The Windlover

I caught your cadence, cooed in another’s voice—her choice of clauses
Cleaved with air, there! the twin of your tattoo, which clip-clops
Down the cobbled pitch of a cathedral tone—that yours alone: how it drops
In caverns of caramel and buckles stone. Tempo, pulses and pauses
Beating fresh between the terms, the rhythm draped on the stranger’s verbs, flung
As high as a bird unbound, each sound unwound and set to soar
On the winged wish of the word—I almost heard the thrumming reeds that moor
The silken syllables you swirl in the world behind your tongue.

Not you, I knew, but each trace chased, each collage cut collected by hand
One more mote of the wild winter that whirls
From the bursting pane of glass. And my love has lit each shard with a band

Of light so rare it colors the numbing night—and the coming white pearls
Of snow. So my heart hears the hum, the substance and the sand
Of you, not you, you, Osiris in the dew of a thousand scattered girls.

Existential Prayer

Ah, Meaning, you who contoured the neural muck and set its slave limbs to dance,
You who left Eden’s door ajar for the coming of the waddling snake,
Seduce my soul and crease my mind
And tug me taffy-thin
So the mortician will know how to paint the expression I merit.

Ah, Meaning, you who splash us with sticky sex and lay mines in the moments of our love,
You who ruined the children and pushed them into the labyrinth stinking of meat,
Retreat into the citadel of the cells
Where you play the piper for the meiotic march:
Ride the cramping crests of our hearts while you plot.

Ah, Meaning, you who dangled duchies before the eyes of Caesars and Khans,
You who drew borders in the sand and summoned cyclones,
Keep the blood of the enemy honey-sweet,
Candy the brains and salt the muscle;
Hide the ploughshares up your sleeve like the ace.

Ah, Meaning, you who infected God and passed from Him with the Genesis spark,
You who gild the seraphim they nailed to our eyes,
Ring us now with our halos of thorns
And electrodes of brotherhood;
Cull our daughters so we remember the lands where the daughters are already dead.

Ah, Meaning, the bisque of my veins and the cosmological constant,
You who evade scientific vagaries and rule stronger as myth,
Give no quarter, spare no dime,
Litter no breadcrumbs and ignore my prayer.
Only flash once a decade out of some desperate dusk, so we may clutch a thousand dawns undeterred.