THE KISSLING

Everything should be poetry. To die for! There should be love, or you won’t play.
And life should be as strong as death. As if poetry and love
were one... You should become one with all.
A pendulum swings in the emptiness of existence,
hitting mountain peaks at times and the waves of the sea at others.

As the strength to hold your breath grows weak you should surface
so as to plunge back into the same game after inhaling once.
Fine but hey nobody’s obliged to give you the kiss of life.
So it’s your trouble and yours alone that you’re a strange player
with wind-like wings who can only survive between fire and water.

That’s what you say, though you want those you make yourself read to see
the poem you lay with cleft pomegranates ablaze at your feet
Yet the readers do dabble in the doodles of poetry
and they do plant a kiss on you for love of those fine details, occasionally.
You collect the kisslings

hoping they’ll turn into a long big one.      [But nothing
comes of kissing.]