Duetto

My enemy, each morning in the chill
  Of shining white and biting light,
My enemy, so close at break of day,
  Our lips too close to kiss,
  Our eyes too close for sight,
My teeth are bared,
  Your flesh too close to bite.
 
        Your smile is strange, this morning, oh my love,
           Did you forget the chessboard that we set?
        You slid your bishop, can you then resent,
          The queen I prod against your parapets?
          The knight your king's engaging in a tete-a-tete?
        The same way that we spoke
          When first we met!
 
My enemy, I thought that black and white,
  Sufficient stirred, by deed and word,
Could blend into a self-sufficient grey.
  My enemy, a thought occurred:
  That I was like a broken-winged bird,
And broken winged birds must learn to love the rats.
  In retrospect, it seems absurd --
 
        Hush now, my best beloved! You are mine.
          Bound closer than a wedding band,
          Upon your shriveled hand.
        Hush now, my best beloved: You are mine,
          Bound like the tide is bound unto the land.
          You be the lady, darling, I will be the man.
        Our body is a little girl's tea party, now,
          Where we two sit, and play at pat-a-pan.

Mine enemy, I beg of you, one day,
A single day, let it be today.

        Hush now, my best beloved! Go to sleep!
          You wished to be the one who lives within the mirror-glass,
        We signed our banns, and you agreed,
          You said that all you wanted, now, was rest.
          Your labors, then my darling one, are past.

(Image: Madame Jeantaud by Degas)

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Ink Notes #2: "There are two kinds of purity"

It's a shame this poem didn't turn out, because I love this song, but that's always the way - it's harder to write something honest if you love it, and honesty was never my strong suit in the first place.

There are two kinds of purity,
       The first is to be clean:
1) The plump-faced tidy smiling one
       Who know where her hands have been
2) The pretty little meadow with
       The purple-paley blooms
Of violets
                     3) The well-swept floor
       Of a fresh hospital room.
4) The handsome white of new-scrubbed hands
       5) The freshing scent of mints
6) The smell of elementary schools
       Where other souls were sent.
7) The burn of bleach on bloody sheets,
8) The sound of freshly butchered meat
9) The clean cut limbs of paper dolls
       Before they touch your hands.
But don't forget the second strand
Of purity reserved for man -
       For if you are not neat
You only need a pretty way
Of putting all your parts away.
Perhaps inside a little box
       Or underneath the sea
       You might consider it to be
An injury -
I disagree.

(No more, in it's peculiar way
Than other purities.
The soap that scrubs can dry the skin
       The mint can burn the eye.
The pretty child can snap a heart.
       The violet can die.)

A hurt is not defined by pain,
       A wound, not circumscribed by blood,
              A broken breast not evident.
To injure - is to fail.
Cleanliness is injury
To she whose made of crumpled leaves
And last December's soil.

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