my martyr complex says
you can't know, you can't feel, while
my sanity and reason dictate a return
to sleepy disorientation.
break my concentration:
a startling streak of starlight,
blue across the sea,
red across the cup of wine.
seek!
i am not so far away as once i was.
remember when writing in
free verse used to break rules?
remember when we used to stare at the moon
and wonder who would touch it first?
remember russia,
all things combined in its name:
all snow, all ice,
all stellar intergallactic interpolated regional distances
from point a (you) to point b (me).
build your fire,
a signal on a pyre or a city on a hill,
waft smoky messages at me
from miles away:
silence the antagonies that shine bright
in the sky, daring me to
hope or trust or love or live;
dare me to sing, in chorus with the pleiades,
dare me to hunt, alongside orion,
dare me to ring bright and true and firey
the return to alone.
if all your gorgeous words should bottle up
and float away,
i'll still walk the beach.
with or without, i am never solo
with as much memory as i have stored.
a flattened W in the sky, i'll sit immovable
(not immobile)
till true love's first kiss
shakes flattery out of the folds of my dress.
i sigh, i wish, i wake:
we are nothing more than humans,
and life is not a reverie.