AJ Mayfield

AJ Mayfield Dec 2014

I remember the first time I saw you
How for days you didn’t know I was there
You offered a precious prize
Your soul captured in an image
But maybe I was the only one to see it there
Perhaps I was the only one to care

AJ Mayfield Dec 2014

Looking Glass

So tell me a story, love, sing it to me once....
It’s already written, at least the opening lines
Tell me how a prince becomes a king
with only a word from his true queen
How a nymph becomes a goddess,
her children, their children, little gods
gathered at her feet like tiny wild saints
beseeching their Madonna for a smile
Tell me how he waited, ages out of time,
longing for that kiss of raven and snow,
and rubied lips just barely parted
How golden eyes set loose his charm
from uncounted days of longing lust
Tell me how they invented passion
on sands of coral pink, and unsated, taught it
to the mermaids in foamy waters nearby
How their hearts beat solidly together,
and their bodies left the earth as mists
in their unguarded moments, hard won
So tell me that story, darling, cry on me
when you hurt, and bite my lips hard
when you kiss me, I won’t flinch from pain
I know the story far too well to judge
Have known it deep within, never saying,
but never forgetting, phrase or verse
of its cloudy image, adrift in time, alone,
the looking glass of every hope of mine

AJ Mayfield Dec 2014

Chanson D'Amour

Sing with me girl,
dance with me to
your music and mine
Love with me girl,
live with me in
our fey kaleidoscope,
and we'll be fine,
so very, very fine

AJ Mayfield Dec 2014

Keystrokes

All the while, all the ****** while,
she stood there, waiting for me
to unlock the gate in the wall
But I was the fool, you see,
to think I held the key
For all the while,
the prisoner
was me,
not she

AJ Mayfield Nov 2014

Tabula Rasa

Must a boy become a man, paint a lifetime
with sparkly night colors gray on gray,
 the time it takes to spill blood and tears
listless onto  one sandy, macadam street

Chase him,
he’ll turn on you
 Confront him,
he’ll fight
 Shoot him,
you came ready  to ****,
to feel hard flesh  surrender,
slacken,
heart flutter,
pressure lost

The street knows, drawn with chalk,
what difference lies between man and boy
Which is which, when dawn breaks,
and why do angels  weep at night unheard….

Written the night of the Zimmerman verdict in July 2013

#trayvonmartin

AJ Mayfield Nov 2014

Carousel Psalm

On this our past, our now, our future turn about the wheel,
your footprints follow mine as mine retrace your own
All else is mist and prism flash and cymbal crash undone
We stare at one another in our clear-eyed search for truth,
intensely seeking silence midst kaleidoscopic lies
Yet why should we not covet daily pleasures offered thus,
gaily painted wooden ghosts, phantasms of rainbow scent
in broken mirrored boxes of conceit and lust—hypnotic dance
Our journey shoes worn thin with waltzing past the image,
we stop, but moving still as two when worldly passions call
A ripple in the haze, and candles shoot like rockets spraying
both of us with fire that never burns, too cold a flame
to catch our racing victory lap apart, and yet we cry as one:

You are my eyes.  When you see, I dream

You are my lips.  When you smile, I laugh

You are my heart. When you are in pain, I bleed

You are my voice.  When you speak, I sing

You are my hands.  When you touch, I feel

You are my soul.  When you have faith, I live

You are my love in many ways too great for
Heaven’s test, but still I wonder, would I fail
to gather water for your journey, if we but only kissed

AJ Mayfield Oct 2014

Within a Labyrinth Darkly

When taking one more breath becomes what hurts the most,
to put oxygen in blood that flows through the chambers of a
shattered nautilus to a mind left better off without memories…
Memories that never go anywhere but to the cracked, grayed,
faded old mirror that somehow still reflects one last, sickly,
fraudulent gleam of hope in a dark room….

Then only one fair choice remains, in this importunate faerie world
where everyone lies to themselves and cheats their own hand
at solitaire played by two's in front of a crowd of laughter
What choice is this you may ask, but you know, don’t you—
know the glaring, searing pain when you open the ******* door,
leaving sunlight to burn away the ashes of a missed embrace….

There are no ends, there are only means, and endless openings
to the labyrinth of souls in which the air is too cold to breathe,
the blood too stiff to flow, the mind too inconsequential to exist
in any universe but this unholy purgatory that would be hell if not
for that ****** single ray of hope that just won’t quite diminish,
won’t give in, won’t ever let a broken heart finally be consumed....
**If only to lie awake in the dark