The Empress of Contrails Writes Upon Darkness - Anxiety of Influence - Original Version
.
for Anthros Del Mar
I, on the other hand,
have lain down with
countless thousands.
My tent is worn out.
Stains mark love-cries,
some blood where tongues
were ground down to root words,
utterance hard pounded,
soft tissue torn letter by letter,
tender verbs opened to pain,
that which is paid for more
than alabaster embraces
and this strangling of waists
My tent has drained more
of love's body than a mortuary.
Spikenard scented oils taint
fabric folds and flesh. Rote,
worn pillows are daily, sometimes
hourly turned where I half expect
to find teeth or coins,
hoping still for one true word for
love without name else it flies,
moths repelled instead by flame,
pillows revealing nothing
but I turn them still.
Oasis and cloaca,
love birds parched,
now moves caravansary
toward heart's always
winking horizons.
There are many before
the sun rises.
Perhaps my name goes
before me, my 'press',
Empress of Contrails,
peacocks in tow,
trailing tallies, scores,
arrivals, departures,
ejaculations, rejections,
all faces hands have held,
and yearning beyond possibility
hesitant dawn's mourning doves.
Recall how hot winds blow loudly
as do I, billowing the tent. Men cry
mad for my return yet burns no desert
impervious to heat of all kinds,
even human, excepting the heart,
its capacities to startle,
its dunes in vast stretches
beat, beat for what moonlight
can only suggest to scorpions
in silver shadows, pitying serpents
coiled smug in their ability
to shed skin,
unlike veiled men.
Hide what cannot be unwritten
though this trail of brocaded
skulls in time returns to sand.
One cannot see this hand
waving its goodbyes, the other
concealing tint and quill.
I have written upon human
vellum through ages,
through cycles unending
and same. I cannot cease
doing what Heart heat
bids though I also
write upon darkness,
eyes closed,
tent flap opened
to all thirsters
who may,
supplicant,
come wandering in.
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
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