Friday, January 23, 2015

HEART THREAD 165 & 166

165.

Or morning only comes when something breaks
how to tell your mother you’re gay
the stains your pleasures leave on you
the roof cracks the birds fly out
it was no house after all it was the woods
only halfway through the catalogue of sins
remember never to confess unless confessing is a pleasure too
girl fell off the lighthouse made her lover fall
both drowned our coasts unguarded
deep-rooted on a shelf of rock below the sea
some sins will never wash away
one slight twist it comes off in your hand.


166.

A wave is pure motion in substance with no substance of its own
a brilliant shadow of a man at sea
left in a terra cotta lekythos takes two to hold it up
ten to drink it dry not ten of our kind ten of theirs
let Ovid tell the story his own way forget the Greeks
they are not in your blood your bloody veil
Mavors inside me made me leap three times
over the solstice fire into the sea of Seven Oxen
I swam to Venus though I cannot swim
walked gingerly on my friend’s adventure
at the intersection of now and then a yellow flag

come not aboard this plague ship of love’s sicknesses.