Franck Prelude in B Minor, Op. 18

Your melody, wet needle burrowing in pleated fabric of my layered mind rocked in the cavern of love’s scarlet womb before I bore a name, I reeked with sin and with decay. Nostalgia sharp and sweet a lullaby of muslin, swaddle me

my love is rinsed and slick as marble tombs as branches against pale breath of winter sky

my single gift bestowed upon the world: a residue of craving. What remains?

my thoughts of navy blue and swollen lust your pale fingers fondling piano keys

all love coalesces over decades a father or husband, lover and child

like my father, hunched with ivory zeal your stretched, impassioned palms yearn for octaves

this song is not only yours, but the song of every man who waded in my dreams

whose skin remains unknown, holy, untouched who left my thoughts damp, jagged, or enflamed

you sink down my body as a drowned stone I swallow your sleek and silver arrow

so you thought you would disappear with death but melody haunts, bleeds across the years

how can wood that plucks, that aggresses string arrest the blood that courses through our veins?

I ask you: forgive the smallness of me I am nothing, really. A wisp of girl

my one legacy: the drenched, pulsing heart clenched and sobbing in a 9/8 meter

your refrain drips with the desire of stone to bury itself in soil, water, caves

to sharpen the stalactite’s longing spear aiming at the earth’s cold eternity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW4-lDMv4nI 

Painting by Paul Evans