See the emblem waving
Proudly, touted in the sky.
We walk among our brethren.
We recourse, resource the reason why.

All, in trepidation...
We cry out for separation.
Could it be our own downfall,
Equality, but not for all -

But, not for all?

Citizens of the nation,
Before humanitarians,
First comes clicks of locking doors.
Equality does not endure.

A man of any land should be my brother.
The whole earth, to us, our mother.
Could it be our own downfall,
Equality, but not for all -

But, not for all?

See the burden being carried
High upon laden backs,
Tautly stretched, with shoulders bending.
Each fear the other will attack.

The words have been the same,
But for intent that's not their own.
For too long, have we been believed.
Equality is just for some -

Is just for some.

Freedom is only for the free.
The lines that keep the captives buckling,
The doors that keep them let them go.
They have no where to escape.

Always there is tyranny
For the landless refugee.
He is no man as worthy as you.
Equality is just for some -

Is just for some.

All the lessons that teach us to love
The home of brave and free
Are based on notions that could not be true,
If all are not the same as you.

And, are they not the same as we,
Who are decorating for our holidays.
Living in our plentitude,
Singing songs of charity and caring -

Charity and Caring?

Gifts are given and received.
Do we remember the lessons taught
About the kind of men we are,
When another is in need?

Do they not rate the same concern
As the presents and the tree,
As we pray in  Holy Spirit,
Singing songs of charity and caring -

Charity and caring?

See the emblem waving
Proudly, touted in the sky.
We walk among our brethren.
We recourse, resource the reason why.

All, in trepidation...
We cry out for separation.
Could it be our own downfall,
Equality, but not for all -

But, not for all?

love
its a beautiful thing really,
its brutal, its strong
it so deep, and so heartwarming,
and at the same time,
it makes me want to cry, scream
pound my bed,
punch the white cement wall until my knuckles are ******, raw
and the wall has a display of reds.
it makes me want to break an elegant expensive vase, and crush it in my hand.
its destructive, desired, dangerous,
and yet
i want to laugh
i want to sing
and dance!
dance to oh what a night
dance with my yellow watercolored pillow case, with my favorite pillow stuffed inside
oh, love is so peculiar isn’t it?
its spectacular,
and its like standing in the middle of a ballroom
where dresses and suit ties of different hues reflect the chandelier light hanging from the ceiling,
an array of rainbows cast on the walls.
and yet, theres an emptiness…
one I’m afraid i cannot fill, and rely on you to.
its like standing in an ocean of chaos, of excitement and watching it from afar at the same time.
i can see myself swimming with the sharks, yet i am a bystander
as the thread of my life is strung tautly,
i watch myself bleed, gruesomely torn to pieces
i watch as the water darkens from spilt wine,
the wine that was once salty becomes sickly sweet around me
but i continue watching myself become bones stuck in their teeth.
its like being in an aquarium, encased in water,
and yet, still not a part of it, a distance, yet, a proximity
i watch myself drown through the looking glass, unable to help.
the sign says don’t tap the glass, but i pound and pound.
I am the only one watching myself slowly slow, and slowly stop.
stop breathing, stop fighting.
love is holding your breath, being cautious, yet careless.
Its diving recklessly, unsure whether to be sober, or drunk,
and being both.
its like seeing myself on a high diving board, the water beneath is so deep,
it seems to never start, and never end at the same time.
I can see myself, on the edge peering over,
scared to take a leap of faith,
yet relived i can still feel the sharp breaths,
nervous stomach,
because it means i can still feel, i am still capable of human emotions
i thought had left me long ago, before you.

he spends his time
rowing through the
rugged, blockaded channels
of my catharsis,
the bitter staccato
of ****** habit.

his love
can be as jagged
as gashes in an
Elvis Costello record
thrown against the wall--
the frayed words of the last love song
Billie Holiday ever uttered.

he is two
exclamation points lit on
fire, kerosene pumping through
tautly wound muscles and
caressing our funny bones with
sandpaper.

he is
dulcit woodwind melodies
and jilted viola strings,
epic poetry and grindhouse theaters,
McQueen gowns and thrift store bargains,
the kiss on the forehead
and the nudge for a *******.

he is a double helix.

he is the beginning
and end of every sentence.

Black dress,
Black lace shawl,
Red cherry violin,
Black frets and strings,
Black bow, white mane or tail,
Tensely poised
To move along the strings
In dances sensuously slow,
Tantalizing strings
To vibrations sublime,
Singing listeners to sway
Eyes closed, adrift, in
Streaming consciousness.

Other movements quick and sharp,
Impossible for any heavy-wielded harp,
Dancing pirouettes of sound,
Jetting needles sharp,
Then  reeling tremulous...
These caterwaulings of a horse's tail
Held tautly on a stick.

A deaf man here beside me,
Only seeing, reads about
The music that I hearing, feel...
Somehow feels the Muse,
Sways to the dancing bow.

Enjoying the cool evening air
in the middle of May.
Walking my dog through the neighborhood,
enchanted by its bucolic setting--

Besotted with the scent of freshly cut grass,
and the drone from the lawnmower that renders it,
and the chatter of crickets far in the distance,
preparing for their evening performance,

and closer to me are the squawks and chirps of the birds
hunched in the brush and perched upon telephone wires.

Enamored with the sight of lush foliage,
scintillating at the utmost tier of the woods
where the golden haze of the shrinking afternoon sun
is still hopelessly chromantic in its fading vigor.

The clouds, dispersed like shreds of cloth
against a looming soft blue sky,
the color of the walls in my crib-room as an infant.

The affable hand-waves veiled behind translucent glass passing by
propelling fleeting smiles onward in the journey.

Though the atmosphere is dense,
its ambiance expounds a soft lull.
          There's a hush over the six o'clock late afternoon day,
as the auriculariae settle gently aside my temples,
placating the rooted tendons wrapped tautly
in my grove of flesh and bone.

                  It suddenly becomes disturbed

by the creaking and squeaking of a rusty frame,
the slow groan of old worn tires treading across harsh gravel,
and the conductor of the indistinct cacophony himself:

A placid old man,
in his worn red and black plaid long sleeve shirt,
faded grey work trousers,
dingy black socks,
muddy crusty ragged off-white sneakers,
and an old camouflage military cap to top it all off.

His face, barely visible under the old cap
and the worn silent shroud of his visage,
holds dull dark eyes steadfast peering ahead,
off into the horizon,
with slackened skin the color of clay,
from afar having the countenance of subtle cracks in worn concrete.

The One Man Band rides atop his aged machination silently--
I hear no stressed breath or grunts,
but in passing--

a slow mechanical raise of the right hand,
a slight tip of the head,
and a soft whisper of a hello in greeting.

          If I had blinked I would have missed it.

He slowly creaked and squeaked and groaned his way onward,
in his slow and steady rhythmic pace,
until he disappeared in the golden afternoon horizon.

I see him every morning and afternoon
as I drive in and out of the neighborhood--
I wave, always he in return with that slow mechanical gesture,
like an old theme park ride from the fifties.

It was the first time I had actually heard and felt his presence,
to see up close the picture of health and resilience that he is,
the Dorian Gray of bicyclists,
transferring his years of wear and tear onto his metal frame
and his balding rubber soles.

Every time I see him come round the bend now,
I still think of that aged Carousel with the rusty horses
and the song worn a semitone off-pitch,
or the "tranquil" boat ride with the languid mechanical dolls
with thick black eyes goggling eerily
and sallow arms waving infirmly--

but he will not erode as the horses, dolls, and his bicycle--
he will live on, and only he shall demarcate
the trash from the treasure.

Thus she pulled tautly
Against his well worn jerkin
Free of woes and clothes
And skin without sin
Removing the veil of enchantment until she rose
Like a full ripe moon high
Upon his radiant earthly body

The welkins were pleased
Sighed with relief
So silken was she within
His richness and majesty
They adorned her with
Their supernatural jewels
To symbolize her graceful submissive gentle nature

They removed from her the chains erasing her paint
This transforming her scars
Into bejewelled stars
To bedeck the ashen midnight of her past with dawns beauty and light
Presenting them both
With a present of eternal
Passion and fulfilment

Mary C Puls
Thus she pulled tautly
Against his well worn jerkin
Free of woes and clothes
And skin without sin
Removing the veil of enchantment until she rose
Like a full ripe moon high
Upon his radiant earthly body

The welkins were pleased
Sighed with relief
So silken was she within
His richness and majesty
They adorned her with
Their supernatural jewels
To symbolize her graceful submissive gentle nature

They removed from her the chains erasing her paind
This transforming her scars
Into bejewelled stars
To bedeck the ashen midnight of her past with dawns beauty and light
Presenting them both
With a present of eternal
Passion and fulfilment

Mary C Puls
Vashti Ayla Miria

I.

Prideless, they tore railroad men’s brown *******
lurking the thirsty Kenyan banks.
Red moonlight sluiced from brambles and linen skins
pressing upon tawny flesh, igniting fire of feline eye.

Imperious, they patrolled the union jack encampment
lingering in shadows of long-labour’s dreamless sleep
until the smoldering campfire morning
when one hundred hammers lean in one hundred corners.

II.

Maneaters in glass houses can’t throw stony glances—
the power to haunt having run off with the ghost.
Now, they reign over the acrylic savannah
sneering—not out of regal disdain, but mild discomfort
from dust mites nitpicking at tautly taxidermed pelt.

Rebel eyes that halted an empire now cast
dull marble stares at fossils in the floor
and derailed trains of un-terrified school-children
near a hissing robot-box called Mold-A-Rama
spewing magma into plastic tyrannosaurs.

sodden fabric
twisted tautly
around a flawed
shaft

perforated drum
tumbles mixed
load damp
and tangled

each revolution
coins rain down
empty pockets
wave surrender

In the eerie hours half asleep
I heard my name in a soft voice.

It was a wake up call I couldn't resist
The jungle was in dark mist
The night ending but morning was still frail
The call was to tread on the fallen leaves trail.

The trees were shaded dark the sky was pale
Every bush was where the shadows fell
Quiet was the air our heart tautly tense
We tiptoed our best, and it made sense.

Tweet of early birds didn't sound sweet
Danger awaited at all sides to meet
We strained ears for the slightest sound
The jungle a romance on a perilous ground.

On the dry boulded river shapes were deep
Moving in a herd crawling to the steep
We stood frozen on this other side
To let the distance between grow wide.

Years have flown and whenever in the woods
I see my father's figure in jungle brood
He wakes me up and stretches his hand
We fly through the bushes in jungle land.

After you’ve been home for quite awhile,
With enough time to eat and drink the fruits
of the daily grind, once you have watched your
favorite show and talked your favorite talk,
Their eyes tease the thought mused by many.

You decipher the lucid expression on their face
in no time at all, or in enough time to find their lips
pursed tautly against yours, and they say,
‘Every time we say goodbye’…as they lead you
to the digs of dreamland, you wonder why a little.

You caress the thought chewed on by most as they
****** your hand. (Your arm barely fondles the burly walls
of the hall they lead you through and through to the room
at the end of the corridor.)

You trip over a laundry basket for two. They laugh,
help you up, looking in your eyes, perforating the retinas
like those cheap knives at some tacky store. You make it
to the door, it creaks open just a crack to click the little flicker back.

The space is small but roomy, with enough slack to let on a bed,
with plenty of fixtures to plug plugs into pluggers or whatever you
call them. You stalk the sack without the stigma that pillowed its petals.
You pull back its folds to reveal the nectar between its leaves.
Fresh linen. Smells like the breeze. They say, ‘Turn off the lights.’

She'd walked to work at sundown  
When the blue dissolved to evening              
Past the roadside vendors cooking fires,
Not yet bright enough for deepening                
The outline of the factory-house
Where night-time shifts were gathering          
'Round the early evening cooking scents,
Boiled rice, and bread and lentils
Carried on the twilight breezes with  
A light refrain that mentioned
The hunger in her mid-riff
And the mild persistent headache
At the urgent anxious anger that
Her fears and hopes resembled.
And the nagging hopeless worry
That the money wouldn't stretch.

Treading lightly, sandals slapping
In a rhythm never blindly
To be misconstrued as anything
But a walk to work, and quietly.
One hand clutching at her sari,
Coughing mutely through her head-shawl
Barely breathing through the mocking
Of the jeering tuk-tuk drivers
Past the dust cloud covered concrete
With the reek of sun-soaked diesel
And the mouthing finger-thrusting
And humiliating cat-calls
That permeate her modesty
And her sense of self-retrieval
With a fierce determination
That the future must be faced

She'd felt the first forced tremble
In the walls and floors beneath her
And the slowly sliding shifting
Of her sewing, soiled machine
As it cannoned past the T-shirts
Through the carefully folded blouses
And toppled from the table top
To smash against the floorboards
When the building crumpled inwards
And the chaos and the screaming
Chased the panic to the exits
Down the staircase to the ground.
Then the ceiling at the center of the
Wide, high whitened work room
Caved in with crash and cursing
As the lighting dimmed and died

Now, far above she hears the cadence                    
Through the gauze of dimming clarity              
Fire truck sirens moan hysteria
Within the tinnitus of silence                
Tumbled past the dust caked boulders
Of the colorless construction                            
Prostrated down below
In the humid darkened stillness.
Trapped and jammed into the spaces
Where the falling floors had forced her.          
Where the grinding groaning echoes
Of the debris and the torture                        
Close her throat to swells of  panic
For her mother and her daughter              
In the two-roomed cardboard shanty
Miles above and hours away

Barely conscious, breathing lightly
Through the dust and reek of faeces
Thinking of her crowded back-room
Where she'd bathed her infant daughter
In the tin-roofed cardboard shanty
By the stinking standing water
And where her husband’s insobriety
Nightly terminates in snoring
After shouting and the swearing
And occasional forbearance
When her mother’s stifled terror
Terminates in tempers risings
And the all pervading violence
That resolves in resignation
And completes the shaming sequence
By the act of copulation

In the wreckage work continues
Where the rescue teams are scrabbling
In the arms of their dilemma
To keep searching or accepting
That the paradox of seeing and then again
Believing in the hopeless expectations
That some persons can be found
Far below and hours away
The burning thirst has found her
Past the pain of her right shoulder
And the numbness in her legs.
The acrid smoke that holds her  
Transfixed in shallow coughing
While the sari starts to smolder
To the agony of breathing
As she hoarsely tries to scream

In a conference room in London
In the tautly tensioned Aerons
Women smooth their sculpted short skirts
As the slicked-down young supplier
Holds a T-shirt for inspection
To the murmured confirmation
Of the busy buoyant buyers
That the pricing must be right.
Miles above and hours away
Six degree's of separation
Form a loosely joined connection
Out of mind and out of sight.
One by one the vendor cooking fires
Turn to embers and to ashes
While miles below and far away
Comes the dying of the light.

short story  i wrote in 11/1/2014*

Decomposing sewer rat- that's the smell that will always remind me of her.
A tow colored ponytail, pulled back tautly with the smallish bobby pins holding down her page bangs, would greet me every time I walked into the cafeteria at lunch. She was a new kid, a sophmore, and I didn't know her name. She sat alone by the big red painted double doors. Everyone in the school wanted to get out-  but she seemed to always be smiling. It was my second semester of senior year, after winter break, after weeks of seeing the same girl sitting alone and never seeing her hair down that I decided to finally sit down next to her. The way she ignored my varsity jacket was striking- though it was my older brother's, the football team's logo always seemed to impress new girls who didn't know any better. She just kept on eating her yogurt. And then she looked to her right. And she kept on smiling. 'Hello, and your name is...?'
'Mike,' I offered my hand. And you? She just said her name was J.
I took it but wasn't satisfied. She went on to tell me she was new, from Burlington, Vermont- that she hated Scarsdale. And the bell rung. I went home that night endlessly calculating what the J could've stood for- Jennifer? Jessica? June? Jessica had me by the heels and she held me upside down. It took me days and days and finally a week and finally even a month to convince June that we should see each other outside of school. And then it took me that night taking out the trash to find out that Jennifer lived three doors away from me in a huge limestone manor. Then it took me the next day to convince her that- hey- tomorrow is a Friday, why not do something?
June said yes, put her sweater sleeve to her hand. I read once in a European studies textbook that in Elizabethan playhouses, they would sell orange rinds in little tea bags for people to hold up to their noses- the smell of all the people who didn't know about washing was so nauseating. It was ten pm when she called me that night and told me her parents would be in the Catskills and she hadn't seen my parent's cars in our driveway- so why not go to the city?
I took it in careful consideration that lasted approximately 5 seconds. I said yes si and da in every language possible. Something told me to go with her. I thought of the way she always smiled whether it was wide or wan and I could hardly wait for Friday night at 10pm.
The next day we drove to the city in her Audi cabriolet. I played New Order- but we didn't get to the city in the time we expected. The woods seemed to go on to the tune of the Perfect Kiss.
But by Face Up, we were in the city. We'd parallel parked in front of some bar  and made our way around. Then halfway through the sidewalk she asked. "Can we ride the subway?" I nodded. I supposed a Vermont girl had never seen New York City anyways. We took the R train at Rector until the end of the line. Then we went home. After that day, She went home after she dropped me off. I didn't find out what J meant or was and then it took three days to see that Jessica's house was actually just a forest. There was no limestone. It felt real, the riding the R train and the music in our ears  and even the yogurt she had eaten. But it took the next morning to monday to see there had never been a girl named J and the table was empty. It hadn't been a dream but I had to wonder if it was even real. But the other day I was on my way to Lexington  and I had sworn to god i'd seen her on the rails- on the rails! I cried for help but everyone just stared. Then I grabbed my briefcase and decided to go home instead of work for the day.

So November's Come,
Hazy leaves deck the trees;
Rotten ****** wrecked the sprecht,
gotta please, gotta tease.
Cotton crusted smile
took the style while spine dumb;
Freeze as whacks churn
spurned, danced to the crime hum.
Early squeeze amidst blitzed spritz, dark romancing,
prancing picket line fum-
bled; Ambled twixt crowds antsing.
Glazed, took prior avenue
espoused culture tazed/
Fazed, ascends erased hub,
Dire mazed/Liar snubbed;
Nah crowd sourced: after-shock stancing/
Corp core flexed waves/paves vexed glancing,
Dropped four, floor to score, music cull en(c)hancing.
Enchantingly out of touch; Butchered lemming dancing.

Rupturous rapturing gospel takes all:
Sports neck line with wreck wine drenched via stall,
Appalling, talling tower looms abroad
Broad took shin dig as grin, fling; swig accord.
Objectified Subject, with verb kept in tow
flits through the fine lines, and cracks in the snow.

Noticed grave shadows, slow; ravens attest
a'Gig'a'Sibling invested in scoping, and chest;
Blooming bioluminescence scatters down/
Frothy broth fairly broiled. Scorn fawning Noun/
Habit forming, tarnished, ab(d)jectified malt-core
Verby? Nun-thank-you-muchly, Mary Mag-dolla store.

.... So November's Come,
Clubbed, stepped and altared.
Brushed away the dark hype
crowd mic check faltered.
Dastardly respite. Psyche.
Planted positively preened
nature:societal fiend
crept crudely, rudely James Deaned.
Pants 'cocked, stewed, steamed',
Megalithic mount gleaned
as posture postulates
cost you fate, spate-spoke-stake, ****-rate
vibrate denatured, protein plucked feud
fueled larger sense of afterlife tense imbued.
Spotted shortly crossèd portly,
tautly tossed courtly cost,
'nawt'ly flossed' possed thoughtly;
Sportly Mossed Kate washed
scene brimmed/beamed/loved
'Leaned' fussed. Trussed team musk/
Stock puppet power-aid, raid's pretty husk.
****** sidekicks show side slicks, stuck chiming bitty.
Flickering afterdark lark glistens, gritty-city-fitty.
Bought distorted Faster Mark, Narc acrossed shark,
passed past the Rasta Park, embarked'n'stashed arc.

Dark the dreams that crept to the fallen gate/
dazzled gems and hellish rhinestones irk fate.
Grated joy, plated coyly, then doff broke;      
spoke symphony of fattened tire/wire frame joke;
Took twisted lyre, choir, to tame my europa,
maybz next time a better luck'n'fly my eloper,
clucky chickens plucked/fussed/cussed, a fitting trend,
Spare parts missing neural heart; a plasticated end.

ALVARADO                                              Old friend, admit,
            You have not crossed this river Styx before,
            But I and that long-suffering soldier have,
            And seen such sights to make your codstones crawl:
            I mean the hell of human sacrifice.
            When trumpets howl, and myrrh infects the air,
            A wall-broad drum resounds a thundering knell,
            To call the cultists to their grisly pyramid.
                                               A drum is heard, repeating at intervals.
            One victim strains across the clammy slab,
            A ghoul down-wrenching at each tortured limb,
            To keep the spinal shambles tautly arched;
            To see the black, satanic hangman leer,
            With clotted snarls of hair, and clawlike nails,
            Lifting the cutlery to tremble skyward,
            And to this brittle bird cage plunge the flint;
            He loots the poor chest of its jewel. The heart,
            Exhumed, hot from the plundered cavity,
            Reluctant to desist its wonted pulse,
            Still shudders in the fiend’s vampiric gripe,
            Which he uprears to slake the smoldering sun.
            Unearthly, braying like a beast possessed,
            And, wielding disarticulated joints-
            The fleshless femurs of a ****** maid-
            Or, glaring through a mask of patchwork flesh,
            The druid forges down the crannied steps,
            Cascading with a rill of molten marrow.
            He kicks the corpse to tumble in the throng,
            Who spring to ****** his gobbets for their dish,
            And chant (the word goes) “Now our gods are coming . . .”
                                                                                                     *They exit.

You always were a work of art,
Cast in flesh and broken hearts;
Draped in skin of not your own,
Stretched tautly over groaning bone

My beautiful monster, can't you see?
'Twas I made thee, unselfishly-
Yet still, from me, you turn away
And squint against harsh light of day

Sewn and stitched, with love, together
None shall ever know you better-
Each hair, each line, I put it there!
With gentle hand and tender care

Alas, you'll never utter word-
A reflection's voice is never heard.

Roth was a great lover of music

Old-timely big band show times that evoked memories in living rooms across white America
Provoking melancholia for what was assumed lost.

He was a master of writing technicalities
Knew the stitchings in a pair of men's brown leather driving gloves
Like they were poetic metre
Knew the nervy velocity attended to the beating of a heart through a stethoscope .

He wrote more novels that can be read in most lifetimes
As he had five different versions of himself to think through.

He wrote half a novel in the voice of an actual ex- lover

He was not particularly good at writing women.

He was unsurprisingly/surprisingly good at writing about the realities of race.  

He often cared little for reality
but could tautly pierce at the authenticity to be found
in "social realism."

He wrote standing up
Cried that novel was dead when really he was dying
He was both acutely aware and ignorant of this
He will be buried outside of Newark, presumably.

His career trajectory is unique in American letters in that it crystallized the vogue for American letters, ****** up the body, peaked and troughs with death, surveyed the end of American Innocence over four decades and closed at a summer camp.

His themes, in that order : Heartache, ***, Motherlove, Therapy, Body Horror, Satire, Egomania, , father hunger, Death, the state of the nation, regret, race, life inside the academy,fascist media darlings, liberal terrorists destroying their family narratives,Death again, old ***, absolute suicide in words, adolescence.

The early blurry dark tar drape,
the annihilating television sky -
under it, we're drifting floes

in a snow-veined river as winter
shadows slum through a beetle-browed
rowhouse valley, all the stars frozen

& ****** away by slow and humid glow.
Tomorrow's rain belongs to tomorrow -
tonight's pattern is hot and pink,

like something simmering just underneath
tautly-sheeted strokes of skin.
Must all our poisons be so sweet?

I came to believe thoughts that you poured into my head
Grain upon grain like so much falling sand.

You tied a cord around me then pulled me to your bed.
Yet, I thought that I could fly as long as you held tight
The string that you had tied around my hands.

I fluttered just above the ground
Never truly understanding that I was bound.

Each time that I sought out some new height
You would tug hard upon the string;
Each time I gained some altitude you screamed.

And I would be awakened from my freedom dream.
I must not fly too high was the lesson taught me.

But, you eventually tired of holding to the string;
That string which continually you held so tautly.
And so you took a stake, I heard the sound

As you began to pound and pound.
I failed to get the concept.  

This time, when I left my perch
As I leapt skyward, I felt a ****
Then tumbled to the ground.

I had thought that I had 'freedom'
While flying just above your head.

Yes, I was wrong, so very wrong.
When I looked down you were gone.
But, you would not set me free,

Yet, the tether had remained
And you came back to feed me grain by grain.

I begged, "Let me spread my wings." "Free me!  "Free me!"
You could not trust nor cherish, jealousy had made you deranged.
If only you had let me fly, forever at your side I 'd have remained.

Through the soft rolling hills of a quiet lush field,
The breeze carried the scent of lilac in the air,
Those pale, purple flowers upon which I longingly gazed,
Were placed in the waves of her braided blonde hair

We feasted upon daily, the fruits of the land
And passed the day humming a harmonized tune
We slept in the fields, where evil had no home,
And drifted off under the eye of the moon

Until one day the breeze died down
And the lilac scent grew weak,
She became the first to wonder
And first desired to seek

Heaven’s water flooded the fields
Burying the flora in a grave of sod,
Abandoned us, had the eye of the moon,
Our life seemingly ruled by an angry god

We decided we must go someplace else
Settle down to another blissful home,
So we left the hills with only linen on our shoulders,
And sought out a utopia; that great unknown

The hot, heavy sun hit our necks without mercy
As we trudged endlessly through that unripe land
The only beauty there lay in her unmolested cheek,
When she pressed to it my calloused hand

The emptiness of our guts was an unbearable pain
I looked over and saw misery in her eye
How could I fail so horribly, to keep her from want?
I couldn’t stop her tears, her hurt refusing to subside

One day we came upon a gravely wounded bird
After days of feasting on air, we rushed to the creature’s side
I mournfully brandished my knife up high
And ****** down and held it there, till the bird had died

O’ cruel fates! What a trick you did play upon us!
Our lost innocence from that ****** was no small sacrifice
The irony there is but a horrible joke,
That there had to of been death, to give us sweet life

She ate its heart, and I its brain
And after, the rosiness returned to her cheek
A state of shudder-inducing blushing I’d so missed
I trembled with joy and felt my knees go weak

T’was a couple days later, and we’d found another creature
A squirrel caught napping up in its tree
The deed was done, and we’d just begun to feed
While a shadow silently slithered and stuck a knife to the back of me

All my muscles then clenched, I dared not to breathe
She tried to help by disarming the man
He slashed at her violently, wounding her cheek
Then through her cries, grabbed our meat and ran

Over the starving weeks, her cheek did heal
And memorialized in her skin with a scar
Was a realization of the brutality of the world
Leaving our fragile psyche’s permanently marred

The incident damaged me less than it did her,
She couldn’t seem to move on
“It’s so hard to get up in the morning.” she sighed
Her lust for life had gone

The grey cloud took over her brain
And one day to me she said
“Perhaps the bird and the squirrel were the lucky ones,
And you and I’d be better off dead.”

I pleaded with her to keep going on
Life without her would be too great a pain
I begged on my knees to no avail
She said “I must cast off this mortal chain.”

The next day I awoke to find her dress, like a rope around her neck
The other end, tautly tied, around a branch of a weeping willow
With blurred vision I got her down, my tears fell on her cheek
I laid her head down on my lap; t’was her final resting pillow

I buried her in a hand-dug grave
And left the next day at dawn
I marched on to find a new home
To distract from the fact she was gone
  
Trudging along, alone with my thoughts,
To converse with there was no one else
After a while, the guilt had fully come
Because there was no one to blame but myself

On rolls in the grey cloud
My once calm sea grew rough
And the same question arose, again and again
Had I done enough?

I no longer bothered to search for food
I soon stopped drinking my water
I walked for days, without any purpose
It was like leading a lamb to slaughter

On the third day of this
My body gave up and quit
I collapsed in the field and waited for the end
I felt body and conscious split

I had a vision of a speck of light
That grew bigger and brighter by the second
Then with a flash appeared a beautiful angel
Whom to me she beckoned

I awoke from the darkness in a cave
In its mouth stood the fair woman
It tore at my heart to see such loveliness
That I thought she mustn’t have been human

Her long brown locks intricately braided,
Ran down the length of her spine
With skin as smooth as porcelain
I longed for her to be mine

She tilted my head back
And poured down my throat water so pure
She fed me fresh fruits and savory stew
Till my shaking hands were sure

She asked me of my past
I told her of the trip
She asked about my companion
It was then that I bit my lip

The gates swung open, out came everything
And by the end she saw a broken man
I told her I didn’t think I could continue to go on
She replied “My love, let me show you that you can.”

Over time she took my body and soul
And brought them back to health
Just let me say that a well man
Is worth all of the world’s vast wealth

She helped me find some purpose in life,
The meaning of it all without my darling
And in the process I found my heart
Belonged to her now, my precious starling

She spends the day foraging for fruits
And I hunting animals for meat
We drift off at night in the cave
Together we lie while we sleep

It’s not a new perfect Eden
But my love of life and happiness there do grow
For I once again, smell that lilac scent,
And can bask in its fragrant glow.