the stubborn silence of mountains.

You are earthen. I am fluid.

As my soft May rain
kisses the willow's leaves
before falling into your warm soil,
the sweet breath of spring
and new beginnings soothes our tired, wintry pains.

The water feeds the root.

My head upon your chest,
a cloud filled lake on a patient mountain.

Memories of our moments,
rocks on a riverbed,
worn smooth and beautiful by time and silt.

Your lava burns a path,
a fertile home
where future fields of wheat will see no tears,
before finally,
with a fiery sigh,
you come to rest in the salt of my ocean.

The ancient root drinks the timeless water.

The mountains nap. The oceans breathe.

A moment,
a look,
a hand on a leg becomes
a small stone of your love
skipped once,
twice,
threefourfive times
before settling to the bottom
among a thousand other memories
polished smooth.

The willow branches caress the shore.
The lake rests in the mountains embrace.
Rain and roots, earthworms.

At last, at last.

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

below the eyelid-waves,
another iridescence grows.
currents blur the view in pentacles of light
to rhythms of the waning breath
--warping what an artist's vision yields,
the canvas of the mind stretched taut
in hues to coalesce the old and new,
absorb the intertidal volumes
with keener intake,
firmest diaphram to lift the pressure out
and sink into pelagic origins finally,
imbue myself poseidonal,
renew the birth of "love"

i am soaking with it,
open mouthed my cry is swallowed by the sea
i am a kracken echinoidea
******* up the floor
of life exchanging me with joy--
of jellyfish and snail,
burrowed shrimp, eyeful gobies,
clowns in their anemones--
my spires swirling clouds of green
to carpet spotted sky with verdant wake
and springing there,
from crest to crest,
a body undulating foam, it rolls voluptuous to swell
the bioluminescent instant... taken in the vast, full span of time...
to see her born here,
'mid dolphin song and symbol crash of tide
protuberance of shore awash in seeming pleasure of the rhythmic act--
alive the goddess comes, into her flesh--
to widen eyes,
re-establish channels to the heart
as if an aperture of cloud
were opening again,
to end an ancient overcast
and usher down to earth
the lance of starlight that would reach beyond the wrecks of ocean depth...

so too her visage strikes the darker corners of the heart
illumes all buried hopes
of bottom dwelling wretchedness,
and draws the tide above the line,
littoral tresses falling,
steep in pools calcareous and algal
worlds remaking worlds within the contours sexing there
imagined limestone in your many perfect forms,
marble softness swimming in my eyes
awaken appetites of newfound youth again.
the ochre lines that stripe along your curves
let hidden ripeness waft across my passion-eye
and with the grassy dunes i lie, doze in wrack at once--
as arches of my sight are pierced with rays of inner sun
my seabreath muse purveys, inhaled;
i would see you as you are entirely,
disperse myself into aesthetic mist,
become the spray on coastal loam
a sundog floating in and out of forms
become your mullusk lust;
sipuncula embrace of benthic dust
and slip along the textures
of your progenation's flood--
emerge as one and many lives
becoming me, this vision
in your suds, your divination's scree
--the salty rooting of the coastal trees,
the sand, the wave and moon
upon the dancing kelp forestal out at sea...
shining in the winking foam and symbiota sand.
crevice and the length of dyads simulating one,
phallus, *****, and none--
egg and **** bed..
diatoms  flourishing  again...
in you i am the ****** my own gestation obviates
i am effluxion of all lives in balance
on an ever-swaying crestline of irruptive suds--
diaphanous array upon your porous *****'s heave
weaving in and out, continuing to blur
in riven sight and empty heart to fill
the blood containing rapid urgency
to feed, to taste and seek its nourish-all
when after having given up the possibilities of love
and having worn the incompleteness raw,
the obverse affirmation cracks the sky...
at last they burst surreal into the now
and lacking practice courting glory
stumble over habits long attuned to falsities unveiled
and drawn into your undertow,
all cravings wrung into the novelty of merging without end--
arrive, horizonal, and echo from the dawn of being more than one




.

Warmed by her hand and shadowed by her hair
As close she leaned and poured her heart through thee,
Whereof the articulate throbs accompany
The smooth black stream that makes thy whiteness fair,—
Sweet fluttering sheet, even of her breath aware,—
Oh let thy silent song disclose to me
That soul wherewith her lips and eyes agree
Like married music in Love’s answering air.

Fain had I watched her when, at some fond thought,
Her ***** to the writing closelier press’d,
And her breast’s secrets peered into her breast;
When, through eyes raised an instant, her soul sought
My soul, and from the sudden confluence caught
The words that made her love the loveliest.

High above the ultra-white plateau
a vultures wheels in an amino helix
above a dead horse. Branded upon its left flank is the word
“Mulatto”.
In the forest far below
an ilex rattles for the dead.
The river, pregnant with shrapnel
sulks and stagnates, her belly full of lead.
The plains are cratered as the Moon
the purple heather soothes the raw stone wound
and whispers that the fighting will be over
very soon, and all the scars will heal.
Their fires have turned our bones to meal.

The mountain gods are sighing now
and dying now, the endless sky their tomb.
Rainclouds loom, seething with disdain
and seek to quench the hungry yellow grass.
Rain lashes through the mountain pass.

Rainwater sifts into the soil
and we do not forget.
Blood chapel-sacred, black as oil
and we do not forget.
Shrapnel is sown like seeds into the spoil
and we do not forget.

Night, a gentle snow.
My sycamores, they dance now.
A secret, they know.

******* very much,
Indian tow truck driver
Now I owe my aunt.

Yes, I saw the sign
And yes, you are an *******.
I guess we both are.

******* money, man.
It's not like I got a lot.
And now I owe more.

*******, native friend.
You were just doing a job.
I'm just ******* now.