She was made of ringlets of laughters,
made of the scent of an apple orchard.
She was the quiet ripples of endless summers nights,
and her dress was drenched in sweet wine.
Purple poured into drunken purple.
She was made of all good things
that slipped through my fingers.
And I was made to love no one
but her.
Tag: poet
The Tavern
At the edge of an atlas,
by the border of desert cactus,
stands the lonely tavern.
An unhinged door, moth-eaten lanterns,
and chock-full of dirty feathers.
The sky is a piece of dry cloth.
You move through a generation
of peanut shells.
Abandoned cocoons
fossilized in amber lamplights,
childless, unmoving.
The tavern’s usual patrons
travel from one end to another
in the hourglass’ desert, sifting
through god’s thinning fingers
between each dissipating hour.
The barkeep settles your tab,
five full tankards for five full lies.
There is no salvation for the dried-up souls,
only rum and gin and
an apple
for the the drunken crow.
With a pair of blotched wings,
it flies to the fevered moon, pale-faced,
bearing a glass coffin,
clear as vodka.
originally published on September 14th, 2015 on my old blog.
Third Piece
She practiced her love on every ugly toad,
casually tossing I-love-yous
into the gaping mouths
of those desperate souls.
With each rehearsed declaration, she felt a new sensation,
an unknown tenderness that she carefully learned,
treasured and saved
for the prince.
But those words, uttered too many times,
have slowly swelled up her tongue,
until it grew so prodigious
that she could not close her lips.
So she waited for her prince,
with a gaping mouth,
ugly and desperate,
completely ignored and detested
by her fellow toads.
Departure
Remember when we were young,
we used to run wild in the fields,
easy footsteps caressing
the wrinkled brows of ancient hills.
We were dancing fairies
that made the whole forest sing.
The days were unhurried
and evenly pink.
Then one day you began
talking about a life elsewhere, a place
without metaphorical flowers or bread,
where you could sweat and tread
in your new sails and moccasins. You left me
half-hearted kisses
and bouquets of teary tulips.
Yellow petals fell, as soon as you were gone,
headlong into the ground. Those hopeless little faces
buried themselves in earth,
like obstinate ostriches, hiding
from unstoppable truths, capable
of neither running away
nor being saved.
At sunrise, trees bent down to lend shadows
to creatures who were fearful of their own.
In this world I marched alone
with a book of vacated love
and an undulating heart
that overturned ships
with each turning page.
Only with bruised lips and confessions could I remain constant.
I rid my body of metaphors you detested – romantic notions that
turned rivers into music,
and withering roses into unrequited love –
so that one day you could return
and kiss my hardened, concrete flesh.
Only with hollow bones and desolate passions could I remain constant
among this foliage of absences and
you and I and solitary stars.
At sundown, the world is devoured by her own shadow, whole
and complete.
Years later, I lay under the twilight of fading memories.
Children run across the wrinkled brows of my ancient breasts. My soul
is a bottle of dried laments.
Through half-opened eyes, I see you standing at the very beginning,
a hand in mine, brown eyes, a surge of delight.
Have you come back to say goodbye, my beloved?
This voyage, already so long, expanding into this incessant night,
is about to come to an end as I
gracefully close my eyes.
originally published on September 5, 2015 on my old blog
The Swallow
I heard the swallow has betrayed the south-bound league.
Into the fatal arms of winter she dove, a solitary soldier
leaving behind a trail of rain-soaked cloud
already mourning her death.
In the forsaken forest, the swallow often sighed,
breath full of sorrows.
Yet no one knew her troubles, desolate troubles
that bubbled up from her heart,
Like raindrops, like storms, like tornadoes.
Nocturnal feet danced upon unturned stones, under which those fearful souls
slept, seeking permanence in time and forgiveness.
In the land of darkened purpose, the swallow often circled,
tired of her own shadows.
Water fell from the her wings onto dried-up honeysuckles. Those colorless kisses
rested upon the pale bones of broken lilies.
So many of them, once green and alive, unconquerable for an age,
knelt down at the dark wind’s hand, surrendered their petals to fate.
In the night of coal-black ashes, the swallow often pondered,
Will there be courage in those tarried morrows?
Darkness came with furious gallops, as if maddened by her presence.
She stood on the monument of seasons, unmoved by doomsday’s silence.
How she came to find the bow and arrows
buried against the foot soles of an ancient dream –
No one knows.
I heard the south-bound league came to the shore of soft violets.
They put red cherries between their teeth,
and tied forget-me-nots around their feet.
But they forgot about the name of their homestead
and their trembling friend.
Come first snowfall, when all the babies went to sleep by the lulling mountains,
I looked up to the infinite sky,
and I saw her –
A solitary soldier, with burning plumage on her shoulders,
A few bent trees waiting on winter,
and a star, defied, without a murmur.
originally published on August 14, 2015 on my old blog
First Piece
I had a dream about you last night. You came home, all wet from the rain. You slipped into my bed and dissolved into water molecules upon my pillow. I don’t care what others say. They were not tears.
SW Altair 