Let's not obsess on
publication,
getting featured,
pats on backs
or legacy.
Let's not obsess on the feelings, either.
They're nice, but if we write,
let's write to bring the tortured words
back home
from institutions that feed the
darkest
parts
of themselves
on just these words.
Their gluttony should madden us,
should drive us to
forget ourselves
and all that other shit.
The words are trapped
behind the wall.
Let this be our starting point.
She hung in the arms of the night
as my envy approached.
The night in envy, too.
Always that envy
surrounding
a beautiful woman.
The lights of the streets like lamps
in the corners of arenas:
almost irrelevant.
But she the archetype:
Eve, the first,
Khadija, the Mother of Believers,
and Cleopatra, the final note
in the song of man.
Woman: the parallel,
the earth,
the intuition.
Man:
the perpendicular,
the sun,
the abstract.
Woman:
the spirit hiding in the flesh.
Man:
the spirit hiding in the coveting.
Come, she implied,
in the arms of the night,
and the rest is prehistory.
“Who are you?” she whispers, rapturously.
Her heart bunks up
with the final verse
of my private concert.
I’m glad she’s asking me
and not my ex.
Something happened there.
It’s all a blur.
Hearts dived in,
hearts drowned:
him and her,
father and son,
around and around
and around.
I forgive you, dad.
Forgive me, love.
I was weak.
So was dad.
As below, so above.
Something happened there,
something yet
to come.
