Your lips smacked and startled
              the saints as you slithered
out of your sundress. What was that expression
              on your face: desire, deceit? Each
hair of my shape edged to your blood
              rush like lightning
rods to your sharp breaths; I took
              your hair in my fist, and pressed
the side of your waist curiously, who was that
              hissing singsong? This was when I caught
you momentarily: this was when you were most
              physical: this was when our pulse jarred together like
muted screams spun inside a loom: this was
              how I robed a typhoon.

I observe the mannerisms of calamity through the window, astutely, as skylines and streetlights disappear. I see your faint reflection dispersed inside raindrops, your chest rising and falling, weightless as whispers in the mouth of a storm. I hear thunders in your sound-asleep. I cannot somprehend. Isee the wind tear a cloud apart, deliciously - just because.

I pressed my soles against your rosy bricks
and felt my bones familiar to your kitsch.
I loved it anyway: the houses that
lined up like ducklings in bowties peach-and-
lemon, dumb to the pretense of their ton.
And while this ingrate-grey estate went on
with his tired litanies, my eyes drifted
somewhere searching past the weight of the wind -
what more deceits do I fit into my
pockets and bring home? I cupped a palmful
of air and sealed it inside a coat pocket;
one hand freed to take snaps of a daydream.
These hands will warm soon enough and these bones
will stop aching, these eyes will stop searching.

Shut up. I need you to shut up.

The lake is grinning. You can hear the lake
and its schemes, the umbra behind
all that mesmerizing blue.

Blue is color dead to itself. Blue is the cataract
called sky. Blue pretends while the infinite
animal runs naked running
its fingers round
the swell
of stars
that sweat
like oysters.
Ah.

You can’t drown in that blue. Now shush.
I hear the lake undress.

This heat, my darling, is no more a sin
than sigh & gasp slid shudder mouth-to-mouth.
It is my love frothing; my garden blooms
beyond the bliss of the sun rolling back.
I’ll have you swear this heat, creature, and taste
behind that pulled-down shade. Your fingertips
tap the windowpane like hot-metal hooves:
soon you’ll feel my throat tending to each curved.
True – there’s no ape under an umbrella,
as the mouths of a shade hook petals to teeth.
Yet your heart-valves curl into a wide smile
and tease my secrets at me underneath.
Pour your breath like liquor. Lick the fire
in your skin –eyes whiten to desire.