This Immovable Block

I need to write.

My head's so full of things unsaid my skull keeps threatening to split, and days pile in layers under my skin cuz I can't find the words to say to dispel them.
My emotions leak into the cooking and the evening meal is drowning in too much spice: an angry curry, bitter salad, noodles salty and wet with weeping. My family swallows the excess and we all have stomach aches.

Where are my words? I swear I used to hold them in my hands like bright treasure, the facets winking with myriad meaning. I strung them on silk threads and silver chain and spider webs and on display they would wink in the sun. Now the threads are all knotted and the gems vanished into leaves and dirt like so much fairy money. I cannot hear the music that makes the words flow. My head buzzes like a detuned radio. None of these metaphors are right!

And everybody says that its ok and everybody says not to worry and to wait, do not panic or be afraid, it's only neurons in your brain misfiring.

And what these heathens do not understand, is "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God."

That is the weight of what I have lost.

On Your Birthday I Dreamed...

It has to be 3 in the morning;
I hear the clock first.
Only the outside light came in.
City Light. Storm Light. 4th floor high.
Open windows in the summertime.

I follow your sound
by the wind pushed down the stretching hall,
ghosts of violets and cigarettes
drift from the papered walls
and the metal of the coming rain
leaking in the windows.

The piano is closed.
Cloth lays over the strings.
You play with your head pressed to the lid
like Beethoven,
an Austrian scowl.
Your hair spreads out, curling down
to the keys, tumbling
over the orange-lit ivory.

Muted, I watch you,
holding to the bluest of shadows.
I want to kiss your frowning lips
drink the music that pours like gin
from your dripping fingertips,
but the light you lie in
bubbles around you.
Still in the storm wind, nothing
can touch you,
outside or in.

I listen
to your heaving breath,
the covered strings
the creak of your body bent over the keys.
Held, a ripe fruit
in your mouth for a moment,
translucent and red as a pomagrante seed,
so much bursting tension
the strings thrum, and the sky
turns yellow-green.
The rain begins, and you bite into me.

The burden of thunder,
sharp change in pressure.
Blood on my tongue and your body slumps.
Bent back, dry fingers.
Your sleeping breath,
and eyes still closed.

I know Love,
the weight of a piano.