Poetry by Val Cole

POEM:

I.

How heavy the tires that drive you
Through fireworks in the street.

How plain the lies that hide you,
The blood and myth behind you
Is nothing new to me.

Beautiful I find you,
To wrap two legs around you,
Surrounded by the safety of my fear.

Steady, love reminds you
To hold the tongue that binds you.
Silent grow the graves beneath our feet.

II.

Some of us wait in the sun
Of the new world
For an old word,
Nostalgic for its
Nonchalant intimacy
With death.

We straddle the splice
Between yesterday and tomorrow,
A moment ago and a moment from now,
Falling in love
And falling asleep.

We know that while
Our two eyes
Gaze each from either side,
They see one image,
The vision always shared,
A projection at the other end
Of the cone
A lone moon which,
Even on its fullest nights,
Is only half so.

III.

Sometimes it nice to imagine
Living in a big house with (),
Having things,
Like a boudoir,
That you don’t want,
And losing things that you do.

It’s ok to think that
You will be happy
With a compromise
Submitted to the arbiter.
You learn the long way
That the only promise of companions
Is to let go together.

Sometimes it’s funny to step back
And watch time in her performance,
Illuminating yesteryears with a present, single word.
You see how to be
Is to be bound,
She knows no future now,
And the past is still unfolding.

IV.

My father is a dark lord and his minions bring me dinner,
Making me a coin that never falls but
Flips into infinity while
My candles leave a tubal-cain
And the rest of me tries to save
The sounds of a mother tongue
From drowning in learned language.

What is left over
Walks in the mornings and wonders:

If we create the word (for love)
And the word carries meaning
And the thing (of love)
Becomes the meaning of the word,
Then what came first (by love),
The meaningful thing,
Or the word?