Ghazal

While I watch your back, my power is breaking,
the love and hate in me breaking.
I will demonstrate the shape of my passion
with blood, with bruises and breaking.
I will give to you the heads of your comrades
and hold you down when you're breaking.
You will learn the sacred meaning of Will
within submission; it's breaking.
This will purify your heart and your thinking,
and you will shatter, unbreaking;
you have seen the demon--I will be come it
and glue you up if you're breaking.
For the pleasure of destroying you fully
I scar old skins with new breaking.

Obsession & Compulsion

My beloved, only you are here with every heartbeat.
Only you can lift me higher up with every heartbeat.

More than any other, it is you for whom I hunger,
and you offer all that I desire with every heartbeat.

Every day, awake, I dream of you (when sleeping, never)
and the hunger that I have for you with every heartbeat.

Oh, how close I'd like to be to you: my neck, my fingers,
underneath my ribs, within my breast, with every heartbeat,

and along my wrists, and drifting up my arms, within me...
I envision you inside my blood with every heartbeat.

You bring freedom, wealth, eternal peace, and safety,
shining steely-silver in the light with every heartbeat.

I can think of nothing else for very long; you linger.
how I want to take you into me with every heartbeat!

And I know--I know--that when we come together quickly,
pain! and then no longer will I hurt with every heartbeat.

Diving deep, a flush of sorrow, youth forever, secrets:
all these things I welcome to myself with every heartbeat.

You and I perform a hundred thousand murders daily;
yet I live, my heart reminds my ears with every heartbeat.

How I want you! Why do I delay to pull you to me?
Out of fear? To heighten pleasure's pull with every heartbeat?

Soon, I promise, soon I will unsheathe you, little dagger.
We will sing a carol, unison, with every heartbeat.

Ghazal

Seal your heart, which is unattainable and unbearable:
I can never be calmly happy with the unbearable.

These small favors that you have already granted shatter me.
How can kindnesses bring to me discontent unbearable?

You have given me admiration and poured out gentleness;
I am humbled and overwhelmed by this grace unbearable.

So much passion is in your voice as you speak of beauty now;
I am staring at you with longing that is unbearable.

In cool mornings and heady, still afternoons, you sing alone.
I am listening, and I sob with a joy unbearable.

Fascinated by animation that plays across your face,
I admire you with a sympathy near unbearable.

You are truly an artwork, sculpted with care, exactingly,
with a strength to which nothing earth-crafted is unbearable.

Oh! And how will I ever keep myself from just reaching out,
touching that flushing cheek, and trembling with fear unbearable?

If I only could smooth away all the grief that lingers there!
Yet more beautiful still are you when in pain unbearable.

Thus, we go singing endless rondeaux of bloodless suffering
while the universe weaves a carol: despair unbearable.

Euterpe

The nectar that may never be my own, tonight, I taste again,
Though faithful, I do not deserve the wreath of your regard again.

I sit alone, entranced by mélodies of Ernest Chausson,
While all the crowd is spellbound by the verse of Gautier again.

My eyes glaze over and my cheeks become volcanic, curling fire;
My hands are red and swollen with the blood that twists me ‘round again.

My skin is cold, but on the inside, I am burning up with zeal,
To me, an inspiration and a breath are now the same again.

Thus, at your feet I fall in supplication, begging for this boon.
I am your lover, like so many others. You have won again.

You know that I could never love another while I worship you,
And I have never been unfaithful to the vows I take again.

Your beauty is so terrible I fear that I may stop my breath.
If I cannot inspire, then you cannot inspire my voice again.

Please give to me the secrets with your whisperings, or I may die,
And with me, wisps of caroling that might have come to life again.

Puer Aeternus

Oh, let me be the Anima that you forget!
Puer Aeternus, show the Self that you forget!

Your smile will not be mine—I know and am resigned,
but my desire is for the secrets you forget.

You know your own perfection and attractiveness,
and yet, your own eternal spirit you forget.

You are the soft assassin who can harshly laugh
while blood pours through the gentle fingers you forget.

A thousand half-dead bodies writhe before your feet.
They issue from my heart: the heart that you forget.

A hundred thousand times, you have refused to love;
I come to you again with pleas that you forget.

Were you to love me, I might understand the whole;
your soul’s mandala ever spins, which you forget.

Reality is cruel and garish: you escape.
Thus, I will cry the shrieks of sorrow you forget.

When ancient, prudent Senex glances to the side,
then come to me by bitter pathways you forget.

As I would be Sophia, be my graceful Guide.
Go singing from the famous carol you forget.