The Song of Dragons
__________
I always thought of love
as magical as fairies and mermen,
as intense as a dragon’s breathing,
bouqueted by meteors and stardusts
and portrayed in movies by
Leo as the king of the world,
Or Lea singing Saigon or Mulan.
____
I always thought of love
like a little boy in search of
pirate’s treasures, a map of
destiny and companions of wizards.
In love, I flew.
Or so I thought, when I wrote
these lines down in the
blank papers
of my youth:
“Unless I find you,
I will never be me.”
____
But past is past,
and history’s nowhere.
Time has kicked me
in the ass and kissed me
in the eyes –
leaving me hurting in the hip,
and howling in my heart.
____
“Unless I find you,
I will never be me.”
Oh, this was foolish.
Little by little I’ve learned,
that these words were untrue;
A song that was never sung,
words unspoken,
worlds without genesis.
____
Now, I have learned a little,
yes – little by little only,
for although growth
is life and living
is growing and to
cease to grow is to embrace death,
I only grow little
by little,
for love has taken too
much of life:
the fire-breath of dragons
melted
the dragons themselves.
Love has killed the lover.
Love has killed the lover.
____
And so, I choose
to grow up.
Little by little,
little by little:
I choose to live.
____
I have revised
my words,
and now it reads:
“Unless I become me,
don’t allow me to find you.”
I will not wait for
magic until I become
the magic myself.
So I write another letter,
my dragon song,
calling out into the deep,
dark void, straight into horizons,
and into worlds,
and into deaths.
____
Listen, beloved.
I need you to be you,
so when I find you,
I’ll know it’s you. And
by then, you will find
me too, for you’ll know –
deep within the lub-dubs
of your soul, the ache
of your waiting, the groaning
of your years – that I
will be me. And
Unless I become me,
I will never find you.
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