I gave you the steel -
Hopes, thoughts, fears,
Reforged,
Honed to jagged spears,
Turned against the flesh
From which they were wrought.
But blood won't flow
From the piercings
Anymore.
The corpse, complaisant, yields
From a lifetime of wounds.
Those razor-edged words
Drained joy
Like the ******
Of a shattered wine glass
Once cut painful and red-
Nails pressed through skin -
We veiled those marks
From family and friends
While I learned to hide
Behind vacant eyes,
Mute lips,
Mind dreaming of water
Running from oily feathers
Off a duck
Imagining words were rain
And ears coated with
The magic stuff
That would shed the pain
If only I believed hard enough.
Tomorrow
I could find another smile,
Know
The world hadn't really changed
Much,
Find new words to alter
Anger to love.
How did psyche falter -
Those few unshed drops
In incidental increments or
By catastrophe,
A failure like a levee
Rupturing, leaving land awash -
Doesn't really matter.
Frame now basks in your cascade,
Absorbing and accepting,
Soul long lost now wandering
Wondering when will body follow,
Missing the mate with whom to share
That steel from which love
Should be made.