Arabesque

I am the spine of a book, pages open on either side.

I am steel rails down a valley that two greening hills divide.

I am the corpus callosum, of two minds in every thought.

Am I sleeping or here wakeful, one eye open, one eye not?

I am the nest with two birds calling, both the same but different still,

I disperse myself in potions, both the doctor and the ill.

I am the worm who grew two wings, one of blue and one of gold,

Meeting in the middle when in flight and when in fold.

_______

for Sunday Muse #161. This had three stanzas but I liked it better with just the two.

Aphelion & Perihelion --- A Child's Anthem

I was a wall-walking ballerina 
dancing in an incinerator,
arms out, bending each way,
light as ash but not consumed.

Now I'm heavy as an old oak clock,
creaky as a forgotten stair,
yet somehow, I know the language of birds.

I'm hard to see in bright light
~always was~
but I shine continuously, weightless.
_______

for Friday Flash 55 at VerseEscape.

Photography by Christine Kapuschinsky Johnson.

Youth & Age

I met a woman with hands made of ice,
she said you're burning 
with fever, 
poor thing.
She gave me a bible, some old wedding rice
and a bell
too tarnished
to ring.

She said, child, you come like a saint with a gun
to bless me
or kill me
with cures.
I stood there and called up the moon with my prayers,
fed it honey,
then gave it
to her.

Don't give me your pity, it's you who need mine
said this woman who cracked 
when she smiled.
Then the moon called me back and erased all I'd done
and the woman said
don't you see,
child?
The woman said
don't you see,
child?
_____

for Sunday Muse #94.

Rumors Of Wars

image by Rebecca Sygnus

We were foreigners bloomed in exotic soil,
a kind of invasive pet.

Wherever we went, we had nothing,
and so performed and begged and stole,
spreading our arms in sheepish apology as our bellies growled.

We wore the emblems and baubles of our homeland,
as meaningless as gum wrappers here.
We were restless,
resentful,
thrilled to be free of all that constrained us at home.

None of us were ever going to wear
those conical hats
or our men grow those little goatees threaded gray with eastern wisdom.

Someone called my name, in accusation or greeting
and I looked up to see only my familiar ceiling.
There was no "we", no scraping sharp-edged survival,
and so I rose, fetched the morning paper from the step,

And searched through every page, as if for crumbs
to feed the thing I had felt
in the life I never lived at all
with the imagined companions upon whom there was no reporting

Though I missed them with a ferocity that held on for hours
like a dying foxhole brother.
_________

For Sunday Muse #77, from a wild and intense dream I had before waking this morning. Why I should dream of being part of a lost military expedition in Indochina is beyond me, but there it is. 

The Drunken World

The drunken world leans in, then away,
like a dancer on break who confides a confidence,
then tips back laughing as if to say it was nothing, 
just a gray cat switching its tail atop a fence.

Every season must first pass through my windows--
so I like to think.
Come in, sit in the slant on the boards of the hallway
and we'll drink
as if we were pretty as petals on a rose.

I have given up, that's the truth, 
and it's such a damned sweet relief to just let everything slide.
The drunken world sways, rights itself, then moves
with us on it, choiceless, birds perched upon a train at night.

I love you. One day I won't, and it breaks my heart.
We're not new at this,
and what can be broken already is.
Please let yourself, this once, just be in my arms;
think of nothing beyond this moment's kiss
so it won't be so bad when we joke it off, let go of the barre, and part.
_______

For my own "Touch of Gray" challenge at Real Toads.