Vows of Silence

it is winter here: wilted roses, white on white on white
patterned by poppies, or pooling blood. I am learning solitude,
restraining snowfall, and longing for a world non-existent
where Venus fumbles her amphora, where it falls from Olympus
and shatters at my doorstep,
blooming into a dozen ceramic tulips.

if I were to steal it from her hands, grasp its sable carriers,
throw her treasure overboard, as her lover Hephaestus once fell:
would you play jury at my trial, unfurl evidence of childlike innocence?
I dream it: my attorney justifies a wild animal's bite by its circumstance,
the timid and aged winter, ignorance and naivety
an acute case of cabin fever.

a meaningless verdict: condemned to marble or snow, a flowerpot, a windowsill;
perennials without guarantee of rebirth, clipped and maimed to be eaten
with the limbs of tulips. It makes no difference. I will play thief,
and I will knock her glass off the table, my fate prescribed a thousand years prior
in ancient texts of kings and warlords,
twice as bright and half as long.

I have waited for you to arrive, weaving red petals into three arrow shafts.
your eyes frost over at my self-imposed imprisonment: no lock, nor key,
demanding to know reasons I don't have.
I offer my craftsmanship, weaponry built out of aspirations for sainthood,
and bending the bow of my jilted lover, its point held to my pale chest, I beg you:
pass me your judgement, your fury and love, your verdict and sentence
and I will find redemption under tulips at spring.

Feb. 06, 2024

The path into the light seems dark,
the path forward seems to go back,
the direct path seems long,
true power seems weak,
true purity seems tarnished,
true steadfastness seems changeable,
true clarity seems obscure,
the greatest art seems unsophisticated,
the greatest love seems indifferent,
the greatest wisdom seems childish.