you teeter
on emotional frenzy
each word etched slowly
in sensuous curves
of flickering candlelight

your taper drips
from tempting fingers
burning my heart's inseam
singeing tender skin
in enticing wakes

come closer
beguile my air
with your enchanting lips
flutter my skin
in your heartbreak's hollow
& seduction's cries
tease my ear, hold me near

I want, I crave
your sleek
whisper's verse

to be your shimmering muse
wafting inside dreams
melding within fragrant breath
to feel your poem's potency
blistering my tongue
such intimacy carried
within the vessel of my soul

I feel your eyes emblazoned as stars
stitched into a river of ebony
your hands, how they extend from heaven
wading across our distance
tasting of cedar and salt to my mind
of every dream I've yet to realize

I squeeze the rind of you
from coastal sunsets
drinking your essence as blood red pulp
you sing within the cicadas' song
as I wander through tufted sea oats
searching, longingly, for your voice

the whimsical splash
of your laughter is a brilliant fusion
of lemon, fuchsia, and tangerine zinnias
framing my cottage pathway
you become the smile
of every face I encounter,  
the tickling glimmer of sunlight
between scrolls of Spanish moss
dripping like lace from my heart

you are wisteria and wine
late summer afternoons spent
in naked conversation
I want to be drunk on you today,
tomorrow, every day
we're promised tucked
beneath your chin,
slumbering to the sound
of your cool rain
coating oak leaves

Do poets adopt the art of words
naturally, or is it an act
of desperation, speaking
from subterranean spaces
to exhume our suppressed voices,
to find a silent corridor
where our defiance finds sound?

And if we speak, do others listen,
or is it merely an act of resistance,
this conversation within ourselves?
We awaken as others sleep
stacking words, restoring trust
in the unoccupied zones of us.

By dawn, we smile behind
a scaffold of eyes and nodding hands,
comply with the day's demands
anticipating nightfall

when, once again,

we release them-
the destitute, the vagrants
of our exiled selves,
who take refuge in tent cities
built of verse to weather, together,
the long cold nights ahead.

She drapes her beauty
over a gossamer sleeve

breathes music box melody

through the spindles of dreams

elopes with the stars

and whispers
lavish possibilities

through a cauldron of clouds

she, the whimsy,
midnight Blues fantasy

seeped in gin
drizzled over
my sins

she is madness
and meaning

commingled in
pearlescent
glow

she smokes naked
at night

believes the rain

is not real
likes when the

sky is dark
wants to be

struck by lightning
believes it is

eternal inspiration

she laughs when
I say sorry

and forgives me
when I sleep

she is a scavenger
living off the

dearly discarded