In the folding chairs beyond the
levee
I looked up at dusk in the
stars
The question compelled in my
chest
Like the energy from the ground that
pulls a bolt of lightning from the sky
To meet half way and ignite plasma
fire
The words surfed off my tongue, “Do
you love yourself?”
She stared in shock of so personal
And did not answer, but she
did
She says, “I have accepted who I
am.”
She spends her life
Professionally
Not letting people know who she
is
No clipboard, just a look listening
asking one way conversations
No address, no family photograph, no
identity, but a pair of blue eyes
No quid pro quo with a second cell
phone
Depending on the ring a different
voice greets, but never answers
Alter ego and a trade name
A Louisiana city and an opposite
gendered saint
Pearl white oyster shell sealed lips
in liquid night
The tide washes in but never
out
She hath chosen prison walls in
concreate bars of an enigma’s call
To be seen and never touched behind
the curtain of thou crutch
To keep the stain of love away
inside a prism of a rainbow’s fade
Jarred and moored to a bastion rock
that she need not the keeper’s stock
He can have thy love in spades, she
wishes not to play thou game
But to buttress the battens down to
diminish love as a beguiled crown
For thy lady she mocks love like a
muse who can inspire
But cannot feel. She cannot
sip the grand chalice for its nectar.
She can drive men to ink sonnets of
love’s exploding suns
Yet a ray cannot dare touch her
cheek for it will bleed
The flowers upon her skin grown not
in day, but in candlelight
Tempered by what she sees as
possible must be constrained inside thy self
Like a wick of burning wax years
upon thy stack
She hath brazenly mocked love for
its kiss
She gives a man therapy but it
cannot be her
She gives a man dance, but he can
never be her partner
She controls the steps and the
moment of thy song’s terminal note
She hath found refuge in what she
can never be
Yet like Shakespeare’s wisp thy lady
doth protest too much
“Love is a smoke raised with the
fume of sighs
Being purged, a fire sparkling in
lovers’ eyes
Being vex’d a sea norish’d with
lovers’ tears
What is it else? A madness most
discreet
A chocking all and a preserved
sweet”
I see her at the top of my stairs
resting head
Debating disclosure like a guardian
at the gate being told to stand down
Vulnerability is the ultimate
bravery
To lay a heart at a sword is but to
risk death, a body slain is but blood
A heart of spread sternum given
freely to a spirit’s kiss
Risking unrequited measure in
exposing the darkened side of one’s moon
Is to ask eminence of love’s
acknowledgment
Love me not as bones and flesh, but
as a being eternal
She is here bowing down to love’s
grace in a moment of the changing guards
She guides my hand to brush her hair
back in a stroke of recognition
I see her name most true written
across her body
Like a thousand tattoos in every
language of the Earth
She cries, “This is me. This is me.
I am going to be vulnerable in this moment
I do not know how long I can hold
it, but this is me and do not forget this face.
For I will cover her in sheets of
scorpions and sirens. I will sing to you and sting you.”
“I will forget my name and cast
yours against the rocks.
I shall not forget yours, but I
cannot help what I am.
I am a prisoner with both lock and
key and I choose not to leave.”
“I have seen the audacity of love’s
promises quake the Earth and swallow cities.
I mock love most vile. I sting
love. I sting love with the malice that sails ships to war.
I have seen what men and women can
do. I, I shall sail mine own. I shall captain my ship.”
“Love shall cast thy gale.
Love shall call. I shall learn the siren song and sing it back to
them and vex their ears most dizzy.”
First she said we were to keep clear
of the Sirens, who sit and sing most beautifully in a field of flowers; but she
said I might hear them myself so long as no one else did. Therefore, take
me and bind me to the crosspiece half way up the mast; bind me as I stand
upright, with a bond so fast that I cannot possibly break away, and lash the
rope’s ends to the mast itself. If I beg and pray you to set me free,
then bind me more tightly still.
I hear her sing to me as she steps
away from the top of the stairs
I see her name dance across the
stars like Andromeda to Perseus
I see her pick up her glittering
mask in the distance as she falls into her ancient gravity
She scowls at love once more as a
temptress in her sanctuary
She hath laid a query in my bed
asking what I am looking for though my telescopic glass
I speak in distant futures upon
fated breath of a partner for life’s silk
Before the fate’s clip, she hath
seen herself behind varnished names
She sings the siren song, “I knew
that would never be me,”
As if when I responded to the
question phrased she pictured herself, where I did not
Yet wishing it was a place she could
one day be
With someone
Sharing more than a fleeting seed
pod of days in a surface of fallow soils razed
Leaping in and out of men and women
trying to tie her down
Thinking they ask her to make
promises to herself she feels she cannot keep
For she hath known her heart an
oyster sealed, walls ensconced, parole repealed
Thy lady has cut out her heart, she
turns her back to me and dare not show me
What beats beneath her breasts, I
see the flowers growing upon her back
In a candle’s flickering stare, I
stroke a gentle stem
And she knows her love doth beat,
and my lady wrestles, she wrestles not
In thoughts of me, but in her alone
compelled to be what she cannot face
She owns her place upon the stage
beautiful and frail
Her legs strong, her mind an acerbic
wit and ear a panel of the sage
I feel my blood swallowing hope
speaking,
I know you do not want an answer,
you do not want to change
I thought maybe you could not admit
to yourself how much you felt you did not deserve love, love for who you are
vulnerable and dark, personal and love unconditional like a ghost that does not
exist, a chase for the mad yelling at clunking bottles in alleyways
I thought I was supposed to help you
see that. I don’t know if it was for us to ever be or love or stay
together but I thought I was supposed to help you to let love in and feel its
warmth in the confidence of my poetic stair. I felt a moment of God’s
kiss in the gift of my words to see you as you are and call you by name that
you are worthy to be you without guardian at the gate. That no one will
drag you to the stables for labor or fold you into a paper doll. You are
worthy of a blinding love, to be held in the essence of the universe and cared
for as a sacred being. You are worthy to love yourself as you and scream
your name to the heavens saying, “I hath been seen by love and love hath
smiled.”
There was a moment on the folding
chairs beyond the Algiers levee where I looked up in the dusk sky and I asked
you if you loved yourself. I remember feeling the inclination not to ask
you, but I felt compelled in that moment. I surfed it off my tongue.
You said that is so personal and
didn’t answer, but you did.
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