Life- the singular composer, planning rhythmic paradoxes
Keeps the unusual truce in this quiet place. Our lives
Played out the contents of our heads. In that moment.
In all those years of moments. Once, throwing gauntlets
Into wells that echo continuously, I told you I loved you
And as life, cowering as a happy dictator,
The statue of someone stronger, relived my mortal rashness.
It was never a grand, big love of exploding triumph-
It was a steady, stroke of pen against paper, the kind
That only can exist in fiction-for the actors
Are laying on the floor as crash test dummies
Waiting for the paramedics to arrive
And the glass doesn’t touch them
It just keeps the audience at a safe comfortable distance.
At least you have that. Always. Where to be loved
By the blinded madman scrawling his pen-knife on hidden walls-
Something to laugh about in years to come
When you have found, at last, the happy fireplace
And the tobacco pipe that fits perfectly in your hand.