Ghosts

my heart pounded a poem
my lips are afraid to part with
or for…
fearing they may betray a secret.
betray you.
your presence deceivingly
has stolen my shallow breaths.
my heart paces against time
racing our lives back into your God’s womb.
my tongue etched and blistered
with bastard languages
unknown to man;
whisper wishes
inaudibly in frequencies
only she can hear
traveling
braille like across the expanse
to fall softly upon her ears.
I want to witness the inception
of her heart’s desire.
the separation of land and sky.
birth of the first sun’s set and rise.
the light of her eyes
or wisdom’s water
flowing freely from
the sultry rouged pout of her lips.
stripped of inhibitions,
exposing frailties
as innocent as man’s
evil intent
on bended knee,
I pray
and wait to taste her essence.
even if waiting forever
means a solitary drop.
it is she
I truly thirst.
like the beaded sweat a top
an angel’s wing’s flapping frantically
against the wind and storms,
carrying human error
toward the pearly skies
I am doggedly determined
to begin inside you.
like hours to minutes to seconds to oblivion
I am
stilled in the space between pregnant pauses
and dead silence.
paralyzed.
forced into a parallel existence
skip
-ping along the pained surface
of hues that bleed and meld
like rain bowing backward
into a mischievous grin
against a kaleidoscope
of colors swallowed whole.
I am…
blackness.
infinitely dark.
painted with bleak possibilities.
mimicked tears fall against
the backdrop
of my indiscretions.
my mind remembers
fingers burned by
nothingness’ familiar complexities.
I pull back cautiously
caught between suspicion and illusion.
I want, but
can’t,
love you.
I have loved the unknown,
slept with bed sheets that breathe,
morph,
shape shift into lovers
that creep between
dissatisfaction and self- annihilation.
we can’t love ghosts (thanks jo!)
but we repeatedly allow them to
fuck us into submission.
I have desperately
loved
those hidden,
locked in dungeons,
stored in closets
crept among cobwebs,
residing somewhere between
my heart’s betrayal
and the cracking of it’s break.
I want to run to you,
dropping my past like a
million pennies
cascading across the sky,
and not wait for
or want to hear it’s fall.
your scent of hope
is reminiscent to
first goodbyes
and fisted dollar bills
sitting neatly a top
dank desk drawers
in seedy motels.
don’t judge me by
utterances from
mouths disguised as
bathroom walls
and stalls…
they speak their truths
all lies in my eyes.
simply the
sound of chains bellowing,
dragging my love
across dusty floors
along corridors.

kdtaylor, 2007
section 8 coffee publications
all rights reserved