John Brandi

Holy is Every Man's Angel
Where Hides the Mirror of Perfection

Sometimes my tongue wanders
among ruins, feels a word lost under the skin
wants to define the touch, the abyss
the whole nervous theater
as seen from within.

Sometimes my eye exists
without me, and I am carried
everywhere at once until the center is far away
and in the blackness, distant as an undiscovered star
you are closer than you've ever been.

You are my life, my death, my limb.

Like an ocean turned to blood
I find you in what didn't exist—
the moment is carnelian, it runs from the painting
back onto the brush, and I am with you
completely with you without me.

Sometimes there is no punctuation
to the land at the end of the point.
The surf doesn't pound, the shore only speaks
when we leave. It is you, then —in me, under
and around, who opens into a burning page
and fills the storm with silence.

It is we who write our names
purposely close to the tide's edge
that we may find ourselves in what disappears,
leaving the world to begin, far outside
the painting's frame.



Copyright © 1998 John Brandi.