Smelling of melon and charred corn chips,
two old lovers came to me in a dream
describing poems they’d written
and squirreled away on flash drives
in case of famine to feed a starving heart.
Their verses spoke of Rorschach tests,
of beauty in the legs of insects anchored
to a spider's web, but I did not understand.
At Toul Sleng
December 2005
Some doors should not be opened,
like the door to the basement
where you know a monster lives.
Or the door that presses into
Toul Sleng, with its cells of red
brick and mortar, each too small
for stretching limbs, the window
slits too narrow for the creep of light.
Some cells should not be used,
and deep sleep overtake us all
for days, weeks, months, years
until the madness of Pol Pot is fit
into a straight jacket and you are
wakened safe from your dark brick
nightmare, safe from the genocide
lurking on the other side of the door.
Some scenes should not be dreamed,
no dream of these airless cubicles,
for the thought itself will kill you,
as will the idea of the next room,
the room the guards drag you to,
the room of chains and tables
and that tray of tools to work
the mangled change upon your body.
Some monsters should not be conjured.
Better you curled up for the duration,
dreaming in your tiny red room,
in the expanse of your mother's womb.
Better me to dream of flying home
to the swamp of Northwest Ohio
where I open the door of a basement
whose only monster hums and pumps water.
Looking Like Frostsbite
This dry summer sun bleaches the mold,
the friendly colony that settled on your skin
and thrived there through the winter,
your body the only warm place
in the seven empty rooms bound together
by tight-closed doors,
our home,
that shell around unheated eyes,
my eyes or yours or both, who could tell,
for we were equal in the game of silence.
No matter who stared the longer,
for we both
survived
the colony
of longing feeding
on the surface of us.
We ate just enough
for heat
enough to sustain us without
having to touch
too much,
warming the bloom
of white
spreading up your arms,
down your chest, belly,
thighs
—or was it I who blossomed leprosy—
looking like frostbite
should look to naked eyes.
Oh, the balmy illusion we generated,
we two encrusted
until the spring sun
scrubbed through
a window pane.
photo by Thomas Born