Friday Love Poems: Amanda Mathews and Andy Bowen!

When The Gardner Loved Houdini

By Amanda Mathews and Andy Bowen

1. The Gardener:

In the quiet

I can hear my undoing,

The soil being tilled from the hard earth.

The sounds of loneliness

blooming from the stem of my throat,

your fingerprints

evaporating from my skin.

There will be great orchards grown from this goodbye.

A someday

of pluck- red

glistening from great boughs of leaves.

For now though,

I am an empty bed of dirt

the seeds of your goodbye,

still moist & swollen

lie restless

beneath my skin.

2. Houdini:

Shackles, milk cans, coffins, straight-jackets,

water filled tanks riveted shut from the outside.

No cage has ever held me so securely

as that made of bone inside your chest.

The day we met had all of the excitement of a rising curtain;

of a smoky spotlight and a tingy piano

reflecting the audiences own breathlessness back to them.

When I took your hand and bowed,

I saw the dirt beneath your fingernails,

heard the way you spoke my name and knew

that I was caught without a key.

But keys are only shortcuts,

an ignorant man’s path to freedom.

The careful man needs only time and attention

to extricate his self from any cage.

I began to watch you;

to study the firm grace of your movements.

How every gesture seemed at once

deliberate and flippant;

both careful and idle,

as though you understood how few

real choices we have in life,

and you meant to offer each one

its due consideration.

I measured the distance between your knees

when you walked with purpose.

I counted the rings in your spine

to know your age.

I could never manage to make these sums

fit into a single word

so I never said it.

But it lingered under my tongue

like a pick to a different lock.

In days I had all I needed

to perform the trick,

but showmanship dictated that I drag it out.

No matter how difficult an escape is

the audience always wants it to look harder.

A smooth exit is unappealing to a paying crowd.

They like to see the struggle.

I bit through sinew and kicked through bone.

I tore through your flesh and skin

like I needed air.

I won’t say I’m sorry.

I won’t bow.

I have never been bested.

I will only say that,

though the bars of longing are wide

and the distance between them is great,

though I cannot see them

I feel them.

I know they are there, just over the horizon,

and I know that I shall never again

be outside of them.