In the Shadow of the Warm
Judgmental, I’d thought you at first, and cynical.
But when you laugh, the muscles of your face relax
To lighten incisions of experience
Like the smile teased out of a little boy in an unknown Italian painting.
Your cheekbones, are they high or low? Mustache? Glasses?
I’ve never noticed, nor the rest of you -
I’ve been mired in thoughts and words, a slate erased.
But my laughter remembers you.
As does my wisdom.
When you talk, I see not you
But Freud’s dark paintings
illuminate Sylvia Plath's walkway along the telephone poles,
and Van Gogh’s leg doubled up in an agony of thrusting efforts.
I see suffering etched on rainbows
That line the night-skies of our tomorrows,
And sorrow dancing flamencos
In the shimmering graveyard of delights.
In you, I only see reflections
The punitive fragments, the fires of my soul,
The same fires that you once stole from the gods
To weave blankets that keep me warm,
And I lack the courage to now ask you: are you cold?
And do the gods ever forgive? |
