MUSIC BY FIRE

by Susan Harris

I choose not to sleep and dry my eyes.
Night must prolong its unconscious welcome...
Yet, there is a certain pleasure, fierce and forlorn
In pain's penetrating glances;
That dulls minds in to this wax like stupor.
Hurts my head with a many thousand blows
-- dragging down.

If you know how deep you go,
How I have scattered your footprints
In the furrows of my soul;
Or how I broke things
To mend shattered walls in other rooms
Then perhaps you will see the yarn I have spun;
The veins of leaves I sculpted
In awe of the tower of love.
[that crumbles, perishes, destroys]
Like when the tenor of the winds would marvel touch
And bring aflame the spirit of music
Which only we heard and swallowed it all,
Amidst other human ruins and maudlin graves.
Seeming birds that bury their past in the sky.
But what does one do with clouds that obtrude?
Or mirrors that split at stalks?

I am mad at spots and scars
See how my perfect world it mars.
White goddesses do not err
Or misery in her devotee's heart ever stir.
Flaws adorn my short hair
May be she doesn't enough care.
There are days when you are a child
And the days are never too mild.

Say it's true,
Now through.
Rain.
By steps.
That you
Crush grass
With me.
I insist
Over this--
--fading bulb's
Glow.
Harmonizing parallels
Gushing through
Images
In the storm,
Rise again--
Lustily
Languorously
Loftily