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a little passion among them


by Jerry Ratch


 

A reddening? A certain swelling, a little passion among them, is there? What lips would not have given what they could, to speak more boldly, more fondly of you now? But now

the country is fastened to arrogance, welded to it in an evil way, wanton with violent flesh, rotten minds, and every deadly imaginable shade of night.

 

And I have driven in secretly too, to the center. I should know better. I was taken by hand to the brutal goddess with evil, welded hair writhing about her in the air (no, I'm not talking about someone like Jolene.) The tying and bindings in the chamber, having an itching without end, without consummation, having been among them once myself.

 

I wish I could have changed how it must have felt to be inside me. But you cannot easily change the natural course of a river. You cannot freeze the structure inside a cloud.

 

Yes, you were a thief, three times over. Three times the land, the earth, the golden flower, three times the unspent sea which hasn't seen your last, because most beautiful things have the need to be watched. Because clouds approach the divine to get light up inside them.

 

Swollen is the mind and the memory of man. Highly wrought with imagination's excesses, a kind of cup raised, pertaining to the young, that the young dawn can see through our dresses, singers of hymns, loadable, fillable.

 

Yesterday dancing together with, today agreeing with, agreeing together, nodding. Saying yes, and again yes. Together walking, holding hands today. But only partially tamable, still.

 

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