She’ll find shelter in my chest as I did in my mother’s braid-covered breasts,
Small to lay my head on when my eyes, plagued with torment,
Found a valley of the light of life, stream of compassion,
Until an ocean of love drained it dry.
Mom harped her mother’s silver-clouded strands to the tune of her humming,
Cutting them because trifling with long, ravened hair was a young woman’s lunacy.
Photo by Matthew Henry from Burst
Of sacred, denuding experience, transfigured into a pliable extract of consciousness?
Art is a mirror that reflects the artist in its beholder’s sigh,
Beckoning you to cross the invisible threshold cast by his commended spirit,
Photo by Sarah Pflug from Burst
The arrhythmic, two-legged, equestrian gait of bustling people multiplied,
Murmuring, under winded breath,
“Lazy son of a bitch” at his motionless body:
Cradled by the sun; slumbering not to cosset rest
But escape into a realm of dreams where he was king.
Photo by Matthew Henry from Burst
Never trust human speech when spoken,
Only when written, and its creator has become nothing but
Strings of sigils printed in lifeless-black:
Lines, dots, angles, curves, and crosses.
Photo by Brodie Vissers from Burst
Inquietação – The restlessness of young love.
The sweet-savory of your breath
Encrusts in the juices soaking my beard’s coffee coarse strands.
Each bite elicits a sensation hot enough to warm two bodies,
But once you taste the blood of my fruit, you bite hard and deep.
Photo by Brody Vissers
Truss the give of the bedsprings
With those tortured instruments of berth—
Striated, cracked mud— given to build a hearth out of the same
Earth you were made from.
Photo by Scott Murdoch from Burst
You are there and not there, around when I need you most—
More than you’ve needed me— slumbering sweet on my rug,
Next to my feet, and under my heart.
Image Credit
Dog Paws [Photograph]. Dan Gold. Accessed on 03/09/2018
