Wednesday, January 04, 2017

dance with the one who hung you

cross of cards

a cross of cards regards
and speaks in pantomime
the colours fade unmade
by memory and time

the shadows dance askance
suspicious of your whim
indifference suspense
illusions gone to grim

there’s no dharma karma
kisses in the distance
your path of least persistence.


mango

like a mango
my heart is not a freestone 
and you will find it complicated
to feed
to fill your need
but I bleed ambrosia and magic
in ink and photons


Poitiers

there is an intimacy beyond the mere intersecting flesh.
but no one is ready for it.  steady enough we bravado our ways
through our days for the sullen nights in languages preverbal
and conveniently hardwired from the ancient brain.
you were a lousy lover, as liars always are, too far from the truth
to be able to transmit the synesthetic delight on the oversight.
the only person I lie to is myself, not wanting to have wasted
the years and faux passions like a hungry man eating dirt
when that is all he finds at the bottom of the pit he is chained in
by his own expectations and insurrections against the beauty of life.


expatriate

exile and the inclusive banishment
vanishment behind a cloud of magician’s prestidigitation
and the puff of smoke and fire
like a bullwhip made of dreams and broken glass
invocation.  coronation.  theocricide.


Tempered glass that passes for the lens of the eye of God

I do not recall in perfect clarity the taste of a woman’s lips.
the currency of seduction.  the toll into the palace of Aphrodite.
for I have lived my appropriate years in the desert where slips
the shards of self-delusion out, away and the darkness so bright we
conceal ourselves that we cannot burn away to the crust
we have folded within to guard and ward as we conceal
the resplendent truth that is evident by the ashes and dust
that coat our feet and fingertips as we crawl to the well to kneel
in confession to the love gods of forgotten religions, with my psalter.
praying they will forgive us, for that is their principle of redemption,
that everyone deserves a second chance to dance before the altar
and proclaim their faith in tongues of flame and the fool’s exemption.
love is too feeble a word for the transcendence of pyre and desire
I have seen through the eyes of stained glass and fire.


idolatry

the argent sergeant gave the order
and we followed in our line
over the cliff
for no purpose 
other than evidence of faith


ripping the stitches

don’t move too soon, too much, or you’ll tear the wound
open again
and again
sedentary goes from temporary to the way of the nosferatu
just slowly
but inexorably



William F. DeVault.  all rights reserved.

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