Je Ne Regrette Rien

 

Here is the door you did not go through.

You, ghost handed, 

the handle deaf, 

non-days gathered,

a luggage pyramid entombing clouds and afternoons

discovered centuries later 

by fictions wearing anvil boots.

Come, recover here as the iron rails of empires

rise and intertwine, cobras

reciting the Romantics

with voices quilted from collected rhododendrons.

Stay with what is real,

the blistering sun, or the blue ice calving

every next minute 

into each moment's astonished respiration.

I love you.

I don't love you.

I have never met you.

I can't live without you.

What use the playing cards of a ferret scrying in a tumbler?

There is another door,

an infinity of mirrors,

One True Path

and a million sherpas hauling sermons

up Everest for nobody.

Forget this door, Fortunato its drunken ticket taker.

Walk away,

go home, 

slip yourself into a vase bed and bloom wildly

between the cracks of dreams.

Rise, 

regret nothing,

and proceed in any direction

jubilantly,

automatically,

as even the slightest blade of grass will, like a deity.

____________

for The Sunday Muse #187.

Love Lock

I have kept you in jars of glass
blown from my own body.
I have kept you in photographs that swam 
and emerged from shallow night pools.

There is a blue cord connecting us,
an Arctic fissure calling with its constant lure.
I wake from dreams stunned, immobile,
a beat behind your false sunrise.

There is a bridge you don't believe in,
where I wait, lighting bonfires that burn the boards I stand on.
There is a lock and the looped chain future,
with only one key, in the palm of your hand.

As I turn to smoke, you turn to stone
where terns wheel and scream their Gypsy fortunes.
I become a bird as I fall, forgiving us both, 
in awkward semaphore I hope you'll understand.
______

for Sunday Muse # 95 where I am hosting.

The Troublesome Book

I am done with a book, but it is not done with me.
I go to the movies.
There is the book, hanging over the back of the seat in front.
"I was better," says the book, bitterly.
"But I am done with you," I tell it. 

I start a new book.
The old book falls off the shelf and knocks the new book aside.
"Motherfucker!" we say simultaneously.
I throw the old book into the fire,
but it just looks darker and more dangerous.

I enjoyed the book, at the time.
(The book and the clock got along famously.)
I took the book into my bed, into my heart.
But now I am done with the book and there are so many other books.
On this, the clock and I agree, which makes the book crazy.

I tell the book to forget me,
though, as is sometimes the case, I am unable to follow my own advice.
I will recommend the book to my friends.
I will review it favorably.
But the book is full of hate and wants to kill me and my new book, both.

After a few days, my new book becomes an old book also.
They join forces,
follow me down the street,
troll my place of employment,
spread lies about me.
I tell my troubles to the tv. It says, forget books, I love you, you're home.
_______

for Bits Of Inspiration at Toads.