It’s not that I only love the characteristics of you that are red.
It’s just that, when parts of you become red,
(whether by irritation
blooming of heat beneath your cheeks
the volcanic activity of
separated skin
friction or
swelling, scratching,
pressure, sunlight,
chemical combinations of emotional magma and
exquisite outpours of liquid, stone flesh.)
Yes,
I see then, when you are red,
that your heart beats
much like
mine.

It’s not that I only love the characteristics of you that are red.
It’s just that, when parts of you become red,
(whether by irritation
blooming of heat beneath your cheeks
the volcanic activity of
separated skin
friction or
swelling, scratching,
pressure, sunlight,
chemical combinations of emotional magma and
exquisite outpours of liquid, stone flesh.)
Yes,
I see then, when you are red,
that your heart beats
much like
mine.

It’s not that I only love the characteristics of you that are red.
It’s just that, when parts of you become red,
(whether by irritation
blooming of heat beneath your cheeks
the volcanic activity of
separated skin
friction or
swelling, scratching,
pressure, sunlight,
chemical combinations of emotional magma and
exquisite outpours of liquid, stone flesh.)
Yes,
I see then, when you are red,
that your heart beats
much like
mine.

I kissed you under the light of a tv screen.
Your lips were stale.
You told me to wait, said
ripening takes time, dear.
I waited.
and now
that my blood walks like a wooden ghost
through the cobwebs of these dusty veins
now
that my bed is tired of listening
to the blank stares of my bones
now
that time's body is decaying
so slowly beneath my eyes
now
I think
I don't want to kiss you
anymore.

No more than three hours
ago
when your body
made funny sounds with my body
and we breathed
like drums
and our hearts thumped
like rocking chairs,
I opened my eyes,
to the shallow shadow
in the curve
of your right shoulder
and I remembered
   -above the smacking
     and slipping,
     and swallowing,
      and wheezing-
the first time I turned over
and watched you sigh
in your sleep.

Dear one, amidst the moon that night I called
for you to lay amongst these sheets of gold
with me. So gentle came the sound, the fall-
ing of soft air from  greiving lips: "Be bold,
be swift, my love. For I have watched you sweat
a thousand nights before this one, and held
your trembling  form in sheets of silver, yet
you call to me, tonight, without a yell.
Be loud, imbibed with youth, without a whis-
per on your tongue. Be bold, be swift, but most
of all, I plead you be-" A clap, a hiss,
and all was quiet. So softly went your ghost.
Now clad in sheets of bronze, tonight I lay,
at last at peace. There weren't words left to say.

I found a shadow perched in the palm of my hand,
weaving his cloudy limbs about my lifeline,
he said
"I came here from far far away
where wicked shadow creatures pass,
wave,
and pretend
we all lived through it.
I came here from far far away
to live here on your lifeline
and shout hello's to every long lost soul
you pass,
and do a funny dance for every tortured soul
you wave to,
and pour myself into the trenches in your skin
until you are brave enough
to stop pretending,
you lived through it."
A woman walked by, that I knew from
somewhere far far away.
She passed,
                                                
                                    I waved,
                                                                                      
                                                                  we pretended.

I think that
maybe we don’t get along because
I am too old
to understand why you are young,
and you are too young
to understand
why I have to be
so
old.