portrait

i have a damage of my own i need to fix in you
done in part by rule and the other of my thumb
a gift you wore like the painted still life canvas
i drew out on you in blue and then in blood

the scar i left is healing the burning oil
it festers cool in places kissed the most
no reasoning for loving is an open knife
given daily by
to wake some holy ghost

no time to sit and forage thru the embers
the faggots burn red-blue like smoldering ore
sing justice on the breaking downs of timber
ringing hot like vintage girls with no remorse

the blowing leaves outside your window clutter
near the ashes of a fathers paramour
they haunt with you the spirit of that wind
and you push and shudder and gently close the door

when rapture meets the cold upon your bed
is my hand alone enough to rue the knot
to warm the substance of some inmost fire
and untie the nuisance hanging in your thoughts?

is it not breath that comes to you in silence rendering
not breath that feels beneath you to your room?
the breath that wakes you softer than the morning hours do
breath that cuts much deeper than the wound?
renewed this breath of absence bleeds removed


jPayne 3.31.10
photo jP summer 09

you're like the sun in spring when its cold between the days - i love in shadows, and ache for you - warmth, reasons to bloom.


jPayne 3.29.10
photo smithsonian wright bros

indomitable

i am

the antecedent on your lips from a hundred miles away
and the prophesy your gentle feet assuage
i have nothing to apprise you bar an anxious lean caress
removing nothing but the antiquated dress
this will fit you nonetheless
and i know it will be kind against your breasts


jPayne march 2010
photo jP spring 2010

delecroix

bare chested liberty will far outweigh your dignity
holed up in a cottage outside the circles,
where the weeping hot mess care nothing for platitudes
and the love that begs to be near seethes unmasked
behind the rippling of pools repeating further
and farther from the stone's reach.

jPayne 3.09.10
photo jP winter 2010 QUEENS

i met love today,
full frontal.
it came, bearing the richness of long pearls
sent down with the weeping and the wearer to vaguely death.
my sorrow lie beside her heaving
and we thrust dirt in upon our rest.

i walk with her now by spirit low
and the days pace distant of her scent,
but the cotton dress she wore and left
as gently cast aside lament
preserves the pepper, mint and musk of who i am

jPayne 3.03.10
photo mMckee winter 2010

a damaged fox bites out and never believes you only want to fix the broken leg. your intentions read loudly like the hunt it knew yesterday. you appear with something in your hand like a belted father set to ruin with the buckle. the weight of your grip is an unbearable dream and the empathy on your face reads like anger - and the hope that you could ever restore is washed in filth with the justice of others. no one is true, no one is sacred, no one is more than false. and even though your teeth are white with compassion, the mere size of you offers impossible relief.

jPayne 3.03.10

awakening

It was not that she dwelt upon the details of their acquaintance, or recalled in any special or peculiar way his personality; it was his being, his existence, which dominated her thought, fading sometimes as if it would melt into the mist of the forgotten, reviving again with an intensity which filled her with an incomprehensible longing..

k. chopin - 1899
photo jP - new years tuscano 2010