For Arthur Rimbaud
___by Danielle Kotaska

"We're in the months of love; I'm seventeen years old. The time of hopes and dreams, as they say--and here I am, getting started- a child touched by the finger of the Muse..."
__________________________________________________________-A. Rimbaud

Oh, my beautiful, light-eyed boy
There's nowhere to be but you're lost anyhow.
Your eyes search suspiciously the open green field
as if you know I'm watching,
as if you sense me there.
But I am merely a breath taken a century away
weaving through blades of grass
and never getting any closer.
I think you might have hated me.
You might have resented these arms
that cradle your bleeding heart.
But I don't wish to heal the wounds
or strip the flesh off your words
with a pad of steel wool.
I need you so I can know I'm real.
I need you so I can be sure that not all angels
look like Barbie and Ken.

The sun laughs at your outstretched hands.
She scorches warm green to cold gray.
The sweet taste is gone.
So you rise,
hands in pockets,
breath short and quick like a botched limerick.
You turn and wordlessly walk away.
The birth of a Goldmund whose silent departure
leaves him bound for all ports.
And I, the pious Narcissus, watch without tears
and smile knowingly.
There is everywhere to be and you'll always be lost.

I, too, am seventeen years old.
I, too, have been touched by the finger of the Muse.

"He's gone forever," I once thought.
But seasons change and the field regained its emerald smile.
One evening I lay alone in the terrestrial ocean
surrounded by lilacs whose sweet smell
wrapped me in a syrupy delirium.
The earth buzzed like a bumblebee
and the stars above seemed to burst delicately
like bubbles in champagne.
My blood flowed differently,
catching the blood that seeped out of
someone else's heart.
As I turned I saw your figure
hunched timidly at the edge of the field.
The mirrored moon revealed to me your end:
A one-legged insomniac who never saw forty.
But I feel your breath full and potent
like a tapestried prose piece.
And you smile knowingly...

Because mirrors lie,
and you're still my beautiful, light eyed boy.
I think you know me.
I think you've guided the
finger of the Muse.

 

Photograph by Adrienne Acton

pp. 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ,16 , 17 , 18 , 19 .