All night I look at your face on the screen,
how each image flows from that October day
we met, a gap-toothed absence
under the scarlet maple. Masks to stop death
would cover your face by spring.
Masks you wore each autumn
crinkled with the intent to scare, a fear
you seduced with the crash of death-metal
guitars on a skateboarder’s curb.
Behind each mask you smiled into the fear,
knowing it the artist’s way, to transform
some somber chiaroscuro skull
into a Day-Glo self-portrait after Basquiat.
I knew a poet’s transformations, to break
my artifacts of despair, tipping the glass
pyramid of words into a plenitude
of shards. Were we so different?
By your 32nd year, you’d learned
enough of your own tenderness
to touch death with a silken glove,
caressing the neck of your sick cat
or your grandmother’s mortal hand.
You didn’t notice the real monster
lurking nearby, whose grim prophecy
swirled about you in the eddies
from red leaves. The last mask you wore
would be the one you’d take off,
revealing the face I’d glide to
and hold in constant refuge of love.
How I dip and dip my oars, never gaining
my mark inside the weeping, digital cloud.
But when I look up at the wall beyond the desk,
I arrive at my own eyes, tearless, rising
from our last bed. Your unseen brush
guides my face, blue with desire for you,
out of the darkness. Through the painting
I always reach your eyes, my love.
This poem first appeared in Poetry London.
“David,” by Eric Lisenbey (2020).