‘All the Times One Wanted to Walk Away’ & ‘Burial Rites’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

All the Times One Wanted to Walk Away

In Vienna, you thought it too profound to say love me.
Of our divine inferno, as you called it, I loved
being its prisoner and your beautiful disregard
of it: your reprimands lingering in the air’s orange perfume,
my soft weeping the lullaby to which you fell asleep,
your thundering snores the denouement of our evening.

The banisters sang songs of philos for the descent of
Eros: the mahogany reddened like my lipstick pigment
and the steps creaking in coital harmonies.
When you scoffed yet descended the stairs after it.

On the hotel veranda we shared breakfast—
colazione, you ameliorated—
my love ever as hot as the mocha espresso,
as tempting as spreading all the gianduja cream
atop my biscuits, leaving none for you.

When I twirled the knife in the juice
of the jar, replaying our joust of yesternight, pleading:
Darling, do not forget I am your mosque;
Let the horrors nesting in Past’s loins be our charm,
Let them mature into things you love: cherries, boutiques.
Venture! Let us organisms dance in the aggrandizement.

Then, Venice—how their servants welcomed you,
thinking you a crucifer imported, a blessing from Karlskirche!
when you are merely a postulant, rendered immobile
in your waiting to secure my love,
my approval dangling before your tongue.

Our voyage along the Venetian lagoon
where I collected stolen glances from the gondolier,
my pulse thumping like its rudder when
your possessive grasp landed on my neck,
held as you doused my cheek with a smacker.

Oh, all the times one wanted to walk away!
Though I am rendered defenseless like the Simonists
of Dante’s Hell plunged into the ground, their feet ablaze,
just as my heart is afire for your wiles and you.

Burial Rites

It begins when home soil is raided,
the reminder that no earthly dwelling is safe
from infiltration. Inundating Rain storms the
barracks of root and clay until all organisms are
flushed out. And when the bodies of so many
worms are lined up for execution on the cobblestone
crematorium, the mocking sun doing its worst,
they are granted no urn save for the trapping labyrinths
of shoe soles. And when passersby do trample and stomp
on and past the massacred and the still-writhing displaced,
unsure if it is the rain or the worm to blame for the littered
pathway—they were not outside during the storm, after all—
the grass blades shake from the shock of slaughter and plead,
if anyone is listening above, may He remove the Worm Crushers’
hearts of stone and give them hearts of flesh! so that
someone may look upon the site in horror and extend the courageous hand
that will transport the worms to Sod, will dig graves of flower petal
and dirt for their home burial, and will not stop, despite scornful stares
of onlookers, until each corpse has met its proper resting place.

Blake Harrsch is a poet corporeally in New Jersey with a writer’s heart determined to capture stories beyond temporal bounds. She is an English Literature Master's candidate and writing instructor at Seton Hall University. @blakeharrsch, blakeharrsch.com.