Tainting the air with plush and homey colors,
snapping oranges and hearth-brick reds
and Cheshire smiles in an intimiate dark;
Crisping cheeks and warmly chilling skin
with hearty flush in the windy grey;
Swishing through the thick carpet
of lost summer havens and relief;
Tasting minty decay in the October air;
and sighing soundlessly in the morning night,
I click along and watch my shadow
wax and wane like simple hopes.
O air, o sweetest air, why flee you so?
My tightened lungs can scarcely keep with you!
A thief, she steals my breath and doesn't know,
this goddess sweet and yet a mortal too.
O words, my wondrous words, where are you now?
The longing songs, the wit I hope I own?
What will I say, what voice, what face, and how?
I must, or find myself again alone.
O voice, my treacherous voice, o fail me not!
Command you I to speak a flowered verse,
or make a jest, I could, I ought!
But what were she to laugh or something worse?
Yet I resolve with steeled heart to try,
I open up my mouth but walk on by.
My thundering youthful heart, beat not so hard,
for volume's strength can never measure love.
Your maddening thuds may put her on her guard,
and now she looks this way, o Lord above!
My reddening cheeks, how dare you color so?
The blood is needed somewhere else, I'm sure,
so cheeks to normal hue, for no winds blow,
and any tint is but a sign to her.
My whitened hands, you tremble with no cause.
No beasts with snarling fangs or bloody cries
are here to threaten me, to give me pause:
no thing to fear, except those sapphire eyes.
To rest, I need to shirk or take the task;
that means to flee, or worse, to simply ask.
But am I not a somewhat virtued man?
No god, tis true, but somewhat more than beast.
No Hercules, no Titan but I can,
with passioned might, hold tightly her, at least.
No Apollo I, but Phoebus has his chore.
Around the earth he daily makes his way,
and I, the mortal one, have less but more,
for she would be the center of my day.
No Zeus am I, no thunderbolts or such,
no power or the wish to take a life,
but then, I lust for but one woman's touch,
remaining true to she, my dreamed wife.
No perfect god could I e'er try to be,
perhaps there's good within my modesty.
No god, but something more than beast am I
and virtues must I have to make me so.
Not swine that roots about his muddy sty,
but I exhume my heart that way, I know.
No sloth who loafs about his treetop bed
and never ventures far from places known.
I am a vigored youth with love unfed,
I must then go the way my heart has shown.
No mouse am I who fears to softly tread
on ground too near to any human frame.
I am a man of couraged heart and head,
who'll call, with hopes and fears aside, her name.
And with a braced heart and hopeful eye
and steady voice shall speak to her, and try.
"O sweetest light that ever graced my eyes,
that made complete the painting of my world
as does the sun when warming bluest skies
or oysters when they're found as lightly pearled,
will you consent to let me warm your nights
when you are cold of chill or cold of heart
and let me salve with care your deepest frights
with healing words which are my only art
and sit with me before the snapping flames
throughout the harsh and snowy winter days
with cider and our talk and loving names
to keep the tender fires within ablaze
--oh, I digress, my question is but this:
will you be mine and share in loving bliss?"
"You silly boy, you talk with dumb big words
that make no sense to human ears like mine
and tangle up your sentences like other nerds
who think they're talking smart and looking fine.
Are words like that supposed to win my heart?
An oyster with a pearl? A sunny sky?
How strange you speak of me! It's hardly art.
I think you are a little out there, guy.
And to propose a 'loving bliss' with you,
well, bliss is not the word that comes to mind.
I'd say a dreadful hell, eternal too,
were I to think of it and be unkind.
So boy, you go and build your cloudy castles,
but I don't need those silly poet hassles."
The sudden snow had fallen like the night.
Saint Louis knew the storm was coming there,
but trembled yet when flakes had filled the air
with patterns that made thick the fuzzy light.
In Mokabe's the coffee cleared my sight,
or maybe just lengthened my covert stare.
I watched you, and I admit I laid you bare
(I must admit it was a rare delight).
But hours too quickly pass in blinding snow
and when love-liking strikes and whites the mind.
I should have walked you to your little car
and seen your lashes laced and cheeks aglow
with winter chill; again my heart declined;
One hundred steps, or one, can seem too far.
It snowed again the Sunday of the play,
and Webster Groves was silent as a bed
is when I've pulled the blanket on my head
to hide my dreams from ever-creeping day.
And as we walked along, I couldn't say
how much I longed to warm your cheeks, all red,
with fingers fresh and warm from gloves I'd shed
to merely touch your lacy skin some way.
I meant to brush my fingertips across your face,
behind your ear and down your snow-touched hair,
to draw you close and warm you from my heart....
I feared a warning glance would end my chase,
a sudden turn away would spark despair,
the blinding sun would pull my dream apart.
It was not mist, but only car exhaust
that rose about you when we said goodbye.
But would it seem too much, a silly lie,
to tell you that I feared the lasting cost,
of battles left unfought, of chances lost,
of sparkling nights when every word and sigh
are clearly dissipating in the dark; Too shy!
It's by myself and not the stars that I am crossed!
The car was idling, throbbing like the blood
that rang an echo in my reddened ears.
I kissed you glove, a pseudo-Spenser stud.
It's not enough, I thought, defying fears,
and then, unlike exhaust, a warming mist
rolled softly through my spirit when we kissed.
The black lights made your shorts a neon glow.
Cut off above the middle of your thighs,
pastel and powder blue, unlike your eyes,
the shorts show all and everywhere you go.
They swish and sway and brush between the chairs
as you bring drinks and smile away the pleas.
You shrug off pats with stiff but practiced ease
and never notice now the drunken stares.
Do other people ever see your smile and lust
to hear your whispers wrought across a meal
or see you walking in the sun's soft light
and watch your eyes awake with sudden trust
and float upon the tide of how you feel?
Or do they only see your shorts at night?
I curse the falling snow these winter days
that flow like ice in slowly-choking streams.
My Fate, or maybe just the jet-stream seems
to mock how much I loved the swirling haze.
I used to wander in Byronic ways,
lost in my faint and fuzzy future dreams
of love, romance, all seen amid the steams
of bated breath and windy teary glaze.
On days when snow falls like curtains on
the cold and greyly-cloaked Milwaukee streets,
I walk alone and yet I'm really not alone;
Inside, among my warm abstract retreats,
I cannot hide in vague potentiality,
not when your glowing face is haunting me....
Your memory, clear and crisp in its matte finish,
I'll put into its little box;
Ten by fourteen and lined with royal velvet,
the box will be your dusty shrine.
I'll put your regretful smile away,
nestled among your apologetic syllables,
and seal them in my deepest vault
with my ritual lack of ceremony
and quietly close the door.
But on silent stormy nights
when rain taps like ghosts
upon my window panes
I'll unlock the heavy door
and hold my heartache against the dark
and see how your memory
catches the shadows well.
I'll revel how it warms my clenched hand
and scratches against my grizzled cheek
and maybe sigh again
before I put it away.
I woke and listened to the night.
The furnace hummed and clicked
to spread its artificial warmth.
The darkness rang its droning nothing
and pressed upon me like a heavy blanket.
I could not hear your dreaming gasps,
as light and thick as falling snow
nor the silent tears
that softly cooled my pillow.
The day was cold and grey, with chilling sleet
that fell in blurring lines across my sight.
My breath seemed thin and somehow incomplete.
I wondered why I was and why I fight
against the Thanatos within each day.
A car drove by and slushed my wandering fears,
by splashing ice against my trenchcoat, grey,
and slowly sliding down like frozen tears.
But bursting through the dark library door,
a coat of green--I blink and squint my eyes.
A sudden smile and breeze of twirling hair,
you wave before you're lost from sight once more.
And in this world of often futile tries,
a hidden glimpse of hope is often there.
Upon the snowy pillow next to me,
your soft blue eyes are closed in lightest sleep.
Your breath is soft and regular and deep;
the sheet is moving slow and steadily.
Your golden hair, a halo, so it seems,
a gentle aura slightly shrouding you.
Your hand is open on your pillow, too,
as if you're reaching out to me from dreams.
I want to reach and lightly touch your cheek
and trace the fleeing shadows down your chin
as stealthy greys forewarn of creeping dawn.
I fear you'll wake and see me tender, weak,
revealing things too tightly held within,
or I will wake and find the vision gone.
With bouncy strides of legs just lightly tanned,
you walk below my watching third floor eyes.
A gentle wind moves silently and dies;
you brush some wayward hair with careless hand.
Your lips, marooned with hasty morning care,
are framing hinted teeth in sudden joy
and move in greeting of some passing boy,
the words sweet notes unheard in summer air.
Your dark sunglasses never flash my way,
and you continue on toward a class,
or maybe to your dorm--I'll never know.
For sixty stairs is much too far away,
so silently I let you swiftly pass,
invisibly about my way I go.
Across the swirling smokeless barroom haze
of faces, smiles, uncaring eyes, and beer,
the other people dim as you appear,
a burst of clarity in spring-time's cloudy days.
I want to say the room kaleidoscopes
around your dark and dancing eyes of blue,
and that the stagnant air is fresh with hopes
renewed by but a single smile from you.
I want to tell you all these silly things,
but bars are not the place for poet thoughts,
and English geeks like me are all the same.
With addled head that my despairing brings,
I wander through my tangle of "I-oughts",
and I am lucky just to catch your name.
To some the falling snow's a pretty sight
to watch from windows lightly touched by frost
in silence with the one you love, the night
with endless hours of love too quickly lost.
To children it's a cause for hopeful joy
of cancelled school and strongholds built of snow
that should repel attacks their friends deploy
with laughing shouts, they're strafed by a snowball's throw.
To lovers it's a curtain soft and white
that hides them from a colder world without
and keeps their words and hopes from being trite,
as might they seem to those outside in doubt.
To me, the falling snow is something plain,
it's nothing special, just the coldest rain.
So come and dance before my sandy eyes
elusive and illusive shades of night.
Come tantalize my touch and fool my sight
and buzz my mind with soft synaptic lies!
Portray for me my words and her replies
in subtle shadings of the dancing light.
Her eyes are slowly shifting left to right,
each probing glance fulfilled with whispered cries.
I know that she's not here, dear whirling mind,
and that she's four hundred miles away.
I beg of you to spin your sweet deceit:
no matter what bizarre nightmares you find
to torment me or what plush tricks you play,
they'll pass the time until again we meet....
I shrug into my well-worn doubts
and my darknesses swirl like coat-tails
about my lengthened strides
as I pull my fate low over my eyes
and slip into the rain.
Fallen