A Week
By Monday I'll have flown away,
the stars will be my home;
the light at night will carry me
through rubor and through gloam.
By Tuesday I'll have sailed away
as seas will carry me
from age to age, from world to world,
through hope's eternity.
By Wednesday all the world will fade,
this whisp that I have dreamed,
and I will seek the things themselves
with one small candle-gleam.
By Thursday I will catch the wind,
and heart to glory lift;
but I am also but a shade
lost in some shadow's rift.
By Friday I will fall asleep
upon death's farther shore
to taste the tears of sorrow's shame
and live my life once more.
By Saturday I will have built
a tomb of thought and stone
and take my supper with the gods,
then break my fast alone.
But Sunday -- ah, what can I say
of Sunday's sunrise red?
Like a door I pass it through
to Monday with the dead.
How Strange Is That?
I felt I fell in love with you today; how strange is that?
Waiting for the bus you stopped and stayed to chat
and suddenly and subito my head was overturned,
unbalancing my body, making blood to burn.
Who can love a woman and not even know her name?
Some mischief-vested cupid clearly plays a little game;
uncanny things, ungrounded, maddening, and swift,
throw the world off kilter, make the earth to shift!
Meeting you but once, but for a little while,
I am haunted by your eyes, the flashing of your smile;
and though I hardly know you, nonetheless my brain
spins out imaginations of pleasures earned and gained.
But swiftly comes its death as swiftly came its birth.
If it swiftly falls away, what is such feeling worth?
The merest little fizzle, a frenzy in the brain,
and after sudden torrent nothing will remain
but cynic's self-suspicion, memories that fade,
a wry and quiet gravestone where madness has been laid.
So It Goes
There is love,
there are lies,
there is lying in love,
there is living a lie
(and loving it too),
there is love like to hate
and hate like to love,
there is lying in wait,
surprise in their eyes
when shots ring out.
She hates him,
he hates her,
she loves him,
he loves her,
at times all the same in a jumbling game
where the prize is a heart,
or a life,
or a death,
and the sudden exhaling of everyone's breath
when shots ring out.
And so --
the gun's in her hand
and the shots ring out,
and how it ends who can tell?
I suppose no one knows
who has not been there
at some point.
So it goes.
And so --
the gun's in her hand
and the life-lines are tangled with lies
and soon somebody dies,
and death is an untensing of breath.
And so it goes.
The dark is a friend,
the dark is a foe,
the tears on her cheek cannot recall
even a memory tracing the path she has gone,
wandering in darkness
before hint of dawn;
just the sound stays
as shots ring out.
He is dead.
There -- it's said.
He lied;
let him lie.
It cannot be recalled.
So it goes.
And so --
the gun's in her hand;
who can tell
who it is
who suffers the more?
I guess to understand
we would need to be there
at some point.
So it goes.
And so --
the gun's in her hand,
and when love is a lie,
or a lie is a love,
there is lying in wait a doom and a fate
that cannot end well.
And so it goes.
We are fools for our loves,
we fall for their lies,
and so --
the gun's in her hand:
like spilled milk spilled blood
is not a thing to cry over;
the tears were already shed,
and she works out a fate
she chose long ago.
So it goes.
And so --
the gun's in her hand;
what's past has passed --
and yet we would love to recall
the lies of the past
and not let them lie.
It makes no sense;
but it cannot be reasoned away.
And so it goes.
