Just Us And Stardust

A thin red curtain over the window, on a cold January afternoon,

               Snowy and buried white, dim sky, through the curtain seems holy,

               Like stained glass in a cathedral; is not what we do now true, pure?

 

               Your body thin and lithe and strong, small breasts flattened against me.

               Your short hair I run my fingers through, your pale lips taste of starlight.

               I worship with kisses and tenderness, and I can feel angel’s wings,

               From your back and your soul and the eerie purity of our mad devotion.

 

               This room with the overactive heater making our bedroom hot and

               Suffocating and making us feel safe from winter and death and loss

               And as if this perfection is all there is, just us and stardust and love.

               Unmarried but I belong to you, you to me, and us to the angels.

 

               And for this cold afternoon, until the end of time, cherubim with

               Flaming swords rotating watch the door and Archangel Michael

               Has cast out Satan from our heaven, in one room, in one little

               Town by ancient mountains, worn down by eons and seasons.

 

               And angels indwell in us, and wings wrap us, we wrap each

               Other and pull close and sweat out the poison in love making

               And sweltering heat and the holy and candied light of the thin

               Red curtain, and our devotion to the light and love and heaven above.

 

               Love is all there is here. Love is all there is, forever.

 

              

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Black Tops As The Baby Grows

Hot shower soothes my knotted, tired muscles.
Harsh water burns away the hate and anger.
Stinging skin can only feel the heat and death.
All other cares are drifing away as I become numb.

 Wrapped in a soft blanket in my faithful recliner.
Pretty woman telling me about all my teams.
Sports world is another world, not my world.
But my real favorites don’t get talked about here.

 And a game, any game, carried away in the fire.
Sports world is another world, not my world.
Not filled with dark thoughts, and rotted dreams.
Not filled with anger and hate, bleeding through a smile.

Tough Fists

Tough fists shadow boxing in an alley.
Valley of Death, valley of loss, of night,
closing in, punching the dark strips
of the night, unburned by the stars.

 She is sweating, tired and taut, wire
pulled too tight over too far a distance.
The shadows are coming down, eternal.
She might break and snap open the sky.

 Silent, but there are sirens, laughing drunks,
and distant music, and people who are free.
Silent, but the darkness in her head, in her life,
the shadows getting hooks in her flushed skin.

 What can she fight, that cannot be touched,
cannot be lost like sanity and love and passion,
that lingers forever in these nights and heartbreak?
Fighting others in the ring will be over, be won.

 But shadows never leave, only cast back by momentary light.
And light fades, and becomes distant, and leaves us defenseless.
She boxes the shadows coming down on her, on her world.
Never ending, never defeated, just pushed back, for a moment.

 A laugh. A touch. A kiss. But always waiting, always roaring back in the night.

Outside The World

Emma and me, outside the party, outside the world.
The night is warm in the first of September, clear, open.
We talk as if we could still walk among the stars, like children.
We talk as if the world never fell, and paradise was still here.

 She lays her head upon my shoulder, and I kiss her head.
Her hand holds mine, and we are warm, clean, like Eden.
She turns up her face, and I softly kiss her lips, taste the apple.
Her hand on my face, such sweetness became the fall, forever.

 The sky is filled with stars, and the moon moves wild tides.
She hung her name somewhere in Andromeda, for me to find.
Find her name, find the spell dream and desire and lust have cast,
as loud laughter and thumping music betray a perfect night.

Our Little World, Our Little Paradise

A simple, down at heel farmhouse, up in the Appalachian hills.
Our little world, our little paradise, just you and I, and our dreams.
We work the garden together in the bright of day, making our way.
And at night we sit and talk on the porch steps, hold each other tight.
Preserved foods and salted meat, our stores for the winter on it’s way.
The words we write, the words we read, the things we conjure in our hearts.
Sunday at the river, we swim nude together, free and innocent, without shame.
As we drift to sleep together at night, you place my hand on your belly,
whisper about the one more thing we could ask for, the most precious gamble.
Our little garden, our little paradise, sweetness after the fall, but another will come.
The world will find us, and this innocent place will be lost, and our sweetest selves.

Broken Hearts and Paradise

Feeling like it was just a dream I wasn’t awake for.
Feeling like it was missing time in the daylight hours.
I walk into a bar, loud and dark and full of cigarette smoke.
I sit at the first empty place, and look up onto the stage.
A young woman, thin and wispy as the cigarette smoke,
and as angelic as that girl who first stole your heart,
when you were still innocent and free.
She sings of lost love and broken hearts and paradise.
She sings above the deathless noise of the world.
I love her; she reminds of something precious that was lost.
I love her; her soft and wild beauty makes me feel alive.
I love her; but I look away as the song ends,
and she says goodnight, and I am alone again,
with all the things in my head I can’t heal or silence.

As The Night Falls

Ellen baby, I push you on the swing, gentle, as the night falls.
A soft blue twilight, the first stars showing us their faces.
Summer’s end, but it’s to jobs, not school for us, all grown up.
We’ve been bound to each other, in spirit, and flesh, but what now?

 You laugh as I tell you a joke, and that sound still soothes me to love.
The twilight fades to dusk, and you look up at the sky, at blossoming stars.
Summer’s end, and we’re on our own now, but will we walk that path together.
My love, my friend, where do we go as winter falls, as our world changes forever?

 You get up from the swing, and take my hand, and we walk across the park.
Now it is night, and there are so many stars shedding their petals of light.
Summer’s end, and I imagine those petals as a path to the altar, for us to wed.
What are you thinking, my love? Will you be my wife when winter comes?

Artemis

The waves crash, crystal blue and Coke bottle green.
The salty air stings her bare skin, whips her blonde hair.
In her swimsuit, her body a Greek sculpture, softly pink
and perfect, as strong as the sun that warms the air.

I follow her to the grotto, Artemis unblemished.
Our little world in the warm, clear waters away
from all that would sully us, destroy us, drown us.
Under the waves Sirens call us down into the deep.

We hold close in the water, rolling with the waves.
The magic is fading with our age, and can’t protect us.
Her body is warm and strong and I don’t trust these feelings.
She pulls me tight and I bury my face in that golden hair.

Walk hand in hand back to our subdivision above the ocean’s edge.
Holdings hands means more than it did as children, but does it mean romance?
We are silent, only our harsh, ragged breath making a sound above the surf.
Her hand is calloused and rough, and it’s the touch of Artemis, still free to run.

Alice

Alone at first light,
sitting side by side
in swings in the park.

Empty wine bottle
at your bare feet.
Your hand is warm.

Tomorrow has come.
What we feared is
right here to meet us.

November Light

Absolved from feeling, in the early morning.
Cold November light, watery and thin,
trickling through bedroom windows
as we make love, flesh forgotten, flesh denied.

Holding in the sounds and cries, keeping quiet,
even as we melt like candle wax from the flame
of love and desire, spilling onto the sheets
and the floor, to harden into brand new shapes.

 Even as we lose ourselves, even as November light
crowns our skin with the gentlest or reprimands,
we listen for the high spirited sounds of morning cartoons,
meaning our daughter is awake, and this must end.

 Burying my mouth in her kiss, we cum together,
and slowly the flame that melted our skin snuffs out,
and the smoke of it still lingers, in raging, happy hearts.
Souls made new shapes, growing closer around each other.

 November light, casts porcelain quiet upon her face,
the sweet cold of the fading year, the light that remembers.
Those sounds of cartoons come, and we leave our reveries,
and dress, and return to the mundane world, the weight of flesh.