Burning Hour

It must be the music that touches this hiraeth hollow

sweet and bitter below my ribs;

I cannot for the life of me think why else as I roll an old ink press over layers of cloth and clay

I remember exactly when you were lost at sea

and I began surviving differently.

It must be the music

because outside the sky still reflects uncanny ice blue

there is pink in the cloud sailing across steadfast

the moon is almost gold

and you’re no longer seeing any of it

through my eyes

that I know of, dear heart.

If You Wish It

You never crossed the Lethe, so you cannot forget. I could make you forget.

What wins out when love is strong as death?

I remember climbing a wide stair straight from an opium dream

to a room holding all sound close with thick-woven secrets,

the blackened bedstead hinting of vulnerable skin.

I remember how fickle time slowed for a bashful, forceful god.

What wins out when death and love are one?

Sleep. Lighter than a feather is the brush of flesh with the universe.

sleepy Liam

The Shape of Things to Come

I swear I’m not staring at her name. It’s only the cast of each letter, the grace, re-entry for my memories carved in clay, all else erased.

That night instead of chasing stray Northern Lights above stone walls of an old water tower, instead of heading back along dark water, singing

through blue air I’d breathed for too many seasons, I arrived at a wheel and a kiln. I swear I’m not staring at her face. It’s just

the effect of her making and unmaking, it’s just her intense concentration. Now that I’m right here, I can’t think of anything else.

I’m only staring at her hands, I swear. Only her hands.

Touched By Fire

Dream for me an equal sacrificial

nemesis. Dream again how he is held low over the abyss

as his flung-out hand becomes the floor

of the volcano we all thrive in,

himself solitary and never sad for his own sake.

Godhead, forsaken, and yet still maker, harnesser of benign heat

and scarcely believable destruction,

dream for me again that there is finally an end to strife.

Aware of too much pain, shaping hands grow cold.

What will it take for us to make ourselves safe at last?

In these bleakest of days, Prometheus, guard flames.

You do not speak.

Complete already,

a rich edge to your distance precludes words.

Quick thunder is your falling because I need you

to fall;

my smooth sober vesper you remain.