POETRY PAGE 3
ALL MATERIAL COPYRIGHTED BY ROY EISENSTEIN
WAKE ME
These old dreams framed in weeds
This half forgotten laughter
The echo of the many things I wish I’d have said
I walk rigid steps leaving no trail
Breathing no breath that anyone can feel
Holding myself for the heat
For the memory of touch
Looking for that look that used to ignite me
Excite me
Challenge me to be a man
These tired hands
My sleeping youth
The face I shave so unfamiliar
These midnight afternoons
That are so thick I cannot stand up
Unless
Unless I hear your voice
The music I need for my heart to play
Then
And only then
Am I me
WHERE ARE YOU NOW
I thought I smelled your flesh on my hands while meaningless hours tried to waste my time under fluorescent lights, trapped by a desk, lost in a small office
I closed my eyes and held you in my mind, in my arms, I inhaled the scent of you and nothing else mattered
I could see the softness in your eyes, the black silken grace of your hair, the smooth sweet color of your skin against the muted sheets
I heard you calling my name again, felt the heat of our bodies close, relived the meeting of our mouths and the intoxication returned to me
Where are you now?
THE WAR OF LOVE
It’s not all feathers and fairytales
Not just pretty pictures and easy music
There is struggle and passion and tears
There is fire and danger and desire
There is nothing neat or controllable
No tamed creatures
Just wild beasts and savage love
Just the ripping and rending
The touching and mending
The foreverness of something that is real
The indestructibility of a kiss
Heroic tenacity
Epic voracity
And courage of the heart
No, it’s not all cotton candy and fluffy clouds
It’s a storm
A riot of emotions
A drunken madness
Delirious dancing
It is something worth all the pain
THE PASSION
I arch and release in that human animal pulse
That naked dance of flesh and fever that breaks us down to our primitive essence
That mortal common denominator thrust
The grunt and kiss of tender fury
Exposed from behind all the pretense and pride and dignity as we wrestle in that joyous dirt
SHADOW SELF
Fear is every man’s shadow that follows him in daylight and hides about in the dark of night
It’s the ill defined part of us that stretches out our shape when sun is low, and stands beneath us at the courage of noon
So we cannot escape its marriage to us, but we can learn to recognize that it is but a two dimensional mimic of our greater solid being
That it follows us but cannot lead
We are the masters
We make the choices
We are what lives and our shadows are there but for balance
For our great light must create its other and it is the ballast needed for us to possess our daring