Just as in the second part of a verse bad poets seek a thought to fit their rhyme, so in the second half of their lives people tend to become more anxious about finding actions, positions, relationships that fit those of their earlier lives, so that everything harmonizes quite well on the surface: but their lives are no longer ruled by a strong thought, and instead, in its place, comes the intention of finding a rhyme.
A midst deceit I found the truth;there in the rough I found a diamond.And from the moment we met,I think of no one elseToday I choose to be, to live and breathe;to dream, to weep, and to sing in free verse.And you, the object of my delight:a like-minded opposite I am myself with,a mind-fuck times six, seven, eight thousand and three.I know that you love me with every inch of your deep.
When you left you left behind a fieldof silent flowers under a sky full of unstirred clouds...you left a million butterfliesmid-silky flutters You left like midnight rain against my dreaming ears Oh and how you left leaving my coffee scentless and my couch comfortless leaving upon my fingers the melting snow of you you left behind a calendar full of empty days and seasons full of aimless wanders leaving me alone with an armful of sunsets your reflection behind in every puddle your whispersupon every curtain your fragranceinside every petal you left your echoes in between the silence of my eyes Oh and how you leftleaving my sands footless and my shores songless leaving me with windows full of moistened moonlight nights and nightsof only a half-warmed soul and when you left... you left behind a lifetime of moments untouched the light of a million starsunshed and when you left you somehowleft my poem...unfinished. (Published in Taj Mahal Review Vol.11Number 1 June 2012)
If You KnewWhat if you knew you'd be the lastto touch someone?If you were taking tickets, for example,at the theater, tearing them,giving back the ragged stubs,you might take care to touch that palmbrush your fingertipsalong the lifeline's crease.When a man pulls his wheeled suitcasetoo slowly through the airport, whenthe car in front of me doesn't signal,when the clerk at the pharmacywon't say thank you, I don't rememberthey're going to die.A friend told me she'd been with her aunt.They'd just had lunch and the waiter,a young gay man with plum black eyes,joked as he served the coffee, kissedher aunt's powdered cheek when they left.Then they walked half a block and her auntdropped dead on the sidewalk.How close does the dragon's spumehave to come? How wide does the crackin heaven have to split?What would people look likeif we could see them as they are,soaked in honey, stung and swollen,reckless, pinned against time?
Have you everhad so much to saythat your mouth closed up tightstruggling to harnessthe nuclear forcecoalescing within your words?Have you everhad so many thoughtschurning inside you that you didn’tdare let them escapein case they blew you wide open?Have you everbeen so angry that youcouldn’t look in the mirrorfor fear of finding the face of evilglaring back at you?
Dead ButterflyBy Ellen BassFor months my daughter carried a dead monarch in a quart mason jar. To and from school in her backpack, to her only friend’s house. At the dinner table it sat like a guest alongside the pot roast. She took it to bed, propped by her pillow. Was it the year her brother was born? Was this her own too-fragile baby that had lived—so briefly—in its glassed world? Or the year she refused to go to her father’s house? Was this the holding-her-breath girl she became there? This plump child in her rolled-down socks I sometimes wanted to haul back inside me and carry safe again. What was her fierce commitment? I never understood. We just lived with the dead winged thing as part of her, as part of us, weightless in its heavy jar.