Claude, he wrote of you
such as I can’t—not like this,
for I’m no wordless brilliant.
His last line rings out into the silence
that has seduced me every night
since you've been gone, but
darling, you are in this song, inside
its notes, enshrined in the music of the gods
for bards to hymn in courtyards;
and the gong declaring a prayer;
and the leaves hung rustling from cypress trees.
The ether, she's a-whispering a secret
to a child, nobody else: that Love,
it’s the twinkling of an eye
when our world is on fire; Love,
it’s the wick who weeps her life away,
drop by drop, to feed the flame. So when I dare to say,
‘He wrote of you,’ it's true, and I mean it, and
Marika, she did too, when she wrote of you
sleepless, for your name is a charm, your smile
a honey jar, and your memory lasts
forever in the longing of this bum
for chump-change and paradise
where the rice paddies and rosewater flowing endlessly
are comforts for those sore of bone, those
weary of the road. Darling, I want to come
home to you. I want your essence. I want
whatever you are, the pure light that shines
out of the hollow bark of pain
as though my Soul were the sun tearing through
shadows so desperate it's only fair
that I should come home,
where the orange trees grow,
to lay with you, there.
04/22/2016
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