Ballad

It's a story of eight syllables

per line, or thereabouts

but throwing the form

is fine: quatrains don't have to

internally rhyme.

It's a story that starts like this:

glances, words, lips; the

joining of sensitive fingertips.

And by the end of it, all

is not fine.

But do you know why?

Well, here's the story.

I can no longer cry

over its telling

(but here comes the black gold:

here comes the
upwelling).

How can the human heart drown a person so? 

And in joyous joy still bring darkest sorrow?

And how can pleasures give one sleep

and yet spurn one in that deep to weep?

I loved her for many a year and

swore never to desecrate her form:

her body was a vessel, yes,

but we left our bodies behind:

we found the God in each other.

We said, is that us in the mirror?

Must be, she said. Can't not be, can it?

But looking upon my body

is like looking at myself in a photograph.

It does not seem real, because

my body has evaporated, escaped me,

and all that is left is light, and the

luminous manifestation of love.

And in these luminous truths she gave me eternal life.

And when she died, I eternally died.

And even though I know so much, I

can never survive without her at my side.

Can never love again. Because her love

is enough to sustain me in all lives: this

life, the future life, and all the lives I might wish

or not wish for. Her love opened up a door.
I stepped out from a small room to a verdant infinity.
She showed me the way, showed the body's decay,
but we were buried in ecstasy, two angels in flame.

So tell me how: how can the human heart 

drown a person so? And in joyous joy still bring 

darkest sorrow? Because the heart is an ocean:

I took a dip in hers, was submersed in the riptide,
drowned joyfully, secreted into that pulsing ribbon of muscle,

and I shall never find my way back home.