When Dawn Arises

by Andre Fernandes

  As we grow apart,

  for the sake of my humanity –

  we will watch each other’s faces

  constantly change

  with tears that carve

  a seemingless shape.

  but that’s ok –

  that’s life, sweetheart,

  and you’ll never be ready for life,

  and believe that as you believe

  that life will one day end

  as will you.

  In good truth I must tell you:

  if you lost your inner child

  you’re already dead.

  so I saw the future,

  or what was left of it

  and I was still the same

  as yesterday –

  I am still the same human being

  lost in the childish wonders

  of constructed utopias –

  a prisoner freed & awaken

  by delusional glimpses

  of infancy.

  I must love life

  and be ready to embrace it,

  no matter what.

  LOVE SONG

  There was melancholy enough in her

  to seize thrones & queens & drowned ships

  & Atlantis would laugh hard

  on her knees, under the sea,

  knowing she was dead an' all,

  where all treasures dwell,

  even the El Dorado.

  But still,

  I'll never understand what she had

  that no other woman could ever offer me.

  Her poetic hair, poetic eyes, poetic breasts,

  poetic legs, poetic ass, poetic hips,

  all she became my poetry,

  my religion, my favorite

  music at night.

  I wrote this

  one night, on the beach,

  waiting for dawn,

  watching waves performing their

  last dance,

  between life & death,

  before the sand cut their head off

  and seized their

  last dance.

  I wrote this at night,

  when my sanity was at bay

  with my inner demons

  & their sweet songs

  of love.

  "She lives in a city

  under the sea."

  Well, I wrote this

  and maybe one day,

  she'll say:

  "I love it."

  and she'll know

  I wrote it

  while thinking of her.

  There's not much about life

  that you can't figure out -

  it all comes down to this:

  either you love

  or you're out.

  We're not in Kansas anymore.

  We never were. In fact,

  the only thing real

  in my world

  are your lips

  and them alone

  sustain the breath of cities

  and their people with their dreams

  and the sun with his fever

  and the moon lost

  between the

  stars.

  Stars always feel right

  in any poem you write.

  It must be

  because they're dead

  but still breathing.

  And so your lips

  hold the gates to my golden sun.

  Anything else is a waste

  of reality.

  and just as before I was born

  so it will be

  after I'm gone -

  a dream within a dream

  within a dream.

  and life is but a dream

  that only happens while we're at it

  and we should kiss

  because dusk will fall upon us, someday soon,

  and just like a city

  buried under the sea,

  we too shall

  forever be lost in time

  but we'll remember

  each other's

  lips -

  maybe not,

  I just wanted to kiss you.

  BALLAD OF A CITY AT DUSK

  the city lives -

  bathed by dusk

  & strange colors

  which my eyes

  strive

  to compose, such

  is the

  absence of light.

  and there

  dwells a city

  lost in her own

  unaware existence;

  and their residents

  all aim

  for the rightful chance

  to bleed

  & leave a stain

  on the stone floor.

  Genius is the recovery

  of childhood at will,

  said Rimbaud at the

  age of seventeen.

  He knew it all,

  he had life figured out

  at the age of seventeen.

  And this beggar keeps

  staring at the sun –

  he lights up a cigar,

  next thing you now

  he burns a star,

  right there,

  in the middle of

  the sky.

  Maybe he deserves

  the best place

  in the sun;

  maybe he deserves

  the love a woman,

  to wake up with

  that beautiful sight

  at his side;

  maybe he deserves a

  poem, this poem;

  maybe he deserves a

  chance to be looked

  in the eye by someone

  who hasn’t figured

  life yet, who still

  is in love with

  mystery and wilderness

  and all things

  unknown.

  Perhaps he deserves

  the taste of childhood

  once again.

  Maybe when dawn arises

  he may be born again,

  different kind of

  love, different

  shelter.

  The gods roll the dice

  but we can kill them.

  We follow the road –

  a place where canyons

  dry in the sun, where

  dusks try hard to hide

  the El Dorado.

  And I’m living out of bread.

  Queen of teenage velvet balls.

  I’ve lost myself in manhood,

  as my wonder years slipped away,

  and I can’t remember where

  my playground dwells anymore.

  Do you remember?

  We used to write poems

  under the starry night,

  sleeping beside a shelter

  built over

  other people’s roof.

  But you don’t love

  that kind of life anymore –

  and I still do.

  The moon, who once ejaculated

  beams of stars above us,

  as grown tired of waiting,

  waiting for us.

  Now I must leave reality

  & find my own place in the sun.

  And they keep telling me

  I’m bound to stumble upon

  the El Dorado.

  Uh.

  Who knew.