It might be painful
It might be disdainful
It might be lightning
It is so frightening
Could be the thunder
That has my number
It could be Jesus knocking
concerned about my mocking
It could be my future
or my lack of culture
It could be those fried reasons
maybe it's Jackie Gleason
It could be the hollow
that always seems to follow
me into the night
so black without any sight
It could be a light
from my star at height
tumbling through the heavens
or bread that is unleavened . . .

All I know is it just happened
while I was here just napping

Under the weight of this elephantine sea,
of smiling faces hiding madness behind bitter glee,
I try to find myself subliminally,
while tucked behind the ear of chemistry.

I could save true love for a rainy day,
but I have to take things slow
light myself on fire
to smoke the pain away.
I've become a drug to every woman I've known,
the ones who kicked the habit
threw away the bones.

I used to sleep in empty coffins
but I'm trying to live again
trying to love again
but it seems
I only end up "friends".
I write the poetry
to climb the tree
to find the me
that you want to see,
but I'm left with the question...

"Am I not enough?"

Attention is a bluff,
it's the mating call of emptiness.
I want to fill me with you,
but you're a fiction in the blue.
It's the idea of filling that fills,
it's the false love that kills,
the ha-hah, he-hee,
to hide that you don't love me.

So I'm saying goodbye,
I won't write to you anymore.
No more love letters,
I won't be your *****.
I tried to impress you,
but you loved what I hated
and hated what I loved:
you waited above,
but I found you below.

I found that there's nothing,
nothing left to show,
the crush of elephantine sea
crushes more than flesh and bone,
it grinds more than my heart,
no, it crushes the soul.

It's not the crush I'm afraid of,
it's who I won't be after it;
I would no longer be myself,
I'd be the ghost of somebody else.

So I slip out of the sea
and into my life,
because if I don't land,
I'll drift off into nothing.

He was engrossed in his performance
in the enthralled silence of the audience
catching the subtlest notes from the instrument
as his supple fingers played with the strings
erupting into the finest blend of ragas
freeing the souls of all the stress
converging his heart into his music
eyes closed as in a transcendental state.

But I could not concentrate.

The face behind the beard and the unkempt hair
was familiar.

From a long distant day
I remember those fingers performed in a different way.

The afternoon I came back from school
and mom told me her monies were missing
and he was the only visitor to her room
waiting in the pretext of meeting me
but after a while leaving hurriedly.

He confessed and the money was recovered
but never again the breached trust.

The audience rose in ovation fingers clapping
my own frigid in remembrance
of another performance.

I don't know how to let you go,
or love you as you wish,

Please just help me,
I'm begging you,
Just help me,
do one -
or the other.

Cherie Nolan © 2016

.
An Echo* asks “where have you been?”
and my reply is heart and truth.

I have thought of you for centuries,
I have conceived of you for millennia,
Patiently building you for aeons,
and I have died for you every second.

For I sit frozen in my cave of sorrow,
wrapped in a blanket of burning ice.
Constructing you in my waiting dreams,
a raging fire in the coldest of prisons.

That is where I have always been,
where I am, and will forever be.
Until the hour you step beyond fear
and the moment you look at me.


© Pagan Paul (16/12/16)

"Can I see you yesterday?"
Kisses fall like painter's snow
On oil laced canvases of grey
On brillant blue.
"Can I see you a week ago?"
Lips on lips and breath on breath
Sunlight picks up the autumn glow
On satin skin.
"Can I see you a month before?"
Hands entwine in summer blaze
Tingling sweat trickles slow
On breast pressed
"A year, can I see you a year past?"
Springing florals dense damp earth
Neck stretched filled with scent
On nibbled kiss
Brown eyes to brown eyes
Time on time
Tell me you're mine
"I'm yours."