November Heart Beats for Lhasa De Sela

I Didn't Call and You Didn't See

Me for a While

by AE Paulino

Lhasa Lhasa O dear,

Dearest Lhasa, from where, where

If not only from the lobby of your heart

Does that voice carry four chambers

On its back and up through the slight

Aperture of throat, does it compress

All that blood into song, into vibrations of air?

Lhasa Lhasa O dear,

Dearest Lhasa, from where there,

If only there does that pain swell and clenched

Like eyes, does a tear damp those fists?

Lhasa, for it is November

Dearly November and your airs make love,

Sheets of fallen temperatures that wrap the streets--

O dear, you make again, the heart with which I move

Its not enough, no longer to know--

Its not honest, no longer never less, to hold most still,

And from a tongue like a stage, truth will act

When the play, O dear, bloats with necessity

Lhasa Lhasa O dear,

Dearly Dearest, when should I,

If ever I should with this There There Heart,

That trickles and drafts, that needs a pin,

A button and perhaps an Icy Late Fall's Palm;

When should I sing from that palm,

The necessity that could make a Lhasa song

out of the absence thereafter?

Because,

Its not enough, no longer to think--

Its misfortune, no longer the more, to press most still,

and from a tongue like a hot tin roof, truth will jump

When the building, story by story, bloats with desperation