L'azul

By Joseph Hesch


There are days when I emerge
from this thicket of self-doubt,
scratched and bleeding from
my mad-eyed crashing about,
searching not for you, but for
the me our story has written I am.
It's a dark hollow into which,
limping, mahogany-eyed and
lashed by the old demons behind me,
I think I see my fate carved into
the walls of this mile-long grave of 
my better judgment and best intentions.
But then I see your smiling face,
like dawn above me,
the lips that mend this broken soul.
And I feel it coming back,
that everyday love
of towering dimension, perhaps
a mountain too high
for this small man to climb.
But you, my spirit guide, turn to me
capturing an image in your polished lapis eyes,
mirrors with which you see me.
"Isn't he grand?" you say.
And I climb.

The Taste of Truth

By Joseph Hesch

I didn't know I needed you
even when I saw you everywhere.
We'd never met, but I was sure
you existed, I'd see you
in the faces of the grocery checkout girl,
that nurse in the ER,
this television newswoman.
They all look, sound like you, yet nothing
like you. They are your pale echoes.

You'd sensed me, too. That breeze
that woke you was my breath
on your cheek, that chill at your neck
my fingertips. That sound, my whistle,
that hum of words harmonizing
with your heartbeat, my hymn in
your angel soul. That's what drew
you toward our inevitable collision
in the cave of the forgotten.

And now we reach for one another
in the dark, beneath a duvet of stars,
upon a mattress of space and time.
And it's real. It's your face, crowned
in gold, I gaze at. As no one has before,
it's me touching you, my Diogenesean tongue
seeking truth in your darkest places,
and finding it wrapped around yours.
You taste of it as we untie our bindings.

Lines of Demarcation

By Joseph Hesch

Surrounding us in every direction, limned
in every possible form, these boundaries
and borders, these lines of demarcation.
We can barely step away from them,
they’ve  so entrapped and squeezed our lives.
Do we draw them to keep others away
or to keep our respective enclaves
of body, mind and soul within?

Strokes of natural and man-made
geography, you mountains, oceans,
rivers, borders, colors, words on a page,
the signatures conscribing them against us,
are constructs that have lost their
constricting hold on this lacerated heart,
this freed mind, this scarred but open soul.

Each day, I look into blazing dawn’s

bright smile blurring and erasing
so many margins long marking my reserve,
my captivity. I know I can cross them now,
like they’re maps strewn across the floor,
mere cursive Ts in my notebook.
This syllogism may be false, but I’m a man
of many faults on the run to the next dawn.


We're linking this poem up to dVerse Poets Pub's Open Link Night, hosted by the incomparable Joy Ann Jones (You may know her as @Hedge_witch). Stop by and let Hedge pour you a tall one and mingle with some of the poetic clientele.

Aether

By Joseph Hesch

You spied the light of me across Plato’s dark aether--
a comet you said, omen of a coming--
where others rubbed it away as an eye-corner flicker.

My Fire drew in your Air, consuming that breath
with which you make being of sparkle, songs of soul.
This drab Earth resisted the quenching rain,

until Life’s plow broke me and your Water
entered my forgotten softness beneath the crust
others had tread to adamant armor.

We burn brightly now, pushing up flaming blooms,
embracing ivy of connection, the sweetest fruit
of seeds cast from the stars in their aether,

where I sensed a heart-tripped something
between Universe and the Sphere and wondered...
Perhaps?

Hiding in Plain Sight II

By Joseph Hesch

I have reached a point at the final crest
of this autobiographic thrill ride,
before the long slow descent to its end,
where I can look back and see
how much of it I’ve missed
by being the close-eyed loner in this seat,
the dust-shrouded outsider,
the look-no-hands clown,
the genderless confidant. 
I realize my pioneering work in camouflaged,
hide-in-plain-sight isolationism
is today’s normal.
And all the other seats appear empty.

These new virtual hermits  
live in their in their cars and cubicles,
behind desks and counters,
and under the covers in thrall of TVs,
computers and smartphones. 
They hide behind avatars, masks and
sullen defenses so the real them
is kept undiscovered –-
a secret for their eyes only. 
If they even open them.

Now on my downhill glide, I’ve started to knock
some of those defenses down – my own and others.
Even if I never make that ultimate connection,
warm form to warm form,
I think the ride will be pretty splendid
in its own right, the bandwidth wind in my hair.
Of course, my greatest fear in this quest
is that I really am alone in this world
of click-to-connect friendships. 
Or worse, I’m just naïve enough
to think I'm not.

Over the Top

By Joseph Hesch

She always had a problem 

with how he tended to over-think, 

over-do, over-reach, 

over-react, over-analyze, 

over-everything.

So, because he loved her so very, very much, 

he tried to change, a total make-over.

He tried to become like he saw her, 

accepting things as they came,
not sweating the small stuff. 

Something he wasn't, really.

He beat himself nearly senseless 

to overcome his obsession

to make a big deal over every

little thing in his life. 

Understandably,
he was perplexed by the how or why, he
underestimated how much 

he’d changed to be the guy 

he thought she wanted.

That’s why he never fully
understood what to do, 

when she said,

“We're so over.”