Modern Romanticism

How long have you stayed awake

To forge the night from your eyes?

I wish to see

What your scarlet heart has dreamed

Beyond the realm of sleep.

When you begin to sigh

Let the pain slip by

From hands that have shielded your face,

Under covers, where blood is to taste

From marks where the world has bitten

Your neck to the spot of your flood

In gulps of air, twisting as tempests.

Let me love

While the Earth scorns itself,

While the graves mourn themselves,

As I bleed tears upon this soil

To grow something that shall never foil.

My eyes begin to say to myself

That to find the woman of my kind

Makes to love, her remedy from above,

While currents dance, as rivers toss

The startled beauty of so much loss.