keguri

[keguri]

let me lean against the handrail,

let me close my eyes and imagine that,

when i stretch my shoulders,

when i fan my hair out

and it gets picked up by the wind

and stamped alike a blood clot on the sky

the way that ink does on a pinky finger,

you look on from somewhere underneath my balcony,

and whisper unheard sonnets, like some drunkard

sick with song and starlight,

and when the wind rings around my head

it is your voice it brings to me.

- 11/20/20

[keguri]

my rounded up right

to a swift exit has been

ignored. instead, i wait on

for some bigger entity

to nod its head in my direction,

as if to say

i have ignored you, but on purpose.

i was looking at the clock hands all this time.

i was not waving, but counting.

- 12/01/21

[keguri]

here, a sonnet...

happiness is happiness everywhere

but there’s no sadness like the sadness of a homeland,

there is no sonnet like the one unsung by ghosts of people yours.

no scenery may stretch before your eyes like that of motherland,

where hills roam wild and wondrous,

and end in question marks somewhere amidst the clouds

so you may ask yourself where heavens start and end...

but shrug off the mortal coil of your big question, shuffle on,

walk quick, your coat pulled tightly like a

manifesto of your disbelief against emotion.

what is love? is it not hills and fogs and mothers?

the hills will stay there,

and when you’ll go to bigger, flatter places,

when faces will seem nicer, better, chaster,

your soul will cry for hills, for autumn fogs,

for coats pulled snug by worried mothers as you leave your home,

for ghosts all too familiar, for how your footsteps seem now much heavier

because your heart has known the way that heavens seem to press on footsteps the same way a homeland always begs a sonnet like a mother begs a child to button up a coat.

- 01/09/21

[keguri]

let us bury love with honors,

lest it be susceptible to demons, djinns

and walking the after-life half un-dead.

the cemetery will be full with

men like crows in limp black suits

starched starvingly serene. how suspicious.

our love was never quite the spectacle,

so the death of it must be a carnival;

never let the lights burn out.

years will pass, but we’ll remember the crowds

we will whisper of each other the way

old soldiers whisper fondly of the man on the other side of the front.

so when the old crone asks you

what became of your fair maiden,

just say i was too much a palimpsest of your own mother.

that will do quite well.

and most importantly,

don’t look for me in tea leaves on the bottom of your cup.

leave me dead, thus holy. love does not sell.

- 01/09/21

[keguri]

you have made me in your image and deserted me,

you have wronged me. done wrong by me. you feel wronged that i accuse you.

you are right. i wrung the pieces of my tears from midnight sonnets,

strung them up to dry by morning dew

but knew that they would not. i waited for them. waited for you. you had made me in your image, so you must return. return, please? i ask for nothing smaller, smallest, daintiest figment of my soul. don’t they all say love is imitation? you have made me in your image, say no more. go to war then, write me letters under poplars, write them long. i do not long to see your naked face again. i am in mourning.

it is morning. peasant women blushing under infant sun sing in tunes of sweat and labor. there’s a favor i must ask of you. don’t come back from war. just die. in my orphic dream i saw you rise like God and Devil to the sky. so, by God, when I say “God” know I don’t call in vain. You Have Made Me In Your Image, I Know Why. You Have Made Me Wait For You Like Peasant Women Wait For Autumn Sky. In The Farthest Corners Of This Land You Sit Under A Poplar Tree And Maybe Write To Other. But Will She Sing Old Hymns To You? Who Will But I, YOUR LOVER?

- 01/14/21

[keguri]

man but God

and God, a simple man

and sky as barrier

sky as end-all

heaven-hell

and hell, a gracious creature

sweet as doing nothing on a sunday morning

sweet as figs on empty stomach

sweet as kisses smuggled from a bed

heaven’s hell

heaven’s doing right by naked and deserted others

for God is but a naked and deserted man.

- 01/14/21

[keguri]

no wonder stars stopped falling

and the moon seems smaller than it was.

my burdens gather at the edges of my vision,

like ghosts of pasts and tears and age and loss.

the world seems dustier, and much more slower,

i’m losing all my balance, swinging like a drunkard wild.

perhaps that’s why i fall in love with ghosts and spirits

the world seems more half-dead now than when i was a child.

- 11/20/20

[keguri]

My love,

Where do all dead loves go

When love has left the love

We felt before?

Where do they go to sleep?

What part of your unquiet, churning soul

Wakes up one day to say

“Alas, no more”?

Where do dead loves lay their head to rest?

On what unpolished surface

Does the anguish of a heart wrench

Become an unassuming “he”?

And where do those stars go?

The stars we wished our future on,

When future and eternity

Were taken out on an untimely loan?

What bird cries with the cry of voiceless

Dying birds,

When he who made you cry

Becomes a voiceless ghost?

And who gives names to shadows

That once did fall upon your heart

But now pass by your heart

That’s full of woes?

Oh, who knew the word “eternal”

Ever did mean this much and so much more?

“Eternity” slipped through our fingers.

“Before” was always “forward”,

But is now no more.

- 09/21/19

[keguri]

you were gifted,

a gift

i had dreamt up on a midsummer’s night

after an evening of champagne and cake and too much music

and so you came out hatched in bronze and glory. you were an idol, draped in riches, pungent with perfumes, each boney finger weighed down by a diamond the size of my soul.

you were a fleshed out Adonis. it was my fault.

a girl should never dance an evening into night, and she should never daze off dreaming up a storm of sun and shimmer.

- 11/20/20, 4:35am

[keguri]

i wish to lay my head down in the crook of your white neck,

and hear the chambers of your chest curse chastity in flighty fits of huffs.

so i may inch my head a little closer,

and when your heart gives out,

when i had buried my breath deep into the valleys of your form

so that your heartbeat may become one with my heartbeat,

we may both blame it on a flitting scene, like on the coldness of my nose against your neck,

and we may both laugh out into wide gaping words like fate,

like debauched sons obsessed with proving fathers wrong.

and then we’ll both feel dangerously loved,

but only in small waves,

in tiny touches,

in noses cowered into skin the shade of creme souffle.

- 11/20/20, 4:23am

[keguri]

to think you were a fever dream,

and i a speck of dust

afloat on words of flattery and fire.

to think my blood was left as rust

on the collar of minute desire

and every woman you will ever meet from now on

will feel loved in a way

that i had molded with my own bare hands

like god had molded Adam. you were a god, my god, and i - your freshest sin. and it felt nice

to run askew, to run towards and not away from,

if only for a while.

but life had crashed your fever dream,

and life knows nothing of desire. life is but dust, the coil of mortal sin, the ringing of the moon,

the way it coats a river at midnight, the way a girl looks out at midnight, out a window,

the way a girl knows men might talk like god

but move like snakes

and slither off like moonlight behind clouds

and leave a ringing in the ear

and leave a pale cast on the past

like midnight kisses sung in overtune but shuffled off by morning. the fire has gone out at last.

- 11/20/20, 4:00am

[keguri]

i long the day when love no longer feels

like slick and smothering slime

and when the love i love no longer wields

my heart. no longer makes it double-rhyme.

i wish to see that bright day come

when love is light, and great, and big

when i will not exchange their heart for all my time

when i will not feel drawn to them as fly to fig.

but as for now, my love is rank and shrouded.

it lies in cemeteries, crowded

by white lily fumes; my love is guarded.

it blooms in caves of mystery, of darkness sprouted.

i wish to see it bloom in sunlight, not enshrouded. i wish to see it bloom.

- 09/30/20, 12:44pm

[keguri]

i stink, i sour, smell, i’m rancid

putrid, flesh-taste, flesh-smell,

flesh-wound, fresh hell

blood taste, blood clots shaped like flowers

pit pat of my sweat on sickly skin

water flows like human hours

words to ashes, skin is sin

i sink, i flower, well, i’m acrid.

but i win

09/09/20, 12:11PM

[keguri]

this night reeks of solitude,

of the humming of the street light,

of the lullaby of stray dogs,

of the smothering of moonlight on my window pane.

- 09/02/2020 2:01am

[keguri]

AAAA WHO WOULDVE THOUGHT !!! THAT BEING IS ENOUGH !!!

TO BE !!!!

WHO WOULDVE THOUGHT THAT WIND TASTES SWEETER WHEN THAT WIND BLOWS ONTO YOUR FORM FREE !!!

THAT LEAVES FALL NOW NOT ON YOUR HEAD !! AND CLONK YOU DOWN WITH AWKWARD ASSONANCE !!! THAT LEAVES JUST BE !!!

AND FALL UPON THE EARTH !!!

AND I - I, EARTH EXTENDED !!! HAPPEN TO BRUSH BY THEM !!! AS IF THROUGH FATE’S OWN WILL !!! WHO WOULD’VE THOUGHT !!!! TO BE IS ALL YOU NEED !!!

TO FEEL !!!!

- 01/25/20 12:15am

[keguri]

perhaps,

“if only” means more than we’ve ever hoped it could.

and perhaps,

you only saw in me what i wish you never would.

and perhaps,

i dared fall back upon you because going forward was too scary.

and perhaps,

this burden further on i’ll carry.

but i’ve forgotten you just like i should.

[keguri]

cast my sins in gold. the fields know how we run. the back of my pa’s barn knows how we kiss.

unravel my freckles. pull my love out piece by piece, and leave it out to dry the way they do way down in sicilly.

hold me tighter, saffron. lick my wounds til the rot falls away and something sweeter starts to bloom inside. easy, steady.

stray from dark, and stray from lightness. my marrigold cotton dress is strewn over the grass. rags to riches to handprints on skin.

skies! curse me! i had a lover en province.