fallen verses

I press play &
sweet jazz &
acoustic guitar &
a sultry voice echo among the rooms &
my ears are not enough to hear it all &
the sweetness &
love &
all of it go wasted without you to hear

The early years were not spent in darkness, but a hazy in-between:
not sight, but the absence of anything to see.
Stumbling, I found the edge of the mist. Before me stretched a grey and featureless plain where colors blended into sky and ground.

Like a fey spirit you appeared before me, showed me a hidden path, and revealed a paradise - an Oz without the munchkins.
In vivid Technicolor you showed me golden walls, a golden gate, a golden lock.
You revealed yourself as the key, the lock, the gate and the world beyond.

I lived in Xanadu!
Every sight was a wonder of you.
Every taste was of your flesh.
Perhaps Kublai Khan did build it in ages past, but you, my love, inherited his kingdom.
You ruled with a velvet fist: that even the most brutal of cuts felt like a caress.

But you proved a fickle spirit and took Xanadu and it’s golden walls and left me.
Without you, the world revealed its true color: grey.
The flat and featureless terrain stretches to the limits of my vision.
I stand where once you opened a world of pleasure:
I look out and understand the plain isn’t empty:
It is inhabited by spirits who have chosen to forget there was once a golden pleasure-dome.
In their forgetfulness there is a peace, an oblivion - one which bears too high a cost:
For I once lived in Xanadu, with you
and even the memory is worth the pain it costs to hold.

Outside my bedroom window
train tracks run along the river

Mornings are the time of the
slow freight-hauling trains
So that each day
in addition to an obnoxious series of
mehp mehp mehp
I hear a simultaneous
dada dada dada
as joints in the rail line flex

Like two old members of the resistance
(”Viva la afternoon!”)
long since retired and sold-out
The train and I begin our day
with a most typical of conversations
“Morning.” kachung
“Damn. It’s early.” kachung
“If I’d hit the snooze button one more time…” kachung
(Angrily, though, and I remember its day had already begun)

I don’t know the afternoon trains.
Like hotel maids they only show up
when I’m gone.

And there are no evening trains.
My evening conversations used to be held with you.
Now, I go to bed early
just to get to the morning’s convo sooner.
(kachung)

You are like a sunset, woman of fire.
You fall over my world, descending as if in a patient flight.
The rivers of my soul reflect you; the clouds so much more than white when you grace them.

Like the sunset, you are mine for a moment, then gone.
I hold my breath as if to impart stillness to the moment, and in that stillness, languish.

The clock’s sad face stares at me and blinks without remorse.

Your heavenly body orbits at a distance-
Cutting an invincible path through the cold depths.

Woman of fire, your warmth spreads beneath my fingers as the oceans spread,
The tide of your affection always advancing and receding like a hesitant breath.

For a moment I am bathed in wind and sun.

You are a sunset, my woman of flame.
For the flicker of a match you cover my world,
Then I am spent and can burn no more.