How beautiful, if sorrow had not made
sorrow more beautiful than Beauty’s self.

-John Keats

How your lips decipher the city limits
and display them in a flash across my mind
when we part mouths and say goodbye
is an unfathomable legend of loitering I wish to tell.
The amaretto of last night is jealous
that I can desire your puckering more than its own
that I can forget all worldly intoxications
and become drunk with the full-blown
spirit of being your companion.
I wonder, is this reward worth what is being paid,
my heart being flayed against the Venetians
untouched and unlighted by
your morning-ambitious
digits digging for sunlight
and birdsong beneath the shade?
If only my shirt stayed
on during dreams of you,
erotica would have a new
and more conservative name
and shame on my skin,
the fires would bustle
out of rusty barrels, my being
alone and homeless, a bum
burning rubbish to stay warm,
giving light to the darkish alley.
Please, if begging ever meant anything
other than making wishful our wants
of tomorrow’s weather.
Rip the shingles from my skull
and expose the attic of my brain
cob-webbed and cornered into
nostalgic thoughts of rocking chairs,
and chains made of heavy water
to hold us down like a finished jigsaw puzzle
tired of working to hold together
ready to disassemble, pour back into
the box from which we scattered. Expose
my vestibule of a soul, let it greet you
like a lost cousin from which I was born next to
and lived apart from, knowing only absence
in place of what once felt like family.
Break the door down when I trap myself inside,
bring a battering ram of axe-handled angels
to burn teeth marks through the cedar
brand me saved from myself, forgiven -
made available again to your light.



©2005 by Paul Adrian Mabelis