i do not love you
words are not in abundance
i am not drawn to you
like birds migrating to
warmer heavens
i felt something brief,
my breath was caught
by love's noose,
but stranger things happen,
i do not love you,
because to love you
would be to become you,
to capsize like a boat,
submerging into red seas,
i do not love in small measures,
to do so would be worse
than blasphemy,
i feel for you,
but i do not love you,
i do not search for your
face in crowds,
i do not love in honesty,
only lies pounding
hoofs on loves ground.
i cannot love you,
because the taste of it is
strange in my mouth,
an unwanted flavour,
like sand and dust,
in the midst of something
that should be sweet.
i do not love you,
or i cannot love at all.

his dream was always of a cart, carrying
limbs like those in so many slaughter houses
dragged along by two oxen, blind, backs whipped
by a golem whose red eyes illuminated
the path, the cart's carrion, and even
the black sky

when he would awake, he would feel
ravenous, not sated by his breakfast mush
or his noon repast--only when he sat for dinner
would he be full, after he drowned himself in wine, and gorged himself on a feast of flesh, charred yet
dripping with blood

the same sanguine soup, perchance,
he saw flowing from the wagon of his dreams,
the same as the crimson ooze from the humps of
the beaten beasts who transported
the ghoulish cargo to some crypt
in the greedy earth

to someplace he longed to see and
to be, in the dream, the one from which
he would awake with such perverse
hunger for life

I carried you
through a minefield, past ***** traps;
though the mortars lobbed their lethal loads
and the rifles spat speeding streams of death,
all was silent, until we reached the end of the field,
and I lay you on the grass

you thanked me, and asked me
to hold you--you were so cold, you said
I put my arms around you, and looked back
across the field--a stretch of fire now, blazing
the night sky, casting eternal light on you and me,
two young brothers I spied, prostrate,
still, on the other side of the field
we had crossed…still

on the other side

a thousand miles we traveled to see
your jack-hammered giants--we arrived at dusk
just as the torrents began, bathing your
chiseled countenances

we hid in our chariot of modernity
wipers flapping in syncopated time, Bluetooth belching
out words from kin, "have a good time,"
"sorry for the storm..."  

but I wasn't, for lightning struck
a blackjack pine, and four mammoth men
came to life, their sheen now electric, their long
mute voices once again a resounding roar

the white coat lords,  
the army of nurses, the aides, didn't think
he understood their language

nor did they know
he had been a warrior in his homeland
and bore scars, inside, out

they paid little attention,
as he buffed lackadaisical linoleum, scrubbed porcelain *******,
making them ethereally white

though the amputees,
the hobbled, the battle burned, would wake
to the sound of his labors:

his broom swaying to and fro,
a softer metronome for their ringing ears
a cadence of condolences
for their beating hearts