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Uncompromising, the way
I pursue this lover, this world -
She must be pure, and love me only
She must be real, and always get me;
No storefronts and no barndoors in between
—For a love that settles never is enough,
That looks to others as it is oneself,
That waits to be told that what is inside
Is not tangible enough, and what is outside
Is never possible without
Compromise. Ah, the word that burns,
That makes one feel so incomplete,
As if I need to trade in flesh
To finally be at peace - no balance, only chaos,
For the war has many faces, be they theft,
Negotiation, neglect or remonstration
And all to put that person in a book
Of memories, a hero of a moment,
The joke that broke the bitter block of ice.

I want more than the scent of perfumed curls,
The quizzical lift of a throat,
The floating eyes, the unrevealing flattery,
I want to leap into the world and make it scream,
To see her with her own eyes,
To speak a common voice,
To hear and yet be heard
At the same time.

Ah, but there is not a voice at all
For one to hear.
The boundaries are sprayed
By hidden lions
And those may not be zebras
In the distance
But hallucinations.
They play with each other
But never change each other's nature -
The excitment of the game
Resolves to death on contact.
So it is with all the human jousts,
No thought of any other,
Just an endless extension of cheese and snares
Inevitable, the ecstasy and grief come through
Out of one's own mind.

There are only the hints
Of glinting laurel, the black shine
In the pool, suggesting one can
Go on and touch the surface.
But the ripples that arise
Are just an echo
Of something hollow
Deep inside
—For vibration here
Is somehow everywhere,
A swirl of dust nebula
As far as the mind can go,
Finding colors that our thoughts can never know:
The ribbons in a would-be lover's hair
That disappears to dark as if
That's all that ever was there,
That single thought
Of something moving
—Attachments to the shapes that static takes
Loosening.