I Can't Help if I Burn

[dks]

I Can’t Help if I Burn

i can’t help if i burn and a minute after
i freeze

it’s in my constitution.
half my blood weeps
like range honey—
warm gyre of wildflower humor

the other half teems fierce
like a brackish melting of river mouth
and water from seas—
lending my nature some salinity

sometimes
I watch bees dance drunk in the afternoon
draining bloom after bloom

i think of them when i breathe,
fill the walls of my veins again
with two spirits diverged
blush of violet, flood of rose

you wonder how i can feed
on the pap of a swollen moon,
together with rations of a rising sun

i wonder if i nourish you
when i bleed

[Saturn]

Oooh very passionate. Excellent as ever dks, thanks for posting.

[dks]

...thanks, Stephen...thanks for even taking time to read it...

[Saturn]

Are you kidding, you know I never miss your poems

[AsphodelElysium]

Gah, I've been away too long! But I can say, dks, your poems are in the top 5 things I've missed.

Beautiful, as always.

[dks]

Gah, I've been away too long! But I can say, dks, your poems are in the top 5 things I've missed.

Beautiful, as always.

...too too kind...

[steffen]

Here I go again with my obsession with you and your poetry. This poem, posted a year ago, is wrought with hard-won, heart-rending lines, never to be forgotten: e.g

you wonder how i can feed
on the pap of a swollen moon,
together with rations of a dying sun

i wonder if i nourish you
when i bleed.


You're hell-bent on "breeding lilacs" in this, "the cruelest month" of April. You deserve being anthologised.

This poem embodies Keats' lesson in soul-making, calling the world "The Vale of Soul-making": ". . . a World of Pains and trouble is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul... A place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways! Not merely is the Heart a Handbook, It is the Minds Bible, it is the Minds experience, it is the teat from which the Mind of Intelligence sucks its identity - As various as the Lives of Men are--so various become their souls, and thus does God make individual beings, Souls, Identical Souls of the sparks of his own essence-. . ." (To George and Georgiana Keats, 14th February to May 1819).

[dks]

...anthologized... no--in fact, I am writing a poem about this very thing.

[steffen]

OK ----no anthology----Looking forward to your anti-anthology poem. Very mysterious.

[Ennis]

dks --

"i wonder if i nourish you
when i bleed"

reminds me of "This Living Hand"

[dks]

Thank you immensely for even reading it!

[gstormcrow]

"I wonder if I nourish you when I bleed" . . . now that's poetry at its finest! You've boldly captured the temperate/intemperate sides of human personality through your wonderful similes in this poem. This work is definitely worthy of publication - truly a privilege to read. Thank you.

[dks]

"I wonder if I nourish you when I bleed" . . . now that's poetry at its finest! You've boldly captured the temperate/intemperate sides of human personality through your wonderful similes in this poem. This work is definitely worthy of publication - truly a privilege to read. Thank you.

You are too kind! Thank you for reading it! I am honored to be among those who love poetry as I do...