A Kind of Burning
Ophelia Dimalanta

it is perhaps because
one way or the other
we keep this distance
closeness will tug as apart
in many directions
in absolute din
how we love the same
tirvial pursuits and
insignificant gewgaws
spoken or inert
claw at the same straws
pore over the same jigsaws
trying to make heads or tails
you take the edges
i take the center
keeping fancy guard
loving beyond what is there
you sling at the stars
i bedeck the weeds
straining in song or
profanities towards some
fabled meeting apart
from what dreams read
and suns dismantle
we have been all the hapless
lovers in this wayward world
in almost all kinds of ways
except we never really meet
but for this kind of burning.

Read Me
Ophelia Dimalanta

whenever my voice flings arrows
your way at a fiery pace,
read, discover there is that
something in me that dies to go gentle.
for when i viciously tangle
with you trying to throw
you off course, inside, i am raring
to cover you, take you, become
all of me fire and fluid.
when i try to lord it over, empowered,
it is because inside i am already
slave groveling ready to heed your bidding,
crawling waves lapping you up
sea shore hillocks sky
all the way up, all drool and drivel.
and when i insolently seek out
pulpits to mount my gospel truths,
i am really one humped question mark
thrashing about for your steadying light.
and when i try to light you up whole,
there is really a part of your flame
i would want extinguished
to die rekindled in me alone,
and when i am wind taking roots
in your solid ground, i am roots as well
ready to take flight upon your wings.
when i prance around proud in times square.
i am child carousing in the greener
fringes of the heart’s final roosting.

read this idiolect,
read well, decode, detect,
and love me when i seem to hate.