Happily Nestled in the Molds

Come and rescue me from this endless sea of cold, automatonic humanity.

There is not a drop of hot blood or fresh spirit among them,

Each one is more like the rest, they are, all of them, quite happily nestled in the molds.

Not one has an original thought or unique idea, they are, every one, asleep.

Each proudly bears the same plastic smile, identical Styrofoam emotions.

I think if I cut one they would bleed tepid, tap water laced with chlorine.

Rescue me before they realize I’m awake, they will surely want me back,

Catalogued, stamped and filed neatly on the shelf with the other delinquents.

Save me before their whitewashed imaginations perceive the wool beneath this wolf’s skin.

Some of them eye me warily already and slink about glancing sideways,

I have spoken too freely of wind and water, the feel of green grass and warm earth.

All will soon know me for the dangerous and subversive deviant that I am.

They have seen me reading books and sitting quietly by myself, I am doomed.

If they discover I write poetry and drink wine at midday without clothing,

I fear I’ll be headed for the stocks, or paraded through the cookie cutter streets,

To be cast into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of socialism.

Deliver me from the clutches of this malevolent mediocrity, come quickly, my Love,

And bring your eyes which hold the swell of all the sea’s foaming, sapphire, swirl.

You alone see me truly, only you have seen the color of my naked spirit.

Bring your heart of fire and hot blood that beats so passionately in the darkness.

Only you encompass and contain me, the flood and surge of all my heat and burning.

Come and bring the world with which our fierce little dreams have labored and borne,

Wet and wild and shining in the night, its blue eyes full of oceans, its heart full of fire.

I live here in every dream but come in your flesh that we may release or bodies,

To walk upon the sands, and the earth and the grass and plant seeds of dreams yet to come,

Dreams of tall, strong sons, sleek and beautiful daughters, to live upon the land after us,

Going forth to live in power and wonder within the world we’ve made around them,

Making and remaking their own world again in turn, writing and rewriting the script of lives.

Come, bring yourself, and live with me the story of us written bold in hearts of flesh and ethereal spirit’s fire.

Eric M. Petit