And Breathe
(for Mark and Mike)
On the lips of abandon
You are balanced
On your tip toes
On a tight rope
One half tied to fear
And the other waiting to soar
Your heart of fire pulled into two extremes
And breathe…
On the horizon of nothingness
Where the brightest star ceases to shine
You choose to keep on bleeding
For everything that makes you human
But the void below begins to glow
And caress and kiss your dreams
And breathe…
Across your memory
A warm hand
Waves away your disbelief:
Two lovers in a field of mist
Your first kiss, your first kiss—
And you remember all of this
Your heart of fire began to burn
And all the guts inside you turned
It’s love that makes the blind man believe
And breathe…
Out in the emptiness of your nothingness
The colors fade into grays
And gravity gets lazy
You float away
With midnight splashed across your heart
You step out of your skin
And fly into the beyond that is your memory
And dreams
So breathe
And breathe.
When the whole world came crashing down you were at your window
Reciting poetry. And she’s huddled in the corner, counting her last seconds down—
She says:
We should run away to Egypt where that silent man cat keeps guard.
Or Berlin—yes, Berlin.
They haven’t torn down all of that wall.
Let’s run away to the ocean and swim deep. Hold our breath until
Atlantis is beneath our feet.
We could be safe there.
We could be happy there,
You and I.
But at the first end of the world
You stood by the ovens at Auschwitz
With buckets of water by your side
And refused to save the flesh that burned—
But she is relentless, throwing roses at your feet.
Always relentless, begging you to come and sleep…
She whispers
Hold on to me tonight
For tomorrow the whole world falls
And if we haven’t got each other
We haven’t got anything left at all
And breathe…
On the horizon the burning sun
Bleeds out across the sky
And all the smiles you’ve ever smiled with—
All the love you’ve ever loved with—
All the dreams you’ve ever lived in
Awakens everything that is inside of you
And screams:
Wake up!
Stand up!
You’ve made it this far,
And there’s so much left to go…
Your heart of fire—it knows.
Your heart of fire it knows,
Can’t you see? That the blood that beats within it
Is the life that burns to feed it
And on your knees
Drowned in disbelief—
It was in you all along.
It was in you all along.
On the lips of abandon
The body you long to caress
And kiss and make safe all these
Long lost dreams, I believe, I believe—
Everything, we share.
It’s the air we share when we breathe
So breathe
And breathe
And breathe…
© 2006 Jefferson Lavender