The Poetry of Mark Daniel Milbocker 
Tasting the Tears of Fura[1]

Born from the volcanic heat of passion
desiring to fill to overflowing 
what a wandering life could never garner
with all its endless overturnings
for sometimes the eye skips by 
what it most wants to see 
unable to believe in its own grasping 
just as easily as it conjures shadowy
aching phantoms to scare away 
the forlorn need.

From this cataclysmic outpouring
does the raging ichor of mountains
cool to a hard, inky glass easily
fractured in mirrors of concavities
and knapped to a toothy blade by
those skilled at holding 
lightning at bay.

Just as those embraced by love
leave many words unsaid and
trust in the enchantment of eyes
to hold the thrall of a spell 
supposedly timeless yet easily
fractured by circular logics
and the need to walk through
other gardens to quest for 
lushnesses yet unpossessed.

Here can be heard the screaming
of butterfly contrition confronted
with suddenly seeing its own blood
gushing from a serrated tongue
frozen in the realization that
all the underpinnings turn upon
one shared tenon that trembles 
from this ineffable unbinding.

The blood of the innocent dries
upon this desertion like a lost
river wilting to a salt bed tinged
pink while warriors take their
spoil cleaving mountains to stone
with hearts of lightning untamed
til they grow old and impaled
like stones left to weather
so that some day between their bones
may be discovered the uncryable remnants
of Eden's vigor that dared 
to grasp two snakes at once 
and presume to walk away.
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