A Pendulum at Sea by Max Sledge (reading women TXT) 📕

A Pendulum at Sea

A pendulum at sea, is
The rhythm of my heart
When I am with you,
Because you are the ocean
Will you speak to me with the wind?
Is that the force that drives you?
Do the castles of cloud
Stir your imagination?
The stars suture you in
Puncturing holes of light
Connected by black thread
These wounds are my compass
Guiding me to your hiding place
Where the waves are calm
I’ll dive into you
Wondering which way gravity is pulling
I’ll twist and spin
Until I see the light of the moon overhead
At this I move down deeper
Beyond where the water is cold
No light is present, save your flickering memories
That glitter around me in the darkness
Finally to caves no one has entered
I’ll find you, pull you out
Reaching the surface
We will move close as you materialize
I’ll kiss your forehead as
Water beads off your nose
Look to the East
A red sun rises
The moon is gone
The stars are fading


Skin

Skin softer than mine pulls me back to her,
Her eyes are calm as fog
I want what she has
After I kiss her stomach I see the moisture that I left
As it evaporates I watch the shape of my lips vanish
She has one strand of hair that falls into her face across her eyes
It’s the strand that she missed when she tucked her curls behind her ears
This hazel lock, it’s my favorite
It glides through my fingers and then it is gone


Time Stops

It’s the best thing in the world
when time stops
eternity captured in your lips
Sticking to me, like I fell into a bucket of honey
And then I continue walking around like this
Your sweat taste fills me up
And then I’m back in your arms again
Because this moment just wont go away
And then you keep looking at me like that
And then I’m back in your arms
Where time stops again


Fire

Our spirit in this moment
Like a burning tinder
Rising up out of a fire into a black sky
It’s all of us
Bursting out of a fire
We move sharply, but still
Represent that soft orange glow
Gliding back and forth across some stretch of abyss
Feathering until we lose our light
Snuffed out by turbulent wind or water
Eventually we all move away, dissipate
Our orange embers disappear
Moving back, blending
Up into the sky
The night to which we look and dream
The deepest part of our lives
And our meaning
Do we think we’ll find it up there?
I see our embers cluster and spin
Capturing our lives in brevity


The Desert

Now you are gone
Your tracts
Swept away by the wind
All this time I thought
I was following you through the dunes
Today I realized the footprints were my own
And I had been walking in circles
I should have known
Mirages shift and change
You were a beautiful bend of light
In my mind, I made you
What I wanted you to be
Every time I got close
Almost enough, my hands stretched out
And again, I’d grasp at the wind
I would have pledged that you were there
I saw you looking at me
Felt you touching my face
You were my cool water
When the desert sweltered me
But now there is a blue hue from the setting sun
I look to the East toward darkness
And it is clear
You were only my footprints
You were only my footprints
Only light and air
Only light, only air


14 Lines

Save myself with these fourteen lines
Soft whispers respect silence and this is
Much like how you love me
I ebb and flow to your words and
They gently peal past me
Unwinding my cover in small
Coils like the skin of an apple
Eventually, part of me falls to the floor
And then I feel naked, and
Dripping with things I’ve tried
In the past to hide
Turn your face away or
Bite into my dripping
Flesh in order that you
May consume me


The Lamp Has Gone Out

The lamp has gone out
I lean against the wind on a hill
With you, wrapped in cloth
Pressing yourself against me
The pieces of fabric you wear
Flutter against my face
Looking across the desert
I see miles, untouched, freedom
This is where we go
Together, where we lay our heads down
And dream to drink
Each other dry

Publication Date: 11-12-2009

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