Experiments with digital India ink/ Constellations. November 2012

Songs of Redemption


“I don’t want forever. I want now, now and now.”
From ‘Aimee and Jaguar’


Father forgive me
for I have
sinned.

He sang to me
– the thought of him,
chorus to my days
as a coffee shop poet.

How much water can a hand hold?
Words fill my eyes,
yet do not find him.

My eyes look for his eyes.

I write his name on disparate surfaces.

The prelude of a shadow across my frosted window…
these are my ravings.

The india ink valleys of his shoulders,
the untenable rolling hills of his back –
the ache of swimming in that night sea.

Dream,  where do you come from?
Youth,  mortal god of Beauty,
we are snatching strands of happiness
we are grasping at icicles.

In a parallel universe
we are together
-craft parallel poems to impossible loves-
In a next life,
perhaps,
he says.

Take it lightly, he says
‘Take it in.’ when he holds me,
expanded heart,
but my shoulders have carried
the weight of the world.

We are separated by a layer of ice,
it melts when you look at me.

Dark, glacial waters lurk underneath
where your arms couldn’t keep me warm,
or reach me,
a shipwreck on the Artic.

That night I dreamt of kind, dirty angels
of kissing you, and I just kissed you.

It is bitter poison
to separate
Soul
from
Soul.

You told me about moon and tides,
our gravitational pull.
I cannot escape the moon or the sea:
they find each other.

Water bearer, I dip my toe in the warm water.
Engage or not engage,
it all plays out with the inevitability
of a slow-motion accident.

Lightbearer, I take this December Sun
as I take you in.

Summer will come,
the contingency of
your scent of roasted coffee beans
– you taste like clouds.

I am not sleeping tonight-
Honey, I slept for five years-
there are verses on this bedroom walls I must write down,
your forbidden cities

These are no walls, baby,
But canvases.

The job of bomb defusers
Is not an easy one.
I am a terrible accountant-
All I want is your eyes.

When the inner house is in order
There is nothing that can’t be accomplished.
Yet I am empty as the house is
after the guests have left:
this, you must know, is the condition of woman.

You said all that I dreamed of
will happen,
the beauty of rugged, imperfect things
the definition of uncertainty.
We are exercises in waiting

Meanwhile, I open doors I can neither enter
nor close.

Stalemate:
If we are
why do I not see you,
will the forgetting fog
swallow you too?

Dance inside of me-
If words are all we have
let us use them.

San Diego, December 2012