Timothy Richardson

He:

. . . as your eyes rise to mine and wreathe my spine.

She:

My pounding chest makes flesh want to cave in,

batters shores of thought with mounting blood,

engulfs my crumbling nerves in a flood of scenes.

He:

They swell in all my veins creating means.

She:

Yet, only in the shallow pull and wash,

we must explore our deeper parts to be--

He:

Watching your unshackled soul watch mine?

She:

No! To gain that knowledge would divide us.

The fruit of shame is picked before you know.

Wait by my door. Do I so eat your heart?

He:

Love takes you in its arms and balanced stars . . .

He:

. . . so blinded by desire to kiss the hour

blessed by towers of light in stained glass meadows,

far from the snakes my mother wears for hair.

She:

And, in your stomach's pit, know her house rots?

He:

Thirst clouds the face I try to shine on her.

She:

You don good moods to hide mere emptiness?

We're through if you have nothing more inside--

He:

I will if her gray twilight dawns on us!

She:

And rising pride will overwhelm its dream.

He:

Though once she, now I'm too much i' the sun.

The masks of truth envelop truth in sorrow;

to put an end to masks is all I want . . .

She:

. . . now, my friend lies here in the wet of mourning.

He:

Love empties to perfect its cavity.

She:

As sparks are flung into the swallowing air

or flashes from a music box's prongs,

we vanish in a case of solitude,

under deepening ages heaped with shades,

to suck the mother of beauty's shriveled breast

and hear our voices melt into the roar

inhabiting a shell's exhausted chaos,

echoing silently in her still heart.

He:

All, through turns opposite, turns infinite.

She:

The flesh is left reflecting nothing more . . .

He:

. . . think you are smooth as any marble nude,

create a loveliness clustering clouds of lust

that press against the spokes of satisfaction.

She:

I fear acts bending in such gusty thoughts.

He:

You ache for rain as much as I, want time

to let your dress slip from your back and stop.

I want to see your fiery points spread out,

want destiny to throw us off the end.

She:

And break the barrier of symmetry?

He:

There is no sorrow at a pinnacle

that leaves you floating like the lightest mist

about to rest on petals so entranced . . .

He:

. . . ripping lush feelings from emotional beds

whose roots entwine the depths to tap love's rush,

know nothing of the heap of dust they're in.

She:

I watch the dew appear on wreaths we wear,

every several pearl bejeweling thought,

grief falling in the sparkling moat of drops.

Yet, this night, which softens our soul's plight,

will pass. Sense and memory will yellow

and burgeon music in deserted goblets.

He:

A seasoned mood, so tapestried with harvest,

will dress in white to purge heat's masquerade;

although, beneath the hills of flesh, veins run . . .

He:

. . . and, like a flaring flame that makes no smoke--

She:

One whose fires thicken darkness God denies--

He:

The sight of you consumes my heart, kills shadows

sneaking in the cathedral of my ribs,

opens the hate I keep my brother in.

Above the peaks philosophy imagines,

my soul is free to roam His thoughtless realm;

the conscious self is lost in no self wholes

beginning to sing as only muses can

about the path before me you lay down.

She:

And we undo the honeyed middle of night?

He:

The happier paradise within is knowing . . .