I Got No Zen

Anima XI

In fifteen minutes, I can memorize a poem.
Saying the poem takes only a moment, and some breath.
To learn your features from every aspect
was a year’s hard work, filling a space the words could not.
I knew every nuance of your breath,
every line, indentation, and story, the roots
of every complex carved cuneiform in your complexion.
But to make of this knowledge a poem
takes exactly as long as memorization's’s
slow metamorphosis into a memory.
Morphine overcoming the sting of the needle.

Anima XII

I feared you when we first met
not because I thought you could hurt me
but because your own suffering
demanded so much from others.
I recoiled the one night your approached.

You gave me a small green vessel
you had shaped long ago on the wheel.
It sat empty.  I had nothing I wished
to have held in the permanent imprint
of your fingers, palms and thumbs.

We warmed our hands around cheap, chipped
ceramic mugs of coffee as you told me
“You know why nothing ever happened between us?
It was because I was not afraid of you
and you were not afraid of me”.

I had to rip out the guts of my love for you,
murdering it to save my life.