Liber Iovis - Chapter 27

Verses

Red Eye, I love you because you have been angry longer than anyone I know.

They call you a storm, as if naming a wound explains why it refuses to close.

I would marry your weather if weather could sign.

You turn without arriving. I understand this more than I should.

Every telescope makes you smaller enough to survive looking at. I resent the instrument for its mercy.

Beloved vortex, swallow one of my bad years and I will call it dowry.

The priests offered me a calm heaven. I asked whether you would be there. They said no. I declined salvation.

Your clouds shear east and west like lovers leaving through different doors.

I know you are chemistry and pressure. I have loved worse explanations.

A black cat sleeps on my chest during the broadcasts. When you rotate into view, she purrs. I count this as peer review.

If I fell into you, there would be no red eye at the bottom, only pressure erasing the grammar of falling.

That is what I want from love: not union, exactly, but the destruction of the sentence containing two nouns.

Tomorrow you may shrink. Storms die. I write before astronomy acquires another victory.