i heard there are a thousand ways
to greet your body;
twenty one keep me up at night.
i don't know if i'm happy or sad
when i think of your skin.
its warm tone is the brightest star
in my universe, and i'm stuck
orbiting around it,
surviving off its rays.

i can't want you more.

when we last kissed,
over a thousand days ago,
something was taken from us,
locked up in a safe
we both have keys to.
maybe it's grown--
maybe larger than we can hold.

i can't love you more.

i've forgotten how you taste,
and that's a sin,
and i've forgotten
your glance, too.
don't be a stranger;
we're already so strange,
wanting to lap each other up,
but holding our jaws shut tight.

i can't stand it anymore.

i'm here for you,
with you, by you, inside of you.
i'd lie here naked for you,
but it's too cold
to sleep here alone,
exposed.

you are my lifeline
in time with time
quickstep tango
Russian roulette
African mango
one will get you high
just one
thread
piece of string
hanging
just one

i swear, i'm not a thief,
but if given the opportunity
i would take your
heart and run to the edge
of the universe and
back, just to have you chase me
(it may be my only way
to leave you breathless, the same
way you leave me)

I am a poet
Hear me roar.
Hear my mind run
and race in madness.
Hear my soul burn
and crackle.
Hear my tears drop
into your hand.
Hear my pen scrape
away old ideas caked
onto your mind.
Hear my laughter spring forth into
your
bright future.
I am a poet.

When I lie in bed
in that limbo between sleepy and sleeping
I think about throwing open all the windows on a hot summer night
(the kind where you can't breathe for the season's breath beating you senseless)
and dancing in your arms.
We'll both be tired and conservative with our words
but our feet will converse into the night.
I'm thinking Sidney Bechet's "Blue Horizon" should be a good place to start
so you have an idea of where I'm going.
I want the heat to press us together until we melt.
The end of your body will be the beginning of mine
because no one's paying attention to where lines are drawn.
If anyone's going to draw them, it'll be me
sliding the tip of my finger across your chest in time to the record
which is so slow we're almost standing still.
We don't notice though, because the only rhythm we care about is us.
The way I see it,
it's like Tennessee Williams is somewhere up there
hacking away at his typewriter
creating us with each stroke of the key.
His fingers work our literary strings and we sway like marionettes in the hands of our creator.
He places the screen door on the other side of the room
the ***** walls around us
the indifferent lightbulb hanging above our heads,
giving off just enough light so we don't have to squint
but not enough to make the room feel anything less than sensual.
Tennessee draped the sundress over my shoulders
but kindly left my feet bare so I could feel the floor in its imperfect softness.
He put a watch on your wrist
not so you'd keep time
but so you'd remember the person who gave it to you.
There's a hint of a smile stretched across the divan of your lips
though I know Tennessee had not a single thing to do with it.
It was all me.
And just before I fall asleep,
the song finishes
and Tennessee packs up his machine,
leaving us to ourselves for the rest of the dream before a dream.