Suspension of the Caribbean Campaign

1.

The eyes of loss are small,
beady, disagreeable.
Because terror is small
& the world’s mouth is huge.

Opportunistic horror
prefers quiet settlements
where its voyeur spectacles
strike with unseemly surprise.

2.

She wanted meticulous plunder.
Timely nipple pinches, ceaseless kisses,
pleasure-fused spine
threatening to drag her under.

She heeded the coyote call.
Pilgrimages to Aruba
now seemed obedient exodus to nowhere,
wayward claims of an indifferent godhead.

You have no voice for your art, it gloated.
Speak all you wish,
but we both know you are mute.
Light pierces your sentences
like sun through a tourist’s fashionable hat.

Shivering In time’s cold regard,
the wait in her voice stiffened.
Shadows lengthened.
She could no longer come.

She gravitates to the suspensions of the middle:
wedges of cautious conversation,
discreet company, tests of moderate consequence,
small slits of care & feigned growls.

3.

But when she remembers Oranjestad,
desalinized & hot,
its journalled Caribbean sand between her toes,
before the silence leaned against her
wearing marriage lace
& leering with its dark perfect life,
everything she was to have said cries out to be freed.

(c) dark  | 13 NOV 1997