Intrinsic

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

~ T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. 
Prufrock and Other Observations. 1917

 

                                           INTRINSIC

The light and goodness
do not sustain
before I find myself
seeking the dim night
the dim fade
the dim close
the dim murder
of the day.

If I were an artist,
I’d choose the river gumbo
mined for my display.
Mud marbles.
Mud ornaments.
Mud dried
quick cracked.
Black tar thick
upon my hands
’til fired and hollowed
core on muralled walls.

If I were a throaty note,
I’d be one final
lingering draw,
the oak and smoke
remnant bit
of Booker charcoal
in the bottom
of some
mahogany glass.

If I were your eyes,
I’d be the cataracts
removed after
robbing your sight,
your strength,
your resolve to fight,
to draw,
to live,
to sing,
to love,
to survive.
To even drink
again with gusto,
but without the loss
of love, of fame,
of a good woman’s shame.
That would be I.
One craggy pair of claws
claiming green irides
for what will never be,
but for I alone
in the dark,
in the deep
in the blue
of the
blackest sea.

Published:  (1) Open Salon (Scupper poems)

(2) Fictionique, 2012: http://fictionique.com/?p=17471