Saying All There Is To Say

There’s beauty in the strangeness , as in night moths flying under icy fog , or the dull moon , like a dying birthmark , or a flock of snow geese , illuminated as white teeth : like that static charge from your dark eyes ; your voice , as if words from a frosted pane . A red dawn’s collected crows , flocks of black monsoons , songs of wood and whisky ; autumn’s paper leaves , a tainted stream of wind : barefoot , your toes in the mud , the water echoed your mouth : a nocturne , requiem , cathedral of clouds … our bodies , cloth bags : we carried the other , lovers groping for the past . I untangled your hair : your eyes , empty shells . I tried to remember the positions of your kisses , the spiced sugar of your watery tongue . Winter came , a web spun from chimney smoke and dead skin , a droopy sky’s guttural cadence ; you gathered your wants , the many scraps of heaviness . Darkness cracked , then opened , what remained fell in … your Punk lipstick stained my sheets , I lifted you to taste the corpse inside your heart : a field of deep holes , marble stones , a nest of cold roots : that electric dawn shocked me . I woke up and placed you at the curbside . -------------------------------------------------------------------- first published in: Lothlorien Poetry Journal (France) beauty in the strangeness is from Walter Tevis from my forthcoming 10th book: "Broken , poems"