"Forgive him," he said

"Like the ocean forgives
the big rocks that break
it against the shoreline. Like
rain forgives sunlight for
burning it away in
the afternoon. "

But she is not as forgiving as water. She is a
woodpecker carving out a surgery niche in the
wide trunk of a tall tree standing in an orchard. They
spent the previous springtime at each other's throats. In
her mind he chased her through that sunlit summer field and
her ankles were scarred by the nettles and dragonflies weren't funny
at all. Pulling twigs from her tangled hair she will never let him forget that
he did not prepare a place for her in his heart. She is as relentless
as the blizzard wind against his bare limbs. He was an
over-exposed portrait. A wet sculpture.
A collage.

"Forget her," he said

"Like waves forget the
sand on the beach when
tide goes out. Like dew
drops forget moonlight
when a sunbeam makes
them blush in the morning."

But I am not as forgetful as water.
I am a tree standing tall in an orchard
with snow around my ankles and my limbs
shivering in shirtsleeves but I won't for a minute
forget the springtime. Or the sunshine and how she
danced through it underneath me. I will always remember
that summer we spent in fields together laughing at
dragonflies lighting on nettles and catching the
warm breeze in our hair. She was a fully
shaken Polaroid. A postcard.
A Memoir.

today is a day in autumn poised somewhere
on the toasted bread color spectrum
except wetter and chewier this morning
the gold light found me solemnly dancing
in the mud among the cypress knees
digging down to the bone to pass
this skin deep writer's block

the sun seemed huge and flat
when it sailed over the evergreen hill
misty on the beak of a warrior owl
but like me it's burning on the inside
tingling the tip of my spine causing
the blood in my arms and legs to buzz
beneath the unshockable woodpecker
with his tremendous hammer where
the monarch butterfly holds court

my skin becomes streaked with brown
as my bare feet slap the water face sending
slow elongated ripples through the swamp river
when the sun begins to spray tie dye off my shoulders
i'm haloed like a young madonna among the
jabbering leaves and whinnying branches

last night there was no howl at the moon cliche
as i let the hungry rain eat me i burped out
a victorious purple bird-sized butterfly
fighting in a gossamer heap from my tum
for my own confused psychoactive salvation

i'm still splashing and swooping
by the adenoidal afternoon
as the wild fox whimpers on the hill
the angelic chorus kicks in when
an ethereal forest nymph emerges
with her hair washed fresh
by the crisp autumn rain
out of the long trumpet gun barrel
of an orchid and dips her silken tongue into
the blue gray puddle of dew collected
in my bare navel

her skinny fingers flit between
the woven strings of an autoharp and
my arms fall limp like the branches of a wind
bent pine toward the fuzzy backs of centipedes
my chest glistens with perspiration
and my lips begin to quiver nostrils aroused
by the organic mating smells in the
daisy and dandelion clusters i
absorb through my open pores
like clear clean shining light
honing priming myself
into a glorious monumental
semi ***** pustule

i was sitting drunk alone in a yellow flannel on a dirt
and patch grass hill beside an empty picnic table when
you sat down said hi my name is sam and i'm tripping face
that was no secret judging by the size of your pupils and smile
i asked to borrow a layer from your lip-gloss and
you happily obliged after verifying i had my circle-circle-dot-dot

you laughed hard and said you'd never been this high before
when you let me finger you on the ferris wheel with
the scene from the hill a distant seven minutes in our past
you watched with tears in your eyes
and smiled as i pulled my body
away from your candy thighs when the ride stopped
and stuck my sticky fingers back in my mouth

you said you listened to music better with your shirt off
and sure enough your ******* perked up like antennae
when my fingers slipped under
your half-shirt like an innocuous splinter
in the great pink epidermal amphitheater
you proved to be a nudist burlesque queen wearing
a hailstone necklace and a gold coin skirt that jingled
when you walked or skipped or rubbed your *** on me

i felt so immediately attracted to you
and i still do i can see you when i close my eyes
dancing free in a delicate psychotropic mushroom haze
whispering slap me silly as we walked hand in hand down the hill
you kept talking about your girlfriend being jealous
of my fatal blue eyes as the music drifted like breath
between us your hair was heavy with the smell
of mushrooms beer sage and rain

we took several overpriced shots of tequila and i lost
another six dollars in drink tickets when
we spent a whole dj set lying in the grass in the dark
with the lights from the stage spraying over
our heaving naked sweaty chests with my
hand in your gold net skirt and your tongue in my ear
the clouds were knotted ropes of wet white cotton
the sky became the sea and your fingers found my
feverish lips like a cool prayer

i looked up through the oak tree porthole
to find the strangulated sky
whirling in on itself like water
in a washing machine and i
let a dolphin carry me away out to where
the waves were boiling and wild
the stars salty and deep

i'll let you be recluse & writer
you can describe how strange horrible
it feels to suddenly realize that one of us will someday die
the other left standing in the dark middle of a railroad
silhouette illuminated by a single streetlamp
mouth open with a granite rock wobbling in hand

i pray that it's me who falls first
after our parents so they won't have to bury a child
& you my only brother can remove my name from
the lyrics of every song you wrote for me

i can't give you the words to write
but find them & add them to your own memories
of me on a spring afternoon standing in shorts
on a softball field or rooftop with
hands on my knees & two wisps of hair in my face like
moths orbiting shafts of remembered yellow light

stick out your tongue & i'll teach you to whistle
without your fingers if you teach me to scowl & squirm
**** with my armpit & spit melon seeds at lowing cows
we'll dangle from plebian treebranches upside down together
& when i fall off the monkey bars you laugh
but when you're on your head in a heap of kinetic energy
i pick you up & brush ***** tear spirals off your chin

i'll drift away first into sleepland with a smile plastered on my
strawberry cheeks squirming legs & my body
coiled tight like a bedspring with laughter stomach cramps
from the stories & jokes you whisper on the floor in the half-lit gloom

i will be your darling sister forever lying to mom
about the time you burned a hole in the linoleum
& you will throw rocks at the back of my head
from a young persimmon tree like a noisy bird gargling bug juice
pretending to skip them across a pristine lake in the
blue grayness of the churchyard before dawn

this time something feels different

this time i'm an angry toucan spitting eager saliva & i want you to rip my plastic beak off & whisper secrets into my slippery face

this time i'm an open book & i want you to place your fingertips on my soft worn pages & read me between the lines forever

i want you to be a magnifying glass mirror to show me my inconsistencies made of stretched wool fibers and hemp and wood held together by shiny clots of ink oil and glue

this time i'm an open door numb with apprehension & i want you to surge into the threshold of my bare bones like a molecular flash flood burglary polishing my darkest stained corners with spiraling velocity

this time i'm an oak sapling planted in your backyard spinning & dazzling in the sunlight & i want you to water me daily so i can grow
with you to unbelievable heights & suddenly sprout flowers from my sinewy arms

this time i'm a babbling brook cascading over slick brown rocks on a lush hillside & i want you to stir the moon like the wind & listen appreciate my serene grace

because this time i need someone whose lips
can be a tissue to the tears on my soft cheeks
before they turn cold & calloused

i need someone to sink their teeth into my
shoulders & collarbone to wake me
from this superfluous daydream

i need someone who beds naturally
into the ribcage nest of my plaid flannel shirt

i need someone who will dance with me
across an empty landscape into
something bigger & deeper
than just the starless sky above us

i need someone who wants to learn
the overlapping language of my eyes & hands

someone who will lounge with me
like an odalisque on the birth-bed of aphrodite
drenched in the shivers of the moon canopy

someone who can blur the lines
between my cerebrum & theirs
so that we become a stitched together
quilt of soft memories in our imagination

someone who has been in a trainwreck before
& knows precisely where to kiss
to make it all better

floating backward
on my back down a muddy river
at a cloud's pace banked by willows & sweet clover
with long branches of oaks stretching across to meet
hot sunshine burning spots on my face forearms & stomach
an invisible hand forcing my eyes to stay closed
& projecting dancing pinwheels of
curled peacock fire on my thin eyelids
i can hear the echo voices of everyone on
shore whirling in the soft wet part of my brain
so awfully warbled by the water in my ears as
i lay there with top water debris spurting playfully
from my lips with a pinched smile
carved between my cheeks
thinking what a shame it'd be to drown
no longer caressed by willow branches trailing
across the surface

to sink down
under a blue sky during a cloud race
into a quiet place where words no longer mean anything
& all i can hear anyway is the profound hiss
of a dying airbubble slipping away from my nose
open my eyes to look i can see it escape
& explode ascending into sunlight
refracting just eight feet away
how wonderful it is to drift down into
the soft silk blanket of dark water
with all the pain & piano music in the world
trapped in my pounding heart
as my friends dive bomb to save me
the drumroll kicks in with the dramamine
& sweet pear wine i had in a pack lunch
to keep away the eager panic hunger
it's accompanied by the soft indie
plink & pluck of violin strings &
someone in suspenders blowing a harmonica
as the nothingness struggles to enfold me
crawling over the shiny pores of my face
while my friends peel back
at it in layers
by re-breathing
their whiskey into my lungs
beating my chest
with their closed fists
& blowing my nose into a t-shirt in the sand

i'm searching for the comfort
of an old flame to keep me warm
tonight knocking on familiar doorways
to foyers where my boots have already rested dripping
with snow or shedding beach sand and all i want is her
the one i remember in bouts of photographs
bright hair hidden in a knit olive colored snood
with big blue eyes set on full power
as we set out on the open road together car
packed full of soft blankets groceries illicit drugs
cigarettes and the fumes of santiago ***

she convinced me to quit smoking saying
she hated kissing the marlboro man and
i'll take you to the coast i said meaning
every single one because i had harbored
my love for her in a million ways of secrecy
and only survived on a currency of torture
pain inflicted
pain withheld
pain drugged away

she was absolutely perky for the first thousand miles
hair haloed and face lost in shadow as we drove
into the sun out of a cocoa beach condo
leaving behind bikini squeals and smiles
she was with me like an ethereal dream
eating scones on the boardwalk beach
in bitter cold new jersey and that night she was
a long legged american girl astride me
sweaty hollering in a secluded gazebo

she was a blur of parrot colors to me
spending most of july dancing in a daffodil field
in oklahoma while i changed tires on the
hyundai her daddy bought one after another i
just gave her the pink slip to my heart
under a pavilion of light pink fractal fabric
pitched on high beams ascending into
pale gold otherworldly billows

she's sweetly ****** and surrounded by patchouli haze
hanging off my back like a monkey wearing a
wide high fashion soft brim hat she found before
i surprised her with a bunch of freshly picked
wild violets from the roadside she
cripples me and we go tumbling
wrinkled and aimless both exhaling plumes
into the paisley purple sky already full of clouds
blowing straight north hair tangled together
full of windswept snarls barelegged now
and writhing creating craved friction
just two souls of pure energy on the loose

but the best memories i have of that trip
are the nights we spent in joshua tree
not-sleeping beneath a meteor shower every
night for a week when her *****
was still running the show and i
was just a poison rash itching her
calf muscle before i became the master of myself
we were a flurry mess of long naked limbs
tuned to the exact same frequency

she was a fresh meadow flower naked
under taupe corduroy overalls cut ragged
into shorts walking with her arm twisted through
mine and i thought i was the happiest man alive
when we crashed in colorado for two weeks
and every morning i woke to her incandescent
hair sprawled lazy on the karastan rug under
the turquoise glare of the television or to
the smell of a gong sized breakfast casserole
consisting solely of her dreams the previous night
and i would kiss her good morning with her hair
up in curlers and my face between her knees

but she started to grow wings in montana
little nubs etched out on either side of her spine
i noticed them one night while she was sleeping
face down chest stretched across my chest
i watched them grow the further south we got
and by the time we reached the heartland
under those glistening river cypresses
or the banks of that great muddy river
canopied by huge florida palms
she was itching and molting them all over the car
and she finally flew away from me
said she was born for the city but i hope
she's waking up now not under skyscrapers but
a metropolis of oak strands governed by the tyrannical sun

and since that day i've painted her lips on
every girl i've ever seen in the morning every
face that emerges from indigo ambience is hers simply
i hear her nothing-to-lose laugh in every fog or faint haze
after every lunar prowl through a mushroom ranch by the coast
my eyes get shined up with dew every time
i find seagulls nesting in a cypress grove holding
some kind of seance for the flash of sunlight off the nape of her neck
in front of the watery green sunrise of the atlantic
and in my teeth-grinding night terrors i have
a hard-on and i can plainly see her dancing
luxuriously on a deck stretched out over a shaded creek
tight and smooth like the skin of a djembe drum

and sometimes when i feel very weird
with something like sick stomach hunger
churning in my gut i shave my ******* clean
and trim my ***** hair into a crude cave-painting
version of a mountain lion just for her
i wade out into the sea passed the orange trees
and wait for the moon or her lips
to rise and lick me full on my face but
she doesn't return my calls suddenly
having phone
trouble i
guess

right now my browning chest is
propped up with beach sand buried in my elbows
i was dozing off underneath my shades
with the salt spray at my feet
& the seagulls swarming overhead
you asked for a story so i'll tell
you the only one i know
it's about making an exodus
& the accident of my personality:

the last time i was shot at
i was making a collect call at a pay phone to my mother
i was living out of a backpack
                                                    in a hostel
in sticky sweet new orleans
in 2008 post-katrina

after spending half a year without a friend
i decided to live what i write and become
the mythical warrior-poet or
                                                 just a sun-haired boy
fighting with the sky searching for his spirit animal
wearing old wool dress slacks cut short above
the knee i was only cargo trying to get
as lost as i possibly could

they came out of an empty socket shop window
blasting through the doorway onto
                                                            ­ the steaming street
jittery & starving roaring on the collapsing mist
but i'm no one's pigeon crouched behind a sedan deathtrap
poised to flee but with nowhere to go i can only hear
                                                            ­  my own heartbeat
                                                       ­       mother screaming on the phone
                                                           ­   hanging limp

& my own feet beating a new path on gravel through a strange city
when the windows grew lighter &
i slowly emerged from invisibility
in a world sprung new not defined yet
shrouded in what i only assume was
                                                             ­   special magic

for a while i was scared to sleep alone at night sometimes
i heard downer & buzzkill other nights that i cried
                                                           ­                          beneath the ivories
& i thought i'd die alone if i had to
but i was too young
to be that cynical

now i'm rising like a big owl out of a meadow
finding good new ways to fall apart as lightning
blooms on the horizon & clouds gather unnaturally
into pale blue ribbons & dance in a pinkish sky
& the sunset burns the treeline down
                                                                ­no one else can fix me now
                                                             ­   no one believes in me
but i believe in myself more than ever
the only person i've ever really loved is my mother
& she says i can't make a name for myself writing poetry
but i'm immortal among these words like stars
being blown in plumes of dust across a night sky
i'm looking for a new better place to dive in from
so if you've got a certain star in mind or a secret
cliff-space combination treebranch hangout take me
there or whisper it to me while we're already high
& hugging don't kiss me unless it's hard & in a precious place
because i'm feeling invincible again instead of invisible &
i really really really cannot wait for someone to try &
                                                                ­                             ******* stop me

when i look at you now i see a woman
who is stronger than most men i've met
but i like to remember you as a teenage beauty
a weird girl with wolf-whistle legs
and white tan lines flashing beneath your
delicate wrist as you walk by in cutoff denims
and frank zappa t-shirt

i like to imagine your jade-inlaid navel in midair
at a romantic disco with soft ballet slipper pink
lips quivering but trying to build a castle and
i am slumped nearby on a dusty corner stage
waiting in orbit for you to notice me with your
notorious blue eyes telling me either to watch it
or come scratch it

the thought of you in a daisy print dress
makes me weak and warm in the secret
ticklish spot between my own navel and ****
but i am just a poet-artist humming the first
sixteen bars of in-a-gadda-da-vida with a
third eye glowing in my forehead

i am an inexhaustible trumpet player
transient and eccentric in a dangerous
helpless swoon in a citrus grove calling your name
and all you want to do is shut my mouth
or ignore the sounds i make but i found you
chirping in a bloom of tenderness on a clover bed

you had just drifted awake in full sunlight
engulfed by the tiger fire of your own hair
with a copper halo of fresh dawn on your
shoulders and we sat together on the floor
of that smooth gold green florida hillside
surrounded by dark patches of pine and oak
we were only children and you had a long smooth neck

this morning we sat witnessing an act of nature like
two peculiar dogs perched on a long screened porch
with a squeaky door my blond hair flying everywhere
and you blushing on your knees as the early morning
fog raided our skin and left the fragrance of the trees on
our noses and lips

the fog burned off after our daily adventure
leaving a light blue haze on everything it touched
and sunlight streamed through the open kitchen window
you made zucchini breakfast enchiladas and i
stood dumb at the table sipping a homemade
kiwi mimosa listening to you sing to the dishes in the sink

some nights you still cry and unhook your
earrings before joining me in bed and we
wait for the twilight reconfiguration discussing
moon-tides and planetary magnetism on our waterbed
until you've stopped crying but your nose is still running
you wipe it on my shirt curled up with your
head on my chest as the stress world melts away
or i'm up late at 3am in a tuxedo at the keyboard
tithing all my energy to you in the dim hallway
with your eyes still wet and shining like a night light

you are indescribable
and i'll sing to you forever
without adderall or **** in my blood
until you come again
by yourself alone
this time on the tile floor
feeling jovial and strong
and weak and slippery

last night when the mothership came
i slept in the trees full of night sounds and shadows
and my hair unwrapped in the wind
deciphering ancient scrolls on my eyelids

she hovered like a vulture in a clean open sky
and i awoke shivering as she swooped down
platooning over the riverbank
and i stood with my arms outstretched
at the edge of the bubbling water pit

for light years until snot icicles grew gray on my face
cringing under the great vacuum sky
and now fog whitens into morning and
i am enveloped in sun-silence
as the last three stars still flash like cities of the future

the smell of grain becomes tweezers in my nostrils
and the sun is a giant roaring furnace
burning a sense of adventure in my southern boy blood
the memory of big pale nutless creatures wearing zoot suits
escaping into the abyss from the green dawn in their classy airship

meanwhile my hairless face being polished by the wind
blind drunk on dew and awaiting salvation
lips pulling away from big white teeth and pink gums
in high song and shrill laughter
a naked schizoid of the morning warped and ****-crazy
silently dancing beckoning the universe with
telekinetic strength to bring another cosmic storm

because i am double minded in this transformed version
of myself and i will ride the electric tidal wave created
by our sweaty kiss like the sound of a trumpet
being blown as triumphant and far away as a lightning strike

i have learned to control the magic manipulate
particles in empty space and i'll ride this
luminescent rowboat under the charcoal sky
into infinity

we live our lives in harmony according to no one else
and after a saturday night full of dope fiends and loud club music
i wake with her giant hair covering my face like a black sunflower
or wisps of a bonnet stretched around my chin
she is a sedated beauty after growing up in an all girl ***** den
i begin searching for her magenta lips with my own
stopping thirsty at the softest spot behind her ear and
this moment is immortal glowing ferociously in my mind

it's a misty sunday morning i'm
watching cartoons in my underwear
while she paints a bowl of oranges on the kitchen table
for the twelfth time this month
when she has it perfect she strips
the windows of their canary yellow curtains and
dances passed me in sock feet singing cake for breakfast
with a japanese cherry blossom branching toward her belly-button

i am drowsily courting my lady after practicing
barefoot naked yoga on the front porch together
like a cricket struggling at a zippo touch on a midnight
tree branch after the rain stops hammering rooftops like meteors
but the air is still wet hot waiting on a sunshow and
the water has sealed my legs together

after following her into the kitchen hands
lunge fast and happy into crevices of hair and sweat
she poses with a wistful smile as
i press her into a tile corner and she
becomes malleable on top of my fingertips
whispering you are the mountain
into my dilating sternum
and we give the sun to each other
two warriors in an open rainbow
alpha rhythm projected on the wall

after drinking a cup of grapefruit juice
she joins me in a short pair of worn out levi's
and a torn sleeveless shirt for an overcast sunday
afternoon walk by a fissure creek as pine limbs
bend and crack overhead in middle florida
we exhale royal purple smoke clouds in a
deep loop through remembered shame

after a long day of frolicking breathless along
perfect beaches of connecting energies
our toes entangled rolling in the grass
i see the clouds reflected in her green eyes
with her head tilted back toward the ceiling
and lightning fingerbanging a starless sky outside
my hands once again find the deep reaches of her hair
and i pull her close to kiss her face muscles tight
with pain from laughter i confess that the sound
of her late night heartbeat still turns me on

women say they want a sensitive man but they mock me when i sit at the piano crying for hours holding a lighthearted paper candle and a smile tucked in between my lips

they say they want a hard working man with ***** fingernails but
they claw at me if i turn a sun-browned shoulder against them in bed

they say they would love a cultured man but they cringe when i kiss them with lips tasting of whiskey & cigar smoke or touch them with fingers gentle as soft old paper

they say they dig the cold but they huddle in blankets when i stay up all night dancing naked across the lawn listening to joni mitchell in january

they say they want their own sugar space but turn sour when i linger and wake up dreaming of becoming an astronaut

they say they're comfortable with my past imperfections but it's my fault when i have a nightmare about being strung out on the perfume of another woman

they want a man who can write a song but they struggle when i anchor a poem to their delicate ankles and fill their empty rooms with shamefully broken pencils

they love my beautiful tattoos and piercings but shake me when i spend days wrapped inside a coral shell singing a lullaby

they want the idea of a man they've read about in books but won't tolerate me when i read them the atrocities in the sunday paper under the lampshade of an oak tree

women say they'll take me as i am but get lonely when i wander for a week and come home buried in the scent of a rock and roll bar

they say they make friends easily, like me, but can't stand to come home to talking & laughing cynical & drunk in a house full of strangers

they want a quiet man who loves them like the stars but scream when i learn to fly at the mercy of the weather & can't be captured

they want to live naughty with the thick musk of a man but act bewildered when they're caught soaking wet and weak in the knees

women say they love men with a tolerance but get jealous when i'm dizzy drunk at dawn on cheap tequila and the memory of my mother

they want a man who lives inside a corridor of words but hate me when they realize artful compliments are only cages of pretty lies

they're helpless for a man with grace but hate me when i'm pitiful and clumsy in the dark after blowing out candles and closing windows in the middle of june

they say they'll only fall in love with a lover of music but audibly cough when i hush them as Coltrane makes dazzling sodium fall across my face

they all wish for a man with careful eyes
but mine are blue and empty in the end
& it gets lonely
so i will no longer carry a song for them in my heart
like a trail-weary cowboy
no lust
no memory
no guilt
no cups
no whistles
or jewels in my vulnerable shadow

i dream of burying my face
in your hair and inhaling your halo on
these cold and woman-less nights
after the all-male beer drinking sessions
nightmares i have to pull myself out of somehow
because there is no small warm body
to hold me when the paranoid shadows come close
howling on the window curtains so
i've set fire to twenty pages of poems
standing naked in the center of the room
the smoke weaves like three charmed cobras
and i just want to be home with you

i am home with you
after two days lying in the hammock
reading prose about clouds of white doves
and three nights in bed
drinking wine and laughing
with the record player on
we have succumbed to temptation
whispering about living on the moon together
your voice tickling my ear
pure like the song of a bird firmly in flight
insecure and exhilarating
your cheeks glowing like polished copper
in the candlelight from the bathroom
leg muscles trembling as we lock eyes
in a truly romantic spot
through one of the mirrors

when you go to work i don't feel so tough
i write you letters about scattered isolation and
rain interrupting sequences of thought
drenching the spruce trees you planted
as i lie on our bed and breathe
the odor your hair left on the pillow
meditation comes easiest with these plumes
and i have no place else to go
so please come back home to a
whole healthy man with
big holes in his ears an
uncanny adoration of your paintings
sacred pyramids in his eyes
and a you-sized hole in his chest

if you take tiny
steps
toward me and

i take tiny
steps
toward you then

in the oblivion of a forest at night
we can make body configurations together
i will bloom like an eternal daisy
blessed by your illuminated soul
in the small garden of silk skin
draped across your collarbone
or
just eat an apple in the hollow of a big oak tree together

i am a god
lying in my own meadow
under the sky i created
i'm monumental and
i will outlive everyone

but my mind is clouded and
full of ice-cold sheet lightning
sometimes
daydreaming about finger-banging
alone in my dingy room
i speak to walls with the lungs of the wind
my scratchy pen filling poetry books
that no one wants to read

but you said i have the type of
personality disorder that you admire
and you're just looking for someplace
to snooze and cuddle out of
reach of the witching wind

well i'm the only man left
the storm took everyone else
and i was born in a magnetic desert
at the edge of the world

all of the sudden i'm burning up fences
and breaking up labyrinth walls to
find you in a lush garden i hardly remember
under a tall willow tree
long black hair streaming across
your face and bare chest

you make something in me
leap and sing remember
i told you i have a type
and it's complete annihilation
under the wet rose of your latin kiss