Oso Para Vos

Je m’accuse.

On the third of November,
as we danced in piles and flurries
of autumnal foliage, and
played hide-n-seek behind
nameless statues and immodest trees,
we transformed an acre of Central Park
into the palatial gardens of Versailles.
Quietly within ourselves,
we both knew that our friendship
was changing as the rotation of
the earth overtook the
rhythms of our hearts,
making us dizzy and childlike.
It seemed almost ludicrous that a
Taurean and a Piscean would
endeavor to bridge land and sea.
And so, no sooner did you reach out
to touch my face than did I
part my lips to speak
in distraction.
Then — captured by your stellar eyes
and crescent smile,
I arrested the first word in mid-breath
and surrendered my heart to sway
in the winds of confession:
“Je m’accuse … je suis amoureux.”

Private Moments: Homage to Chicago.

October winds lick at my shirt-tails
like a cat eating ice cream;
but the cold only encourages my oblivion,
for it is emptiness that I seek.
Dead to the sirens rushing corpses
to their moment of truth,
and limp to the prey of wayward housewives
shivering on shadowy streets,
I desire only to be alone with my private moments
until the romance of despair numbs
my failed ambitions and consumes my pride.
And like all truly self-sufficient men,
I once again return home … alone …
to celebrate the birth
of Winter.

Three-legged Waltz (The scent of lemons).

Well hidden behind the portals
of passionless and watery eyes
the incessant carousel of an insomnious
three-legged waltz is revealed with
childlike vision; hypnotically in
syncopation with the murmur
of the inviolate ticking clock.
In this surface-like existence, well
beyond resistance and emotion,
every attempt to break through is
as futile as punching a pillow
or screaming in a dream.
And in the absence of promise we
eventually find solace in our perpetual
state of existentialism and blues —
and pretend not to recognize the
ever-present and bittersweet
scent of lemons exuding from
each and every passerby.

Fragments.

Dulled slivers of emotion
no longer entangled with
words flutter and scurry
out-of-sequence.
Once air-bound, the
footloose fragments of
a life gone past seek
resolution and release by
eluding recognition and
assuaging the sharpness of reality.
And quite relentlessly these
now-transformed bits of
parchment confetti find new
definition by recreating history.

I shall soon awaken.

a heavy evening snowfall
weighs my eyelids down.
you see bleakness;
while I rejoice in the
comfort of the refreshing
blanket of purity.
but you are right, Robert:
it is all but a dream,
and I shall soon awaken.

(Poetry, photography and oil paintings by Adam Donaldson Powell.)