A Braid, Abrade - Many Ropes All Our Wanting, An Exhalation Poem by Warren Falcon

for Karthik, for Viren

'...to lie
and love...
aching to
make sense
of this night
in our mesh
of reference...' - Vikram Seth


many ropes all our
wanting

I stand behind
them the curtained
dancer entranced
entered into
upon a mystery
how one could
be so swell, so
marvelous &
one so cruel
upon one silver
stem the tin
jag hangs
tears at
memory's edge
opens facts -

you, love, are
new memory
hands emptier
sensitive finger-
tips filigreed
prints your
body hairs
sifted imprinted
touching softly
x all the x's
here accounted
for, listed,
besos as
kisses
scribbles,
notes,
letters,
no matter
the black or
blue tide

what
slips out
ebbs black
back into lapis
lapses into what
self is - uttered
poured, scored
transparent upon
surfaces

faces even eyes
now glaze with
love loss beside
the flue the glaze
upon the pane

where one
near plain
black mouse
remains,
stays,

is many,
a multitude
of petals
x 3
the jasmine
unspurned
at last


O return
soft Junes
the lips of
which are
sometimes
pink, of
lavender
swollen,
as if to
kiss
x memory
x 3
the antinomies
a string
of pearls
anemones
& you

bring them all
back, so many,
to me now

memory
torques
into soft
teas

June
steeps
turns
steaming
said window
(and torsos)
said prints
views obscured
of nothing
in particular
or special,
but
troubles,
troubles only

of passing birds
enamored-of
(their lighter
bones)
or
are they
cloud and shadow,
merely the steep
sun declining ashen
into New Jersey?



occluded
silhouettes
contrails
glyphs &
River's
annunciation's

so many dawns
x so many goings
down of the sun
x fortune the lips
x myriad ones gone
before of murmurers
O lover

I adore
in timbre
thru the
window rings
(the bells)
the arms
of which
too
wring out
breath to
breath
x no more
embraces
into indolence

This
(yet)
again
(late
offering)
just to
reintroduce
some
levity
for we
(loves)
were many day-ed
x merry we
merrily played
harming no one,
not even the
mouse unmoved
perhaps, watching
perhaps still,
still, from beneath
the god you insisted
be excluded from
all our nakedness