Beauty is Imperfection

Reincarnal

By Eric Rasmussen

Love like accidental planets that crossed

Thick with mezzotinted atmospheres, moirés of

Opposing dusks

Life in a mere 80 years, like 80 minutes winked shut

For a few chiasmus-soaked cross-hatching lines of verse

To dote and fawn away, to fall in love but only for a day

Each time; mixed with mixolydian verses

That chink with the ice in lemon gin reverses

Seething with thoughts born only in momentary extremes

Then in words poured out with the mildness of cream

Thought (and life) lived only from the black to the white

Life breathed through a dilating glade

Slithering to the thought with the pallor of jade

But to think again, to love again, to live again

In the extremities; how does it like us, these?

If all that is thought is chemistry, if all we do is think

Then this thought will live again on a thin aired gloaming

Until there’s nothing left of it to drink