With smug delight have I loved thee;
With pride, with confidence.
With joy, with finery;
With hope, with a coincidence.
With tears have I wanted;
With feelings have I failed.
I was too young to have a wit;
To fall in love, from my shell.
Thou, strained outside the brook;
With glittery eyes glancing past;
Meeting mine, drawn to look;
Kneeling on the green grass.
Sensing me, my young fabric;
And the perfume of my love,
I was strong, yet too weak;
My love was keen and lunatic.
I grew awake at midnight hours;
But not that my heart ever slept,
Nearing to me, my quiet slumbers;
Thou came by to sit, and wept.
I grew idyllic, and sang;
Then thy voice rang through
The hot night, and sprang
On to my silent summer hue.
I looked at thee, and stumbled
Upon my own lulled, mumbling words;
How couldst a soul be so humbled
Amongst the busied human worlds?
I was the Mermaid; that was all
Nobody came to me but at nightfall;
But how couldst they be charmed by me?
The ivy thought, my name was awry
Inhuman, toxicated, amiss;
Never wouldst I deserve a kiss,
Not even one on my behalf;
I learned to love just behind the walls.
Those of the lake, before thou came;
And the grand of thine appeared in time,
For thee, that I wouldst feel the same;
Thou saw me through, called out my name.
Those of the water, as I had tasted;
With lilies and rosebuds to my right,
Oft’ at night, I swam to the surface
To the hauntingly fierce nights.
Love sounded sordid, that I knew;
I didst not believe it all anew,
Myths had it that thou wouldst not see—
Nor hear, nor hold any faith in me.
Love sounded true, in the heavens;
The human realms I imagined,
Not that of my brethren,
Not the one that I had seen.
Tales had it that thou could see;
For it wouldst be too much disgust,
To watch my deserted land, to be
In a love that wouldst not last.
But thou caught me in that lilac stream;
A stream filled with young lavenders,
And their naked, infatuated dreams,
West to my natural heavens, ever.
But thou didst, that thou listened;
Within my fears, thy eyes glistened,
And I couldst locate but the scars—
Those remnants pottering thy hearts.
That I wouldst dearly heal, my love;
An injury that had been buried;
The dismembered once enough;
The despaired of a heartbeat.
That I wouldst listen, as thou spoke;
To cure the devils of all shock;
To return thy heart to what should be;
To stir thy love just for me.
What if my hours pierced the night;
And injured me again tonight;
Wouldst thou be my lover still,
Be a danger to what I feel.
What if my lungs felt thy voice;
To send thee to a stern standstill;
From this cursed being, and heal;
To forget me, back in human bliss.
What if I console, and thou refuse;
What if thy world without my poems,
What is my chorus, is it of use?
What is the melody of my doom?
What if I dance to unborn stars,
What if I wished to heal thy scars,
What if we battled in all wars,
What if we loved with all our hearts?
And thou, lamenting there every night;
Listening to me ‘till sunlight;
And flew away on summer mornings;
To retreat more, on beloved evenings.
And thou, being the hymn of all roses;
The moss, the found, the lost;
Thou read to me, on those hot days;
Thou heard my words close, every day.
The stubborn dose of blue eyes;
Bewitching to the counting skies;
Resembling all my lonely nights,
Burning the wrong, turning all right;
That handful of red lips;
Scratching at my beds of tulips;
Like the scorching gloss of sunset;
Red but defined, just mad.
That hand, that flesh, those cheeks;
Mine in my mind and all those weeks;
My human friend, my love
Having him was solitude enough.
That kiss, that warmth, were fluid;
I had plenty of them, my sweet;
He smelled like the moon, my prince—
He was mine, he had been.
The lightning ruined it for me;
On a day of summer sunshine;
Clawing into the pure skyline,
Making all too broken to see.
The sun made its way, and killed
My shielding of all was displaced;
She struck the birch trees on the hill;
“T’is is not over,” she said.
She moved to the lake, and all—
Ran as waters moved on to fall;
Then she startled my lover, lazing
On my lap, flirting and singing.
And I heard his scream, his death
Approaching him from gurgling earth;
The sun prodded his life, his breath
Shrinking him into frosted dirt;
The sun shrieked in jubilance;
Enraging my disgusted stance;
Laying my lover’s tossed head;
I squeezed and whined, hoping for death;
A few hours passed, the sun won
Flocking to welcome dawn again;
The night watched dead, with air torn
Leaving me spread in passing pain.
Five minutes passed; the dawning air
A guiltless foul, but naïve and fair
Carrying her rose in a dead odour;
With a stained presence, emptied colour.
I was wicked, I was angered;
I rose from busted land, and water;
Dragging along my pointed soul
I stood unfazed; perched in the cold.
I clicked my fingers and opened blood;
Then dawn bled from its heart;
The wound, piercing its sonorous veins
Watching her out and about in pain.
I rubbed my palms, and thick streams
Shot at the sun’s paled surface;
I killed in arrays of white dreams,
I destroyed in horror, in haste.
I touched the ground, and strokes of mud
Launch their ways to the skies, out loud;
Washing all brown earth off summers,
And all its threats and sworn powers;
Around my arms were they;
Those humans, having none to say,
But to run, to their human lovers;
They couldst—and wouldst be together.
My immense rage bottled me,
And I ended those lovers to be;
Leaving the cold universe to my own
And my bloodied moors, my lake alone;
And I was there, that death passed by;
A curse that wouldst see me lie—
By the raised legend of the sky,
That I couldst **** then I wouldst die.
And I was there, that he came round;
My dying body that he found;
In a gone soul, a friction;
An oval ghost, an apparition.
And I lay there, with him;
Welcoming death to our dreams;
And our lips, in thrumming kisses;
By our dead hearts, dead impulses.
And I lay there, by his side;
Basking in the life of the night;
Blending our arts, our idyll—
Celebrating what we couldst feel.
And I slept there, with my whole;
I didst not feel all that was cold;
Running my hand through his bronze hair
All of a sudden; all felt fair.
And I lived there, with my love;
He was ever my spirit and laugh,
He was ever my sweet, my loving;
He was to me my everything.
