Nymph, Sylph, Mirror-glass

The water suspends,
As warm as a womb,
It whispers currents,
From the bloom of my own
Languor.

The air, she lays the steam
So soft and slow against the mirror-glass,
So soft and slow like mother lays
Her child in the bassinet.

Then, unburdened,
And left fresh-skirted and alive with chill,
She kisses me in the lover's nook -
The crook of the neck.

Her tease is tender:
She is right.
Its time that I got up.

My eyes wander to the mirror,
But the steam lays across,
So I, still and humid,
Am a ghost-in-the-glass.

Too tall, perhaps?
Yes, that.
The spectre, it is foreign --

But perhaps a strange and elder sister of myself
Looks back through a glass darkly.
And when I nod to her,
She nods back.

Cold, heartfelt, compassionate.

And this gentility,
Perhaps,
It is enough.

(image courtesy of nutmeg designs)

Read More......

Racontreuse

It is my way to make the cruel blade laugh,
to entertain the heavy knuckled fist.
I tried too long to tuck myself away,
to be the one that nobody would miss.

And? No fist thrown towards me ever did.
But silence only deepens for so long,
it is a sea that has a fathomed depth.
So I raised a storm of stories and of song

and threw down bolts of just-a-tale among
the fists and blades, and wrap about their necks
a drunken arm. A jolly joking lip
drools bonhomie along their poisoned backs.

And no one misses me -- just like before.
Nobody misses what they've never known.
They glad to see the shriveled limerick,
the hollow-echo-laughter of my bones.

Reduce yourself into a silent stone:
An angry hand will hurl you at its hate.
But silent stones! It still is not too late!
Reduce yourself into a plot device!

Read More......