I wonder aloud
about a backpack
that I left back
in an old lover’s
room,
filled with dreams
of our
future
even as
her heart
cracked
as
she emptied hers
out for the things
she felt I
lacked.
I am no
Saint—
in fact,
I am just a
Sinner,
but I’ve always
known that—
and my heart’s
no thinner
for giving myself
the right
to let my
Love
shimmer
like broken
bottle caps or
sea glass
on the beach
in
Winter.
I have
emerged from
the chrysalis,
but no one knows
like me
where the
missile is
that I
hid as a child
from the eyes
of the nosy
kind of god
my brother
was;
thistle is
a kind of
hiding place
where a child
can go
to think;
this ill is
the kind
that finds its
own cure.
If I could be
anything
small,
I’d choose to be
a moment
in a poem
where the
reader whispers,
‘Wow,’
but then forgets
to stall
long enough
to mark the page
at all;
I’ll be here
when you come looking
for me
again
after he breaks
your heart
next Fall.
The quieter we are,
the easier it goes,
but I am full of
colors—brimming
at the nose—
and when I speak
of flowers,
the word flows
like Lethe toward
unutterable Hades,
where he shows
Orpheus
that Hell
is a place
behind and
inside him
waiting simply
for
his eyes
to un.close.
Ovid
ought to have
left Orpheus
with the rocks;
I know that I think of
him when I
stare at clocks
(with my ears
mostly),
and think of
Shakespeare’s
‘thousand natural shocks’
and how I got
to be so shabby
and tattered;
so
practiced at being
sanguine
compared to
my
pristine
condition
when I came
‘out of
the box’.
What were the ways
in which
Ancients
held
hands?
(I toss up a question,
but don’t wait to
see where it lands.)
You see, I ask
because I have
plans
to shout the moon
down from the sky
and make of
her demands.
(I only hope
she
understands.)
Darkling I listen 