Your fingertips
lift up my lips
at the corners

But I smile
because I want to,
I smiled before I
met you

It shakes my little
soul to be with
you, and

I'd smile because
you want to,
I smile because
I want to

Ante added up
in a slipshod
sweatshop for

Permission to hanker
on some buttermilk
slopwork with

A frump finery of sorts
laundered nicely:
a down gown

Slip slap
*** clap
tip tap
*** hat

I felt a
flower
in the sun:
like feeling
without touch

To taste you is to slip into
that Freudian pit, and
turn a baby still
****** fixed:

To tongue out
the parts that might
identify you fully

Winged migration
to flee from migraine
irritations:

I was the shadow
of the waxwing slain,
flung and flew through
wire flues on the roofs

To be some happier
glove, not on hand

I am the ghost
-of chemicals-
in the air that
slow and
turn to rust

While the droplets
in the air rush to
turn to dust

We hit
the hay,
you hit
my face

76

Exultation is the going
Of an inland soul to sea,
Past the houses—past the headlands—
Into deep Eternity—

Bred as we, among the mountains,
Can the sailor understand
The divine intoxication
Of the first league out from land?

Van gogh said
there's no orange
without blue

My bed says
there's no sleep
without you