By David Vela
Poem 1
I place the sun in your hands, what’s mine of light,
Your soft warm body braced against mine,
You say you are cold, but I feel nothing
Because I have lain my weapon at your feet
Bent and burnt from summer’s time.
‘I miss the sun on these wet dark days, rain
Retracing life to Lebanon, my daughter,
Youth, father -- what sensual olfactory delights:
Remember: A bomb splits our day in half;
We drink and dance at night. Lebanon is thus,
But you are not, because my daughter is not
Yours, her father’s perhaps, or only mine.
There is no desert in Lebanon,
Only green hills and our hopes.’
So in the hour of night I shall steal past
Any burden, candles smite, those
I lighted from the tip of my head, not out of spite
To let go your hand as Orpheus lost twice
His wife: I shall lose you to nothing,
Not to desert, memory, chance, oblivion – night.
Not once but twice.
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Poem 2
Your eyes sing green life and hope;
Your hair shines black desert night;
Your voice tastes honey in my mouth,
Your steps fall graceful as the deer in fall.
Your name shows gem-like to those who know you
Because fire burns in round earth’s
Hips: Nothing like the sun, the bowl of your
Sex draws lunar dark and light.
Your grace is your walk: Deception
Your music and light, intellect is not your
Sword; your lips are charged with spite:
Your words wound, don’t soothe.
Yet the desert chants your name; the hills sing
Your youth. Mortal lines outlive your lies
And your lips spit, concretize, contra-dict, spew.
Velleity defines you, your loss, you realize, is you.
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| David Vela |