does the Sun know
of our orbit?
does the Sun care?
does the Sun know
how many
are at her mercy?
does the Sun know
how many
subsist
on her glory?
do you know
you are the light
in my heavens?
do you know I exist?
Tag: romantic poetry
-
and life—
for too long,
it kept me from you.
but I’ve decided
no one—
not the fates,
nor the hand of god
can keep me from knowing
the taste
of your breath,
or the very song
of your heartbeat.
I’ve decided
I could write novels
just about the way
your eyes crinkle
when you smile.
And I’ve decided
there is a novel
in the way
your gaze
erases a lifetime
of being invisible.
-
you are what songs are made of,
that celestial dew,
inspiration like honey
from the heavens.
but I worship in hiding.
they would persecute me
should they know.
so my prayers
are poems scribbled, torn out and thrown,
hoping I can forget this love.
needing to forget this love.
but
needing you more.
-
irrational poets
who call nature their home,
and write love letters
to the earth—
i’m one of them.
irrational poets,
claiming the heart is the cipher
to the hidden language of the trees—
I’m one of them.
yeah, I’m one of them.
irrational.
mad, foolish.
i’m all these things and more.
i talk to the Moon— she talks back.
i march not
to the beat of my own drum.
i gave that up.
the earth’s heart is enough,
her hidden song
which permeates all.
i hear it— oh, i hear it,
& i cannot help
but sing along.
brick and mortar:
i cannot call it home.
but my feet know the feel,
& my gut is a terrible liar.
it knows god’s chapel
is home. have you seen
its diamond-specked ceiling?
have you sat in its pews
of willows and daisies?
have you heard the choir
of blue jays and mockingbirds?
do you hear the sermon
in the winds?
have you shed your burdens
in confession, whispered your secrets
to the mountains,
and let yourself be forgiven
in the silence?
god’s green chapel
is a holy place.
yeah—
i’m one of those irrational poets
who call it home.
-
magic still exists, right?
i swear it.
i could have sworn i got a whiff
when we brushed arms in passing.
i could have sworn
it glimmered in your eyes
when you tilted your head back,
and sang to the world,
your glorious laugh.
could have sworn
i could tell the future,
when,
for the first time,
you held my hand.
no,
i never saw fate more clearly.
-
and when you hold my hand,
my heart speeds up,
but time slows down.
your head tilts, laid on my chest,
& the turning of the earth: it hiccups,
if only for a moment.
and your laugh—
oh, your laugh,
I can only die happy
if that sound
were my last.
this love: it is not quiet.
it burns in my gut,
it needs to be sung—
to shout, to scream, to holler,
“Look, world— it is her. She
is the one—
the one
who is a full Moon
on the darkest night—
or, no— she is the Sun,
and I the pallid Moon,
and if I shine,
it is but her
borrowed light.”
-
Break your life into verse.
To run on this path,
or to stop; savor,
inhale—
step,
stop—
gravel crunch, silence,
eyes closed, heart open,
holding the Sun’s hands.
step again, stop.
there is a hidden movement.
a leap in every pause.
such speed in stillness.
such stagnancy in those who cannot stop moving moving moving moving moving moving moving moving moving moving moving—
lips move,
but frozen on the same word.
find the symphony.
make a hymn of the cacophony.
rescue each layer from its doom:
to be swallowed by the whole.
do not let life be noise:
let it be music,
and please:
stop, and listen.
-
can you feel the flame dying? this star of ours, the celestial hearth we orbit, she dims.
premonitions of heat death — you inch farther and farther away. our gravity is not enough. this dance comes to an end— you are drawn in by another, a gravity far greater than mine.
goodbye old friend, goodbye.
i pray this star is warm enough for me alone, but my oceans already turn to ice. my glacial heart slows its beating— heat death, heat death, heat death— again, the premonition.
prescient vision, it sees not the future, but the now too clearly. my love is its own cipher: the very thing which bitters our parting makes shouts of whispers, cymbals of subtlety. they broke my heart long before you spoke the words.
and what is heartbreak but this: to hold someone near to your heart still who has long departed? the heart speaks not in terms of physical distance— to it, you are still close. it reaches out, expecting your embrace— it recoils at the thin air. it reaches again, cannot fathom your absence.
where are you, my love?
-
I’ve come to worship
at your body’s temple.
I am on my knees
confessing the sin of my desire.
Your curves are scripture—
I touch the divine—
I’m in ecstasy.
Light, white, blinding.
No—
this is false.
I know not anyone
worth bowing to.
I cannot
make you my idol.
I will not.
I’ve had quite enough
of love
that puts me on my knees.
We meet face to face,
or we do not meet at all.
I give—
but I also receive.
No more love
that is a one-way street.
Done am I
placing the divine in another,
as if they, and they alone,
hold
all that is holy,
like I am damned,
and my salvation
is bought
through martyrdom,
dying
for an unfeeling God.
If you are holy, then I am too.
If I am damned, you are too.
Scales of my love: balance.
-
Before I go on, I need to make something very clear: I love her. Deeply. I could list infinitudes of clichés about the ways in which she makes me feel – that she’s the missing puzzle piece I’ve longed for all my life, she made my life go from black and white to technicolor, that I’d give up my soul just for a whiff of her scent – but I fear none of them can adequately explain the intensity of my passion. How can I explain an orchestral symphony to the deaf? How can I explain sunsets to the blind?
How can I explain the depth of my love to anyone?
Alas, I must try. When I tell you that I love her, I mean to tell you that it feels like my entire life was a long process of approaching the great singularity of our meeting, and that all things have been secondary to that one extraordinary moment. I mean to tell you that our hearts are plainly connected by a golden thread, the only source of direction to be found in the labyrinth of the universe. I mean to tell you that she is the end of the labyrinth. I mean to tell you that our spirits were cut from the very same cloth, that our love feels like deep kinship, like a grand homecoming. I mean to tell you that the glory of our union is like the feeling of graduating after many long, grueling years of study, like throwing your cap in the air in sweet triumph. I mean to tell you that it is like a physicist toiling at his desk for many years, his entire life’s work culminating in one grand moment of at last reconciling all variables into one Grand Unified Theory of Everything. I mean to tell you that she is my Grand Unified Theory of Everything, that she is my Everything, and my life had not started until our relationship began.
I didn’t know I was homesick until you held me. I didn’t know I was addicted to you until I had my very first fix. I didn’t know I was freezing until I knew your warmth.
What wasted years! My hands had never done anything worthwhile until they held yours. My eyes had never truly seen until they drank in your bare form. I didn’t know I had a voice until you heard me. I was virgin until you deflowered my heart.
Life before her was not life at all, but a prelude to it, an agonizingly long gestation period where miscarriage was threatened numerous times. The glory of our consummated union was like at last being born and taking my first breath.
…