I have been awake,
perhaps a little longer than I should have.
My door is cracked and I hear you stirring.

The sun has risen, but the light that travels through
the window is still soft.
Your coffee machine gurgles,
and I think
what a wonderful thing to fall asleep to.
You are quiet but I still hear the gentle

tink-tink-tink

of your spoon upon your mug.

Your gentle morning mayhem
has become my lullaby,
and i know I will rest easier for it.

I was wrapped in black
fur and white fur and
you undid me and then
you placed me in gold light
and then you crowned me,
while snow fell outside
the door in diagonal darts.
While a ten-inch snow
came down like stars
in small calcium fragments,
we were in our own bodies
(that room that will bury us)
and you were in my body
(that room that will outlive us)
and at first I rubbed your
feet dry with a towel
becuase I was your slave
and then you called me princess.
Princess!

Oh then
I stood up in my gold skin
and I beat down the psalms
and I beat down the clothes
and you undid the bridle
and you undid the reins
and I undid the buttons,
the bones, the confusions,
the New England postcards,
the January ten o'clcik night,
and we rose up like wheat,
acre after acre of gold,
and we harvested,
we harvested.

We are elaborate animals made of wood
earth, flowing like water into the veins
of the sky.

The sun being a fist of lava, and the night
being an enticing molar—we are
a succession of tides, being swallowed
by successions of day; and how beautifully
we wilt in the presence of joy.

The moon may be nothing
but a luminous
stone

and to eat the poetry of it
is how one chokes
on love

but the romance of morning
is that if by midnight
you are alive, that is joy.

In the black spheres of another’s cavernous
eyes I lost myself amidst the seep of my own
light patterned into strange foreign orbs

drinking heavily of I
am borne on the winds of imagined hands
sculpting me awake. where I can dream-in
the voids between lust, where the nothing
seems happy, the night is my friend

in the convex meniscus of another’s iris
perhaps I can dream of rebirth in the titrating
wound in the womb of lust

makes my eyes search the ether. In the
womb of my lust there is wind in my wings.
In the womb of my lust there is more

to be found. to be woken into equilibrium
perhaps I must abandon the forked tongue
of independence, so that fanged loneliness

can die of happiness. the snake becomes
a docile bird when fed. the castle of self
becomes a womb in the kingdom
of entwined, sleeping hands. we are born

many.

sometimes i forget
how i have grown to own my skin
and i am bigger than what i was trained to be

sometimes that training kicks in
and i am just curleys wife,
flashing ankles
trying to soak up leers
the same way young men
graciously accept accolades.

i wish i could say it at least
leaves an oily film
or the burning of bile
in the back of my throat but
it doesnt.

it's thrilling!
the way the wind whips my messy hair
against my face,
   a long and tattered flag behind me
     still braving the weather.

the way we stand together,
hand in hand,
  and embrace the storm
   that thunders around us.
it sends vitality coursing through me.

you give me a thirst for life
that i have long forgotten.

you remind me
of what i was before,
  and take me back
   to a place i can't remember.