by Lisa Marie Popp

Dawn breaks; it’s only the sun

the East smokes, & only my bedroom’s singing

Yet I am doomed to have done

The Time my alarm clock’s ringing.

 

He drags bare feet out of the cave

In ragged soft robes is fear

when he sought the land of the saved

when the flash comes: Empty Mirror

 

Children sprawled naked on living room floor

where angels of anxiety laugh in each other’s arms

Hidden like diamonds in the clock of the world

Then we go driving drunk on boulevards.

 

Baby, talk to me, and I’ll return

to get lost on highways in allegiance

to catch pure emerald flame and burn

in a stupor of wine and silence.

 

You gave me black rainy gaps of time,

My Great Art learned in desolation

You gave me the traffic of night in paradise

as we shared a cigarette in frustration.

 

Your windshield full of tears

Rain wets our naked breasts

We kneel together in the shade

Then beat apart the best.

 

He strikes the guitar to be reborn

Made drunken by this legend

of a girl come to mourn

her forgotten sexual angel.

 

All loves fall, they fall to fire

In a war between dreams and time

a temptation to touch desire

and take it to bed before they die

 

If I let the mind fall down

as something else in gray matter

to feel sensation of the gone

to feel reality and my soul shatter.

 

*Shantith defined as ‘peace’ (see T S Eliot)

Also, posted in Rhythms