An independent love

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Even on a good day
it’s hard to describe what I am
or impose upon myself a metaphor.
To say I am a projection or a hologram
presumes I really know what those things are.

I could say I am the gelatinous goop
of butter and spices hanging off
the leftover chicken in the frig.
But that would be too solid.

I could say I am a shadow leading my shadow,
or at best, a visitor from an
alternate world, separated
from everyone else
by the thinnest of transparencies,
pretending I live among the people—
that is, assuming I know myself well enough
to impose even that hint of a shape.

But I don’t, not any more than
I know how to explain this love I feel,
having accepted the fear
that there is no turning back,
whereas everything else is open ended
and this is complete.

I used to know what an apple is,
but now I don’t.

And what I once thought was love
was only its metaphor,
an approximation of what it could be,
words connected by varying shades of gray,
satellites to this love, which is independent
of anything else that has ever existed—
independent of the words for it,
living in its own universe of absolutes
where there is no such color as gray.

©A. D. Joyce, 2014

Incarnations

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In another life, I think,
I must have
Stood upon the highest ledge
I could find and in the
Final moment, dizzy, breathless,
Thinking of you,
Learned how to fly.

In another,
My blood trailed from your knife
And I was glad it was yours.

I have died in your arms.

Died wishing to have
Your arms around me.

Died not knowing you
But knowing something.

 

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The Suicide of Dorothy Hale – Frida Kahlo (1938). Courtesy of Frida Kahlo Fans

©A. D. Joyce, 2014

 

 

Near to dawn

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(revised)

I dreamt that I woke up
with you lying beside me.
You told me I was dreaming.
I cried myself to sleep
and when I woke up, you were still there.
You had been watching me sleep
and you said you would not leave.
Then the alarm clock went off.
I hit the button and just lay there,
the sound gone
but the buzz still coursing through me.

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©A. D. Joyce, 2014

God on the Freeway

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It was only a Saturday,
and from my vantage
on the freeway,
breaks in the continuum approached
where the darkest clouds
would soon give way to brilliant sunlight.
But first, there was
an arbitrary line crossed
where sprinkling rain gave way
to blinding torrent,
deep and uncontrolled.
Time stretched out
in the shade of darkness,
all the cars in slow motion,
as God, She called to us
from the other side of the deluge,
Her sexy sky dressed
in gold and white taffeta
billowing bright.
And once there, dry and safe,
I continued to drive toward
that door of heaven.

©A. D. Joyce, 2014