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