Love’s Reclamation

for Victoria and Andrew

O Grief, 
         genderless colorless wretch 
                   humorless 
crushing palm on larynx
         encircled brawny fingers
cancel carotid canal’s languid pulse 

…an intent 
more powerful than ought possess.


This breathless brutal — ineffable  
dissolves my prowess

siphons off the voice of my flaccid body 

                   lungs burning 
amidst ceaselessly wrenching anguish.


This taut tension of Grief’s clasp 
         cleaves
                  compresses
                                 draws.


My amorphous and cadaverous body 
         unbendingly 
                  succumbs 
below dark fecund humus 
         — my crematory — 
                  my baptismal grave.

Whether 
this extant heart and corpse 
                  remains cadaveric

or raised by 
         Lazarus’s levitational nod
is not of my choosing…


The strings of this fate 
         are held by the stealthy fingers
                  of the Mystery’s
Karmic Puppeteer. 


Should she erect 
an elevated life from this morbidity 

                  — the one rising 
will not be the one 
         annihilated 


For this risen one
         forged into
                  knowing  

visitations of
Grief’s fierce ruthlessness 
and
a summer’s day fragrance
of honeysuckle


are compassions each.

© 2014 Stephen Victor