doubting you would, under the Ford Street Bridge at dawn, you kissed me, as a trumpet vine grabs onto every available surface, on arbors, fences, telephone poles, and trees, you wrapped your tendrils into my yellow throat and made the world feel closer than it ever has before.Unmediated by the veil of what we think we know, I kissed you back, and together we became unfamiliar, like finding new oceans. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included […]
love
A Bond
As lemongrass holds the river’s first shimmer of morning light, you possessme. Drifting in the marsh, my fingertips dipping in the water, like a luminous blue god, you have become an idea that I can no longer doubt without proving my devotion. Yes,you hold me, you hold me, you hold me as wood holds the frame of a house, or as iron […]
Sri Yantra
Just as water will flow througha well-worn riverbed, even beyond and after death,I go to that place of memory between our legs, holdingthe sacred vessel with my lips, a holy mass we recite by rubbing,by binding, by applying our Tantric perfumesto the wound and by eating the unfolding body baked with sago,the astral body weaving […]
At First Sight
The hour I walked through your temple door,I came and knelt before your table. Thirsty and tired after a long journey,you asked me what I needed and poured water.I had no answer for your beauty. So I loved you without explanation. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included […]
I Miss You
everywhere, in the hairs on my head and of my body. In my nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, stomach, bowels, mesentery, and excrement. I miss you. Your absence floats in my bile, my phlegm, my pus, blood, sweat, lymph, tears and saliva. I miss you. In the oil of my joints. […]
Virgin Birth
Impregnated by the stars,the womb flower invited you, swifter than lightningyou were invoked,refreshing the entire world,a cloud releasing its rain evenly for all George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, The Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, […]
The Birth of the Sacred Mirrors (for Alex Grey)
Birds settle on a tree for a while,and then go their separate ways again.There is no separate way apart from you.When I breathe, I can taste your breath,ablaze with an all consuming fire.When my heart aches,there is nothing you will not understand.Many have died in this house, but not you. Overtaken by this thing which men […]
Fire Sacrifice
The way some firefliesHide within the grassFaking the fluorescent signs Of cold heat, I waitedTo possess you, to consume you Entirely, absolutely, as gravityBends star light, or vines relax Over the necks of grapes,This desire springs from the soil. When you come and go, I feel Like a burnt offering George Cassidy […]
Echolocation
I want to find youWith my sound, empty and Marvelous, in the void, givingYou shape with nothing else Except the idea of your molecules.Every jewel, each note, contains The reflection of all the others. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary […]
A chant, to wail, hospital ward
It is the year 3001, and humanity has almost reached the point of no return: only a select few humans—known as “The Feelers”—are able to experience emotions, and a governmental program has decreed that they be medicated to ensure they to adopt the detached, unfeeling dispositions of the younger generations… Syringe in hand, Doctor Albright […]