The Real

Your face and hair cast themselves
upon on my page, insinuate, twist between
the thoughts I try and straighten on
a workpiece for a pigeonhole. 

The light was low and comforting
the time soft, mellow,
and I combed your hair, untangled it ...
your locks curled in my hand
and hours of words between us
but space never crossed -
the moment of caress 
was lost.  

O to wrench you 
from those small thin hands, white arms
thin black-haired, black-eyed witch -
I envied her 
your time, your thought, your limbs, 
those long locks and limpid eyes 
greening 
with unwise ways -
a childlike life
forever unfulfilled 
and thirsting.

Yet I knew you would not fit
my thought, my life, my way
of being me
in long slow circles
circumnambulating silently -
too alien a thing -
and you too strange, too
estranged from all zeal
to know how 
to burn and fuse through to the real.

Ah my dreaming mind, it floats ...
it breathed your air, you:  
all coltish charivari, all crescendo 
of body surge, singing eyes, 
a teasing maleness
strong on the tongue.  

That sulky mouth ... what
weird delight and oddity 
could fix me to light gravity -
I did not bar your power 
but it had no sway with me -
seeing behind those eyes
I divined the unreliable 
unholdable boy:
his lurking multiplicity of
faces, stances - tuned
to the new and raw, 
the next excursion,
your feet well-in that stream
soaked and drinking, 
your spinning thought all in revolt
that in its daze 
plays music to your ruin
of centaur and guitar.

Yet I yearned, O how I yearned
to drop out from
myself, my high staid wall and fall
to your dark realms, 
be held forced at that dark core
where your bright fire brightest burns.

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