there is no need for the sky
for the constellations are painted
individually, ever so gently
on your honey dripping skin
i look into your eyes and see
star dust scattered across
the never-ending nova

your smile could end a cursed storm
while your kiss could cause a wildfire
and your lips alone could melt
the words in my deafening mind
you shine brighter than artemis
you bring the tides, take them away
you grant the ocean life, and
if you please, grant sailors their fate

your voice, like a ghost, follows
i cannot escape it: in the nights that
i dream i hear it calling to me
when i am awake, it is haunting me
deep like a valley, coarse like the rocky shore,
low like a ripe Apple hanging from the Tree,
warm and dark and awakening like coffee,
sinful like i am

your hands move along the curves
of my body, sparks seeping into my veins
to my spine you whisper, ‘comply’
and i, an empress of my own, comply
you come from a foreign land yet
your commands do so much to me
i do not ever have to think
to move with your hands on our silky palace

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

"My mouth hasn't shut up about you since you kissed it. The idea that you may kiss it again is stuck in my brain, which hasn't stopped thinking about you since, well, before any kiss. And now the prospect of those kisses seems to wind me like when you slip on the stairs and one of the steps hits you in the middle of the back. The notion of them continuing for what is traditionally terrifying forever excites me to an unfamiliar degree."

I lie awake.
The half moon,
whose soft white shine
invades my room
and makes the tears that rest on my cheeks sparkle;
illuminates half of my face
so that the moon and I
can become a whole.

Only me
and the silence of 2 A.M.

Outside goes the party-goer
-knackered and filled with a portion of fresh memories
that won't be found in the morning-
to his rest.

Only he
and the silence of 2 A.M.

Outside stumbles the drunkard
-with repressed thoughts and events
that he couldn't erase out of his memory by a bottle-
to his end.

Only he
and the silence of 2 A.M.

Outside staggers the broken one
-with blood that’s drowning in wine and as red as the lips of the woman he tries to forget-
to his death.

Only he
and the silence of 2 AM.
L.T.