You are winter afternoons;
You're light jackets and khakhi shirts;
You are long fingers twined around a cup of chai;
You're the authentic exotic experience without the strings.
My cool heat that stings the back and caresses the arms,
You blow hot/blow cold
Alternately.
When you're hot
And my hands are stuffed in my pockets,
You are gentle and intense
And full of purpose
But with the spring,
You whirl away in dust,
Leaving your tropical wonderland
Bitter, barren and absent.
My Persephone that retreats to the underworld,
You take away my flowers
Too soon.
Let me have May with you;
Wait for me to catch up.
Slow down.
I'm counting in clicks of the clock
Our ons and our offs.

I like the way your name
Fits inside my mouth
When it rolls around,
Swishing gainst my
teeth, like a forbidden
candy kept, in younger
days, tightly pressed in
under my tongue, melting
there- into caramelised bliss.
It fits so perfectly behind my
Curtain lips that screen it off-
for one Clumsy moment only
-and then it is unleashed,
Lost, released. like you
and me, as teenagers,
Looking awkwardly
at each other- For
One uneasy beat,
frozen- and then
Leaping,
A pair
of
giddy frogs.

you are running water
Spreading, seeping slowly down the holes
Of a drain, and
You are holding a slim pencil
Between two long elegant fingers
And ******* its tip into your mouth
So that its pink rubber end
Disappears behind your pink pliant lips.
Your every sleek movement is sensual
And I am ignited by
Every turn and tilt of your head
And the drawl of every unwakeful stretch
That pulls the skin over your forearms tight
And makes the sweat on the back of your neck
Glisten like imperfect rhinestones
Sliding into
                      forbidden,
                           ­               inaccessible
territory.
-How I wish that territory
were accessible-
You lackadaisical beast of the mornings,
With sandy eyes and ambling legs,
Wrap. Wrap!

We will drive
In fast cars, and climb over fences;
But when you and I ride bikes
Down speedy hills, we feel
The wind in our brains
And our arms and your fingers,
Wrapped tightly around the handlebars,
Will be red and blue and brown
And I will love you
Like mountaintops
And rolling wheels running languidly,
Round after rubber round,
My love, oh
Tender Love.
When we are doing nothing
And your fingers are
Drawing circles on my palms
-And then they're in my hair
And then they're everywhere
All at once, and fast and strong-
I will love you wholly, quickly,
On roaring hilltops, and shout
In the vacuum of our
eternity,
My tender Love.

I have risen but
Have not shone, and will not do.
Remind me at noon.

When I love, I
Don't just fall in-
I trip, and land
In face-first crash.

When I was younger I thought
These bars, they keep out something fearful.
What lurks out there?

Now I'm older and I know
They're to keep the monsters inside, this side.
I'm trapped, held in.

I was born and I will die
In this red bricked prison.