black ringlets fiercer
than any tempest, my
late-fall paradox:
in your anger you
burn so brightly, you
rage like mars
to the point that i want
to call you a summer storm,
i want to characterize you by your anger
(mouth a summoning trumpet of war)
janus-faced and desirous
i want to make you
red
bold
hot.
but you are not, raven
eyes: anciently wise, alive
with the laugh of a secret
muse and scrutinously askance.
No, you are much deeper than that red
hot anger that is fueled by furiously rolled
tobacco and
seemingly endless fucking; within you lies a great heart.
Scorpion mistress, Animalia, you hold
your morals close to you
and guard their precious heads like a she-bear
does her pups. But
I remember
when you were all the gooseflesh
of shaved arms
and tube-tops
and no lunch
and newports. I remember
when we were young ruffians
and I savor our silences, our hatreds, our
violence, stinging like
cold snow on a hot palm.
We warred like young wolves
we warred like boys
twisting each other's arms and wrestling
the shirts off our own backs while trying
all hot-blooded and valiant
to aim for the eyes.
We sparred like mustangs,
but we always remembered
how lovely we found one another.
And you are the greatest poet, I know, but
I'd never written you a poem
until now:
Within you lies a great heart
of stillness, a well-deep organ
so greatly profound that when one climbs deep
down to its silt-jade depths
the warm darkness is so vast that during the day
when one is resting, curled at the bottom
of the profound aquifer that is your heart
it is possible to see the crystalline stars
wheel overhead in their fixed lattice.
The great well of your heart is fed
by the abundantly radiant spring of your
phosphorescent mind -- an opal --
sixth chakra like a diaphragm, great third
eye opening and closing like the pneumatic wings
of a butterfly--your mind! Mountain
wind bearing pellucid stream
to aquatic heart.
Mind, breath
of life, capillary fringe between
soul and sense.
The sister stars of your love
and seething mind are wrapped,
papooses in a cradle of sheepskin-- soft
and resilient, suede from the child
of a mountain ram
it has been everywhere, at least
once before. Dark locks
are your prize and your otherness.
Womanhood is your vitality. Fed right
and hearty since childhood,
you are strong.
Well-worn and well-loved,
you are beautiful
and you have regained
my trust.
