sight.
They are so cold even in summer
that I can only imagine they search
for some towering lighthouse
to steal some warmth.
Ten tiny promethean digits
that can tickle ivory or children.
She plays with her gold ring when she’s nervous.
Her
And could you imagine that
Heraclitean furnace at her core.
The way she worries that it
burns out of control.
She is anxious often but never sad
like energy itself
and to look at her you would never
understand how she couldn’t adore
the way she laughs uncontrollably,
sighs absent-mindedly or
snores only when she sleeps alone
and presses her pillow so tightly to her face.
She prefers the company of humans.
The Speaking Space
We
Talk over dinner
over and over
like the river
or an ocean sound.
shhhhhh.
We
Missed out,
Nobody is around
under, under
the skin
We begin
to speak in spaces
sounding places
silent faces
beside and besides
ourselves.
Silence
is a collection
stolen. We find ways
to steal each other’s time
in the speaking space
within me, within
you.
Eating
only to be empty.
Something is lost
between us. Between us
Age clings like frost.
On and on
goes infinity.
Time
the agent of change
puts me above you
and now the spaces
without you
can’t speak.
They can’t speak
without you.
A Piece of My Mind
I
sit refusing
sand particles become me
they sit refusing
shape.
Ages ago
water broke us down
from the whole
words, waters,
baptism
the once united
now claim their
nothing individual
dry, dry, dried by the sun
They are one.
I
sit wet
from rain
we are now mud
together
what is left of the rock
is the key
and I am the lock
shhhh says the
falling rain
just be.
Aristotle’s Romantics
Shattered porcelain
like unburied artifacts
look like clouds on a hardwood sky.
She broke it, she is broken.
Standing by the dishwasher
her fingers between teeth
to prevent tears.
The curls of her black hair
bounce in the rhythm of her tapping foot.
A treatise could be written about her stance,
a theory constructed out of her clothes,
she feels the tension she has on her self.
Somewhere beneath strained breathing
she is porcelain ready to break.
The setting sun behind her
represents change, renewal, and hope.
Flooding through the kitchen window
it casts her into a shadow on the floor.
It isn’t until I draw close that I feel her heat,
see the blood on her olive skin,
until I discover the cause.
My fingers on her chin give a new trajectory -
her eyes no longer on the floor.
She laughs while waving a dish towel in surrender.
That little porcelain plate was more than it appeared to me.
It was children yet unborn, it was bills yet unpaid,
it was first love, it was heart break,
it was the collected poems of our life together,
it was life unburied.
Watching Woman
She made short pauses in speech,
of the short this was the shortest
because she was in great haste to stop.
Her eyes widened to catch words from the air
felt fragmentations were in reach -
that is what called her to stop, and wait.
Shrapnel remaining from some big bang
tiny seconds ticked and removed from clocks
separation around her, and therein a history.
This moment, still defined as an instant
had refocused those sky light eyes
into beacons at sea, or trees in a garden.
More like trees in a garden actually,
tall twins reaching above the rest and whose
fruit would fall like blessings and curses on the land.
While one eye saw life and goodness all around
the other cupped its tender wisdom and through it
saw the naked truth – barren reality devoid of fragmented seconds.
The shortest silence was a complicated one.
Perhaps why she filled it so fast, with last second pleasantries.
But she and I both knew of time’s brief embrace with her.
Clarity aggressively inserted itself into her perceptions
revealing the destructive nature of creation – the circle
around her pupil – the circle around her eye.
But such circles were horrifying, and assaulted her sense of romance
it was the dance of endless endings. Her shoulders dipped from the weight
- her eyes squinted against the harsh light of beacons too bright.
Her hands tensed and gathered the white fabric of her clothes.
The climax of the instant was at hand and within the folds of delicate silk
a tremendous strain – a tempering – a steel heart.
She blinked and straightened her clothes thinking I hadn’t noticed a thing.
She pushed away a strand of hair from those glorious but tortured eyes.
“You looked lost for a second.” I said.
“I was just thinking of you.” She replied.
