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lycanthrope
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he wasn't the first to seek mata hari's heart.
she fashioned her smile on smiles just like his.
she'll give you certainty for the small price of
uncertainty.
she'll let you past veils which undulate
like a nervous system through a spine,
in connected leaps and gradual turns.
on her chest, reflected light, droplets,
are they jewels or drivulets of salt?
jewels glittering, like armor, preventing
further disclosure.
she would be your scapegoat for the small
price of your humanity.
If you trusted her, you'd trust anyone,
if you betrayed her, you'd betray anyone.
Because you wanted to believe that
she wanted to believe you, in a moment,
for a night,
holding each other against forests and cities,
against thick walls of wet leaves,
holding up buildings in their deafening teeter,
their shadow vacuums filled with pleading, and
the sad eyes of the masses
trying to climb away from the earth.
Mata hari was the earth, the eastern drums,
and your heartbeat would struggle to match hers,
as it picked up in intensity, because you thought for once,
you knew the truth behind the wilderness's green enclosures
and the forced geometry of the human skyline.
Any fool could've owned the bullet that pierced it,
but no one owned mata hari's heart.
Her heart was the billions of particles of gold fallen to the sea
in the battles of countless galleons and armadas.
palaces of timber and steel unmoored
and filled with men and broken down thrones;
opened up to
and filled with the wind by sharp exposed sails
stretched out seductively like a sacrifice,
painted with the markings of various nations;
sailing over endless variations of light returning
blue, returning like a radar covered in soft static,
garbled topography drowning, calling to the sailors
in their sleep. in their dreams, they walk the bottom
of the ocean, drinking out of gold chalices
where the water turns to wine.
up untill the end it is like this.
after their battle,
they become the very deep
other ships nervously move over
in a motion which feels like falling and rising,
but averages out to an almost peaceful stillness,
so long as there is someone to constantly watch,
to make sure they never reach a place
where they fall too far to rise.
There was one man she would've walked through fire for.
But he couldn't know that.
When you reinvent yourself too many times,
others can do the same.
Your heart fits any standard, they don't see that it hasn't changed,
it's grown.
Their eyes are downcast to their notebooks
while your heart is burst, split open, ravaged impatiently like the puzzle of the skies and the seas.
You become a cadaver who's value they feared.
And like the seas and the skies, mata hari responded only with silence. And a passing glimmer of what seemed a malevolent smile.
She knew no one else would have her love.
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021026
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