Tag: love

Dragon’s Teeth in Theban Soil

My love's an artist whose central goal
Is to conjure a collective around him
Who would unite to make him whole.

Feeling his friends' successes surround him,
He's struck out in many modes,
Resentment growing as silence confounds him.

He missed the decade of steel-clad odes
To vaudevillian death and displays 
Of flame and sparking electric nodes.

But really he wants a legion which stays 
Loyal to something he can hold,
Be it him or some movement ablaze,

He needs something to help unfold 
The riddle of his history.
He needs help, his story's untold.

It's all that he insists to me,
He needs a following but seems barred
From all contact. Is this to be

His life, spent in disregard,
Ignored and obscure, unimportant
And immured in paintings charred

And dumped in some landfill assortment?
I try to tell him, but what do I know,
Attentions are fickle and discordant.

He's sure he'll die with nothing to show,
No idea or accomplishment
To force the world to take a slow,

Long look at his complement
Of nightmare arches and windows,
To see his soul in astonishment.

The myth and magic held within those 
Doors to worlds beyond our own,
He searches despondently for symbols,

Figures which he hopes to clone,
Bridges he would replicate
To make a way from his corner alone.

The moments passing dessicate
The prison cell we'll call his domain.
Who'll succor as we supplicate?

He'd build the mechanical train
Of automata Daedalian;
If no one else, they'd remain.

They would be his daily in-
struments and aides, but could they talk;
Could he discuss the salient 

Values of being as they walk
Together on the river's shore?
They might only tell like a clock.

Of course the interpersonal core
Demands what senses cannot say
Without the heart to give them more.

Conversations gunmetal gray
Sting when brought into the light.
Rather bring him a band to pray

With and feast the sacred rites
Which keep a spirit's wavelength true;
Brothers to make love worth the fight,

A legendary army who
Found strength in war and love alike,
The kind that ancient Thebes once knew:

Lovers poised to fiercely strike
Side by side in phalanxed ranks,
Surviving by the spearhead's spike

And beloveds' shields protecting the flanks
Fate has chosen for them twice,
Earning and giving double thanks.

Nothing since approaches a slice
Of their bond, and yet a fraction,
Even only earnest advice,

Would help to vindicate his actions,
Any step toward a base
Of comrades he can call his faction.

He's still running, still in the chase
For eyes and ears to bring forth hands.
Frantic pursuit. What is this place?

There was only one Sacred Band,
Even the deepest attempt to scour
The world couldn't find that strand

Of bond, which until the final hour
Is ever loving, ever loyal.
Perhaps by bones with magic power

Fruit could flourish from his toil,
Dragon's teeth in Theban soil.

He’s Isolated

He's isolated, without friends,
And then I realize so am I.
Employment gives me my supply
Of socialization, but spends
It on itself; likewise upends
Plans with Hayden or with Chris. Lives
Provide obligations to tie
Each one of us to his own lens.

It may be truly as he grieves,
A shared act of creation must
Be made for his friendship to leave
The dungeon of his spirit's rust.
He needs saving from desuetude;
He works too hard to rest unviewed.

One of Many Things

I think what I adore about you most
is your compassion for creatures in need:
the softshell turtle caught in dirt you freed;
protecting the mother hens on the coast
of the pond from a rowdy drake engrossed
in his hormones; and when you took the lead
trapping and releasing to his green weeds
the little lizard found on our bedpost.

Spiders, moths, and even juvenile wasps,
you do what you can to bring them from harm.
Even when exhausted you don't exhaust
your kindness for helpless things. That's the charm
which draws us to your arms, especially
the one who needs you more than any: me.

Homesick

Autumn in Fort Wayne,
Indiana, solely known
From my love's tristesse:
The browning leaves he misses,
First snow, furrows in his brow.

I despise airplanes;
But if I had the money,
We'd fly back and forth
From the glades of Florida
To Indiana's corn fields.

The Reason

Whip me
into shapes
of low, submissive 
apology;
               put your name
on each corner of the cudgel
you scour me with.

There's a reason—when it comes from you:
harsh reflections drawn from your own
dissatisfaction and insecurity,
the daunting vacuum of the future—
there's a reason it feels right
for me to take such heavy-
handed excoriation.
I deserve it.

When you hold peril above 
my head, I remember my mother
pleading, what could she do for me,
and my barbaric answer,
                                          kill me.

I look (admittedly with shame)
at the several scars up and down
my wrist and arm;
                                I recall
the frenzied self-inflicted batterings.

Life before you resurrected me,
I've told you, though it's impossible
to really know; but when your eyes
 widen with insanity,
  with mania,
   with sick rage,
it's a mirror to my history.

Not only do I deserve the castigation,
you deserve the patience I got.

I had wanted less and less,
 to be distilled into nearly nothing.
You want more and more,
 to overflow with endless bounty.
Neither of us excelled to such extents,
 but in self-abasement our tears are one.

Bash me with disdain
 for wanting nothing more,
  you have the right if I believe
   that you should humble your expectations.

What's more difficult,
to grow from nothing into something, or
to shrink from dreams to a single datum?
Hopefully somewhere
 in the middle,
  where we draw each other,
   is the right place for us.

Certainly it's more difficult
to be found in your circumstances,
nomadic, isolated, uprooted;
I can never fathom the horror 
of watching your mother deteriorate,
jaundiced and dessicated until
she finally passed away.
    Without Mom I would
      have self-destructed.

You're right
 when you tell me I don't know you.
We have our differences,
  but I want to give you
   the things I have that you never did.