
Old Wineskins
I did not think it through,
the way your simpering mouth
would take a wrong turn
and retrace the steps of unwanting,
the way desire would not burn
holes in your pious resolve or
your stoic traditionalism, or the way
honeyed words did not tempt
your unrelenting blossoming so that
you still bloomed in the desert
though water was scarce and all you had
to survive was the fountain of my youth.
I did not think it through, the way
your eyes took on a molasses hue,
the rawness so beautifully refined that
I could not pay the price for such spoils
the likes of which I never could afford
though I carried the weight of them
in my ring finger these last few years
like a string to remind me that new wine
could never be poured into old wineskins,
otherwise such wine, so rich in honesty
though tinted with abandon, would burst
open the skins, spilling out the ugly hidden
beneath, and spoiling both wine and skin alike.
I have ruined you.
I did not think it through,
the way your shoulder would turn cold
upon my needed rest, and your lips
would go on strike when mine came near,
the way your touch would keep its place
behind the shadows of your distrust,
and you'd side-glance me with a hint
of such prominent disgust.
And in the eye of your storm, the one that I created,
I am painfully reminded
that I did not think it through;
I did not think it through.