12.27.06

As she stands like an unlit lighthouse on the shoreline,
A dark
wind
blows.

Only waves caress her now,
Only seagulls hear her weep,
Only sand soaks up her tears, and
Only tides pull her to sleep.

She thinks about a place far gone
Beyond the drowning sea—
An island

separated,

isolated from what's real.
The truth has left her stranded here
And set the wrong ones free.
As she rejects reality, she's crushed by fortune's wheel.
(Fortunefatefrivolity, it doesn't matter—She can't feel.)

A dark wind's blowing
Through the cavern in her mind.

A sailor's shore leave cigarette,
She burns hotly in a careless hand,
Sustained by winds now filling sails,
Now shifting west, now stopping dead .
A drop of rain or errant gust
Could serve as sudden ashtray sand
To put her out or drop her where
Light and darkness can be wed.

Why can't she have them both?
A dark wind whistles
Through the cavern of her mind.

"Life's but a tired metaphor,"
She groans with feet sunk ankle-deep
In wet sand soaked by centuries
Of waves eternal, pounding rocks,
Waves that pull her, push and crash
As she now dreams but does not sleep
And pictures pearls for eyes,
For jewelry in a velvet box.

It's a dark wind for her
And her mind
And her soul and body and future and past
And no horizon.
No sun,
Only moon—

Two watchful eyes over light and dark,
But are they not contained
Within the same revolving sky?