O
Her mouth shaped like an O drawing breath.
Open and round, the shape of possibility -
the eclipse surrounded by a corona of lips,
gasps like desperate hopes,
your body perpendicular to mine
forming angles perfect and predictable
under one window that watches
but doesn't dare to hope.
Part of me agrees with the glass
so I start to talk to myself.
In your mind, someone else is there.
Shadowgirl fingers, sharp teeth, midnight pupils
teaching you to see things in
double reflections
made by mirrors
facing mirrors
turned to read words backwards
so meaning and hope
are locked in a reverse kind of anti-solution
that turns time inward on itself
dilated and pouting like lips
on the verge
of giving birth to
nothing.
Do you remember the numbers?
A reflection of a date -
8 - 24 - 4
The day when words went back in time
to cover first kisses in arsenic -
This is the lock, the code, and the key.
Erase this moment
like a revisionist hacking
holocausts out of history.
Sever it from cerebral folds like
a surgeon excises gray cancer from wet lungs.
Learn from it like the bright red skinned knee
that made you get right back on the bike and keep riding.
Forget the old way into pain that the shadowgirl taught you
with her tiny hands and delicate eyes,
wet without care
or concern.
Pick up a hammer
and break the fucking lock.
The way out is through
and you were
before she was.
There is a girl made of light
coming from every impossible angle
banishing the past with her wanton mouth
that kisses through all your defenses
and she is waiting
for you
on the other side
where pale green buds can still explode into magenta wildfire.
But shadowgirl's lips are like dead fiddlehead fronds
wrapped around your tongue so
you cannot pronounce love -
it will come out like a grunt
and the lights will go out.
So shut up. Stop relying on words.
Stop talking to yourself.
Turn the handle.
Metal parts with metal
with a goodbye bisous -
*click * click *
one on either cheek of
a latch that disuse turned rusty
and disuse will tarnish again,
because you
are never
never
going
back.
6/16/05
Her mouth shaped like an O drawing breath.
Open and round, the shape of possibility -
the eclipse surrounded by a corona of lips,
gasps like desperate hopes,
your body perpendicular to mine
forming angles perfect and predictable
under one window that watches
but doesn't dare to hope.
Part of me agrees with the glass
so I start to talk to myself.
In your mind, someone else is there.
Shadowgirl fingers, sharp teeth, midnight pupils
teaching you to see things in
double reflections
made by mirrors
facing mirrors
turned to read words backwards
so meaning and hope
are locked in a reverse kind of anti-solution
that turns time inward on itself
dilated and pouting like lips
on the verge
of giving birth to
nothing.
Do you remember the numbers?
A reflection of a date -
8 - 24 - 4
The day when words went back in time
to cover first kisses in arsenic -
This is the lock, the code, and the key.
Erase this moment
like a revisionist hacking
holocausts out of history.
Sever it from cerebral folds like
a surgeon excises gray cancer from wet lungs.
Learn from it like the bright red skinned knee
that made you get right back on the bike and keep riding.
Forget the old way into pain that the shadowgirl taught you
with her tiny hands and delicate eyes,
wet without care
or concern.
Pick up a hammer
and break the fucking lock.
The way out is through
and you were
before she was.
There is a girl made of light
coming from every impossible angle
banishing the past with her wanton mouth
that kisses through all your defenses
and she is waiting
for you
on the other side
where pale green buds can still explode into magenta wildfire.
But shadowgirl's lips are like dead fiddlehead fronds
wrapped around your tongue so
you cannot pronounce love -
it will come out like a grunt
and the lights will go out.
So shut up. Stop relying on words.
Stop talking to yourself.
Turn the handle.
Metal parts with metal
with a goodbye bisous -
*click * click *
one on either cheek of
a latch that disuse turned rusty
and disuse will tarnish again,
because you
are never
never
going
back.
6/16/05
