Asia’s Rain

I want to hear the songs you hear
As if the music was the same
I want to feel each time you fear
As if the fear had called my name

I want to be inside your eyes
To see the darkness when they close
And when your breath is only sighs
To be the warmth that comes and goes

Standing in the rough-hewn door frame
Sweating slightly from her daily chores
My anti-Puritan awaits me

Today I steal behind the house and quietly
Creep up behind her, pull her in
One arm around her waist
One hand upon her mouth
To stop her squeal

Did anybody see her leg
As she kicked the door closed?

She spins so fast
The scarlet letter on her breast
Abrades my arm

My leg already between her knees
She bends and parts her lips
Darker than that letter
Sweeter than the smell
Of honey in the fall

“The devil be damned,”
She whispers,
“I want it all!”

In a place where we found pleasure
In a past too deep to measure
When all the ancient tales were new
And all the seas were crystal blue
Long before Prometheus’ spark
Guided man from out of his dark
Caves where he crouched, cursed and hiding
From the Tyger, still abiding
In night’s forest, stalking, pacing
Dusty tracks his claws still tracing
In a valley lined with flowers
In a time unmarked by hours
Where the grasses practiced waving
Calmed by breezes, never raving
Never wilting, never dying
Sometimes shaded by the flying
Clouds of heaven all dressed in white
Cooled and warmed by day and by night
Where they poured their living showers
On the prairie’s magic flowers
There the flowers shared their stories
Wreathed in magic, ancient glories
Ancient builders, tales of power
Told by people of the flowers . . .
This is the place our souls first met
This is the time we won’t forget
This is where we were created
Sealed together, matched and mated
The poet sealed unto his muse
Never again to have to choose
But eternally to recall
As each life’s summer yields to fall
Dies in the winter, lives in spring
Memories each rebirth will bring
Of the beauties we inspired
Ashes woken, fueled and fired
Giving light and warmth to the peace
We first created to increase
Words like rain gives rivers water
Where our souls create a daughter

Is that sound my voice
which calls a seed to sprout
and flower
from the ashen ground?
Are those my tears
scattered round?
Remind me
were they tears of joy
or tears of pain?
Will anyone ever hear
my voice again?
My heart beats
in my fingertips
in my skin–
Is it a sin
to touch the flower?
to coax it with
a Master’s voice?
Does the flower have a choice?
My heart reaches out
to pluck it
from an ugly place.
And tendrils of the root
refuse to rise.
They grip the soil
hard and black–
I cannot put
the flower back–
But wasn’t it my voice
my tears?
Whose ground is this?
Did he ever call it a garden?
Or simply a place
to spit out seeds?

Nothing warms the pain
in the depth of
the mud which lines my
world, below the surface of
this freezing river, this
universe which sweeps along
or laps at my body
above and below the water.
Will I ever rest?
Stop stirring up the mire that is
me?
From what cold dreams come
loving words and the safety of
you?

Come home tonight; there’s nothing more to say.
This phone is cold against my eager ear
and every word will serve to guide the way.

I hear your voice in time through some delay,
the words, your own, though this is what I hear:
come home tonight; there’s nothing more to say.

I got here in the morning, yesterday.
Your message was recorded, almost clear,
and served with every word to guide the way.

It wasn’t cold, although the sky was gray.
You left a thoughtful note to calm my fear–
“Come home tonight; there’s nothing more to say”

I saw you in my mind, you kneeled to pray.
Your soul, a welcome comfort lingered near
with words that served to guide me in its way.

I found your book, your chair, a place to stay
where every thought was free to shed a tear.
Come home tonight; there’s nothing more to say,
and every word will serve to guide the way.

Love and lies are all your life contains.
This wind-blown dust that heaps upon the sill
will wash away like tears and rain.

You fill your days with words you know are vain;
you fill your night with lonely cries until
love and lies are all your life contains.

With forehead pressed against a cracking pane,
the trickling blood which slowly starts to spill
will wash away like tears and rain.

And in this mood of contemplative pain
through blood-smeared windows visions mock, but still
the love, the lies are all your life contains.

Strength!  Work to do! Bills to pay! Love to feign.
And everything your emptiness can fill
will wash away like tears and rain.

Don’t cry, my child, you’ll only go insane.
That life which can create can also kill.
The love and lies which all our lives contain
will slowly wash away like tears and rain.

Slowly, as the cool, dry air
Pulls the moisture from my hair
Calm of mind and body bare
Remembering the water

Softly, as I drink you in
While you linger on my skin
All but lost, you say you win
Beside the flowing water

Darling, I have drowned before
Wet and weeping on the floor
Wrapped in nothing less or more
Than purifying water

From the dark below the wave
From some damp, beleaguered cave
From the well where madmen rave
Remove me from the water

Mouth and tongue and lips aspire
To their succulent desire
Brought to bear on passion’s fire
Water gives rise to water

Now the desert flowers bloom
Now the child in mother’s womb
Now the falling rains resume
In this season of water