Her hand is a vanquished
Castle of sand or cloud,
A hot breeze gone cold,
A heartbeat felt by fingers
Pressed upon a cadaver’s jugular.
And yet, is a kiss that different from a hug,
from a poem, from a text? Neither nature nor science
has anything to say on the matter. Love follows no rules
save those set by her practitioners.
Look at me,
This mess of flesh, of blue eyes,
Of tendons and nerve endings
(No, they are not endings).
I can only give you
That which I cannot hand you.
Forever giving gifts
Unwrapped by your eager eyes–
There is hardly room nor need
For my hand in yours.
I am vain.
I want your skin, your dimples, your breasts.
I want to trace your eyebrows with my lips
And border with my hands your hips.
I like to reach a hand
into the unknown.
I like to rise early and predict
The patterns of the clouds.
Were you in my embrace when I watched the footage of Mars,
heard that alien wind and felt, somehow, at home;
Were our lips wet with one another’s saliva when I read
A Brief History of Time, considered places even light can’t escape from;
How do I decide: essay or letter,
free verse or sonnet; what it is I want
to say to myself, to you; if it’s better
to have or to hold. Alone, I go gaunt
“When I have a terrible need of — shall I say the word — religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.” – Vincent Van Gogh
A mystery consumes me. I pass the morning in ardent search of last night and furrow my brows as though dreams would return in the grooves of my forehead. That is not enough. Nothing is enough. I never can go faster or slower than one second at a time. My enthusiasm teeters between the unbearable and the blissful. I want to scale the heights of human knowledge, to create art, kisses, love, peace…but the next moment carries the enormity of my desire, and I fall upon the ground of my being like an electric charge in a puddle of amino acids. So I continue, neither collapsed nor elevated. Every sight I see, every thought, however subtle, every word I read or write only adds to the fury: nothing is enough.
Mystery eludes the firmament;
The unbeliever rejoices, yet certitude
Is but a pause, the prelude
To an inexplicable and joyous lament.