When the Romans Come

I wonder what it will be like?
Walking over that final crack on the farthest sidewalk
With brown grass invading through its recesses.

Breathing has always come so easily;
The chest always contracts and expands
Contracts and expands.
Organs slither together like piles of worms,
A living paper bag is draped over it all
So we can laugh, cry, kiss, understand.

This grey temple buried beneath my hair
Is somehow capable of holding incomprehensible fires–
Warmth and agony,
Soft golden soul, and bright angular spirit–
How strange.

But when the Romans come
Where do the luminescent lovers flee to?
It is difficult to see very far in dark waters.
Is it forever cold and clammy when we leave our ghosts behind?
Maybe the journey never happens;
Light, as glowing embers,
And with closing eyes,
Fades.
Or perhaps the sea is a sky through which we must fall,
To reach heaven’s glass green floor.

Like falling in love I should think,
You always wonder what it will be like
Until it finally happens,
And you know it is not like the other times
When you were not quite sure.
It is either a long dark cloud or the very sun itself.
The rain comes often enough,
Sighing into life with the wind through the pine trees,
But so also does sunlight streak through the dim shadow
To gild the loam and tree bark
Into living kingly halls.

The depth black phantasm in the closet,
the enigmatic void,
Makes these sparks all the brighter.