Four Love Poems

Author: Valdezi

Original post: https://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=7614.0

Entry for YC121 New Eden Capsuleer’s Writing Contest in the Poetry category.

Victuals

Even before, I remember red,
weeping red, like the lone rose
against black plastic.
Too costly, I passed it by.

Though at the time it seemed perfect,
I remember now how stubborn aphids
had chewed away at its goodness,
tiny tears in the red petals
and the cluster of thorns on the stem.

You loved the red
of a heart eaten raw
lifted to your smiling mouth
your teeth stained
your red rictus
twin lines framing your chin
swiftly drying to a crust.

A man more wise
might have known to step around
a cooling pool of blood,
two damp trails leading off
and the grim white reflection.

Instead, my toes disturb the almost-dry surface
brush aside the browning skin
to reveal slick and sticky red
coating the tips indelibly.

It was nothing. Consumed
by a single gout of red flame,
crumbled to ash.

Firebird

My dead heart lies in sullen ashes, black
like shattered plastic and shame and drift-
ing smoke, dark, vacuous and slowly crack-
ling with almost spent flames, which reach and lift,
sooty claws up walls.

                The first touches, fum-<br>

bling and beautiful, of love in this place;
blazing caresses in the soft dark, stum-
bling over strange things, like family, fac-
ing forward, or turning back.

                You pass me<br>

one morning with a smile, and I realise
that my home is your arms and lips and hea-
ving chest. My residence is your burnt eyes.

No place can contain this brazen fire,
you stroke these embers, pant and perspire.

How to make Qatayef

First, the sweet syrup,
sugar water
and tart lime.

Apply heat,
the warmth, the stroke
of flame, the slow build
of anticipation.

Caress
the dough,
keep it wet,
gentle but insistent hands.

Smear
The dough on her dress
As you sidle up behind
Her, her smell of cumin
and cinnamon and her cascades
of soft treacle hair
that you drink
like water in a desert.

Encircling arms drizzle
across bare skin
pale and dusted
with flour.

The syrup bubbles.
Forget the Qatayef as you kiss
her forever.

The Dream Book

What was that book I lost?
It dripped away
like water in my hands
crawling out of the velvet well.

In the book was a wild green country;
a place I want to take you.
Mountains rise against the blanket
of still murmuring trees -
whose branches stroke and drift
against the silent undergrowth.

We had a journey in that book,
through a high pass, a hawk’s cry
in the sharp air and the hanging snowflakes
at noontime, melted to droplets which muddy
the earth and disappear
underfoot.

I think you wrote the dream book,
sprinkled it on my mind
with a dusting of white-brown feathers
swirling to rest
or scattered by spring winds.

When you said you loved me I never dreamed
that I’d follow you into the purple sleep labyrinth.

My lamp is bright, it leads us beyond.