Ajapajapam (Or Something Close)- second draft

Mild-eyed Euryphaessa has birthed

nigh on seventy-four full-formed far-winged daughters

since last we basked in the glow of the perfect union

of her favored kin and her consort that night, star-fathering Astraios.

We have always foregone the horological

incantations of our old dead predecessors;

we wrote our masterpieces in fiery touch

back when we were still the kids we claim to keep alive,

we seared with fingers odes across our ribs,

sonnets in the smalls of our backs,

sang glorious hymns down each others' throats.

I'm told it was Osiris and his gods of the Nile

who blew us seven-hundred-some miles apart, but

we always screamed youth's defiance and death

to whoever was listening after we fell, panting, sweat-slick, apart.

Do you remember? We rejected the printed page

as the passive empty delusion of an age

that has lost its connection with the principle of Chaos

by which our lives have always been tethered.

And here I am, writing of you. Writing not in the

ears or flesh of those who came after, not in

the long languorous spirals of skin-against-skin,

but in short rapid keystrokes devoid of meaning

and frozen in intent, frozen in the permanence

that we denied as devolutions of the human spirit.

Here I am, writing to you, not speaking to you,

not revelling in your passion; you were always the better me.

Six years to the day, and the moon is full.

You know, that night, the moon was just past new,

but we didn't care. We were more like children then - together -

and we had full moons of our own. We danced in

the moonless black, and even Astraios had taken his leave;

our revelry was our own that night, six years ago to the day.

The roadside field has been razed repeatedly since then-

controlled burns, wildfires, arson. I know what you'd say.

Erase the past. Destroy it entirely. Forget there

ever was a past. Recall only what is to come. Then forget that.

Confabulate if anything must be said- keep the symbols and

the signs, but honor the meager truth with improvements

by the infinite fancies of time.

As we sang to each other, modulating our natural harmonies,

you bit my lip, not for the first time.

Do you remember? I bled, just a bit. You called it purification.

You told me it was my self-punishment for an imagined sin,

then apologized for any suffering I caused myself. You cried

for just an instant, the pale cold oceanic salt blur hitting your own lips

in one of those too-perfect movie moments you loved to hate to love.

You shared that moment with me, the mutual sting of sodium and

iron

jumpstarting our youthful frames, and we toppled back to our bed of

Mayan

blanket, crumpled clothes, and discarded skin cells.

The night's cycle began anew, birthing the stuff

from which details are later selected, rejected,

detested, rejoiced, and, ultimately, retold.

Now in recall I find not the wallowing of grief you

predicted with your angry shouts to the rising sun,

but the vestiges of ecstatic wonder that do not dampen current spirits,

but inspire to greater heights the efforts of future exploits.

(copyright a(scetic)verse, March 01, 2010)