I Can Only See With Our Shared Eyes - Diavolo Ray

poem read by Timothy Arliss OBrien

I Can Only See With Our Shared Eyes
Diavolo Ray

I can only see with our shared eyes

all comedies and dramas whistling below us

gods and serfs, the noble and meager

pink summer babies and elderly winter skin 

tumbling along their zoetropes

my mouth to my lover's ear

when we skimmed the atmosphere

Imagine my delight to discover a fountain

within a fountain of you

becoming Shiva as Nataraja

no law, only this dance

two cobras twirling necks together

sinuous mysteries, iridescent scales

a double helix, a ladder ascending

silver threads in a brocade coat, kite strings

waiting for us to hold them

Like wolves, we only sleep when we want

our tongues are peacock feathers

we blur together in this firelight 

beyond the long roads lined with eucalyptus

Blazing filaments coalesce, the cocoon of this world

bejeweled spiders crawl over hillsides

wearing manacles of daisy chains

trading rani for raja, back and forth

like hummingbirds, without entropy

over trellises of honeysuckle

"I will," said the Devil, that old rooster

crowing as though all he saw he created

and gathering his angels, started his own colony

Those were our ancestors 

our fallen star genealogy

each of their lips wet with this very fruit

---

Diavolo Ray is the award-winning author of the novels Many Arms Enfold Us, and Hypersound.
He is a devotee of Surrealism and occult iconography.

https://www.goodreads.com/diavoloray