Life Lines
By Lem
- 604 reads
SPRING
In the season of becoming
When the world is fresh and new
My heart mourns lost significance -
A faded playing card
Or old stamps in dresser drawers.
It’s criminal that no-one knows
You kissed me on the collarbone
In the tumult of green-silver blinding spring.
Everything and everyone
Was once nothing and no-one.
The split seam of the world
Of sky tight-stitched to earth
Gapes, gives the sun new birth.
Tentative, in glimmer-light
My dewdrop words come sparse.
Blood from a stone
Pared down and ruby-small
To hold soft in the hand
Like a wedding dove
And cast into the world.
Once there
Do they soar?
Do they flail?
Do they fall?
SUMMER
The dangerous season’s upon us once more.
Mad dogs and German men
Walk home in the evening sun.
The crazed brain teems, the hot blood seethes.
With lungfuls of dry heat and ember eyes
I am what you make of me -
Asian fetish, prude, enigma -
Seen through translucent shadows, shifting veils.
Those who are sad in the summertime
Are world-weary all their lives
For their souls are too stained
for the blinding sun to sear pure.
I saw an angel at the launderette
Counting out her fifty cents
And hovering above the sticky floor.
She looked at me askance, white-haired and naked
Flicking through a dog-eared Frau im Spiegel
And fumbling with the halo round her neck.
I had no socks left. I was there til evening
So I saw how her robes all came out black.
AUTUMN
I tell my wish to mountains
Birthday candles, coins in fountains
Feathers, stars and moulting dandelion heads.
I pray to gods in whom I don’t believe.
I once found a four-leaved clover
(was it torn and only three)?
But anyway -
we were late for school
You grabbed me by the arm
And there was no time to pick it
So I guess we’ll never know.
Blood has been spilled this fragrant night.
The gaping maw of the hungry moon’s
Sunk deep in scarlet sin.
I am small but contain multitudes
Compact universes
Concertinaed tight
Like silk scarves furled in boxes
Matchsticks side by side
Photographs that kiss, glossed back to back
Past adhering to past.
(Be self-contained.
It makes you easier to throw away
Without all this mess spilling out
And getting everywhere, leaving
Sticky residue on the fingers.
Seal yourself up nice and tight
So that these little wisps of soul
Don’t show).
WINTER
Where once there was a river
No river more doth flow
Where once there was a green field
No emerald grass doth grow
Where once there was a forest
No proud trees their crowns do show
Everything is dead and buried
Under silent snow.
I write suicide in sonnets
I’ve been less alive than dead
Read between my lines
My silences
For all I’ve left unsaid.
Like Jesus’ love in the song
(So high/so low/so wide) -
I can’t get over it.
There is nothing big enough
Deep enough
Dark enough
To convey
The aching vastness of the emptiness I feel.
If I could make my life a gift
I’d stow it beneath the tree
Give it to someone who could use it better -
geniuses, tigers, orphans -
For I’ve scarcely scratched its surface
And I would not feel its loss.
But I would not make it beautiful
Or tie it with a bow
For I have seen behind her mask
And know Luck is no lady.
- Log in to post comments
Comments
A complex and many layered
A complex and many layered poem. How nice to see you posting again - it's' been quite a while.
- Log in to post comments