Stephen Mead
Lacyrmose d’amour
Bedside reports:
Here fingers are choreography itself,
& these sheets are drawing pads,
& the pillows refreshed dreams
even as the flesh sinks
& the skull becomes more apparent bone…
Brown doves, this tuft, that, of hair
leaving the head, but a dance goes on
nevertheless. a mash note, autumn-tinged,
in free fall for vivid living—
spirals, leaps, improvised
to be well-place pirouettes:
You here, you.
Breath draws forth, a pencil’s whisper
waiting for the fulfillment of adrenalin,
toe shoes & skin,
waiting for the onrush hush of Nureyev—
From the wings you also caught,
brought bouquets, ovations, center stage,
held the promise of Petrushka,
empyrean, from The Nightingale…
So this ode goes clear as the legs
before the PCP bouts, the Cryptococcus,
those vandals of an innocence
feverish in the end.
Love, why are my cheeks wet?
There are footlights in the med pumps,
final bows from the curtains, & you
stretch out suspended, a Peter Pan
smiling wide for the stars now, stars
stillest.
You who were here
will echo there always
as the greatest wishes.
Stephen Mead is the author of numerous books of visual art with textual accompaniment, the most recent of which is According to the Order of Nature (We too are Cosmos Made): Art and Text for Gay Spiritual Sensuality (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016). His poems have appeared in Projected Letters, ZiN Daily, The Drunken Llama, Literary Yard, Peacock Journal, Wordgathering, Page & Spine, Ink Pantry, The Wild Word, A Little Poetry, Poetry Life and Times, Scarlet Leaf Review, Poetry Pacific, Pig Iron Malt, and many other journals. He live in Albany, NY.
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