Torch Song

“All the secrets a wise heart has
must be more hidden than the Phoenix is
Because concealment in that oyster-shell makes the pearl
From that water drop that comes from the depths of the ocean”

~from The Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayam



Putting out candles with my tongue again
and wearing tiny blisters for days.
I can barely taste my food.

Where statements might be invitations
there should be silence.
Little, stitched-up, sewn together
secrets that stay where they are;
rather than bleed from a vein which suffocates with a blackness.
Pushing with backs of cupped hands
a fine layer of powdery tenderness to the periphery.

We knew about this love,
we learned about it in mirrors.
Cold, clear, we decorate ourselves in front of it.
To obscure what we see, to conceal more than a blush
or forked lightning in our eyes at the sound of a name.
Until hiding is habitual. A proud discipline.

The humble portion, still,
inside is held, nurtured, transformed.
To expose it becomes a soft, slow loss, a seeping.
It aches as tears of a little lost girl, alone in a place of bones
and skulls. Telling herself stories, while the wind encloses her
in a relentless lullaby of an emptiness.
This is impossible to wrap in the warm strangeness of words.
This image of a pocket inside a jacket sealed with tiny stitches
which should remain unpicked. Stays and expands,
becoming all.

A Poem To Read In The Dark

To read without breathing
between these fragments of words
find me
with your lips
here, press your finger to them
now and say tongue
nipple waist toe
belly button earlobe
Neck offered
a wrist exposed

These things we hide
to discover
beneath beneath
like crying or dreaming

The laughter we seek
as destination, a drawing-
bodies as bridges
arched spine arm elbow thigh
warm blood coursing
below the surface

The thoughts sent to air
or paper
The perfect wisdom of bodies
creeping into our imagination
to slake this craving
where it’s warm and quiet
to change the way things are
today