I went looking...
looking through legs
so shiny and bare;
looking through the eyes of a stranger;
looking through arms
tangled in dances,
through fingers gripping
the satin sheets;
looking into eyes painted with fire,
across the lips of one saying
"more is never enough,"
across the lying lips
and wayward hips
of countless washed up sirens;
looking through the dessert
and courting each mirage,
each cracked and broken sea floor,
each petrified promise;
looking through the heat
from a thousand neon suns
shining down on the hopeless,
the secret;
looking through the savagery,
through rite and omen,
through the increasingly hypnotic gaze
of priestesses and virgins;
looking through open mouths
into the lonesome hollows
where souls bring pennies on the pound;
looking through piles of amputated dignity,
through prosthetic dreams
that have played themselves out;
looking through fiddle shaped shadows
and straining to hear their mozart memories,
watching them sway,
watching them play,
never hearing a whisper of music;
looking through daughters
and sisters long estranged,
through cousins and neighbors,
through the cause of someone's tears,
through the pain so blatantly fueling desires;
haven't you heard that heartache is kindling?
haven't you ever thrown yourself into a sea?
didn't its hands feel just like comfort
all the while building your cage?
haven't you heard the song of the ******
in many a mirror's conversation?
I went looking for satisfaction
in the soot covered ruins
of *****
and fell into the lake of fools;
where the ego swims freely
and should anyone condemn
you are never found without an excuse.
I went looking for you in Gomorrah.
You were no where to be found,
and the gods I once believed in
could not even speak your name.
You, whose tongue is made of lightning,
who spoke across my sky,
you saw me naked,
and looking,
and never blinked an eye.
Your love is a force unfailing,
undeserved,
never blind,
calling me back to the world of the living,
unlearning my ears
of the mirror's lie.