Love Species...Lost and Found

Warm light shone down 
from windows in separation, 
splashing yellow rainwater puddles 
about our feet of clay; 
  coarse sleet stings our faces, 
  hoarse vapour exhaled, 
  brute stabs in the breast, 
  twin heartbeats impaled.

Eyes that pleaded stared upwards, 
blinking and vacant 
as deserted parking lots, 
or abandoned cradles; 
  hands hung stiff and dead, 
  slabs of meat, still and red, 
  frozen, lifeless with cold, 
  having nothing to hold.

Shadows flitted, lingered, 
silhouettes of velcro warmth, 
a cameo tender play 
announced to the world; 
  and we, the twin outsiders, 
  alone, self-deluded, 
  merely stamped through with sadness, 
  a breed apart, excluded.

The shadow people hold each other, 
close and unhurried, 
meld lips, soft, loving, 
dark yielding flesh caressed; 
  once we had this, now withdrawn and afraid, 
  isolated, imprisoned by lives we have made, 
  flinching away, head bowed and low, 
  where now to turn, where now to go?

Tramping faceless streets, 
cursed by the cross of regret, 
we carry it as we try again, 
going nowhere, going somewhere? 
  the anguish of knowing the past is stone 
  may freeze and writhe like fractured bone, 
  the future road, an empty track, 
  cry "full ahead slow!", and never look back.
Copyright © | Year Posted 2005

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