Look Up, My Love: We Are A Symphony

Posted on by Alex Gazda

I.

I possess
the audacious
belief
that
mine is a
story
lain out
in chapters.

I like to think it
an interesting
story
in its own
right,
and perhaps
it does
indeed
shimmer
out beyond
these pages
which are
my
inhabitance.

But
when I
first met you,
it was not
our first
meeting.

We first met
already
partway through
our stories,
and I will be
brave enough
to learn my origins
in our
recapitulation.

I recognize
in your
existence
the voice
of my own
author,
and each
upcurl
of his pen
in you
stirs my own
suspense.

I choose
to believe
that we are
each of us
purposefully
driven apart
so that our
eventual joining
will mean
something greater.

II.

I hear you
effortlessly
trilling
my own soul’s
melody,
and I dare not
allow
my down-bow
to cease.

My eyes watch
as conductor’s hands
curl vapors
of all colors,
but my ears
belong
to you;

(And who
can explain
how artful
harmonies
interplay?)

Our interval
sometime
may grow,
and
I strain
against
the staff
in groaning string:

Our suffering
is of an
exquisite
hue:
fleurs sauvages
lain across
this score
in open
nakedness
to still breath;

Each
appoggiatura
begs to be
the device
by which
our reuniting
resolves.

III.

You are this
endlessly
fragile
thing
whose ictus
I have learned
to cushion
while soaring
tangent
to your
laughing
curves—
I do not
steer,
I lean.

My love,
we pirouette
and you pass
the light
to me
and there is
finally
that glorious,
eternal,
dual possession
of such
silver-stranded
melody
as we
neither
of us
have dared
to dream.

After all this,
pen lifts,
and we

at last

d_i__s___s____o_____l______v_______e.

Which “I” are you?

Posted on by Alex Gazda

Which “I” are you?

I am me,
but that’s not saying
much.

Darkness scores the
prickling bark from my shoulders
and stars
slough off
my bristling
breaths:
I can write a masterpiece
or nothing at all,
and I choose
nothing at all.

There,
that’s better.

I is all I’ve got;

Which “I” are you?

a love letter to one who is far away

Posted on by Alex Gazda

If I were there
next to you,

I suppose
I would not
say anything,

but,
since I am not,

allow me
to tell you
that
I notice
when you
alter
your smile—
I admit
I prefer it
in its original form:

askew and bookended
by laughter
at one irreverent thing
or another.

I want you to know
that you are worth
all flowers

(and

I have only just
begun to discover
what that means).

I know that this is not the same
as a lovesong,
but that is only because
you cannot hear me
sing it.

You are familiar,
I think,
with the way a tree
might be
moved
without
being moved;

thusly does time
pass
with you
to
without you

(waves crash on
themselves
and only we
notice).

I cannot–
so removed–
offer you a flower,
so, instead,
I bring to you
all flowers
and lay them
naked
at your
askew
smile,

which I love
so
well.

A day at a time is relative

Posted on by Alex Gazda

I am one
whose
forgiveness
eyes
frostily
crack
the newborn
skies,

and

within my heartbroken
well
of retention,
I know
the stars
by names
of my own
invention,

and their light
overgrown
learned to
outshine
my own.

Yes,

I am one
over whom
trees of yesterday
do loom
and sing
their melodies,

and

the broken,
clinging
leaves,
left to die,
reach closer
to heaven
than do I;

I am one
who
believes that
tomorrow
is always
painfully
far away,

but,

be that as it may,

it is still
always closer
than this
looming
yesterday.