Sitting in bed with
you, back against
the wall,
we talk about
how smoking
cigarettes
is ****
and we laugh
and the 5:30 glow
of soon-to-be-sunrise
floods the wall

it's then you tell me
your stories
your deepest
tragedies
your longings
and your needs
and I can
taste the
whiskey on your
sorrowed tongue

and so I hold
you here,
in my arms,
our shadows changing
shapes in daylight's
advent
where I
want so much to
keep you and we
watch the
sun come up

The turn-table's in
rotation and
Otis is rallying
my sin,

Oh,
your cambridge blues
are piercing
me
where I'm kneeling in your
pew
like God himself
has been here,
like God himself
cast you

you dust another
record
and you
phrase it on your
shelf

you're everything,
an eclectic,
class-act
tapestry,
boy, you're something
else.

Tonight,
underneath the sooty
sweeping sky
where my
amber lights
all blossom in their
honeyed, brilliant
blaze,


I'm no longer
lonely


how do people
do it
where they fall in love
and push ahead
they reach rapture and
keep going,
they reach the height
of ecstasy and only
move on up

It means the world to me,
that for me,
to me,
with me
you've found the edge of
rhapsody  
where you
balance on the
threshold of a
romance ever-
lasting

There aren't enough hours in the day
to watch your
hands

the way they serve me
whiskey
or dance on a
baby grand

Just the thought of you
and words
do not prevail
like they do
like they
usually do

where I'm burning to the top
with passion
desire
tension building
releasing,
insatiably reaching
for
you

What is it within
your soul
that touches me
so

where I am
flooded by the
cadence of
your haunting
amber glow

and every book I've
read
poem I've read
and sentence in me
struggles to
find a way to tell you
that
I'm in utter awe
of you.

Some people are
the poets
who fall in love
with every shadow
on the wall
and every flicker
of a tiny
burning
flare

Some people are
the poets
who drink coffee
dark as pitch
and they press
their candied lips
against the
armor of a pen
who translates
tales

And some people are
the sparks
the light against
the ocean
the little bit of air
that blows the flame
into existence
when I blow it
out again
because I always
blow it out again
and need
the gesture
of
your soul
to light the
fire that
raves in
me.

If I lie here
drenched in
silence
and I see your
chest
rise and fall
in candied
fulfillment
I'll be able to sleep
at night
because my silver tongue
seduced again
evolved into
a siren who can
talk you
straight to ardor.

If I lie here,
soaked in ivory silence,
dripping in your
yearning quiet
a honeyed
aftertaste
to you
then
my chest will rise and
fall and I
will
finally
experience
what it is
to love
and surrender to it
all