Red Poems: Hybrid Prose Poem
They can burn us
For the heart is an organ of fire – Ondaatje
They can burn us
the red poems
alive in negligees
in camisoles where
desire
is every burden
on every shoulder
and bare
and talking softly
I whisper prayers to the softness of your flesh, the flaming doors and windows – ah, the cling of words to the throat, dipping into, into the trance, a stellar séance of sex and circumstance – a birthing of future tense, of knowledge unmet till now, till you, musing into my head on an early spring morning —
And they can bleed
the red poems
like love and
lust
falling from your hair
I kiss your lock as if it were around my neck, as if the goddess’ honey light will singe my eyes as it faces the world – from my chest – and the growing pains – I’ve grown and will groan and — and my heart wraps around you, the arms I so dearly want you to have to have to be possessed of — your need and your breath –
They sting and sing
all night
the red poems
waking
to the burns of my finger tips
Telling tales to the silences, the spaces between the red poems — cursive on the body, colouring sighs and the liminal signs that can be followed like a ballistic trail — that wound for just a moment before the whole comes sweeping back into my eyes again.
J.D. Harms 2022
