:: Colloquim ::

Again, A Dying

Again, a dying,
Cold in a midnight moment,
Unclouded, spent of logic
―in casual torment―
Every beat on poisoned asphalt, I seek in kind;
Your name jogs gamely, in the snakepit of my mind.

No speck of sentiment
In my throat, not this death,
Death was long ago,
Hand on heartbeat heart on breath.
Love, my love, is a wicked minority god―
Cares not for votes, cares less for praise―victims of fraud―

And your eternal need to save
―Me!―with your cape, My Clark, my Bruce,
Your cartooned caress, your puzzling shape;
I send wreath upon wreath of apologies, a funeral march,
Trumpeting the gravestone of memories, your forbidden touch.

Again, a dying,
A sucking scion, half-lying―
Tonight.

***

Twelfth

I fell out of love, and that's my story's dull ending,
Flatter than old champagne, and duller than the grave;
Take my rock curtsey now, break off strains of this love song,
And smash the guitar. Baby, baby, there's nothing to save.

Love makes us dogs, whining at cloistered closet doors,
We puzzle ourselves―why we complicate things so?
I once let you enter, a powerless master, leashed
How we petted each other―fetch, darling, go―

Don't get sentimental, or I will end up playing
An ancient melodrama: calling on the empty deific love,
"Forever, and ever" we say, and hope for an echo
But there is nothing―no returns―from silence above.

Return to your box, your previous declarations:
"I love you, I love you"―what little words, what durable life―
Now recalled in mockery, in my loveless hereafter,
Like a tattoo being skinned off, with sores and blisters rife.

We should have listened to the goddamned love songs,
We should have looked to wilted flowers or the quiet sky:
All warning us fuckwits passing off as lovers, saying
The grander the hope, doll, the fatter the lie.

So, now twelfth night, and I am Romeo's whore,
My story is done and you've opened the door,
To love your new Juliet while I rebuild my Rome,
May we be pardoned, may we learn, for having loved before.

***

Plea

My father had a dangerous youth, one of those
that makes childhood seem like cancer.
Age is the witch-doctor, beseeching with prose,
and he is defenseless. Remains uncured, until today.

I remember his fists, and that ornate ring he wore,
on the fourth finger like a king. An emperor dethroned,
he barked madly at his slaves: my life, his wife, a chore.
So we quietly love him. As families do, in the movies.

He is an odd scholar, learned but common, fierce
in his knightly quest for perfection. He flashes his anger
like the head of John the Baptist, his words pierce
through our vague vests. Do you know we drown.

The witch-doctor has a peculiar cry, makes one vain.
He confronts mortality with obedient hands―no fight―
So he limps, crippled by an unseen Excalibre, slain
but not quite dead. My phantom king, my father, the rebel.

***

Monday Monologue

You pity me, I think.
That I may bleed poetry from my veins,
but I am unable to love your mortal kiss.
So we touch glasses, and drink.

In a well-dressed dream, I have killed you―
But you rose again, like a curious mirage.
Your beautiful neck, an early canvas of Picasso,
Drawn too late, old too soon, but I knew.

I'm beginning to wonder.
If all our lines are tranposed; a shared furor,
that gets reincarnated like a dead sparrow,
Lines we purge and plunder.

So we say the same things twice,
And watch the words stagger about, as though
they have been clobbered on the jaw.
The murder of beauty, for some, is a dainty vice.

And he says, rather sullenly, he does not
understand. And I blink in relish, an enigma
at last, somewhat like a Russian poet,
Or a soldier limping with footrot.

Who cares about being your queen,
she has to be as mute as marble;
My noisy insides would lynch me of my crown.
Who cares, what I mean.

Even I pity me.
Repeat once more, with idiot effect:
Pity the pitiless, unloved by love.
Thank you for your Monday sympathy.