SEEING YOU AGAIN

SEEING YOU AGAIN

 

Seeing you again after all this time

is a single stitch in a hundred mile long wound

that couldn’t bridge its differences.

Spanish earrings like captured constellations

dangling from your earlobes like a jailor’s keys,

everyone still thinks

when you make your rounds

you’re someone they would like to please

by giving up their freedom

for a few skimpy minutes with you

on your knees.

You haven’t lost your knack

for making men feel lasciviously wonderful

and it would be easy to forget so much

like a last wish on death-row

just to fuck you

but there are scars on the window

that look like the moon

weighing itself like a stone

in the hand of an angry boy

who wants to break something.

You were more of a delusion to me

than I ever was to you.

It was my arrow

from my own bow

that made a target

of the archer’s heart

I wore on my head

like the crown of an apple

and missed.

It’s seven parts vanity

and three parts lust

to want to be loved

the way you always imagined.

You did your best with what you had to work with

to make something neither of us knew

come true in the aftermath

of all we destroyed in each other

as one by one our delusions

fell like sumptuous nobles

on the swords of the gladiolas

that had flared like trumpets of blood.

Now we sit beside each other

like two gardens that failed

to find common ground

as the stars salt the earth we walk upon

down memory-lane

meticulously avoiding

all the testy improvised devices

that still lie buried like passions in the road

waiting for the next insurgency to explode.

You indulge my vanity like a cup of coffee

with the most slimming subsitutes

for sincerity

but I understand

behind the sleazy gestures

it’s just your way of trying to heal what you can

without being forgiven

for not knowing when to quit.

It’s not often you get to sit down

and have a conversation

with your own obituary

and not believe a word of it.

 

PATRICK WHITE