One Heart

ONE HEART

  By

  Genevieve

  Copyright 2013 Genevieve

  This book is a work of poetic fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  POETIC WORDS

  Poetic words may sometimes lack the key

  That opens vaults to rich significance;

  The nuances escape fine imagery,

  Like raindrops drape a silk within a dance…

  I never say precisely what I mean,

  To dress in layers seems more intricate…

  Why tread the sea when one may cross a stream?

  Into the heart, one rhyme may penetrate…

  I drank a toast to Shakespeare’s random thoughts,

  And offered chocolate to Milton twice –

  Once for the damned, another for the lost –

  Referring naturally to Paradise…

  Still, I will never polish the adverbs,

  Or tame the key that shields poetic words.

  SHE MERELY SMILED

  He told her to behave - she merely smiled...

  Refused to take the cat’s place on the floor.

  Her words and actions never reconciled...

  Infectious laughter always beckons more.

  The knots kept coming loose, as if they lived.

  The better wine was always nearly gone.

  Not nearly enough sleep! He was revered,

  And so the class du jour left him alone.

  The sea began to flow a backward slant;

  The clouds turned colors he had never seen;

  The market offered turnips on a plant...

  Even the ale began to come in green.

  He did all that he could to get her riled,

  She patted his caboose and merely smiled.

  YOUR SIGH

  Your sigh hisses like wind through trees in March,

  Your laughter assaults the earth like thunder;

  Can you keep a secret? I ask, in part

  Because I doubt that your mind will plunder

  Beyond scraps of reality offered.

  Spring has sprung, and each new day that it brings

  Will remind us what winter has coffered.

  Into the night, some damned woodpecker sings.

  The air is crisp, yet sunshine melts the nights.

  I hate awakening at dawn’s first peal.

  At last, the nuptials of fire and ice.

  Something to obviate the high you feel…

  Slithering like a snake through wheat and rye,

  The hissing catches the wind in your sigh.

  DUSTING THE EDGES

  It’s late in the evening and

  All my once upon a times come to call;

  Uninvited memories

  Struggle for supremacy…

  Some find they don’t have to compete at all;

  Wrap my heart in kevlar so

  That it doesn’t respond to ennui;

  Idle threats that I ignored,

  Joy will never be restored…

  Healing took some time to qualify;

  Watching my specters parade,

  Their images diminish over time;

  Reject spirit protocol,

  Occultists invoke it all…

  Casting a circle, choice intensifies.

  Just inside the circle, I will remain

  Merely dusting the edges of insane.

  READ ME

  With your lips and hands,

  read the story of my life,

  written on my body,

  housed in scars and lines of fatigue.

  Follow the path of pain and joy;

  mingled; erratic.

  Fear consumes me slowly

  and I want to replace the wall:

  that invisible barrier to all that constitutes me.

  Overanalyzing destroys my confidence.

  I realize, of course, that the poise

  has always been a fabrication -

  something I willed to be –

  encircling my penumbra.

  The aura of calm sangfroid

  is my armament, my knight

  in shining armor.

  The threads are woven

  too tightly now

  ever to ignore.

  While your eyes smile,

  read the story of my life-

  before you must depart.

  SCATTERED NOTIONS

  The breeze carries my whispers quickly past

  The one that I intended should receive

  Those syllables that waffle under glass.

  The moon, uniquely, no one will believe;

  Fistfuls of danger caused my blood to heat.

  My eyes grew wide to herald the demise

  Of everything that made my life complete…

  Now phantoms and penumbra fill my sighs;

  While the sun is draped with winter quilling,

  Crepuscular events practice their line;

  Ephemeral elisions instilling

  Contusions that evaporate in time;

  A zephyr to become a hurricane

  Will never simply settle for the rain.

  HIM

  I want him to want me so badly

  that he barely makes it to the hallway

  just outside my door

  before he’s violently crippled

  with the desire to have me one more time.

  I want him to ache for me,

  feel physical and emotional loss

  when we are apart.

  I want him to feel my gaze,

  like the sun washing over his body.

  I want him to hear my voice

  soothe his psyche when we’re apart.

  So that when the moon

  shines exquisitely brightly

  and the stars wink silver shards

  into the night sky, he’ll think of these

  days, last Christmas,

  and me.

  I LOVED HIM THEN

  I loved him then, when I was young.

  He wrote his sonnets in my blood

  And wiped his hands on my heart.

  I accepted his excuses, as he

  Wore an artist’s temperament.

  There was no need to say sorry,

  No expectation of remorse,

  He only blamed me for my existence.

  I remember when my heart was pure

  And I believed every lie he told me.

  I fed him artichoke hearts and apricot nectar.

  Dressed all in black and quoted Dylan.

  Then, when anger ruled him again,

  He struck out and gave me agony

  For no reason, save fury.

  I turned on him and kneed his groin.

  He stood in shock; I broke his nose.

  As he lay there in anguished pain,

  I told him it was for his own good,

  Just as he always said to me

  When I lay in a heap of blood and hurt.

  I never saw his face again…

  Ah, but when I was young -

  I loved him then.

  GRAND DE