
Silent Sunday

Brian Geiger at Vita Brevis picked up one of my poems.
Thank you, Brian and Vita Brevis!
Paris has irrevocably changed;
it’s very clear.
With their heart broken,
a hole scorched in its center.
Stone edifices will tumble,
in time they will crumble —
but wasn’t this more than clay?
Lives were changed,
were taken,
were damaged,
were transformed…
No one leaves
Paris — Paris that weeps
now — no one leaves
Paris without an impression
of the lady.
“The joy that isn’t shared dies young.”
— Anne Sexton
Silence makes me gasp.
Not the quietude of two shared,
but the hollow of one…
and one.
When we must be apart,
life smolders; bears
little heat.
I must look away from you to lie,
or tell you in your eyes how I suffer
in the silence, the silence,
the awful echoless still —
one here.
One there.
* * *
For NaPoWriMo 2019, day 2.
For my beloved.
A rebellion of storms;
hail-damaged lungs.
Too much unsaid
as she rampaged
out the slamming
late-March door.
Sunlight enters —
the cold squalls
of goodbye replaced
by the warm girlfriend glow.
April disrobes.
Flame leaps from the hand, the rain is listless
Yet drinks the thirst from our lips,
solid as echo… (Canto VII)
I have eaten the flame. (Canto XXXIX)
A corner table, Taqueria Too Hot for Comfort, just
outside of Arena, New Mexico. Waiting on Fajitas
al Pastor, and another Dos Equis. Munching chips
and salsa, squeezing lime into the stone wear bowl
to kill a little of the heat. My fault. I asked in my
best TexMex, “Ajima! ¡Más caliente por favor!”
“My own damned fault,” as the theologian said.
Here comes the HausFrau with the tortillas, a boy
behind her carrying the sizzling pan of meat and
threes. Cholula in the condiments rack, a side
of nuclear peppers. I’ll be paying for dinner
all night long as I watch the stars spin their tale.
* * *
Day one, NaPoWriMo 2019. An ounce of Pound for inspiration… and not a drop of tequila, I promise. Sad thing is, the voice is recognizable in parts of the West.