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Thunder Sandwich #23 |
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Jessica Mahlstedt |
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Housed By A Shrine He stands silent. temple-like. filled with life's Rich Music - BROADCASTING light. Slight and insignificant I gaze open-mouthed, bow In awe of his strength how His pillars hoist me. Footholds I climb upward now To reach the buried root of his truth. Clothes removed As Clouds part on Day One and I can feel the sun's warmth Unfreeze the chill of my youth With rays begun before I was born. Seven Shores I see before me As he lies waiting On sheets soaked with three weeks of heat Created in the last hour. I devour Sweet nothings as substance And meet his soul's need With my own deep dreams, my Seams untied. I can see my heart's forest in his eyes. If I were cut open You'd find his name inscribed On the side Of each ancient tree trunk. I hide Beneath his limbs From the roaring echoes of my past lives, The last fragments lost Beneath the pile of discarded garments On the forest floor. He hands me things I've waited lifetimes for - An armful of peace to ease my nocturnal odysseys, Ripe grapes of inspiration to Texture my melodic philosophies, Flat, solid rocks of belief as a base on which to build and Pools filled With the only kind of hope that cleanses grief. My knees, they Shake uncontrollably when he holds me like this - Weak. Every fiber of my body speaks His tongue and every inch of my skin seeks his Lips… My hips, they Fit in his callused grip As the round and sinking sun that dips Into the sea - Riding his horizon with such intensity it catches me Off guard. I trace the hard Lines of his face, taste the richness of his faith While I watch my wanting pace the length of his sand. My hands, they Hold his tight, Painted on like the thick coat of light That drapes us at night's end. I see his colors best then, the Blues and greens Too vivid to flow from any mortal pen. Then Thousands of liquid visions Fill my head, and I breathe threads Of verse that bled Into my throat. Each wet-voiced note, love-soaked, Spills out in a rush. Words, as fingers stroke Deep paths into his dust As lines of whispered gravel Unravel us. Impossibility I temper my desire with footnotes, camouflage my small and wanting parts with polysyllabic words and compound sentencing, paint my facial expressions with watercolors - not wise for someone with my emotional range... A story is not a story without a cliche'. Green things - I see green things in his eyes. Live, anxious things behind his patient blinking, waiting the obligatory hours In fog that's not lifting, this figment of my imagination. Out of reach, an almost impossibility, like fingerprints on the outside of a 37th story window. Smudging the untouchable, whispering the wounds of seventeen children. Sleeping off the last 3 heartbreaks in 8 hours seems plausible, even likely. I lie awake and restless, dreaming of nightmares, stitched to the seams of turning pages. Like silver moon drops, I hear his eyes close a hundred miles away, gentle as a car crash in my bedroom |