rapt

kisses my hair only

differently now

more cautiously as though

she too has grown aware

of her bone’s fragility

as her veins and ligaments

express their weariness

with gentle yawns

reminiscing on

star studded nights and

dreams taking flight

but now, there’s a life

inside of her eyes

and the bile rises

like the waves of a

stormy ocean and

she hears the heart pulsing

in her dreams

in her mind

and she wonders if

she’ll ever be all that she dreamed

if her hands can pick up the pen again

and if her lips can become song birds again

and if she can sit enmeshed with a midnight sky

my lungs are heaving still

with mocking caws caressing my mind

they worm their way inside my eyes

a murder of them,

watching loudly, waiting hungrily

for any last vestige

of hope or security

my hands rise shakily

toward a murky sky, that once appeared

laden with promises of light

i try to whipser-

but my tongue is torn,

my lips peeled back,

and my teeth are worn

to him who watches from afar

a stranger who once seemed familiar-

that i marvel at his skill with a knife

to carve out my heart along with my mind

but he cannot hear me

so I call every shadow

offering them back my bone and marrow

content with the knowledge that comes seeping through

and when i'm alone with you

i can feel this deep hum

hear this thrumming of

memories, always the same

a yearning that took the shape of

bottles of tears, that i sailed away on

every night

scouting for you always on an ink-black ocean,

led only by this desperate urging

then

you found me when i'd given up hoping

you saw me and i knew the seeking

was never of my own making

it was always you

singing my name across the galaxies

calling me home

planted flowers in my rotting bones

asked the swallows to sing

to my dying heart

to teach it how to beat again

then you melted away beneath the furnace

of my world that exists in a perennial

misbalance of energies

swirling cosmos' that I can never make sense of

and you saw too many shooting stars

and caught the tail of one,

riding in arcs

far above and away from me

leaving me to wither away, collecting dust

again in an old wooden box

that I never should have opened-

encase him with my most beautiful words

but his roiling soul eludes the ink

toiling tirelessly to make me work

he does not tease my mind

with esoteric concepts

laden with meaning

but brings me fresh flowers

from the greenest of meadows

and i can smell spring

dripping with honey

he catches my soul in his

light blue eyes

and feeds it back to me -

coaxes me-

piece by tumultous piece

and i can taste the peace

that he brings to my world,

a healing ballad

for his saturated soul

full of flowers, of figs,

of light,

of the sweetest fragrance

of my longed-for home

he's a meadow i could dance in

beneath a moon-drenched sky

moving to the cadence of our

sweet and desperate sighs

i would kiss his lips forever,

enchanted by the taste,

of the shivering stars

of the honeyed-sun

of his eternal grace

so I wait for you, my darling,

in the Gardens of Above

longing for the day

when your unborn soul

can drink the sweetness

listened carefully to its timbre

watching them paint other worlds

as we lay in bed at night

and you always loved to listen,

to the heart I couldn't find

piecing it together,

bit by bit,

showing me my skies

and all the corners of starlight

that would flash through my mind

you captured them in glass jars

hanging them in your sky,

drawing maps of all the constellations,

until i could see why

i know i can be fickle darling,

and i know i can make you tired,

but, i love you like my very own soul,

hurtling past Icarus

the tips of his in-tact wings

brushing my lips,

staining them red

and he hadn't even touched the sun

my bones they shattered

clattering, rattling

pleading for someone to bring me to life

pleading for someone to bring me a knife

and he fell through my fingers

when he wasnt even mine

leaving the taste of the Divine

and the moon no longer falters

in this celestial dance

where you're all magnetism

and i am the ocean pushed and pulled

lulled into a midnight quiet

echoing through the eons

these decibels are so familiar

and i know you

and you know me  and

you wrested certainty from my cold hands

leaving me with a familiar warmth

that grows into this insatiable feeling

looming large in my thawing heart

because I know you-

blinding sunlight

trapped within

a smile, honey sweet

his bones forged from iron

his heart made of stone,

i worship at his pedestal,

in my room at night, alone

Heracles envies him,

Zeus claims kinship,

Aphrodite wraps herself

around his honeyed lips,

and I, I watch him from afar

wondering at his nature

one so foreign, and so alien

cavalier and ancient

but ill keep the secret carefully-

that my body is made of his

bone for bone and cell for cell

blood for blood,

a skull, perched menacingly

on porcelain shoulders

grimaces, bleached teeth

promise a vicious bite

she whispers to it every night

of the death of reason

the passivity of every beating heart

and the violence that lies within

an unchecked appetite for life

hedonistic and self-fulfilling

prophecies, that wax and wane

hastening to their inevitable

and timely, untimely deaths

she takes its' silence

for tacit agreement,

then drinks herself into a stupor

dreaming of his lips and eyes

her porcelain shoulders cracking

of a howling storm inside your mind

a 3 am lament beneath a cold moon

dressed in gossamer

and clouds of cigarette

it's a special kind of madness- isn't it?

a special sort of alone-

where the ink bleeds black

pouring from your veins

across the pages of the millenia

and every timbre of voice you know

has passed into the void

long, long ago,

what torture!

to imbibe the words of the dead

yet, to remain in the throes

so tantalising- out of reach

my tear-stained lips

pressed into a grimace

i wish that i was always easy

did you ever have your own demon?

put me to sleep-

let me dream again

put me to sleep again,

of a change, of another season

of a winter hue glistening within

the frosted tips of lillies

that sway gently in the sweetness

of autumn's breezes

floating upon ethereal clouds

i sing with the blackbirds

i cry in solidarity with the rain

and i sit with the silence

with the pangs of mortality

embracing the limitations

of an infite soul at the mercy

of a resolute and dispassionate

of a foreign sun

stretching across a turquoise sky

above an ancient city line

the trees will whisper secrets

that have sunk into their roots

you'll be there amidst the clouds

learning with me too

and every sparkle of the ocean

will not outshine your smile

and I'll forget you, lost within you,

soft and mighty

struck me down

so swift, so finally

laughing with detached frivolity

as I lay bleeding still

'Come play, Love'

she sings- so beautifully

'Teach this one of want, of cruelty'

i see his golden brown crease slightly

watching me with curiosity

iron hands reach

sure and firmly

rip my heart

from my chest cavity

i watch it beat with soft fragility

emitting strangled cries of 'mercy'

he throws it high

mouth opens widely

Aphrodite

smiling brightly

a piercing pain rips through me searing

and a millstone in my soul

the moon sprinkles me with dust

and i writhe in silver

through a tear-soaked night

ghosts gently stroke my hair

and whisper of another time

and I'm ensnared- trapped within

the machinations of my mind

why does sadness feel like home?

joy- like something that belongs

to another who would never

for a moment question why

and why - oh night-

give me divine insight-

why does my soul faint with longing