Lovers' Age
Location
memo left on yellow notepads
the resonance of tides in the sighs of an old man
with a demented back, empty beer can
and crooked disposition sinking,
in a dysfunction of a life
evaporating from the surface of his face
glazed with the disgust of Saigon’s Mondays
hearing blindness and seeing rolling thunders
in a hiatus of his criminal tendencies and faultless blunders
to be left, as the stone that the builder rejected
only to capsize his new ark in Newark’s mess
trenched in subjective thrones, echoing bells of distant funeral homes
to tell both sides of a story, one of a patriot and malcontent
written in unspoken words
guilty lullabies sickly putting him to rest
through the sleepless evenings
mind’s wounds wrapped in dying naïveté and faltered reasoning
when August breeze released, between breaths, to space out his steps, bad habits, grace, and old ways
lines of his palms wrinkled into lines of psalms
and at last he regretted in never seeking covenant with fragmented traces of joy
he had once found in the blackest abyss
and in his demise, with his failing eyes, he realized
that which he had never claimed moments before his put to peace
had been there from his start to finish
depicting an unnamed soldier on a painting without a frame
she reflected, on the fruition of her dreams
she stayed dry-hearted but relinquished her tears in a stream
in a revelation of what seemed
reminiscent, seeking the diamonds of her youth
that was devoted to conflicts of the restless and tumultuous truths
innocent heart in a written page of her honest prose still unfazed, came alive to her sentimental old age
memories, suddenly inundating her mind,
reminding her of her past in one final moment of atonement
she had realized what her husband’s words meant
conceiving one’s beauty and regret in sharp images of a passionate mask above a generational task
flashed back to a time she simply couldn’t grasp
in a mere slumber,
far beyond the stars of her somber, yet prideful countenance that longed to endure amongst her children
only to have spoken of the distance between her unspoken words that she’d let
into the depths of her brilliant resilience
to echo through many caves and undisturbed provinces
naked eyes and silent skies, whose moons she yearned to have had whispered back
and would have felt the warmth
as one feels in the naïveté of a dove
as one feels in of death and its love
one that’s undead only between a thoughtless boy and a girl.
And to think, she breathed for his last to have told the bravest story ever known, one of an ordinary love growing old.