No Passion, No Warmth In These Words, I'm Trying, But Have Nothing To Offer, I'm Waiting With Nothing To Do, I'm Waiting, Just Waiting On You

--"Waiting", The Rentals

THE CARD HOUSE
a poem by E. Patrick Taroc

The pilot-light blue of my fist
As it, fallen in faceless depths
Of the breach, burns and burns again.

Winters when the world was complete--
Structured and proud like card houses,
Vermilion bikes on their back,
Layered, level upon level,
Till immortality remained--
You were taken to such moments
Mankind can only dream of dreaming.
Unshackled of your home and hearth,
Where mother mentioned your name often
In hopes you'd hold it forever
In those pinkened and pudgy hands,
You would award it back to her
After more names were mentioned
Ten and twentyfold with a smile.
London-fogged dawns imparted
Their riches and were replaced
By New England nighttimes,
As you were insisted, as I,
To the palette of smearing blues
By the seasons in endless round,
The spinning jenny of your life,
Each new season a spindle
Where with each methodical motion
What was to be fated from birth
Was fashioned, not from special straw
That gave way to gold, but plain thread.
Days whittled the weeks away
Until only months remained
Of our daydreams together.
I was as never as young as you;
You, never as mature as me,
But the difference was divided,
Bisected by the bronzed compass
Of a common name, not yet known
To you.
              Perchance it was nothing,
Nothing much more than a few letters,
A sound lisped by even native lips,
That attached myself to you
Like the old box-kite kept reined
By our alternating hand.
Perchance it was a knot tightened
By society's customs and manners,
But one that had been there always,
Like the pull of seasons upon us
Or your friendly hand outstretched
To catch beauty itself in your palms,
Never to be disappointed
When it spilled out and beyond,
Dabbing your youthful features
In its ebbing intangibility.
And when you giggled and fell
Into the waiting lap of the land,
I thought you thought the same as me
And I fell in support.
                                        But now,
With the earth embracing you in,
As if your escape was never meant,
And mother invisible,
I deduce nothing came of thoughts,
For a thought can never replace--
The candle's light never quite nears
The import of its facile flame.

Your fingers melding with mine
Beneath the glossy tabletop
Of the once-pond, I tug-of-war
With the thousand thousands of hands
Reaching, grabbing, grappling, groping--
Below, all knowing you are too much
For mankind and me, for life itself.

(05/04/95) Copyright 1995, 2007 E. Patrick Taroc

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers