Many blessings upon you as you settle into your new address.

Since that workshop of yours I attended many moons ago, I have been in the practice of what you call "kiss poems". Though this exercise comes as gracefully for me as to be almost involuntary, I disagree with its name, how it implies temporary as fleeting;

the breadth of time allowed for a kiss
should supercede that of a pair of lips pinching each other
it should be amnesia breaking like a fever
it should be dodging bullets
and finding forgiveness
capturing the sun
a spinning panorama centered around two people in a busy train station
we get closer as the universe drops away with every revolution
it's William Blake standing in line at MPI
it's long lost friendships
it's fond acquaintances reintroduced in a museum after a thousand years
it's the accumulating caress of cresting tides
it's finding out what's on the other side and staying awhile
it's a lazy afternoon to make up for a lifetime
it's your song on the radio
it's an unyielding hand on a shoulder as a foot leaves a precipice
it's, "I'm sorry"
it's, "I know"
all this said as read should allow for the breadth of a kiss
for more, for less

dear Mr. Wint,

the breadth of time allowing for a kiss
should leave a pair of what was once previously anomalous,
identified indefinitely as a singularity

lips like fingerprints
forever evident

At the risk of being contentious, I just wanted you to know I wrote a poem, and you're to blame.

Thank you.

I kind of love you
    when you’re drunk
    and you
    piece together words
    like a child would
    a broken vase;
quickly and clumsily,

like you are afraid of
being caught
by your own thoughts.

You are like a sailor
who wants to forget the sea.

   And I am not the shore
   you cling to
   or the lighthouse
   that guided you home;

   I am the boat,
   left docked and
forgotten,
   and the waves
   that call you back
   to the life
   you were born

   to live.

What odd creatures we be
in binary we breathe
these two feet
a lifetime of skinned knees
propped up
suspended
beneath eternities
a rhythm alternating heaviness
upon such a wild sphere

we danced like infants
when we danced together
we danced the moon
we danced quadruped

this heart at times plural
often lost
we carry always
a contained ocean
a single fragment
a measure of the sudden and the certain
a rhythm alternating heaviness

we wander
we heard
we learn extended
we fall restless
the universe and knowing it
we are made up of everything
and we are incomplete

ever beholding the beginning
ever beholden the end
everyone belonging
the choice
and the inconsequential
in between
the road and the alone
the time we make home
a rhythm alternating infinities

and I dance incomplete
for your eyes and your feet
missing your breath while I breathe
my heavier pulse
my bent light
and our ocean sleeps
in streets
in the puddles of a weeping sky breaking concrete

I wait until
Enid's old man
has left the flats

feeling a bit brave
I walk up stairs
to their flat
and knock at the door

her mother answers
and she has a black eye
and says
what you want?

I need to see Enid

what for?

it's Saturday
I want to go with her
to the flicks

flicks?
she says frowning

yes cinema
see the morning matinee

she looks past me
as if she's seen
an angel behind me

is her father around still?
she asks me

no I saw him go
just now

make sure he's not
doubling back
he does sometimes
just to be a cuss
she says

so I look over
the balcony
look into the Square

well?
she murmurs

no he's gone
he looked in a hurry
when I saw him
I say

Enid!
her mother says
in a harsh call

she turns
and gazes at me
her eyes dull
the black eye closing

what's he do  
for a side show
I say

what?
she says

your old man
what's he do
for a side show
apart from hitting
you and Enid?

ENID
she bellows

I look back at her
as cool as
a young boy can
brushing my
brown quiff of hair
and glazing over
my hazel eyes

Enid creeps out
and stares out
from beneath
her mother's arm

what is it?
Enid asks
looking at me
then up at her mother

the boy wants
to take you
to the cinema
her mother says

I can pay
I say

Enid says
can I go?

her mother sighs
don't tell your father
you've been
you know
what he's like
she says

do I have to lie
if he asks me
where I've been today?

her mother bites
her lip
slightly swollen

sure you do
I say
lie your head off
tell the schmuck anything
but the truth
I tell her
the truth
he isn't worthy of it

her mother
opens her mouth
to speak but it
remains as
a mouthed O

her mother looks
past me again
you sure he isn't
coming back?
she asks

I look over
the balcony again
no he's not
coming back
I say

ok ok
she says
and she says Enid
can go

so I wait
a few minutes outside
while Enid gets ready
and her mother
stares at me
then the sky
as she brushes her lip
and rubs her eye
closing up
like a dark plum

then Enid comes out
dressed in a blue dress  
and her hair brushed
and we walk off
down the stairs
of the flats

she's silent
but excited
and I look down
the stairs ahead
hoping her old man
isn't coming back
as he does sometimes
to catch them out
and commit more crimes.

Spring does not occur
in verdant shocks and celebrations
of garden blooms and animals *******
it's a slow parade
it's a hostage situation

there is a crow
dodging traffic for roadkill
there is a boy
who loves a girl who doesn't love him

The Twilight Man
finally learns how to cross the street
alongside school children

The thin ice
which still resides
on the concrete
dares you to be the first to traverse it

and the snowbanks
which lay before you
feign alpine hazard

and I wonder what the naked tree branches are saying
as they reach for the sky with twisted fingertips
with their meteorological braille
we confuse for variations of shade

they say give us back the sun
and we'll give you our leaves
there is a book in each tree we do not cut down
and we read it as we breathe
a forest is a library we breathe

Spring is resolving hostage negotiations.

Perhaps in some ancient Greek
philosophers' dream
we danced quadruped
clumsy and complete
interlocking narcissism
as celestial bodies skirt
the curvature of the earth
In some drag queen Diva's dream