Existential Right of a Cliche
Your eyes, a moon-soaked shard of heaven,
your face, luciform lilt of sea;
I scarcely breathe,
lying with you,
love, now,
my heart so jammed with awe;
crammed with the varied parts of you;
lips of wispy arabesques — compelling
in propositions of abandon,
cusp of your breasts resplendent as clouds —
my affliction their intimations keep,
your nape — arc of impulsiveness
where dreams I long to bury,
your scent, raw air whisking
rain in spring —
in it I thirst to drown;
that coy cadence of your gait,
that spirited sough in your laughter,
the fractured timbre of your anguish,
the unhinged limbs of your grief,
those arced notes of rapt excruciation;
those nameless unfastenable mysteries —
stuffed in me,
flushed through me,
swamping the blaze of me.
What have we made?
What is left?
What of the rage of the world?
Those corruptions that taunt my walk and sleep.
What of the fate of our isle cities?
The radiant metropolis of our aspirations.
I denounce the submission of you,
I oppose this sublimation of me.
I refuse the mastery of me and you.
I reject the conglomeration —
that socially normative bastard,
that hormonally-moderated shameless quadruped,
arrogating the sun as it swaggers up the street,
staking grace for its flawless self.
What I want is you.
What I need is me.
Don’t lay waste the thorns of your garden.
Don’t tear down your fearsome sky.
Remain what you will need.
Photograph by JUN HUA EA
