Mortal wounds. Wideness, among arms,
folding around good things grown,
finding a heart clashing against blank walls,
an echo as universal wake-up calls,
and toss this temperament
somewhere, where this world
can keep emptying.
Bringing up, growing up
fossilized stab wounds into chests
buried in mortality’s game,
love’s last name.
I am cheating on another grain
in a lovelorn ocean. I am handing
ice for children’s mouths – their eyes
are seeing what they’re feeling.
Their growth,
a time for comparison’s sake,
with a chime centered against
their innocence
in their uplifted hearts,
never cold, never old.
What do I treasure?
In this coverage of a thousand miles,
what will a thousand more conceal
other than drowned breaths,
as no more than further deaths?
No more than
lifeless growth,
other loves that recreate
that pain of a former time,
knowing a chime
that went mute.
Modern Romanticism 