homage to Artur Rimbaud & Federico Garcia Lorca, & for Viren G.

"there will be no repose at the altars" -  Artur Rimbaud

"the labyrinths
that time creates
vanish.

(only desert
remains.) 

the heart, 
fountain of desire, 
vanishes.

(only desert
remains.)" - Federico Garcia Lorca
 

I, on the other hand, 

have lain down with

countless thousands.

My tent is worn out.

Stains mark love-cries, 

some blood where tongues

are ground down to root 

words, utterance hard 

pounded, soft tissue 

torn letter by letter, 

tender verbs opened to 

pain, that which is paid 

for more than alabaster 

embraces and this strangling 

of waists

*
My tent has drained more

of love's body than a mortuary.

Spikenard scented oils taint 

fabric folds and flesh. Rote, 

worn pillows are daily, sometimes 

hourly turned where I half expect 

to find teeth or coins hoping 

still for one true word for

love without name else it flies, 

moths repelled instead by flame, 

pillows revealing nothing


but I turn them still.

*
Oasis and cloaca, 

love birds parched, 

now moves caravansary

toward heart's always

winking horizons.

There are many before

the sun rises.

*
Perhaps my name goes

before me, my press, 

Empress of Contrails, 

peacocks in tow, 

trailing tallies, scores, 

arrivals, departures, 

ejaculations, rejections, 

all faces hands have held, 

and yearning beyond possibility 

hesitant dawn's mourning doves.

*
Recall how hot winds loudly blow

as do I, billowing the tent. Men 

cry, mad for my return yet burns 

no desert impervious to heat of 

all kinds, even human, excepting 

the heart, its capacities to startle. 

Here dunes in vast stretches beat, 

beat for what moonlight can only 

suggest to scorpions in silver 

shadows, pitying serpents coiled 

smug in their ability to shed skin, 

unlike the veiled men.

*
For these I hide what cannot be

unwritten. For them, what heart

heat bids, I write, best, upon darkness 

though this trail of brocaded skulls

always returns to sand.


One cannot see this my henna

hand waving its goodbyes, the

other concealing tint and quill.


Still, my tent's sail is open to all 

who may, supplicant, beg entrance,

or lost, or straying, come wandering in.