Skewed Embers (Poem)

Either the past was the Garden of Eden

Or like the flaming heaps of Gehenna

Or our love was like the Garden of Eden

But left among the heaps of Gehenna

.

To the fiery throes, where young love goes

That smoldering pile right there–that’s our love

Grasp an ember so I can remember

Only an ember, the past that I chose

.

Look backward while nothing to see forward

And backward was always warm summer nights

Especially, always warm summer nights

Reminiscing in the dead of winter

.

And what song was playing on the radio?

It probably wasn’t that song, but it

will be that song years down the road, that song

we liked, but wasn’t playing on that night

.

That moment just before the first kiss is

the best part of the first kiss, that moment

when her eyes approve of the foregone move

It’s like our souls kiss before we touch lips

.

Strange how something dies after that first kiss

Knew not what it was, nor that it had left

Not at that time because euphoria

is a euphemism for carelessness

.

The ember partly made of memories

partly made of fantasies, fades away

relunctantly, that time, that place, that person

now only exists in some part of me