j.

It's so terribly astonishing
how your every inch remains to me
(or at least the "you" you used to be),
when the more obvious idiosyncrasies
of lovers lost more recently
were forgotten almost immediately,

I can't recall my last love's fingers,
but yours? A perfect image.
I can't recall my last love's kiss,
although yours was more timid.
I can't relive my last love's sighs,
but yours, still, how they sear!
An ever-widening distance between us lies,
yet somehow you still feel near.

Is it that that distance, always our curséd blessing,
why I still find myself my love confessing?

or is there truth in the adage that made us wander-
absence truly makes the heart grow fonder?

I'll seek not, nor deliver an apology,
but how did you ever become so much a part of me?

For Dame Death, on Her Birthday.

(June 17, 2011)

Not the first, and not the last-
O, gilded glimmering burst of dying ember
frightfully flitting, to light my path-
thus I'll burn once more just to remember.
A truer friend, you might've been,
but love me more? A one could never.
To see the Life within my dying face,
and to wed the two of me together.
The beauty of it was the deadliest.
The dual-sided dopaminergic Deliverance
always fueled the never-would-be-sated
fiery seat of my ambivalence.
Most dolorous of doting fervour
trembling to trespass the Gates of night
before we'd find our dew-kissed cheeks
tough and taut before dawn's wretched light.

But now that my psychadelic Swirling Falls have passed,
and the summers have singed the weeds that grew,
I've resolved to tenderness over what transpired,
and denounced the pains I thought I knew.

Now that our grimoire is shut and sealed,
tossed into the icy Styx our rueful tome,
I wish I could have conceived our sentience;
I wish we'll all still find our home;

I wish that I may still find pardon,
though I'll hold out a little longer;
that you were more than a Cross'd Star to light my way;
and that I could have been a little stronger.

runes

The ditties I write are but eulogies
Of things I once loved now long gone
Engraved by hardened men's hands Upon cold jagged granite,
Runes strewn across perfect green manicured lawns.

Marigold daisies like your eyes pushed to sight
As corpses of dreams regenerate the soilIn their tectonic right.

I suppose this to be the thing
You always understood,
So as Orpheus I'll trek
Through fire- and ice-wood,
Valleys of shadow-sea-
To bring you back with me
Where the light beings frolic
In the wide-spectrum-band -
For mustn't Death and Tragedy
Walk always hand-in-hand?

I heard a story you might like,
It goes as such:

My fiddle player fell [to his death] into a well.
To retrieve him I sought to speak with Lucifer,
And thus traversed again the rings of hell -

The Goblins bade me turn away, laughed in my face
At my plight and did my fate foretell-
And Jareth, so cocky and keen once he was seen,
Gave me a task when pledged I my soul to sell;
He spake, "Travel the depths to the Hall of Mirrors,
And bring back only the perfect shard."
And I suppose his jealousy now arose,
Thusly towards me his heart grew quite hard.
Then, when he saw all I'd done to retrieve the glass,
He scoffed at my completed task, and asked,
"Haven't you figured out yet, dear,
What you've truly chosen to sell?
See the True Love that you seek in that mirror-piece."
And, of course, all I could see was myself.
"Little time," quoth he, "on that green earth have you now,
So if you'd like to hear the fiddle played,You'd better soon learn how."

He then gave me my heart's violin and bow,
And I returned to the light burdened to know
That never would I behold again
My handsome holy grail of men.

My lovely Mademoiselle de Mort,
You know I love you dearly,
But must you kill all mortal men I love
To help me see myself more clearly?

Dan.

Oh, it's no big deal, really. A familiar feeling. Easier, though. I mean, I didn't even meet you that long ago.

There is that brief moment that happens, cause it's fresh. Where your name pops into my head, or something comes up that we talked about. Something you were going to help me with, some plan we made half-heartedly. Then the, "oh, right. I guess that's not gonna happen now" moment of realization. The first day I cried a lot, but the following days where I normally would have been inconsolable I was pretty much fine. Still surprised, but fine. Maybe because you didn't burrow into my heart enough for me to care, or maybe because I've become more resilient. Not sure if either is all that comforting.

I was looking forward to it, to some relief from my furrowed brow and grief-stricken mindset, even if a temporary superficial one. I thought, maybe this would actually work. It seemed different. You seemed different. It's better this way, to not ever hear you make the promises the others only ever ended up breaking.

I think of you everyday still. The frequency wanes... It's all I can look forward to in light of what transpired; that a stranger will bring up a film we watched together, a comedian you showed me, the tiny town where you grew up- and I won't linger too long on the aftertaste of the mention of you. Just, you know, the real part. Your crooked smile, lazy eye just behind that swoop of hair. How your jeans fit over your hips, your bowed chuck taylors, your ridiculous cackle.

Now that someone else gets to enjoy those inanities, I guess I don't have to.

I love you. And when I say it, I mean it. It's not apologetic, or consolatory, or conditional.
When you said it to me I didn't know whether to cry relieved tears of joy or punch a wall. I'd almost rather smash my own hand then let you keep breaking my heart.
There are days when I'm okay with it all, and then there are days when I fall to pieces- and wish that you'd never kissed me, that you were just still the boy who'd look longingly in my direction for too long at parties. I can't remember the last time I ...
The hope was pleasant and peaceful, now there's just gray tumult. And, oh, it hurts and tires me so to be but sea-foam in your wake...

this i know

After years of affliction, hitherto a short lifetime of remorse and chagrin, my roots are planted, and not in sorrow, but in hope. My swaying sadness is just a sometimes sour affectation of my somber psyche, but it does not define me. When I've broken, I've been renewed. When my brain told me to not go on, I did it anyway. When it tried to persuade me to not love or let in again, I did. Over and over thus haven't I swelled and collapsed? And not in just one way, but many?

Of course there will be those cobwebbed corners. The stow-away compartments of dusty dreams it took so long to slough away from the forefront. Of course you'll never know the girl on stage. Of course I am a delicate woman. And of course you would be the person I would love to tell about the darknesses, the sweepy dreamy mists I hide from the daylight. The unnameable fears, the macabre romances with dead songs, eulogies of the incarnations I have been. Of course I would want you to know about the weaknesses- because I want you to know the closest to my present self as I can share.

I am not my words or songs- they are merely an apostrophe of something I maybe once had been, a veil engineered by a ghostly unseen monster of a previous swirling Fall.

I am not a wounded dove. I yearn to be loved, I long to belong. But the desperation you sense is not in the desire of the attainment, but in the wait. And that is inevitable, and nigh. Because I am whole, and giving, and open. And whoever is worthy of that scope of tenderness will meet me there.