Kasie Kissel
The Lovers
Outside sorrow, anger, joy,
Creeping thyme, fox maw, beetle teeth
Break down the calcium that holds us still,
Erode the gospel carved in our lungs
Unwound and free of the world
And the frantic looping of my brain.
On our way to the Elysian fields we have left our siren song.
The day has reached its end,
The thread at last meets the soil dead.
Finding the joy of our undoing,
Skeletal fragments becoming whole again,
The gaps in wanting apparent.
We cannot know rest in the worldly hollow,
Or beg peace from the bluest sky;
But the earthly bond we carry from world to world,
Into the bog and future steeped in tall thin grass and buzzards call
Follows
Relentlessly.
We lie here, vacant shells;
Cicada ghosts crunching under foot
Where we clung to each other
And where we first slept.
Crouched down low, coyote cautionary
Unaware of our circumstance,
(It means little to the shifting of teeth)
Worn fingers interlacing blackened mold
Saprotrophs and detritivores called to rest
Upon sleepless things:
Archaic joy in man’s disentanglement.
Yet this unravelling is webbed in beauty
The gentle sunlight piercing rib cage
Rooting into the burrowed dark
That we have inhabited:
The solace of dust and wet in petrichor longing
To relieve us of our pain.
The harvest has begun
The soy and wheat waiting to be found:
Our earthen crater,
Tenderly embracing ruin
Amidst the farmers toil.
Who shall traverse these fields
To find the restful lovers
Under the maple tree
Patterned by loss and shame
And will they leave them green
In envy, wanting to reap what they have wrought
Or will they disturb those that need not be
Displaced from their yearning?
The balding birds who joined our table
Shooed away by pitchforks drawn
Bound to their next dinner guest
As we become temptation
To roving eyes and screaming mothers.
My lost heart
Ventricle waning in the light of dawn
You are torn from our tapestry
Knuckles broken and memory undone
I am screaming into the day
As we are abducted from our nest
That has harboured us throughout the night.
We knew heaven but this is hell,
I ache in your absence from me
My heart calling to you
From the dirt where we had lain
Where sullied ground turned sanctum with your touch.
Eternity defiled by the hands of man
Our sightless future ripped from grasp
By ripening grain and sun blind eyes
I’ve never hated humanity as I do now
Caught in their endeavor
To unearth the past they buried.
We were not intended for resurrection,
Our intertwining limbs had settled
As thrown dice on a forest floor
And I had whispered to you in clovered ground,
To worry not because I would never leave your side.
But I am made a liar,
And only you will know the promise unfulfilled.
My love please wait for me.
With your curving jaw and arms outstretched
I will trace your forgotten breath again
And we will rest in our puit d’amour,
Abandoned by the world as we had always dreamed.
Creeping thyme, fox maw, beetle teeth
Break down the calcium that holds us still,
Erode the gospel carved in our lungs
Unwound and free of the world
And the frantic looping of my brain.
On our way to the Elysian fields we have left our siren song.
The day has reached its end,
The thread at last meets the soil dead.
Finding the joy of our undoing,
Skeletal fragments becoming whole again,
The gaps in wanting apparent.
We cannot know rest in the worldly hollow,
Or beg peace from the bluest sky;
But the earthly bond we carry from world to world,
Into the bog and future steeped in tall thin grass and buzzards call
Follows
Relentlessly.
We lie here, vacant shells;
Cicada ghosts crunching under foot
Where we clung to each other
And where we first slept.
Crouched down low, coyote cautionary
Unaware of our circumstance,
(It means little to the shifting of teeth)
Worn fingers interlacing blackened mold
Saprotrophs and detritivores called to rest
Upon sleepless things:
Archaic joy in man’s disentanglement.
Yet this unravelling is webbed in beauty
The gentle sunlight piercing rib cage
Rooting into the burrowed dark
That we have inhabited:
The solace of dust and wet in petrichor longing
To relieve us of our pain.
The harvest has begun
The soy and wheat waiting to be found:
Our earthen crater,
Tenderly embracing ruin
Amidst the farmers toil.
Who shall traverse these fields
To find the restful lovers
Under the maple tree
Patterned by loss and shame
And will they leave them green
In envy, wanting to reap what they have wrought
Or will they disturb those that need not be
Displaced from their yearning?
The balding birds who joined our table
Shooed away by pitchforks drawn
Bound to their next dinner guest
As we become temptation
To roving eyes and screaming mothers.
My lost heart
Ventricle waning in the light of dawn
You are torn from our tapestry
Knuckles broken and memory undone
I am screaming into the day
As we are abducted from our nest
That has harboured us throughout the night.
We knew heaven but this is hell,
I ache in your absence from me
My heart calling to you
From the dirt where we had lain
Where sullied ground turned sanctum with your touch.
Eternity defiled by the hands of man
Our sightless future ripped from grasp
By ripening grain and sun blind eyes
I’ve never hated humanity as I do now
Caught in their endeavor
To unearth the past they buried.
We were not intended for resurrection,
Our intertwining limbs had settled
As thrown dice on a forest floor
And I had whispered to you in clovered ground,
To worry not because I would never leave your side.
But I am made a liar,
And only you will know the promise unfulfilled.
My love please wait for me.
With your curving jaw and arms outstretched
I will trace your forgotten breath again
And we will rest in our puit d’amour,
Abandoned by the world as we had always dreamed.