No carapace

I more than once heard people say, often proudly, that their experiences in love had led them to grow a thick skin. I've never understood why others regard insensitivity as strength and, even more often, emotionality as weakness. My belief is that there is far more courage in growing keener with each joy and pain we experience, and to open our heart all the more when we know we may suffer. Here's the expression of this belief:


No...

Carapace.
Spartan shield shed into chasm.
Pachyderm.
Arduous tusks, scab scratched off.
Ivory.
Charcoal rooks flew pawning coins.
Adamant.
Trumped by hearts, piked, clubbed to ash.

I've naught to hide beneath my pelt,
all walls forswear and ribs unsheathe,
cerise hood lift: this heart must breathe,
admit caress and wild whip's welt,

my sweetest seed shall don no husk.
Though lids may moor, put out the lights,
I shall not fall to mourning nights,
this Spanish Don won't turn to dusk.

The other half of our Moon

My iambs always seem to feed on sorrow and memories past, but are meant well.

"These fleshy fruits about my beak,
have twisted, turned around in time,
to petal, sepal, arid spine,
and lastly listless, lifeless seed.

Within - no flesh, I fear, cut out
by blunt, by slavic, stumpy hand.
My florid tongue was but your land,
depleted, languished in my snout.

Two orbits bare, two shrivelled stars,
inside slain seas surge charcoaled isles:
Is quit the quiver of my eyes,
and Amor's arrow's but a scar.

Despite, each eve, waves plan their flight
from these their coves, to stony shores,
to lap the wounds and salt the sores.
Could keep them captive not tonight.

They tumble to Electra's tear
enwrapped in chain, swaggers a rent.
A "whoosh", Psyche erupts the dent,
her argent cord - impaling spear.

Bronze heart, subsister, knew not rust
until past pores your pasty dew
infested it, its warmth withdrew.
You taught it love can come with lust."

Nephritic stone

I decided to dedicate a small playful ode to the kidney stone that so complicated my life a year and a half ago. My folk say that one must laugh at adversity, since crying is of no use:

"It feasts on flesh, banquets on bone,
or quick, it gobbles body whole.
A grain well placed will urge you prone,
Not love but sand takes such a toll.

A germ that grows on salted ground,
in taut terrain, nephritic night.
A pearl, wet desert rose, ignite
this wraith into a question wound.

You jade me, nephrite, graven gem;
your wanton wound, unfaithful ail,
predicted death and bade me pale,
my petals plucked but spared my stem.

I thank thee for that sleepless time,
in Orwell's wing (eighty fourth ward),
its Telescreens, my piddle poured
and turned to wine; but most, this rhyme."

Patience

More than three years ago began a poem, and never finished. Until tonight.

"There is no fear in love;
but perfect love casteth out fear:
because fear hath torment"
1 John 4:18

I pour my sadness on this page and try to yield to Fate,
but Will is weaker than Desire, so still I clutch the blade
and push it tight against my breast as though it were her hand.
My sorrow drips onto the floor and mixes with my blood;
the grain is made, the seed is sown and now there comes a bud
that springs a flower that can lead my essence to her land.

Where colour cuts all eyes to shreds, the place you call 'a dream',
Where beauty pierces more than pain and silence mutes the scream.
The grass devours the Lion's flesh, the dust erodes its bones;
the Dragon dreads to spread its wings above this fatal trail,
And warns me not with blaze nor burn, but bare abysmal wail,
that those that can't devise its end will perish here alone.

My sight has read a thousand lives, each step a myriad deaths;
The path is paved in carmine light, the dusk of my close breaths.
The citadel waits nigh at hand, its gates bloom to my rhyme,
Within its carcass stark and scourged, mon coeur illumes the pit.
I clasp, reclaim my mortal sin, to weave as I see fit,
To find a match to flame away the very frame of time.