We hold our breath until
I close my eyes and feel the sensation of rain
With my brain becoming the air trapped inside a car
Sticking to the glass
But all the clouds are hearts,
Lo
We don’t even have to check
They framed your face in a perfect glow
Perfectly overwriting the scars and the wraith
In my eye reflecting back on the sky
Burning on the glass
All the clouds are hearts,
Lo
We would never dare breathe
We created the memories
In retrospect. Because through the glass
You can’t be seen
I drag my sleeve, and through the fog
All the sky is hewn from dark
So
To scare us from ever checking again
I turn my breath from the glass
And consider that seeing each other in clouds
Is a rather shallow way of finding a soul
This turning away from the death of your face
Is a recursive eventide to the rest of our life
All the clouds are hearts in the morning sun,
Lorelei
I do not see the sun making us one
I turn my frustration toward the fog
Or smoke, or the knife's-edge gasps leaving my lungs
From the natural causes to which she succumbed
To the poisonous diet of our Capuletian plan
I quietly process how we were made this way
Is it human to be born as an imperfect creator
Lo,
Of self— of self feelings, identity and gender?
We hold our breath until
I find my body in the place that we stand
With my face again framed by the usual scars
Swirling in the fog
But all the clouds are hearts,
Lori
All as before
They remind me, in some ways, of a golden head
Perfectly overwriting your past in the sun
Thus bringing peace, but deflecting a lie
Standing in the fog
All the clouds glow,
Lorelei
I dare not deflect the peace that she brings
We created a body
In pieces. Brittle; as quiet
As I could make it
Dragging her feet, lo, human-desperate
All the clouds are in their places
So
To form the beating, bleeding
Systems of fascia and connective scripture
A sky-blue mixture in layers of fog
But violently human as a thundercloud
This turning away from the rain on your face
Begets only angels to carry you off
All the clouds are still,
Lori
Inside of a storm
I turn my face toward the ground
Waiting to strike you through the clouds
A resuscitation and golem, in one
And the clay will love for real, with time
Lightning in the fog
All the clouds pour,
Lorelei
All as before
from january 17, 2022
poem from the past a day #35
Lorelei is the single most important poem i've written, and the first thing i wrote in the single most impactful and transformative year of my life which was 2022.
i believe i started writing it in the impact zone of my childhood dog passing away because the first few lines recall my last memories of him.
this poem is actually not about that, though, it's about Lorelei/Lori/Lo, which is me, a new me, a discovery. not a discovery of my transness, which i had done many years before, but a discovery of the true sounds for it. incidentally, i've now decided the name doesn't explain me enough, and now i go by Riley, but i want to talk about the past right now.
another name for this poem is "Interpolations" because it takes from, at least, 5 other poems of mine. and then "Reconstruction" which, i think, is really the theme.
honestly, i don't want to explain it so much. there is a lot here, but i would devolve into rambling.
this is the center- blazing- piece of my joy, and i would spend all my time on the earth to feel what i felt while i wrote this, if i only knew the explicit course of chemicals that went off and exploded into Lorelei.