— Pax Tibi Marce
                              Catalysta Meus →

                    •

          i. Virgin Lightning

                              •

A single soul in two bodies,
who would have thought
that two nobodies could be
caught in something mystical?

But if you see through me,
you will see into me, and
I hope find the goodness
that I wish you to draw;

Moving the energy the
catalyst sends down,
it passes the boundless
path past the horizon

We now chase each other
around, and I hope if you’re mine,
you can ground my highest
flight, see through the lines

Of my poems, each mode—
how alone we have been
until this weekend when
our dissonance resolved

Itself, absolving us of crimes
so subtle they caused crisis
to tender its cracks in our veins;
our parting to take with it our shame.

                    •

Flotsam of histories fall
onto the shores we thought
were all deserts, dampened
by virgin lightning calling

Us home through the storm
seeking no apology, torn from
heaven to form something
less frightening than intimacy;

But if you swim in the wounds
too long, mistake the sound
of silence for our song, sweat
off innocence and sing along

Against this epidemic
of perfectionism, with its
self-limiting thickness
hitting us down until it

Convinces us of our need
to abandon plans, and take up
the liberty required to make
ourselves, to create a shared history—

Then I might even bleed
my secrets unconditionally;
seeping into you my need
and you might keep it, even.

                              •

And especially if it means
becoming part of me, fears
starved of their possibility
need only trust to transform

This animosity into what we
dream, what we seem always
to greet in mourning; partly
astonished, partly in awe

The universe could at all
understand canceled versions
and make sense of what I
thought was lost, certain

You would never call
and here I stand in the nude
of unveiled moonlight, all
new again, hopeful you might

Put in me your faith
and face circumstance—
never again leaving
us and our love to chance.

Can I be the source of
something so sweet to
receive, to indulge myself
of what I give to you?

                    •

Maybe we can meet
in our humanity if
nowhere else, shelve
our desire for each other

And suffer for what
people deprive us of;
a need I’ll strive to put
into the box war opened up—

A dialogue creates a third entity,
allowing me to know
I’m not so precious as the
eternity we father and feed

Whenever we see our Selves
facing the æther, dissolve
our past pressures past our best
features, and keep open minds

Cleared of expectation sent
like suffering to lead us on—
if in that openness, you haven’t
caught on, I can tell you how;

Hoping it’s not too late
to work into substance what fate
summoned in through breaths
wind wounded, impatience

                              •

Blessing us with blindness
too kind to accept. Oh, I pen
this hoping to open the next
chapter of latent affection,

Content if I fail, if you tell
me nothing at all; if we end
wanting nothing, no more
sure than when we began

If this is paradise or deception,
since letters often caption
unutterable thoughts in boxes
of capitals offending men

Unaccustomed to receiving
wisdom in the mail—minds
dulled by thievery grinding
down expectation, small

Enough to call efficient,
but not at all conditioned
to recall what we hadn’t
realized is essential to being.

If you will, look through me
and into me, and withdraw
a conclusion that even we
so broken and appalled

                    •

          ii. The Invisible Crime

                              •

Can somehow be renewed
and somehow can glue whole,
this cracked fixture tinctured
with bruises too few to title

Unfixable, and so all I want
to ask is that, if you can, can
you comprehend my hand
trembling with my soul in

Forming this record of so
bashful a demand? If so,
please send some word
letting me know, even though

I don’t deserve to be shown
such kindness when my own
callousness wounded your
courage; please, may peace

Be with you and forgiveness
water the garden our strife let
wither, open those hardened roses,
and tend to fulfillment the best

Love two lovers might bless
themselves with; it’s a sacrament,
this bowing to the torrent, stress
and tempest testing us, it’s just

                    •

The stress of the distance
keeping us cultured by the waves
and their bitterness, it’s these flames
depriving earth’s furnace

Of a way through the fire,
through this—to get through hell,
we have to just keep on going,
but it turns me to ash not knowing.

Disillusioned by that beautiful
and horrific thing, careful not to be
the model you strive for, full of the
need to be filled by your personality;

I don’t need a collaborator,
but to kill this weighty autonomy
would chart a little more
resonance on our hearts always.

What would you most
be afraid of, if I lost
my need to be in control?
Would chaos cause

Us to be unjust to
each other, to trust
anyone but one another?
If you must, want

                              •

Who you will, but just
tell me I’ll still be
someone you sought
when us is what you wanted,

And only memories haunt
the ocean of stories strewn
onto the floor of the room
we wanted to share, but couldn’t.

What is your metric? Is this success?
All the way into emotion with
inquiry renders tireless this
passion of our insolence;

If talking couldn’t tell it,
then why would the rooves
cover up the sentiment?
Wherever I go, pain moves

In too, and so I know that proves
nothing, but one thing
that I can’t help being true
to what I want: being with you

Somehow again, by some
mysterious irony no story
can plot, nor poetry pace—
someone to know within.

                    •

I want to be your priority,
your revelation exposed
openly, wholeheartedly
without worry of judgement;

To be balanced in the palm
of our revered creator, shared
with none but the justice
bared when you dare to calm

My savage pulse, rippling
trauma as it does through
inlets of forgotten time,
trickling into your memory

By its secret vein the only
consciousness worth knowing,
and by that I mean I am going
to make sure you follow

My thought’s stain to its
weeping source—to be shown
my weakest of my concealed
weaknesses, and conceive

Of a name to gift to this
desire, to relieve it of its
anonymous pain, so that when
we suffer, we collapse together.

                              •

Of the same rift cut into
the fabric of our soul woven
in two folds, these fleshly clothes
we cast off in a downpour moment

Chosen by ancient parents
to share in a shattering,
clouds contend to send us
wrecking and mending what’s

Been ravaged with the same
disaster that nearly became
our last encounter; take
pause to enter without shame

That vacant chamber in which
sits a bed laid in linen, entrusted
by good intention to be made
immutable, to contain what dread

Desire and fed fire our lust lit
and our reunion might maintain—
take no other offer but this
and tell me you still feel the same

Wounds moving through each other;
unmitigated flaws of who we are,
attuned to such carnage a moment
catches us in, carrying us on farther.