My speech coils, a labyrinth biting into the air
My speech coils, a labyrinth biting into the air,
The last nail of the lie I remove from my mouth, delayed,
I gather accessible letters, string them on a thread of silence,
To enclose within them an oval time, like a sightless clock.
I encompass totality, a hundred lives in a moment,
Their infinity, too short, like a cracking ice bridge,
Brave as saints hidden in chests of slag,
Heroes who carry fear in their blood, like an old armor.
Through pits dug with hate, in their opaque hearts,
The alphabet flows, we like its alpha tears,
Stone atheists write psalms with nails on ribs,
And I steal a second from them, to grow it in nights unguarded.
I declare a galactic war on time, with stars as witnesses,
Ignite blazing manifestos on orbits, fiery signatures,
I ask the final clock for the spark, the reversed second,
To give me in return a breath of day, drawn from night.
At a contested exchange, with an eclipse's scale,
I barter my poet's shoulders for the gentle back of a horseshoe,
Ritually I become beastly, to carry light through grass,
To stretch your infinity with equal steps over necklaces.
From your crafted energies, I pour honey into bitterness,
I love without blinking, like a lighthouse in the marine wind,
I sew a map on your eyelids, with counterfeit tears,
To teach you that day and night can be the same crease.
Measure me with silence, the pendulum of the heart beats,
Count the long shadows stretching from the palaces,
In me, moments grow like stones in still water,
And each is a name you don't know from light.
When the alphabet tires, I crown it with clay,
I give it to drink from the celestial bitterness with a taste of foam,
And in the flow of consciousness, a boat passes without shores:
I call you — and time, ashamed, returns the moment on the wave.
Copyright ©
Dan Enache
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