‘The Mystery That Is You’ and Other Poetry by Paul Buchheit

The Mystery That Is You

The gasping hulks of rusted wrecks that share
with eyeless scavengers the mysteries
of Styxlike depths; the lecherous affair
of heaving earth expelling centuries
of fetal carbons from its fiery womb;
grotesque microbic warriors, whose fields
of battle on a wisp of breath consume
great armies, more than all the fallen shields
of kingdoms past; the artisans of stone
and bow, whose boundless hunger would betray
them to a shifting desert bed, where bone
and centuries are ground to chalky gray.
Unseen, like these, the passions that you stirred:
forever in my soul are they interred.

Intoxicating Lover

A reverie is misted on my mind
like pollen whisked from purple nectaries.

Her smile is lustrous, white, as if designed
by deities to cap the churning seas.

The musky bronze perfection of her skin
is closer now, to stir a witch’s brew
of sybaritic turbulence within
me, warming, wooing, lifting me anew
on lips aflame with honeysuckle wine
from Dionysus’ vaults. And then I hear
her voice, Sirenic strains, and I align
myself with starry musings that appear
upon her presence and enliven me
with blissful visions of our destiny.

Paul Buchheit is an author of books, poems, progressive essays, and scientific journal articles. He recently completed his first historical novel, 1871: Rivers on Fire.  His poetry has appeared in The Lyric, Illinois State Poetry Society, Poets & Patrons of Chicagoland, Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest, Society of Classical Poets, and other publications.