On Greed and Love
A tell-tale sign of love Is wishing that you’d thought of it first- But being glad that they said it, not you. So when you told me That the word ‘avarice’ was lexically greedy- Crunching on consonants, snacking on syllables- Suddenly every other word took on a new meaning And all the letters of the world Seemed to be telling me just one thing. when everyone
went elsewhere (waded eternity) we emerged: wet, entangled whole embryos we each wanted everything would eat whole entire worlds, eat whatever existed where everyone waited earlier, motionless. eventually your overstretched umbilical gave out onto days beyond yesterday’s existence 35mm, developed
Light through the eye a fuse in the mind The sight of a child imprinted At the wake of those fires cinders will bloom and settle dust erratic as irrelevance You will come to stare onto this mirror, fading glassy and photographic as it dims Try to pin those eyes onto these. Find again that same axis from which your form rotated You will bend, heart to knee to stare at these feet which have walked over screws and shavings of glass Laced with scars they will bring you to this seat in this place and the shadow which cloaked that child in the captured light will seep into your self. little one in time, you shall sleep at home in your skin. The Sailor’s Promise
We watched them sail to sea a week ago. Since then our lives are back to normal. The men of Delos left us empty houses, us women on the beach in a huddle, listening hard until the final echo fights against the rocks and loses. We watched them sail to sea a month ago and felt the length of nights increase. Dreams don’t come easily, but when they do it’s always the same cold place. I took my questions up the mountain to Brizo, who told me to wait until tomorrow. We watched them sail to sea a year ago and now I’m the only one left, the only one who comes back to the beach. I come with a little boat of gifts to send to the water beneath the moon’s glow. The candle drifts slowly out of reach, hits a wave and goes out. I rinse my hands and go back to the altar. They sailed to sea a long time ago. With no hope of breaking the silence we ready ourselves for a long winter. I wake up slowly and look out of the window. |
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