melancholic musings

you offer yourself up. shoulders first- sharp juts into the wind- and next breath- the grateful rise and surrender- and then, in a heave that denies sacredness, fish-flesh -

and then there is just cold- brief, stark, total. cutting through limbs to the tendons, tautly bound, and the blood, changeling blue. the whole world gasps and shrinks into this space. the water is not kind, but it takes you with little reluctance, and for a little time it is only skin against skin, creature to creator, child to mother.

- but then the rich earthiness of the body ceases and what is left is a consciousness, maybe yours, drifting, calm and melancholic and yearning- oh, a familiar, terrible, sweet ache- as it looks up to the sky, which is endless.

l. she appeared to me swathed in the silk of midnight- soothed my wild cries, collected the star-bright tears of my passion and turned them to gleaming white pearls with a slow, knowing smile. she took my hand gently and spun me; turned me into a dancer, into some proud siren, all naked flesh and warm skin and hard, gleaming eyes. I glowed under her touch, and as my heart and soul rose and blurred, became whole, her form fluttered and slickened as if oiled. she became teasing, mirage-like as I sought her out further. one night I found her as a queen, jewel threaded curls and honeyed robes, the next she knelt and wept fiercely alongside me, finding my body with the soft heartbreak of a friend, a mother. she was wonderful, and fickle, she demanded more each time and yet with each disappointment, every time the thread loosed, slackened, she remained just there, just out of sight, for me to return back to her arms. she was not of love but love itself, and she defied every definition.

i. I’m reaching out into the dream-void,

glimpse with a pathos heart

the other self; not mine, as flimsy as

a spider’s web (dew struck- trembling with

the weight). but then my vision weeps

even in the bright light,

so I cannot be true, not real about this.

my flesh is made of a unconscious mind.

~

ii. disturbance rustles like black silk under

my skin, unknown threat hanging

just there- just behind my eyes

white fish pearls- I see nothing

I know nothing

I just think, with wildness on rose

velvet lips- it is there, it is not

right.

~

iii. a net of golden thread, o pretty vision,

entangle me- I am cut up and stitched

poorly into something intense but

blurred, confusion reigned in

massy thoughts, lead, blood, tired

ness, longing to

go back, to where I can formless sit and