He Asked Me About My Mind

The boulevards were pure color,
Leaking one into another,
The thought crossed my mind:
I was fuller than the fullest heart that night.
The span of time I bargained for another,
Yet another, still another, the sun rose and fell,
Cinders, ashes, my shoes in patches
Of city dirt,
My every chapel rises from these slates upon the pavement,
But for the biggest one, in the very center,
And there I entered, green, elated.

It was velvet dusk. It was then I almost slipped
Into the double, she loves her fun, the double,
Helter-skelter, untroubled
By what the day ahead demands…
The river and wine ran on, her time
Was on, her ankles bare under the skirt,
Long,
The bridge is a ghost-hologram
Of parties described in Galsworthy’s books
And she trembled with pleasure and shook
The cherry blossoms off her hair,
Though they lent her a perfect bloom, resting there.
She left me then,
I was the other one, again.

We wasted some good time, sitting under mid-day shine…
Your storm was rising towards me,
Rushing to swirl me, to crush me
To bits. You clenched your teeth.
I crawled in my heart and prayed with all might
To fly away, a thrush, a robin, a swallow,
Fly over in any shape, just not followed
By this storm whose silence stung.
Forebodings rung
In my head.
We took a breath…the clouds began to melt.
But the ringing echoed…
The fear stayed.

He asked me about my mind,
We were shuffling along
Among the other drones,
I do not know my mind, I said;
He laughed.
Mornings vary greatly,
But a garden helps,
I said, a garden grown inside you.
Plant and water and tend to the flowers,
I know my mind not, but I know that it suffers,
When I neglect my garden.
And it is not so much the mind,
The pangs come from elsewhere,
This mind you ask after, it resonates only
What is born deep within our deepest chasms.
But enough of this talk, behold – the lime trees
Are beyond beautiful this year,
Let us name them the reason
For our good spirits, today.
The poet sighed his little sigh and looked
At me,
His blue shirt smiling at the bulging clouds.
It started to rain…
The scent of lime trees sliced through city air in waves…

She was beautiful,
They said so.
You said so…
So tell me how you leave
Your creation
To roam around without an armor
For protection
And wonder why she’s scarred unlike the others
Who say she is so beautiful.
But then again, we all have paths
To follow,
God speed you on your way,
Until you meet some distant day
And both averting eyes the other way,
Try picking up the threads
From where you left
Them, these bloody threads, hanging.
But don’t be depending
On her to hand you your bravery
On a silver platter,
When she shall hardly find her own,
Upon that day’s arrival.

This stone circle is so damn round,
So damn closed, this circle is.
It seems my ashes are waiting
Here somewhere, for me to
Sweep them over in one heap,
Bind myself again, take a leap,
Be an acrobat for my desires.
Too great, these desires,
Too voracious, the craving,
And when you say life passes us all by
I want to punch you in the mouth real hard.
Be smart. Be smarter than Reason and seize,
Seize the chance, seize the day, seize something, damn it,
Break this damn circle, damn it.
The anger? Yes, it feeds upon me,
Out among the gray-bearded men
And oddly dressed women,
It feeds upon me, upon my feet, mostly.
This cannot be…this sepulcher cannot be
Me,
She thought in her sleep...