Devotional

What’re you doing, my love?

Image description:

“Omphale figure,” from the Ptolemaic or Roman Period, c. 100 BC–300 AD, courtesy of the Met’s public domain image collection. Image description: a tiny, red, waxy nude figurine with an inscrutable face and legs open stirrup style. From the Met’s description:: Omphale was a figure of Greek mythology whose liaison with Herakles gave her power over the womb and the travails of childbirth and, by extension, over rebirth after death.

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Through; love and sickness

It don’t hit, me, quite the same

Sinister wisdom in this witness

At a distance,

equipped to quit with a quickness, such a shame

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What’re you doing, my love?

Where did you go?

What will I do without you?

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Catch me, hold me,

Know me, only

All of, the whole me,

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Something don’t feel right,

Because it ain’t right

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And what’s left

Lest you forget

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What’s worse —

I’d rather be crazy

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drown me

Surround me

Just don’t go without me

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I used to be full of you

Til I was bold and overflowing

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I’d rather be crazy

I’d rather be cozy

I’d rather be coping

I’d rather compose

But can’t stay composed

Not while the sun’s exploding

Though it evokes the inner poet

Coming close to comatose

While the knowing encroaches

And the low thing floats

Slowly like a lotus out my throat

Exposed so it glows

But couldn’t put it into prose

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And I don’t smoke

Except for when I’m missing you

To remember your mouth, how it made the flame burn good

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Do things, I never should do

Because; it brings me back you—

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There is yet another screen

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Cannot hear who screamed into the night

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What must the moon feel hearing maidens’ wailing ways

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She cannot protect, only save

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Only wait for the ones who came

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No harm is undone by calling me brave

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Tests of strength ought not make the whole dam

Almost

just barely

not

break

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