There is a legend
of a king that gathered his greed
with image and vision,
Crossed a border --
invented his ideal woman,
his concubine and queen. Something ranging
through his potent power - desire enough and alone,
set fire to her lungs,
made her Real - made her mortal.
So in flesh he ruled beside her.

Another tale
of an artist. he fell in love with a woman
he painted. Daily, he put her to canvas
perfecting her image while he grew gaunt
and wild eyed. So disinterested
in mortal life’s third dimension.
At last, he painted himself into the border
framing her form. Made himself
a fictional image just to be near her.


HER STORY:

i am running across shallow water beside my lover.
the wind’s bitten a small hole clear through
my heart. It whistles there. A breeze crossing shallow
strings. a mandolin propped by a cracked windowpane.

i am flying the ships trapped in bottles as if they are kites.
i will wait til they’re quite high, i will wait
til it’s night and then cut their strings. send them sailing
over the moon.

i am growing along a low shore beside
patches of reeds and cattails.
we are the trued woodwinds. mouthpiece set deep
and perfectly shaped to suit the lips of secret desire and
northern lights.

i am attuned. a flute made of anything: cobalt, copper, amethyst,
aluminum and string. invented by music itself in a grave time
of need.

i am imploring - an open request to an old lover who loved but
Never, he knew he
never
knew me.

drunk from sipping bottled milk weed
and half forgotten lyrics from songs we loved as teens,
on public streets from a paper bag. my love
and me. real or dreamed, in a long time coming
somewhere cast from now, off the sleeve of
a boxed up jacket, he will pull a strand of long gold hair
Long Ago left there, in one of our careful or careless crossings.

i am asking, when you find it, and you will, due to fate
or astral travel, do this: thread it through
our memories. hand weave our time
together on a transparent, transient, errant loom of used to be.

i arise out of need.

i am sitting in a diner drinking coffee.
across from me, a man organizes his ideas
like an origami artist -- folding the Sunday Times into
The Shape of a Woman. uttering something remorseful
at her headline. mostly, i notice,
the color of his words. they are umber
and encase his body
like a fitted sheet.

he takes my face lightly
between his two fists.
turns my neck til my eyes align with his.
handles me like a loosened cog and he will be
the tool tugging at my cheek to set me straight.
i only bite my bottom lip
and lower my eyes.

build for me, using only fire
and one right angle, a model of my mind, a template
for heart.

he says all we really are - we - merely silk
snagged on this sliver of existence.
he is calm in his skilled use
of turbulence that unwinds
my beliefs.

i am a woven braid - iridescent -
a dream had by crows that left
their feather’s lighter in the shade.
pulled from the bordering blue
round the white in flame.
our coupling. as it cools,
through caress and seduction,
it will take on a clean shape.
We will watch it come to be
What it will be.

It hardens before me,
An ever changing sky,
a sheath of memory.

And there will be no waking.
Such is the border between
dream/reality.

The border itself is a place.
I live there and i feel,
i can feel it being crossed
both ways - dream to reality,
fantasy to dream - by He who has seen
a good deal of Himself but nary a glance
of my face.