Thom Garzone

Pondering Aimee

 

I fell asleep dreaming of Aimee

fantasizing I was in love,

harmonizing a frail depth of dawn,

its enigmatic answer

I wondered while sleeping

counting the sheep of other colors,

in the playground of my mind

remembering my bizarre glimpses of madness

 

I awoke thinking of Aimee

recalling I haven’t had a companion

since the nineties,

a sharp void within my sexual confusion,

my lost days and decades I’ve squandered

like a greedy merchant in markets of time

 

I made breakfast visualizing Aimee

in my grilled eggs and sausage

reflecting from the plates and silverware,

recollecting echoes when we saw Twelfth Night;

hence, to greet this grave soul

only with a redemption for passion

 

I wished I had made love to Aimee

thinking, dreaming, feeling her limbs

entwined with mine, my soul joined with hers

linked forever by some uncanny irony

A View from Times Past

            I remember when we raised pets all with the same names,

you’d replace junk food for health food because it wasn’t carnivorous

            your mother roomed with us when not at a ward

sheltered by our mad nights of passion

            I wrote poems and you were my muse,

an aquifer of words that showered helplessly from dark to light

            We were the poet and fortune teller of Santa Cruz

            You still weave in my stories like a tapestry whose patterns I could never quite follow

            We wavered on the fringes of cities, on the west sides of Sacramento and Eugene, the Haight and Castro Districts, and just beyond the Grant’s Pass of our dreams

            We gallivanted like wild deer over wooded borders warding away AIDS with monogamy

 

            Though you never said, you watched my trauma clear on the runways I left on, or through

            as a resolute fog, those bonds that had been moored by my DNA,

            by breath and blood to help vanquish a brutality clenching my will

            To see through my attraction of your androgynous form as my recovery unfolded

            and time marched on in parades, rallies, over meadows, children who couldn’t distinguish   between sexual orientations and old men who cared less if I wasn’t gay

 

            To finally leave you on a farm with other el chivos, ambiguous goats who could just let their beards grow endlessly like yours, laid back and gluttonous

            My entrance as a tricenarian became our last climax,

the coldness leading me back to a warm and comforting home,

            secured by another sense of love

WAITING FOR ALANA

 

            So silent a sculpture

meek    enchanted         ornamented

timeless, shrouded, and armed with bucolic epics

            that graze upon the meadows of my mentality

 

            I glance at the grey glint in her eyes

            like a Geisha of wonder her lithe voice

from divine, sanguine lips, and yes statuesque, slender,

reticent, yet born into love and fearing no human utterance

            that no art may compare

            just as one intrepid warrior against

            defamed obstacles of the planet that burn

sweltering in light, in praise of peace and freedom

            like liberty who lusts over varied truths

 

            Here, I dream of her, reflecting on a magnetic fortress

emblazoned, and crystallizing this sentient clarity,

            so helpless, frail, and mesmerized