I
If I could, like a switchboard, dark my heart,
Flip the levers one by one inside my mind,
And watch the stillness creep forth part by part
Painting my scalding senses sweetly blind,

I think that I could live without my lungs.
Pass each day the faded spaces on my walls
Where portraits of my heart's desires hung,
And peeled away, powdered to dust within their fall.

I think I'd like to be an empty house,
My loves all dark and cool and draped in sheets,
And cobwebs strung across my hopes and vows,
The dust in drifts, the solitude complete.

If I could turn away my love and flee,
I would be tempted, for perhaps then I would be free.

II

The burning embers of my love would dim,
And my eyes like empty windows dark would yawn,
And nobody could hurt me on a whim,
My defeat and fear and shame all dead and gone.

And footsteps in my empty rooms would echo
Murmuring the strife and longing past,
And all this complex, painful ecstasy would go,
And I would sigh, able to breathe at last.

Perhaps I would forsake my yearning soul
And give up all my wild joy for blankness.
Stop reaching, always striving to be whole,
And strip away my passion and my frankness

And in relinquishing my quest to get it back,
Forget to miss the passion that I lack.