Iron Eyes Poem by Norman F. Santos

Divulge yourself in my language
Speak of forked tongues that can masticate
Imagery with psychedelic blades
And swallow these swords so you can tell me

That I have eyes of iron
That I am blind but I can pretend to believe
That I can perceive in full colors
From sapphire, to eau-du-nil, to claret

And if you are malleable enough
To sink in my impermeability
And nibble on my waxing vision
Then I will permit you, in my elbow to my anteroom

Suffice enough to fracture my vision
And enrapture my eyes of iron
My eyes that can decipher decoys
My vision that can perforate veils and halos

I would gladly fall in a slumber
And in acquiescence I shall fumble
To bolt my callous eyes
And dwell within the perimeter

Of your coherent liminalities
Seasoned of pseudo-animosity
The facile art blotted of acrimony
May be adequate to coerce valiancy

Whenever, we could go now
To anywhere but the down town
Where everyone knows who we are
How we are damned and surmised to expire

Lead me down the Mediterranean Gulf
A sanctuary in the grazing sea
And I can ponder inside your bountiful fingers
Of callas that would cloy my cellars

And though we cannot swim
We would be buoyed by our belief
That we have feet of street lamps
That blaze aglow so no one would trample

If we pretend like lovers lost in time
Could we hold the sun perched in burning leaves
Of ivories and ebonies, of a tatterdemalion gypsy?
In daylight, I would feign that I can see

The words coming out the mouth
Of angry clocks and compasses
And I would curse like a sphinx
To live with you forever at the fringe
.
We’ll pretend like black suited agents
Sheathing a pistol and a plan
To find fate and kill serendipity
And create something out of dark alleys

I would run whilst you walk
For you walk too fast
Perhaps, to leave all behind
Perhaps, there’s something you’re trying to find

But in gasping breaths
I would keep with your selfish pace
And I would keep you in askance
With the dark corner of my crumpled eyes

Juxtaposed each other like mutual towers
Are these orbits of hefty balconies
Unswerving eyes of flimsy convictions
I would vie for another vision

Of our galvanized liaison
That had transpired in my phantasms
And absconded through veracity
And left me with pallid assumptions

Of a fatal life line
That I wanted to preserve
As we traverse the phosphorescent shore
And trample in the city streets

In an ethereal living
Where we would never have to go home
For home is in our seams
Wandering with our dreams

But I have iron eyes;
Eyes solely to embellish
And all the things that it can perceive
Are those in a parcel ground

A land of voracious reveries
And all it failed to hold
Are things vagrantly unfolded
Right before these iron shackles

I have gone astray
Too far, too long, I have been away
But no one knows
And no one cares, anyway

Iron eyes, sleep pensively
With your dreams in a hearse
A cavalcade of whimsy notes
Remember what you are: iron eyes.