Ameles potamos

Ameles potamos

By: Jonathan Garren

What remains of me when the fugue breaks

And I am left alone on the sleepy banks

Of the Lethe? Will my love drown beneath the

Grasp of shades, my humanity left to drift

Like listless flotsam fated for the eternal

Wash upon Elysium tides?

Shall I drink instead from the Mnemosyne?

Shall I remember all, yet still be far

From your touch, still lost to your memory?

Shall I know you always from a distant shore?

Will I find you when I break from this

Disease that occludes my mind from the fruited

Tongues of Paradise? Will my soul return with

The golden bough and escape these bleak

Immortal chains?

Will time still sibilantly sweep the years

From our faces? Will you grow old

While I remain young? Or will I return,

Only to find you languishing drunk

On the fallacies that wash perfumed

Upon the retracted felicity of Lethean shores?

Among the Unfamiliar (For K.)

Among the Unfamiliar (For K.)

By: Jonathan Garren

Like the moon in the morning sky

We sit pinioned among the unfamiliar.

A love presupposed in wilder lands

Now lies festered and sore in tepid hands.

Still the desire lingers beneath the pulse,

Beneath the swell, beneath the neck so smooth;

The heavy warmth of lust woven in a kiss

Stemmed to blanche the chill of skin yet underhand.

With the hunger pains of passion frail,

I yearn only for love forbidden

And taste the secret sealed behind your smile.

Held in your arms against the light of a sallow sun,

Like the moon in the morning sky

We sit pinioned among the unfamiliar.

The Warmth Between Whiskey and You

The Warmth Between Whiskey and You

By: Jonathan Garren

The snow fell in a slow rage

Like Kamikaze pilots

In the dim, yellow street light.

Dark asphalt and brown fields came

To life with a pale brilliance

Like the mirrored reflection

            Of a full moon night.

As day breaks behind the blue-

Ridge backs of giants, the snow

Slowly bleeds the sky’s color

From brilliant hues to a steel

            Gray of ambivalence

The flakes swirl restless and wild

Like a flock of translucent

Birds in the wind, alighting

In fallow fields blazed brown by

Winter’s kiss; the snow collecting

On dead shoots of panicum

            Like a thousand tufts of cotton.

I stand there alone among

The electric mist of white

Noise as each flake dies violent

And cold against my wool hat,

Watching as the empty promises

Of winter fall at the fury

            Of a jealous spring.

Wrapped in the cold I have come

To know, I watch the snow fall

With a silent barrage and

Wonder if I will ever

Find the warmth I felt between

            Whiskey and you.

Lost in the Finding; or, Memories like Late Autumn Frost

Memories linger like the reluctant frost of an early morning in late autumn. The crystalline tinge of leftover moonlight and star-shine sleeps soundly against the slow pull of the rising sun, dreams reluctantly slipping in thin misty tendrils toward a brightening blue sky. That's when I feel her most. When I feel the most alone. The warmth of this or that morning's coffee slowly kindling fires within the chilled ache of my body, pipe-smoke peeling away the dreary fog of a daunting and sleepless night.

"Did you put out the stars with Hikeshibaba (火消婆) last night?" you would say with butterfly whispers and a kiss like the wind. Your skin the warmth within the morning that wills the world to life. Your hair loose within the apartment's stillness, the slowly swinging conductor's baton bringing the symphony of morning birds to tune. I would feel arms fold and pull, skin pebble then smooth. I would close my eyes and breathe in the world that would only spark to life with a technicolored brilliance at your rising.

"Good morning, my Amaterasu (アマテラス)." That's all I could ever say. In those mornings, you were the birth and death of every breath. You were the sunrise that woke the world.

I look out this morning beyond the dampening banisters from a cold front porch and close my eyes against the slow rise of the sun, the slow reluctance of the early morning frost coating the ground like a thousand specks of shattered sea glass. And I feel you again.

Good morning, my Amaterasu.

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Lost in the Finding

By: Jonathan Garren

I am desperate for fingers raising skin,

For your long hair tangled in the wind.

And I am built to embrace my sins,

But I know they were hard for you to defend.

I miss the taste of your lips and the slow rise of your smile,

Your scent like winter woodsmoke and summer rain.

I miss the bend of your knees in sensual denial,

Your fever, your cries, your joy, and your pain.

I’m trying to find the weakness that pushed you away,

Suffocate the flames that tore our story from the binding.

I’m still trying to find the lies to make you stay,

I keep trying to find why I’m lost in the finding.

Does that mean we were broken by desire,

Or did we bleed together through the lust?

Does that mean we became liars,

Or were we simply betrayed by trust?

Did we gradually descend into colder water,

Frozen in memories beneath time and dust?

Or were we meant for different lovers,

Different bodies to blend and adjust?