INCENDIA

As fire when thrown into water is cooled down and put out, so also a false accusation when brought against a man of the purest and holiest character, boils over and is at once dissipated, and vanishes and threats of heaven and sea, himself standing unmoved. Cicero

Incendia:  Words No Longer Needed

I am drinking in the smell of him,

the rage of fire on deserts’ lips,

the need to heal the temper with holy water.

The hidden wound,

a gape, a burn, a slow slip of blood,

consuming

a night that will never die;

a nightmare in black transition.

The mouth is half moon, half dream,

weighing no intent on his limbs.

He is the wound which keeps bleeding;

I want no piece of your burning heredity--

always loving,

always judging,

always destroying,

the path with which you singe.

I sat beside her through her

mechanical  vespers,

loving the rapid

movement of her lips, even as her

lips seemed to curl like waves when she prayed.

Hands like water, eyes searing undertow,

fingers fascinated with pressure,

singing in time with the mere

words said in redemption’s horror.

The reverberation of footsteps

escaping to another wet dimension

allows me to go on existing.

Feral fear and screams fill the rooms,

ten hands bless with unctuous signs of the cross.

I run up and down the dark steps lost.

A petrified candle squanders in its own tears;

I fumble in slumbers somber clothes.

Saintly feet electrify nature’s impossibility--

a soul’s mind riveted in Gods marble--

I watch

the meaningful squeak of a wood floor lost,

the tenacity of a dusty stained window,

the site of uniforms shadowed memory,

faster and faster, always alone, faster,

the indispensible mechanism of the power unknown.

Fingers unravel naturally as silence buries each bone.

TJKG