Spring and the Everlasting Dialogue
04.06.05
by Lacey Smith

I.

perhaps the way i
spoke love direct
ly into your chest is
why it is now
wrong, but i,
a long train of thought
and feeling cannot call it
simply by mistake, i think:

you are not trangression
but if perhaps
i was cunning
and hated, you'd love me then
for this (and i pause)
i've learned
by such example

II.

in my dream:

I went back to
where we were that night
and since I was near
(but I did not call)

I'm sorry, you see
I was so busy

III.

Suddenly it is spring again and
I am in full bloom and my petals
make wreathes around my limbs
humming with the electric sky
as it unbuttons its shirt.

We are bumping wild as honeybees
as I am learning new these names of ours
and you are the chipping bark of

mulch, brown as rot.
Your sweet musk is choking the
beautiful sky (you help
the earth grow but she does not
love you for it) with all of its forward
apprehension

IV.

now i am holding your hand over my ear
but there is no ocean in your palm.

V.

your lips are like a leaking faucet
drip
ping
wildly onto the soiled dish
(mold grows too)
and all of this for you,
all of this because you won't
turn off

VI.

spring! You are a woman
with the most sensual hips,
a swinging dance! and in your
hands, the whole of the world
weeps with joy, filling itself
with your lusty lacquered words
and all of them are coming,
soldiers for an army just outside
your bolted door.

VII.

i do not know if
you've already been told but
behind closed doors i am
growing old.

ancient, in fact
you can't tell from behind but

in my skin there is an uproar
(they are all in a revolt)
and they've pillaged and burned
my insides to a pulp.

so many have died there,
these ancestors of my pores

let us not forget: in my eyes there've been wars!
and their history is written
on my face and bones.

and so i will also die there
ancient, but still alone.

VIII.

your finger cannot be
true without the
agreement of your tongue
and lips and cheeks and
chin and arms and legs
and eyes and shoulders

back and skin

and this is why
even in darkness, a lie
will never win.

IX.

All of them leaving, rows of cars like
flowers pinching into the soil below,
their tangled roots wheeling on
across the pavement.

I have watched the lot of them go
but I would not say the words until
they were pulled from my throat,
poured out like dirty water into the
filter. This is the new blood of

all that I've known, it is welting this
tender skin with all of its wheres
and whens and whys that were
never able to say goodbye.

X

i am five years old again, i am saying

look spring! all of these changes so sudden
i am a sparrow, i can fly and this sky is so
blue if i spin it will not stop and i won't
stop, i can't. now i am made of magic
and that bird is really me, he is
not really gone and clouds are these
so-white lovely things, they make
cakes and love and kittens and i will
not stop spinning, i will not, i won't
you cannot make me, and all of this
is oh so lovely and this sadness
cannot stay, no it just simply
won't do. it cannot. it cannot. it can
not

04/06/2005

Author's Note: Something about it still seems very incomplete and so I am submitting it for critique.

Posted on 04/09/2005
Copyright © 2024 Lacey Smith