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on this night of the proverbial
manger and doors slammed on the faces of the blessed it is not necessary that you believe in virgin births or the tight script of canonical texts or (especially) whatever you have been told you must believe or die not believing. it is enough to inhale the scent of old hay and animal dung, feel the stars gesture with faint arms of light on the most lightless of nights and wonder if something blessed should be given birth to among the shuffling homeless of the streets or your heart would you know it? or bolt the door? the donkey brays in his stall discordantly, a cold wind finds all the cracks in the jackleg door and makes short work of them, the wise men come make unrecorded pronouncements and then they go. none but you will ever know they visited. no one will ever believe you. for you alone they have come. yes, it is hard to hope for new stars when there are rats in the walls and now the ceiling, orangutans squatting in places of power oil oozing from open wounds. always, there have been murderers. always, someone with a kind face is born on a slate cold night. the struggle goes on, will go on forever regardless if it is the nightfall your heart chooses to wait for or the dawn. the world goes brittle
in December, month like a doorstop made of ice. if a heart cracks now it does so to its tapered root. what is slammed shatters. what is struck turns to dust. the dry air begs for the longest kiss. listen to my plan--if we draw close breast and breast like shivering birds do and breathe like we are dancing in an old library and touch the way pine needles rub their thin fingers together in the wind, if we draw this circle tightly so perhaps the morning will find us buried under a white blanket alive and grown wise and full on the delicate edge of love. shall I call your bluff? lie down
under your stars, your moon? let your lips run the ladder of my vertebrae? your chin rest in the orbit of my clavicle? such a tender spot, so close to the neck. and the neck, ah well the neck speaks for itself. at this age we are such storied stories, such novels of being. this is just a page or paragraph the sweet spot the book has opened to cause you to look up and gaze out the window. do you wonder now what it would be to stop reading, to follow the path of your breathe and pointy stars into dusk under the moon-glyphed meadows where it is too dark to parse letters and all that is left for you to do is feel? the kiss lasts forever
if you refuse to stop kissing the ocean goes on forever if the horizon spites your certainty the trees go all the way down and up speak sky raise your face call the sun I’m holding out my hands for more power is knowing it’s thin ice everywhere stomp your foot stomp both feet take hold of your drowning don’t be a victim of death don’t look for me in the house of eternal sorrow knitting plastic pessimism I’m walking river-ward over glass broken bloodied as berries the promised land doesn’t need these sorry feet when wild thoughts lift me like air the cut banks and point bars the leaning willows the humming frogs all have the same song whatever helps you to reach in the sea whatever breakage the dam takes heart I am strong in your maroon shadow I refuse to kneel to no woman but you and no man but myself. when at last the trees
let drop their summer dresses the creeks and stones stand out and sing. love, you are more of this when bare. December, again I crawl
through your drawn out twelve the way the minute hand on a clock agonizes on a delinquent lover. your old sorrow, too many numerals too many ways to divide you. January, come soon. roll with me singleminded in your cool white sheet. |
Poetry LogPoems are posted here when I'm ready to share them. I often don't title my poems. The date you see above the poem may be the date it was posted here and not necessarily the date it was created. To see more, click on the Archives below. Archives
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Unless otherwise noted, all content ©Paul-William Gagnon, Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-NoDerivs license.
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