Vallhalla: blue"

I.

A storm roars through cracks in the mountains - 

Like water from a broken dam.

We seek to retreat and find that we cannot.

You try to find comfort in his face

That is all cut-out eyes and porcelain smiles.

He slips away. Experience is a changeling.

When he is gone, you remember

It half-clearly: cloud shadows rippling

On leafed-out mountains like hands,

Hands, we are surrounded by hands.

We were born here, but 

Do we belong?

II.

I will let my pen dance like a Turkish belly dancer

Until you feel the texture of my language,

The whisper of lust.

O, cruel language, my head waits for you.

Close the curtains, turn out the light, and 

Teach me to believe in this love.

Fill up the vacant, listless hollows

Of my childhood. Make me complete.

O, good language, you are my safe-place.

III.

Your eyes

Rush over me like horses.

Light rip-

Ples back and forth across your brow.

Quiet

Descends like curtains in this room - 

Closes 

Out the cold, rain-saturated night.

Don't say

Goodnight - keep talking about anything

At all.

Your voice is solace, soothing in a chaotic

World that

Spins too fast and will destruct. Your voice is

Ever-

Ything I need to keep alive this belief.

Your tongue,

Like music, fills the emptiness of night.

IV.

Wet leaves are hanging heavily

All around you

In a misty rain

And a distorted carnival,

A blue, manic Mardi Gras.

Confusion is a muddy circus field,

A clown-mime continually following,

Mocking you.

You are searching, for what?

A wood nymph in naked joy

And sunshine in his hair?

You don't know.

Leaves keep falling, stacking

Up in sticky, brown-wilted

Mounds. With shuffling feet,

You scatter and tread them down, 

Shuddering in the uncertain light

Of a clouded-over blue moon.

V.

You are as formidable as a Tibetan mountain,

As sexual as Morocco,

But you are as closed as China,

Whilst I, like a shut-in,

Thirst for more of your world.

VI. 

It's snowing inside this room:

Like someone turned it upside-down, 

Shook it, then set it bolt upright.

It's brushing along the top of the black

Baby grand that you play on party nights,

And your eyebrows and eyelashes as you speak.

I think it sounds like wind chimes when you

Laugh like that. If I were the

Ballerina in the music box of your throat,

Would you wind me up and watch me spin?

VII.

La Vita E Bella:

The world is like watercolours, green and gold,

Running down and together,

Like tears on the earth's face,

Grasping, sliding down a window glass,

Barely noticed, undocumented, unfelt.

You are stretched out like a dulcimer's 

Plaintive whine, watching the

Fish tank light reflecting images on a far wall.

You say you see

Belly dancers wearing blue musical beads and

Borrowed bracelets.

In my dreams afterward, I am walking

On water slowly, in a circle of

Mottled light playing through the leaves of

Dark green summer trees. In the distance,

Bells ringing in harmonic melody, whilst I

Speak Irish in an undertone as if my private poetry

And marvel at the brightness of the morning.

VIII.

Where is home?

Language that is chameleon:

This passion which is mortal,

Addictive.

IX.

She grew up amid amateur paintings

And yellow walls - 

A leather-clad, muted blue star.

The mirrors on his clothing make it

Hard for her to see him,

But he's there...

Maybe he's there...

Like bananas and lemons on the dark

Kitchen counter - 

A still life with hidden meanings:

Hope, perhaps?

X.

Sometimes, when you speak

I think I can hear the sound the sea makes

Slapping, crashing

Against the cliffs of Moher,

Splitting into myriads of colours, 

Letting in the light.

And I don't tell you, when this happens.

You'll only roll your eyes and miss the point

Entirely.

So I tell it to the crickets - who sing it back to you

While you sleep.

XI.

Certain mothers

Tell their children it is the rain

That impregnates,

Not the dream.

It was not the rain 

That impregnated me.

O, child of my womb, unborn,

It was hope for something more than

Existed,

This poem.

Richard Hugo said: 

"Words love the ridiculous areas of our minds."

These are my only functioning 

Parts,

It is useless to pummel them.

I'm sweating the touch of

Another body

Down the length of mine,

Cotton-barb-tongued mouthful.

No spit. Consequence. Untold,

Don't fold.

But the word has gone away.

XII.

Limitless as Joie d'Art is this feeling.

She can only grasp it as though fragments

Of ancient parchments:

Peacocks on stained glass entries and the 

Finality

Of blue and green colours wafted by the light through these and

Painting her 

Permanently.

Dazzled and disoriented by 

The spear of sun on the thin, burnt-biscuit skin of New Jersey,

She is humming a melody she only ever

Hears in dream -

And forgets she is supposed to feel

Safe 

With you. Oh well...

Tin whistles fill up the ineffable places

Between what we say and what we mean:

Valhalla: blue.

Valhalla: unredeemed from plunder.

The treeless hills echo back our failures;

Hearts keep calling out...

XIII.

Slipping under what seems to be,

He is swimming in a light-refracting sea:

His hips ring like bells.

You wake in a room with

Romanesque statues in a circle which are

Draped with watercoloured fabrics

To hide their nakedness. Left behind, you are

Groping

To recapture that light.

XIV.

It's all about shattering mirrors

To let in yellow daylight.

It's all about learning who you are.

Do you know me?

Your watercoloured smiles and gypsy-clad

Habits are a worn out delight.

Still, I'll keep coming back. Always,

I'll come back.

-Sabne Raznik

http://www.facebook.com/sabneraznik