a leper's ghazal

[joel]

This daylight-saving sky departs in pinkish patches just the same as ringworm leprosy.
This scaffold iron frame now starts to, red with rashes, rust in shame as ringworm leprosy.

A letter of a long goodbye too long denied arrived with blame forgiven long ago.
The countenance of reminiscence doth protest too much to tame as ringworm leprosy.

A swift reduction in the trees: the little birds and beasts turn game as victors cull their play.
What tiny targets of mortality we victors turn up lame as ringworm leprosy.

Resplendent as a lit marquee announces some fluorescent name, your all announces you.
It’s funny: nothing holy gives a human near so much for fame as ringworm leprosy.

Those moments when we mourned when nothing yet was lost, those moments came like unpredicted storms.
Not grief, but my forgetfulness of you irrupts in me a flame as ringworm leprosy.

My love for you like some persistent needy hag does beg and claim its need requited.
My love for you—embodied, tortured and importunate—became as ringworm leprosy.

Dormition ’s such a buoyant thought; and dust from dust, for such acclaim we’ve floated all away.
The daffodils long dormant rise again today and dust enflame as ringworm leprosy.

[Arcadia]

leprosy...
mother Theresa
Che Guevara
bells of fear ringing in medieval streets
Nikos Kazantzakis´s Pobre de Asís
Bono singing about to kiss the lepers in your head
bad heavy local fútbol jokes
one woman almost without nose that I saw in a bus
Fontanarrosa

(maybe it´s not leprosy, only a ringworm and the solution is chinese ink and a curandera!)

[Susan Marie]

Joel,

this read to me as one heart seeing through many eyes, many experiences.

In society, in regret, nature, life and death, fame, love and the ending of that, and in the end, a rebirth.

(this line I adore: My love for you like some persistent needy hag)

Amazing perspective on the cycle of life and the human psyche and heart.