The Empress of Contrails Writes Upon Darkness - Anxiety of Influence
.
for Anthros Del Mar
I, on the other hand,
have lain down with
countless thousands.
My tent is worn out.
Love cries some blood
where tongues are root-ground,
utterance hard pounded,
soft tissue torn letter by letter,
tender verbs opened to pain,
that which is paid for more
than alabaster embraces
and this strangling of waists.
My tent has drained more
of love's body than a mortuary.
Spikenard scented oils taint
fabric folds and flesh. Rote,
worn pillows are hourly turned
for teeth or coins hoping
to find one true word for
'love without name',
moths repelled instead by flame,
pillows revealing nothing yet.
I turn them still.
Have I not spoken of tears
subtle parentheses of blame,
brine outlines punctuated,
thinly silked, easily taken
for wing-laced salt maps,
tongue lick sighs grown
weary with enunciating.
Nightly misspoken, the
flagons are tossed down.
Pleading echoes, the tents
are packed. Forgiving camels,
commas nailed to each hoof,
tread into cool unread darkness,
all that is within it -
a history of wax seals,
once important names,
broken pledges, lies still smooth,
their nuance-scripted smiles crisp,
predictable riffled pages
intent on cool gain upon
desert's shifting floor.
Oasis and cloaca,
love birds parched,
now moves caravansary
toward Heart's always
edited horizons.
There are many redactions
before the sun rises.
Perhaps my name goes
before me, my 'press',
the Empress of Contrails -
peacocks, accountants
in tow trailing tallies,
unsettled scores,
arrivals, departures,
ejaculations, rejections,
all faces hands have held
and, yearning beyond possibility,
hesitant dawn's mourning dove.
Men cry, 'Return, ' yet burns
no desert impervious to heat of
all kinds, even human, excepting
the heart, its capacities to startle.
Its dunes in vast stretches beat
for what moonlight cannot
index but only suggest,
breviaries, endless recounting
of causes - neglect, curses,
justifications, worst cases all,
just 'tent talk' to scorpions
scribbling in silver shadows,
pitying serpents smug in their ability
to recite every skin they have shed
without regret unlike the men in veils;
their profane winds, lightly perfumed,
do the work of erasure well,
absolving memory.
What lies ahead shuffles in
cursives of sound confusing
the ear, a solitary traveler
compulsive for solar winds,
tumbles it's own way.
No pressure for accuracy
nor to lose plume and ink
hiding what cannot be unwritten
A trail of brocaded skulls in time
returns to sand. One cannot see,
waving its goodbyes, the concealing
tint and quill.
Through ages, upon human vellum,
through cycles unending and same,
what heart heat bids, I write perhaps
best upon darkness, eyes closed, tent
opened to all who may, supplicant,
come wandering in.
*
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
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