Nursing the Wound

Frozen cells of time lapse life
moving backwards
beating a path to regret
you can't quite see.
The silvery smell of a burning
paper cut remains.

Ideas and desire
sip toasts
clinking glasses
shattering stems
rain down to the base of the wound.
Stepping in and from
the mound of tabletop excuses.

Dance like gypsy wedding
in late summer eves;
three day supply of livery, liquor and love
tear like a circumventing itch
you can't cure.

The red streams grown
in tissue and strength-
hands forming, which
threaten to strangle you
for forgetting
that they were there.
That they have always been there
singing tipsy
the nights away while you
waited; deduced
and reinvented
their circumstance.

Hack off the limb,
where the scratching won't subside
and fashion a silver spear
deep enough and strong enough
and clear enough
to slice through reams
of perforated bullshit;
casting off the spell of waiting
room reading---

Book burning,
spear at side
gypsies waltzing the second wind
of their third late afternoon,
calling at you.
To move.
They won't ever run dry,
and your swollen sky
bounding above their heads.

~ M. Lucia