The noon's greygolden meshes make
All night a veil,
The shorelamps in the sleeping lake
Laburnum tendrils trail.

The sly reeds whisper to the night
A name-- her name-
And all my soul is a delight,
A swoon of shame.

It's time I told you the day is gone. Curtains hung and your work is done.
We watched and saw a last goodbye, waited for you to draw your breath and then
Let the cold come by and say hello. Do you remember our plump days like candy wheels we ate like fools?
Do you remember hungry love we starved on. I do.  
I see forever end. You were there. You promised we'd be together and we were.
I didn't know forever was just for you.  
It's time I told me the day is gone, a dial tone and then hang up.
I stand in the kitchen my ear pressed against the air to see if I can hear.

I was with the ocean last night and your body
Was its vessel, overflowing.  Words were frail,
Drops indwelling about the shapeless sky,
Water reaching for its own height and breath,
Like touch, were as desperate letters exchanged,
Endlessly read, until like loamy vellums, they
Disappeared in our hands.  Inklings of tide-
Pool and driftwood.

                               My blood was a river that ran
Its course.  Members feeding your deltas and birds
Breeding where the water-russet sheds on pampas
And inverness.  Eyes like wing through ever—
Green, empties the fossil shell.  Fire, brimming
Mountaintops that were, for countless millennia,
Sleeping.  Did I mention that the earth moved?
No?  Her displacement was involuntary.

Then came the waterfalls, lifting throughout
Time.  The scent, searching for its identity,
The wave, calling to its own name— Ocean,
O— cean.  And flowers, opening like galaxies
In the after-light.  A universe of face and hand
With hunger for salt-rain and then the cloud
Burst-blue and spilt and spun more redolent,
Deities, in joyous creation.

I breathe, in your ocean, like a child unborn.

If you were still breathing in my universe,
I might see you as a
mediocre
being.

But it seems that, as you are;
uninvolved and out of sight,
I see you as I last saw you -
    a large, black, grimace
    on the face of true self.

Oh, I'm not angry or saddened.
In fact, I'm grateful!

But that doesn't keep me
from seeing all of your negative energy
as it swims around,
******* itself
into it's own black hole.

It's interesting how,
when I first loved you,
I was blind to your darkness.
and,
when I first hated you,
I was blind to your light.

Either way,
I was blind
during all of our firsts.

I do not hate you and I haven't
for some time.

But that grimace
is a tainted memory that,
no matter how many times I cross-examine it,
seems to hold as much truth as you do.

Who knows, really,
     who you are?

Who really knows anyone -
    loved, or not?
    hated, or not?

I certainly don't know you,
and I probably never did.

Eyes lost to silken darkness
Sold in trade to skin's sensation
I feel the touch of cherry lips
As soft as day dreams kissing the wind

Quicken the breath and exhale shaking
Body shuddering
Trembling

Strong hands gripping soft flesh
Gently
Hungry
Starving
Ten lonely wolves running cautiously
Through forests unknown
Blindly moving

Dancing to tomorrow's song of yesterday
Embracing bodies kissing deeply
Lost to the moment
There is nothing else

Only this

Only now

Only you

Soft hands glide across my skin
The satin sharks that swim the expanse of me
Devour me gracefully

Desires burning in wild eyes
Black blind flames and uncontrolled breath
Shivering hot skin
Pounding heart

Control long lost
To arousal
And crushing need