Monday, May 27, 2013

Poetic Relief: Epithalamion


COUNTERPOINT (Epithalamion 11)

Imagine a world where every door is open
where emptiness moves freely
between rooms.
Just because it is my mouth
does not signify these words are mine,
that I am speaking of or to you.
Some nights I promise to lie here
fixed beneath your weight
and listen while some strange language
erases me.
Does absence
of God in our ceremony
prove that He was here?

I know the mirror shows things
that aren’t there
but yes is real,
the names of flowers:
heliotrope, narcissus,
magnolia, dogwood, milk
(although the cows were dreaming),
that bed  placed just there
to cover an imaginary hole
under the carpet,
my mother’s backhand on my face,
and just because you piss standing 
doesn’t make you a man.

If you write the left hand,
I might write the right,
chaos or counterpoint.
The clock is faking time
but we believe because it moves
the way I still believe the next door
opening will take me home.
What interests  is the space between the moments,
where memories are manufactured,
brought to the dangerous border of mouth
but somehow stopped
before they become lies.

So here I am your bride,
my suitcase unpacked of everything but
memory which weighs always just
more than you can bear,
a vision of you
eating rice in the snow
even though it is so warm in this room
with the candles, the chandelier,
the steaming bathwater
and thankfully
love is invisible
because here on my wedding night
I lie down with you
and see nothing but a boy I’d slept with
close his eyes.


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