Old Lion Man
In this lair I built
all around myself
the tigers lost their hunger
and lions slept like coals
without a flicker of flame
There were footsteps
lambent and poetic.
How can one find me
ballasting a violent nothingness
in the void of this cellar
where the prison is the warden?
Perhaps the spigot
made the saline water
sing enigmatically
into the harried pipes
of gelid gold and brass
As the dawn morphs to dusk
I saw you, calculating steps
like insurmountable avalanches
to catch the iron shackles
on my aching legs
You found me amidst
the chalky light and air
of my cobwebbed heart
You found the Braille
on my terse paw prints
and read the laments
of ludicrous misshape
like no one else did
and for a stolen moment -
while the aeons became bubbles,
the breeze sang violins,
the sleeping cars dreamt of revving;
several degrees out of phase
I saw myself in you
Like sleeping mirrors
we awaken into the terror
as we look into each other
and exchanged livid lights
and lucidly formless hopes
But the glass is shattered
and the bones dangled
like an inebriated pendulum
tautly vertical in
pleading for you again
to pillage my time
and percolate the many stains
of the unwoven tassels
on my parsimonious tapestry
The spuriously ratcheting flames
on the wick of our charades
wept like candles
but the tears will not
sing its weathervane song
burned generously
like toppling bridges
Where are you now?
So distant from the heraldry
not even your hair
comes to my waning graze
but in this lair, the shadows
remained riveted on the walls
and this telescope is inverted
I am the only one plummeting away
into the gates of exodus
Like a caged beast sleuthing
the pollens of yellow daffodils
I lost my virulence for hunger
in this malignant dream
Unbreak my cage if
I can no longer be tamed,
my fastidious heart is frail
my fastidious heart shall fail
so crucify me now
before I become
a lion or a man alone
if I am a lion man at all.
poem by Norman Santos
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Also see the following:
- quotes about calculations
- quotes about telescope
- quotes about tigers
- quotes about fire
- quotes about bridges
- quotes about violence
- quotes about pain
- quotes about animals
- quotes about yellow
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