Ephemeral Obscurity

gold eyes ii

gold eyes ii - iron on the door

There’s an iron plaque on the door that reads
“baby”
and I almost-kind-of-wish it wasn’t an illusion,
but then your eyes blackened and I knew.

If I asked nicely, then would you please
lock me up in an ice-cold cell and leave me there
for ever;
and let my heart beat until it fails—
What fragile things they are!—
and sings no more,
and silence reigns.

I could not bear the low timbres of the highway
nor the way my own notes tried to fill
the silence between yours.
And I still haven’t mastered the art of
swallowing shoes,
so I guess I’m bound to repeat my mistakes again.

I hated to throw flames at your smooth skin
(hated the way it burned)
but it had to be done.
The sun would agree: it gives itself up to the ocean each night,
and the moon, too—it burns worse
than both you and I.

I’d love to let the sulfur streak my skin
in stripes of blue so I can remember,
next time I come to these crossroads again,
which way to go;
but as I stare at these signs
LEFT and RIGHT
seem to swirl and combine and switch places
the way they do to the girl in the front row—
but wait, I am the girl in the front row—
so what does this mean?

Give me a needle, darling,
and I’ll gladly thread your eyes back together
as if they’re just a random scattering of stars
waiting to be painted a constellation.
I’d thread myself, too, through and through
until I’m not afraid anymore of the darkness between your silences;
but that’s a whole other matter entirely,
so let’s focus on you for now. Just you.

Short words sprinkled with a dusting of truth,
and short moments sprinkled with a pinch of s-m-i-l-e.
You value gold above else but I value the gold in your heart that I can’t see.

Souls, souls—stop soul-searching, I’m so tired of it,
but I hate the way you march ahead like you know all the
whens and wheres and whos and whats
so well, so exactly.

Let’s just evaporate and dissipate and see where this experiment takes us.
Mixing silver crystals and filtering red copper still hasn’t given me anything
but empty letters, empty numbers
that don’t mean anything.

The mail-man knew the truth of secrecy and wanderlust
but no-one cares to share truths these days
so he didn’t, and you certainly don’t.
(But everyone has their own interpretations of it anyways.)
The rhythm of life lately hasn’t been smooth at all,
and sometimes I rather wish this green hadn’t returned at all.

Her mirror was calm when we started;
now a tempest rages in my ocean
and I don’t want to drown so this is my fire,
these are my flames
and this is me flinging them
at your gold eyes and your smooth skin;
I’m so sorry, love, I really am—see, this is my sorry:

     S       O      R      R      Y

but I can’t risk drowning.

There’s too much excess solution in my boat
and you weren’t here when we dissected the moon to its bare bones.

I doubt you’ll ever sing in my ear even if I dipped my hands in your soul
to find snow-white silks of paper
stained with flawless ink,
and I can’t and I won’t beat back this shadowed cloud of fear
because I still don’t know if your eyes shine
for gold, copper or lead.