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.