Doors - Laurie Lessen Reiche

Staunch sentries of decision
gloating
and imposing
tempting and untrustworthy.

How dark can the darkness be
behind
such sadistic
heights? The moon is at brave angles

I agree to bear witness
to know
the black pit's drop
and the monster's swarthy tongue

across my trembling lips.
I reach out
to your blockade
giving the okay to open

the hinge of your wide mouth:
Deceit!
O' mean demon
bombarding me with light!

This is Heaven's hot entrails
the sun's maternal heat
breasts like light bulbs burning the

tears out of my singed pupils.
You laugh
dastardly  door
at my shock and tripped up breath

I would never have thought light would be
within your depths
or the simple bodies hung

with wires and labeled neatly:
"Breast Cancer" and "Brain Disease."
Science shivers like slivers of ice

in this luminous laboratory
The dark
may be unknown
but how gentle is the bite

of mysterious monsters
who roam
unseen through safe
black dreams as weightless as silken phantoms.