Brenda Warren
A kiss fully enunciated
Will empty the lungs
But it is the heart
For which there is never hope
Enough to spare.
The doom of a great love
Can never be spared.
–
Pain is not intolerable,
We suffer in the name
Of all our causes and none
Quite so much as the right to live.
Pleasure takes courage,
To open oneself up to laughter,
To bare both secret and martyr
To a stranger, a fellow prisoner
In the membrane of a shadowed childhood.
–
Love takes the seer, however, apt or amiss
To a state not unlike insanity.
I shine, therefore, I am crazy.
One can neither underestimate
The tendency of diamonds towards blood
Nor the frailty of steel beneath magma.
One can never underestimate anything
As there is always a time and a place
For the unsuspecting victim to fall.