If only I kept the reins of my song,
I could tell you pretty things:
two dreamers stranded at the truth
the paradox of love my gospel of sunlight
in god-sanctioned darkness.
In the pond you have made your grave
body threaded by divine heat
the tips of your fingers grazing a jaw
that could not be refused.
Beautiful one, you’ve plucked me
right from the pit of understanding.
From your hand spells a throbbing
of high water a slick thumbing of lyres.
I want you in the most primitive
underwater of ways oxygen
snuffed until air yields a pearl
cruel and enduring enough
to break open our chests.
Don’t dare to say this is wrong.
The very gods create upheaval,
burning the fleece entangled
with the stray hairs of mistresses,
loving girls even as heifers and daphnes.
Well I am no god and no one would
obey a mouth so whittled with need
but my echo I promise tells no lies.
The limbed cords of my voice are tender
will not strum of their own accord.
I will stand at the helm of your teeth
and release your amber-colored prayer
as my own hymnal your gaping maw
my enunciation of fruit your beggar’s cry
my open-palmed plea your handful of notes
over the water my distant call to home
across the native tongue. The narcissus in
your breast hangs his head in the labor
of beauty as the stones that fall from
my lips resound the cells of the earth.
This struggle of miracle is a language
that demands our whole sacrifice
yet we never seem to learn how to
shed our skins from the cypress grove
that twine our names into one breath.
In a body like ours the shared reflection
of will is what’s left of the living.
