I remember when we first met,
t’was a chill’d Autumn day.
Oh, how ever could I forget!
it was a Friday, many a May.

On that day, stood thee:
fair skin’d and rosey cheek’d,
dark plumes in morning gust.
your gaze my eye had seek’d,
your touch my heart did lust.

on that day, stood I:
heart heavy with fluster,
stood I still as time did flow;
if only courage could I muster,
my love for you would I show.

Wo! my heart did cry,
Wo! had I sadly weep’d,
until my name you did call
and my heart to heavens leap’d.
oh the joy! I still recall.

~ Inori

Five red haired maidens / resting symmetry
Draped in bluest sky / arranged peacefully
Interwined pink flowers / chaining togetherly
One composition / from Antiquity
Arms wilt with leisure / classically painted
Their wild thoughts blooming / a pale recreation
Seated in judgment / of time untainted
By modernity / By degradation
in eternal youth / in a single row
They sit and they watch / seasons come and go

Despite all my rage
I am still just four minutes
of silence
                          —John Cage

a melody in
        to another flows
a third
            divine counterpoint

Fascism sings with sweet lies as
The chorus wails. We sit weeping,
Our history bastardised and
The body of our nation growing cold

Console us not you priests!
We need more than your words

Mozart lay cold in that square box.
Salieri observed tearful.
"With this vexing star dimmed, who shall
Brighten the sky at night?" He sighed,

"In my hatred I forgot
The fire you stoked in me,


Alas."

You wanted a love story, sweetheart—
    well, I’m an unwritten tragedy;
  hand me a skull and I’ll monologue
while Rome burns.
      We’re two acts in and falling fast,
         we’re half a city down and soon
            there’ll be nothing but ashes.

          You wanted a love song, baby—
        I’ll sing to you in a minor key,
harmonies in the rain under neon stars,
            screaming in tune with flowers in your lungs
      and blood in your hair
and city lights and city lights and
                                               city lights.

You wanted a love letter, honey—
“Dear Heartbreak,
   I’ve got purple bruises on my chest
     where my prose hits me. I’ve got
       a mess of clichés and a dark and stormy night
         and a pinch of melodrama,
           no talent but I’m trying, honest.
             I don’t suppose you could maybe
              unravel me a little?
               Cut me open like a knife through butter?
                Maybe then I’ll bleed words;
                 maybe then the poems will spill out of me,
                  entrails unravelling.”

You wanted a love poem, darling—
                meet me in your aspect and your eyes
               at ten o’clock tonight. Rome’s burning, baby,
              and all our lions are loose. No time for
    sonnets; we’ll climb the Colosseum with
    our flowers and our songs and
                             we’ll deny the gaudiness
                                                     of the day.

You wanted love, sweetheart—
I’ll give you everything I am:
           a burnt-out city,
           a soliloquy in G minor.
               I’ll play til my fingers bleed,
                     sing til my voice gives out and
                                                             ­            maybe—
maybe
it’ll do.