By Micki L. Bailey

Can madness drive love out of the heart
If love gave birth to the madness in the beginning?
As beautiful as it is insane, they say
You are my own blue heaven
Disconcerting, disarming beauty
Healing as the colors of the sunshine are the shadows of your eyes
Miracles you�ve worked for me, all unnoticed by others
Stronger than the worst monsters under my bed
Saver of my life roughly one million times
Shepherd of my days and nights
Keeper of that spirit-nourishing pleasure

How can you ask me to remember you
When I�m in danger of forgetting all else?
Seized by longing, that quiet illness of the soul
An onslaught of wanting that cannot be used up in sex
Keen, familiar agonies shooting outward from the aorta
Like being mad � and being aware of it
The fever burns hotter than they can see
Simmer it must, or our world, exclusive and obsessive, will boil
Those who don�t know love, real love
Cheapen it, drawing it down to their level
It is at once harder and gentler than we imagine

Am I afraid? Ah, no, my dark angel, my Rosetta stone
I�m the one to be afraid of, it seems
Renowned for my black moods
Trembling with a great wanton flame of anger
Unable to abide the walking plague of stupidity
And treachery � the flowered crown
Of all other heinous abominations
Love for the truth, instinct for the jugular
Life is full of small, vexing battles
And wretched people who must be endured
Oh, and inescapable lingering melancholy

Why is sadness what I feel best?
What I�m most comfortable with?
Expected and calming as it washes over my soul
Like the inevitable high tide � natural and unpretentious
Surrounded by millions, yet essentially alone
Except for you, forever you
My accommodation to brutal reality
My all-purpose troubleshooter for any crisis of the psyche
Loving you more than I�ve ever hated everything combined
Living in a moment I would die for
Wouldn�t that be something?



March 30, 1999



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