for Gerard Manley Hopkins
My God!
That I might not know,
bent to the floor, dirt-kissed,
grit-scuffed, searching remains,
the absence of your name.
I am left, when right is all I can endure.
Thoughts of you appear miraculously,
wrapped in ethereal imagery,
inked papyrus? (flickering screen),
and I can but weep of thoughts of you lost,
forsake that which names your absence.
Your voice splashes through the rapids of my eyes.
The wind whistles through my moonlit branches. No longer do I feel your weight upon my limbs, Your nestled breath in my leaves, Your song in my roots. Your melody speaks to me from the echo of a different pith. My dreams sound the beat of another's heart, My hopes fall some other's leaves, My fruit ripens different desires. I will refuse this flower's bloom for the absence of you.
Your skin circles my breast as our breath flows
downhill. There remains naught but residue
from our coupling, bright browns and sterling greys,
raised squiggles of passion and bent depressions
of moisture. I have considered death before,
looked into its void, smelled its sour fear,
yet nothing but your thighs locked and loaded
can drag me beneath its spell. Because sex
with you is absence. It is loss, submission,
regression, withdrawal from the conscious and
immersion in the starred splendors of forked
nights, burnt portals and thrice-prong’d cries.
Alone I stand in a bed black as the sun,
your absence a shimmering wave of denial.
I I am become visions: archer without horse; water without sea. I cannot swim this confusion, cannot pierce this effervescent veil. I ride an ocean's expanse, poems rendered without words. II Doubt has stricken me this afternoon. I am succumb: plague of insecurity.
alaintodd 