A New Picture (2004)

Cleaning out one's home directory is a little like cleaning out an attic. You never know what you'll find. This piece, for example, from 2004.

I found a new picture
 of you
 today
In a place I didn’t know I could see,
Beyond the rim of eternity
Tumbled-down twisted
Embattled and scarred
Your grey eyes
Exactly as I remembered them

Startling electric remarkable
I thought
Of how much you’d changed
So little
And the spark of
 Ignition
   and of
 Rapture
Swelled in my heart.

The ensnared wings of my desire
Frustrated and restrained
 Unable to rise
   to soar
   to escape

Daedalus’ admonition ringing in my ears
Cruel and tender bonds of fear
Soft and sharp as new silk thread
Wrapped gently (with love)
To entwine my haggared wings
In a web
 A cocoon
Of despair
 And
The bottomless ache
That knows no respite
Or relief

Captivity eludes the veil of
 Your soft smile

 I feel your brittle heart
 Straining for release
 To give birth to an explosive passion
 And the eruption of a terrible volcano
   I sit encamped on Vesuvius
   Awating your liquid fire.

I rise desperate to burn in your love
Awash in your heat
Awash in your unquenched desire
Desire matched only by my fear
And my weakness to resist the onrushing pain.
Entombed with a bittersweet longing
 For you
With only a wish to be cast adrift
In the firestorm of your heart

I found a new picture
 of you
 today
In a place I didn’t know I could see
Beyond the rim of eternity
Tumbled-down twisted
Embattled and scarred
Your grey eyes
Exactly as I remembered them