Two old poems (Eliot Cardinaux)

  I will leave my life by the heart of the sea

I will leave my life by the heart of the sea

for the shoulders of thieves,

for an extinguishing star,

for my soul’s loose skin.

I will find it again in the soul of wine

for America’s sleep,

for a soldier’s happiness,

for a fugitive justice.

We were scattered here

like magnolia petals,

from a garden of movement

to a prison of stars.

Our rivers have been poisoned

with usury’s kiss.

A discarded rose

lays in the road

like a dead dove,

like an apple in a broken wrist.

We may abandon this place

where chains hang loose

from the mouths of gutted cars,

abandon it to a dream of brown and blue,

but rust will fall

from a butterfly’s wings

and another wasteland

will open in our lives,

for our rivers have been poisoned

with usury’s kiss.

We were scattered here

like abandoned children

on empty trains.

A discarded greeting

lays in the road

like a dead animal,

like a rusted face

from another wasteland,

for our rivers have been poisoned

with usury’s kiss.

And I will leave my life by the heart of the sea

            for a wolfhound’s feast

            for a soul’s madness

            for a lonely woman

on abandoned train tracks

like a memory that haunts the echo of today.

Amherst, October 26^th, 2009

  I will open the orange trees of my blood

I will open the orange trees of my blood

to the sea, to the rocks, and forget.

I will find a cave by the sea to remember,

to awaken my longing again

in the rocks and in the spume.

Here, at the confluence of two rivers,

I will view my desolation,

my desolation that reaches to the stars,

and asks me to remain.

              Amherst, October 24^th, 2009