Poems

Poems serve many Princes,
a meal of words refined;
broken promises, and instances
when small moments are enshrined
a precious frame by intellect.
whether metered or un-rhymed.

Maybe our work is not our own.
Our words spend the night
in the beds of strangers,
doing the double duty
of love and hate
and what follows
the disappointment
of not getting
enough
of either.

Maybe it's not a thing.
Not even a poem,
but a wordless cry,
a blind eye severed from a socket
seeing only its own bad luck.

We tend a furnace
lit with our tongues.
Combustible portents,
ignited pretense,
the dancing dowager,
her antique furniture aflame,
amidst the bodies of those
  we forgot to bury.
Or, simply, blank pages,
the fastidious record
of All
that went just
as we expected.

We said too much
too early on.
Little room was left
for going on...
much less
for the unspoken song
of love's amazing lexicon.

Each word,
a poor courier
of the heart's cipher,
was put to heavy lifting
better left to arms
and lips and eyes
exempt from the deceptions
of our profligate verbosity.

If we had it to do over again
would we let the silence speak,
daring doubt to kiss a cheek
to touch and seek
the arcane speech of hands,
the intimations of the wordless mouth
affection surrenders to a sigh?

Would we fly
instead of crawl
through hollow papered halls
drunk on the lush elixir
of scent and taste and feel
too real for words
too hot to heal
the open wounds of love?
Would time erase
what we thought we had to say
when it didn't matter anyway?

Writing, we would rip
directly from its source,
  --childish reckoning;
and lavish each
with our gift,
  --poor token;
All that a tear
makes
small.

But for the unspoken
ardor of another,
who adroitly tastes
what treasure may be gleaned,
we have no stake,
nor can we know
the contour
of the dream
re-dreamed.

My sweet,
your sour.
Your sweet,
your own.

Yet, only when carved open,
exposed by another,
the flesh peeled back,
can we see,
in the air escaping
the carnassial wound,
the ghost
of our intentions
set free.

We say so little
so on cue, it seems,
a toxic syntax of ice
spawns that glacial indifference
for which we often pay the price.

Still, this late, I read your words.
You who would be known.
You who would not be known.
Yes, find myself in familiar country
again searching for old truths.