Ah men, I want to spread
my arms and take them in to drown their fear,
to love them with a whore’s heart
in the taking, not unwanted giving—
only more they cannot carry through the night.
Their tears cut deeper wounds
of knowing, yet like all else, they do not know
where the bandages are kept,
and sweep the floors with wind gust from
a Boeing forty-seven and bury dinner plates.
Bleeding, weeping purple gashes mark
their unhealing souls, yet lips are stitched shut as if
by Cupid’s arrow turned sewing needle wielded by
a witch’s hand. I want to shelter them inside
a cave wet, warm and temporary.
They speak in a strange sign
language of their own, their arms held tightly at
their sides like saplings planted, rooted in
a ground as firm as waters of the sea and still
they won’t put rubbers on.
But reach out blindly for an anchor
heavy as a dream, a wisp of painted memory to warm
them, warn them, wrap them in wombs made
of smoke, and kneel on sodden sheets in adoration
of their holy lost madonnas.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
Perfect and true.