Poetry
Mads Schmidt Rasmussen
For Unsplash+
Flames
A hot September
morning flames fire to heaven,
Golden Lucifer.
Anticipation
to culmination: a bloom,
its cacophony.
I just want to be
loved with your honest tongue and
combustible eyes.
You blew in like a
hurricane, lighting my skin,
shades we’ve yet to name.
Your flame eclipses
me, the sunlight shadows my
moon. We’re annular.
Control the chaos
in you. You’re not thrown into
fire. You are the fire.
Desire’s memory
still fragrant with time’s advance
- sweet orange blossom.
Shhhh, my dear. Our love
speaks in decibels only
our bodies should hear.
Let’s sit under the
blanketing sky and watch the
crown of gold melt west.
You, I, Us
I’m here in front of you, a tree of flesh and bone, sap rising in the veins. Roots deep in the soil of our shared history. You plant seeds of longing within me. I nurture them with whispered promises, the whisper of leaves in the wind. I am the earth beneath your feet, fertile and waiting, You, a thirst-quenched rain and all that remains unsated. Together, we become a forest of desire. You see my branches, reaching for the sky, the creaking of limbs in the storm. You are the sun warming my skin, and I, the flower opening to your touch in this sacred grove of passion. Let’s lose ourselves to the rhythm of nature. You are the axe, poised to strike, heavy with intent, muscles taut with anticipation. We breathe in unison, the air electric, as you prepare to cleave me open. The axe's path, a parabolic curve. In this cycle of lust and love we've spun, our desires sharp as steel meeting bark. You carve our initials in my flesh. I hold the secret in my rings. These rings tell stories of drought and plenty. You seek to count them, but can you read the tales between the lines? As time etches deeper, these feeling things, in the end, we're not so different, you and I, rooted in this earthy bliss. I've weathered seasons, shed my skin, like molting bark. The difficulty lies not in the tree, but in seeing the forest for what we could be. You and I rooted,
– yet yearning to be
free.
Third Eye
“I want to write a novel about the silence,” he said;
“the things people don’t say.” – Virginia Wolf, The Voyage Out
Telepathy,
our mode of conversation, words unsaid.
I know what you want to say,
I see what you don’t show.
For others, your pale brown eyes
puddle pools of mystery
but this is the only language I know.
We become a poem
written with flesh on bones,
tiny particles of the glittery stars of the iris,
all things beautiful I’m fated to love.
I try to tell you with words
but you are between the spaces,
the white space of a poem.
I write the fragile echo of our operatic caesura,
delicate balance, an ethereal dance
defying the swallowing solitude,
the sting makes my eyes water.
I forget where we are, which volta.
There’s over a million words in the English language
but none can describe
the feel of this silence.
I had a dream that every word written in the retina
grew wings and flew away to find you.
No words can explain what is going on
within the secret world behind your eyes,
words distorted and stripped by stillness,
a telepathic language becoming
the only reality that makes sense
with what’s burning behind the eyes.