It's true that I never really knew you.
But I did love you
In a certain, breathless way.
In a hushed way.
I was very small, then. And very sad.
And I looked out on a great, green, vivid world,
And I was afraid, even, to whisper into it
As if my breath would push the color out.
I watched. I noticed.
I perched on the edge of myself,
On the line between me
And the air around me,
Too cautious to slip into either fully.
I was used to looking.
I was used to being a shadow, and I enjoyed it.
I thought I enjoyed it.

The day I met you, you looked back at me.
You were the first.
Imagine that- all those years, and you were the first person
To wonder what it was like behind my eyes
Enough to really look into them.

I could have loved you
Just for that
And maybe I did, originally.
I remember small things, small wakings-up,
Tiny moments that made me realize who I was.
I never lived inside myself before that year.
When I met you I discovered
That I had hands
That when the breeze was warm
I felt it
That my fingers could read the world I so loved to look at-
Change it
Mold it,
Have it.
I discovered that maybe I didn't have to exist alone
And for that knowledge
I must bitterly thank you,
For ever since then I have craved to be held,
Every second
And it has been wonderful and terrible.

I remember snapshots of that time.

The first time, when you looked at me, when you stood close to me
And I was so surprised that I forgot to recoil
And I discovered that I didn't want to.
Your eyes,
Pale and warm, a clear grey-blue, sparkling with mischief,
And what was behind them-
Pain, fear, love, wit and imagination.
You.

I didn't know you,
But I saw you.
I was looking. I always look.
I rarely see anything I wish I could write poetry about.
When I do, it keeps on coming, even years later.
Go figure.

I remember going home and laying awake in the dark
And your face wouldn't leave my mind.
You were leaving within the week,
And I didn't want to forget it, somehow.
I didn't know what made me want to look at you.
Thinking of you-
The curtain of dark hair you hid beneath a hat,
Your softly freckled skin,
Your low, husky voice that always made my head turn
As if everyone else was just background noise.
Maybe it was the way your lips would quirk up in a half smile
Whenever you said something witty and knew it.
(I loved that you knew it.)
Somehow the sum-total of you
Stuck with me and wouldn't leave.
I'd met handsome men.
I'd met beautiful women.
I'd met many people, by then,
But none I'd wanted to know quite like I wanted to know you.

It had never occurred to me
Before that summer
That I would ever want to kiss anybody.
When I discovered that I wanted to kiss you...
I didn't know what to do.
So I said nothing.
Did nothing.
I passionately looked at you
As you told your mesmerizing stories and laughed and looked elsewhere.
I didn't mind.

That was the year
Two weeks later
That I rolled over in bed and asked my best friend to kiss me.
That was the year I discovered why I'd never fantasized a white wedding
(It wasn't legal yet.)

In the years after, I searched for you.
Sometimes I found you.
Sometimes
I couldn't stop telling you you were beautiful.
Sometimes I felt close to you
And my heart would race.
Sometimes you chose a boy
Over my small, dainty face and my eyelashes and my high heeled boots
And that was the first time I felt
The now familiar aching shame- the fear
That maybe that would always happen.
The fear I still grapple with, if I am to be honest.

Still, there were moments when you and I were close, and I treasured them.
Once, I asked you for a hug
And you pulled me down onto the bed beside you
And that was the first time
I ever felt my stomach fall through my feet
In a delicious way,
In a thrilling way.
All I did was hug you,
And looked at your soft, brown eyelashes
Casting shadows down your cheeks.
And then somebody walked in and the moment was over
But I never quite forgot it.

You were kind to me.
You were kind to me in a way I hadn't experienced before,
And I wanted to make you smile.

I remember the day you told us why you wore shorts at the pool.
I remember the white hashmarks shining in the sun
All the way up your thighs.
I remember I thought a thousand things in that second.
I wanted to tell you that you didn't have to hide them.
I wanted to show you that you were beautiful.
I've kissed scars since then, you know.
Because of that moment, I've kissed scars before I've kissed lips.
I've left people loved instead of wounded.
If I'd have let myself think such things about people back then,
I'd have wanted to touch those long-healed cuts with my fingertips,
Feel the smooth hills and valleys of a chaotic heart
Made damaged flesh.
I'd have wanted to kiss them, too, like I did to different skin-
Softly and without lust, looking into the eyes that witnessed their creation.
It was a very, very personal thought. A very, very private longing.
So confusing that I locked it up and didn't think of it for years to come.
And when I did once more,
I was raising a pale white wrist to my lips, tracing a wax-white pattern of healed hatred with soft kisses
And I saw what I wanted to see in the surprised, vulnerable brown eyes I was looking into.
That moment for her
Was your fault.

I remember when I realized why you had such trouble eating.
I never did hear all the details.
I couldn't presume to ask.
All I did was watch you walk away from the table,
Burning with the desire to comfort you
But
I was so used to looking
And not touching
And so I watched you go
And thought of you all night.

It rained a lot, those years.
It never seems to rain like that anymore.
Whenever I saw you it seemed to rain at least once,
The sky turning the same grey blue as your eyes when you were thinking
And thought nobody was looking
And cracking open with a rush of rain and lightning and the sweet, low rumble of thunder crackling through the hot clouds high above.
The holes in the road would fill with water
And the whole place would become a river.
It was so free.
Somehow I began to think of you whenever it rained.

I'm almost sure it was your eyes. They were so deep and stormy, sometimes.
Sometimes they were bright blue, like those summer days when the clouds skip along the sky, pushed by warm winds and shattered by sunlight.
Sometimes they looked very, very pale, like the tide when it folds up in satiny layers against the sand.
I always felt a little strange, looking at your eyes like I did.
I couldn't stop.
That was probably why I rarely touched you.
I was afraid that I was already invading, already pushing too much
To see what was inside of you.

I remember listening to you learn lines late at night,
The way your voice would rise and fall,
And I didn't even know why I was listening-
It just pulled me in, a sound I was partial to,
A tone I wanted to feel on my skin.

I remember tagging along for countless adventures,
Making up excuses to be here or there that I knew you'd be
Just so that I could be a bit closer.
I didn't have an end game.
Didn't have a goal.
I wasn't me enough yet. I acted from fascination.
I wanted to stand near you and watch you be.

I have the most vivid memory of you taking off running
One hot, hot summer day
Into a field of tall grass,
Your laughs and shouts echoing further away
And sometimes I'd see your pale arms stretch above the wildflowers and underbrush,
Waving a gauzy net after the white butterflies that rode the sunbeams.
What a happy field that was.
I didn't run.
I watched.
I always watched.
But I remember that the smile that touched my face
Filled my bones.

I remember when you cut your hair
And I could finally see your face in full
And I wanted to photograph it
In black and white
And maybe catch the way your laughter lived in your gaze.

That was when
You started to fade away.
I saw you less,
And you saw me... much less.
Perhaps I should have let you turn away
And never said a thing,
But
You were the first thing I ever really wanted
Enough to reach for in any way.
I spoke, and you heard me.
And even though you pretended you didn't
It was still the first time
I ever shouted.

Now... now I'm not sure what I think of you
Or what
You think of me.
But I know what you were when I knew you
And I love that girl
And that girl
Created much of what I love about who I am.
And most of the time
I think she grew up.
Found a man, found a life, found a place.
Most of the time I think it's okay that we don't talk
Because you probably aren't her anymore.
I wish I could say
I thought I'd grow up like that and leave my skin behind
But
I am the girl who looked at you back then.
And I have been her ever since,
Only added to.
I know I will never outgrow how I love,
Who I love,
Whatever woke up when I first realized how I felt about you.
I will only learn to wield it.

Sometimes I wish I knew you now.
Sometimes I wish I'd known you then.
Just because... look at all the firsts you were, to me,
And for years into knowing you
I didn't even know your real name.
Imagine if you'd let me in, how we could have changed each other.
I wonder who I'd be
If I'd done more than just watch you silently and smile.

What I learned
From years of gazing at you across picnic tables and bunk beds is that
You can love somebody you don't know.
You can give to someone you haven't taken from.
And you can be changed by someone who never even touched you.
And I'd like you to know that.
And I'd like to remind you
That you never quite know who out there
Is quietly writing you poetry.

Memory

     is  the birth of cool, it is rapture and ignominious spokesmanship unearthed. Packed into a slatted-wood crate, milking the obsession from cash-toting hands. Freeing itself from your bottom lip while life ticks itself away on a digital stock-exchange display. I am down and you are up, and you save pennies while I search for Chrysanthemums and vanilla-scented candles. Scent is my fifth grade spaceship,
     I hide it in my pocket and take it into the forest when the week is over. Adventure is the part of our story that's caught in between complaining about money and having clean sheets. Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday my hands mend themselves back from bleach, their crevices cave under bright lights, I go to the garden strip and put dirt on my face, over my shoulders, and on my back. I make a altimeter from an alarm clock, and worry what will happen if your feet should ever touch the ground.
Relief
     is a sarcophagus, the satiny silk chrysalis I weave into invincibility. I make myself a small child with a demon-proof lair, no one comes in, not even you.  I see

     how drugs take out your heart and put you anew, fresh: orange, pink, ultramarine. A wave is a soft gesture for twilight, a slow walk among the greying statue towers, bliss extracted from person to person tedium. How you exclaim about **** music as if your temple home was unfocused by jazz or synth-electro.
     I forgot your room of quiet had no bells, no hope, and no notes of resolve. Tragedy was the desert of your six to sixteen, while I made an opus out of crystal glasses and Cran-Raspberry jars. Then it was the relief, Neptune's hands on your *******, red dots of ecstasy connecting you to a higher vibration. You felt it was time to start exercising. I didn't **** you for modifying your perception of color, degrading in a salt pool- I didn't own your ****** it was just a place I went into to write.
    
    Three years later. I was growing backward, I was sixteen, making you the muse in my doorway, a James Bond goddess unraveling my fingers on her silky skin, except your golden crown was really a turban of snakes, and instead of silk I was groveling underneath you. That was the sweat that Ryan Shultz said I garbled up into two pedestal doves, I aimed by eyes straight at the city of gold, and then inside me shucked out every piece of self-respect and vitrified my spirit, castrating my lips and my tongue for something to come to or come at, he said I lived under pointed stars and that lying isn't a good way to get over past phases of silence.

     A few days ago, it all game back to me, in a random series of songs on an iTunes playlist. One memory from an isolated beach outside a strawberry patch near Santa Cruz, a second, two hands cupped over the ears, my face closing in on her smoothed-out pink bottom lip on an over-exagerated car ride to the San Francisco airport, and the third was the mention of non-vegan banana cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, a birthday I celebrated several years earlier. All of them in the coda.
    
     Verse four unbelievable. It caught me straying from the next stressor at hand. What's next? I move my cold hands from a keyboard versing strange relapse of mind, or I tear out another page, whip across town, and peel stamps onto a postcard to send.
     They were all tails from a memory. A slowing ghost that cooed at me from far away, beating me up and down, pulling my eyes away from a scent I continually tried to remember.

Bubble gum, bubble gum, in a dish
i
un-wrap
the tightly wrapped satiny
Paper Package
-- and savor
every sweet taste
Of juicy fruit- and bubbly deliciousness
Wetting my mouth and
AWakening my
wanting tastebuds.

Roll it on my tongue,
blow gently, and
pop, there's that bubbly bubble
gum on my face.

Most late summer days fade into night holding a tepid dreariness in their breath, beating away with the tedium of the sun from late July through early September.
Yet ephemeral as it may be, the life of early summer is purely sanguine in the face of its oncoming age, as willowy saplings sway in the blustering breezes of June, and sprouts of vivid animation appear all around.
This is when the soul heals, and out of the mulch rises new beginnings and the ripening fruit of various works.

In this early season of summer, many taciturn inhabitants of the flourishing earth made their home, and among them, Lily: a creature of reticence and intricacy.
She burgeoned in attitude and character as days crept forward, extending her limbs upwards in an eternal paean to the heavens― as such was her sinecure and quiet delight.

In this, she stood insular to her ubiquitous family, an outsider to the sisters who flitted about carelessly on the wind, satiny gowns of pink and yellow billowing as they twirled.
Always invited into the fray, Lily was evermore stalwart in her choice to keep out of their plainly sordid affairs.

Yet in her isolation, the night whispered to her many a berceuse.
The sleepy stars implored of Lily’s indolent nature as she gazed into their eyes, trailing across eternity into peaceful slumber.
The night sky held wonders and questions that filled her paltry existence but placed her in stasis with the decorated heavens of her dying season,
Left to wither away with the insidious heat and vibrant splendor of late summer evenings.

Kisses under the mistletoe, holly, Santa's list,
Rudolph's red nose aglow,
Sleigh bells ringing,
A donated toy, presents galore beneath the glistening tree,
The rich, soft scent of green pine, wreaths to behold, angels above,
A wish made upon a star,
The wise men's gifts from afar, the drummer boy,
Satiny ribbons, big red velvet bows,
My hollyberry dishes,
Wondrous white fallen, holiday snow
With lights at night - a shiny, sparkling fairyland show! ! !
Christmas time magically brings dreams about heavenly things
Back to life again.
Boxes of candy are ready to go
Except for the bows - a must for shoppin'
Around the world Santa, driven by reindeer,
Will stop for good kids Christmas eve night.
Soon I'll get some seeds the scarlet cardinals and other woodland birds to delight.
Christmas carols were played past years
On our piano
With two old fingers and more.
My grandpa who had a heart of gold could play songs by ear at his memory's door.
Days have long ago gone by since
My grandfather so dear to us
Told me how they use to put
Wax candles on the window sills
And the tree - to light Christmas's way.
Around the deep, magnificent boughs, too, a scallop trim with splendor
Made by hand from strung popcorn and pure ruby cranberries, danced along its adorned, lovely strand.
A glorious tree it must have been!
Grandpa didn't have a red Christmas stocking.
He got a piece of chocolate
And an orange in his sock
Early Christmas morning.
Wishing you all a snowy, Merry Christmas
Filled with sweet dreams of sunshiny days
Tops my list like winter's cherry cheeks
On children whose laughter brings cheer while they play! ! ! !

His long fingers clenched into their palms
His dark eyes were black with intent
Every elongated pause was an intricate harmony
gracefully accompanying the words
that tumbled from his cracked lips
He heightened himself and leaned in earnestly
Feverish want spilling into his rich voice
revealing the fear that had bloomed in his ribcage over the years
Fear that snaked up his throat and caught there
restricting his temperament
Fear that rose from knowledge of failure

Failure indeed lurked sickeningly
In the frosty air
In the purple autumn shadows
In the smell of hot cement
In the satiny pearl petals of the dogwood his mother had planted

He was a single smooth stone in an endless riverbed
Shaped by
the restlessness that flooded him
the desire that washed over him
the nostalgia that swept around him

Frantic to break out of the flow that was accepted by the crowds
Desperate for the peace that surpasses understanding

And in that moment
his finite experience and crooked path
meant less to her than the last of the cigarette she proceeded to flick into the breeze
Outweighed by her faith in the lighthearted boy trapped inside this troubled man's body

With your satiny hairs,
You amble without a normal foot.
But with a pristine look,
Your big eyes shines luminously.
Dear, Maybe people call you a handicap,
I call those bullocks a madcap.
Interestingly, what, I am a handicap mentally, here I reveal.
Everyday I fight inside the close door when night falls.
A few days ago your eyes have cried a lot,
Let me clear here, you are a daring person.
It gives me a reason to fight with his servants openly.
You are a bizarre, I don't know you Monica Sharma.
Though we did not shook our hands at all,
But whenever these eyes squints you,
A new story creates a History...

The soft whisper of your breath
Against my nape
Sends shivers quivering down my spine
Thighs ache to part for you
"Not yet..."
I can smell my wetness permeating the air
Between our pulsing layers
Soft tongue snakes out to taste
Satiny swirls right below my ear
Every glide has me melting, swaying
Closer to the hazed space of your heat
Another *** charged moment and I'll explode
"Please?"
My plea reaches sigh focused ears
Heavy seconds pass until at last
The edges of your teeth sink into pliable shoulder
Your moan.
My scream.
*Our release.

my grandmother sent me
seven thongs
a lacy, midnight blue bra
in the mail,
and i wrote this poem in
shaking, shivering hands
over my psychology homework.

i told this jokingly to the
pure faces of the girls in my dorm;
reflecting off glass like warm,
steamed milk before bed.
"what's a thog?"
they asked.
"it's 'thong'.. you dont know what that is?"
no, it shook their heads like seizures.
"its a type of undie. they make your *****
look nice,"
i told them.
i got a laugh and a face full of mixed expressions.
whatever.

please peel off my layers like a summer orange,
eat the zest.
put on your favorite dainty pair,
black lace or white satiny
polka dots?
they all look good in bed.
pull them up my legs
and warm me up because these
walls are concrete
and all i've been is cold, cold
my toes are freezing.

I drew a flower,
With your lips as a model.
The petals of bright colors,
Looking tasty like apples.

My flower as a heart shape
And perfect curves,
Satiny draped,
Shining like pearls.

sweet satiny sleep, wrap me in your billowing sails of crimson. Take from me this gnarled cross whose weight doth drive through calloused soles these sharp shards of life.

At breaking of dawn
in early morning light
when you first stir
and I'm your first sight,
when you gently taste
my satiny skin
teasing me awake
as our day begins.

With whispery touch
lips moving down my back
urging me to waken
love you with no lack,
arousing from slumber
with passion fully stirring
tensions already built
and motor whirring.

Hair tousled upon my pillow
as I come to you from sleep
then eyes widening with surprise
as you meet me so deep,
sun never burst
across morning sky
as the explosion from you
sending me into convulsive sighs.

Day has begun
with morning ever so bright
as you come to me
bringing total delight,
passion untethered
in wave after wave
leaving me sated
from the love you gave.

Can we go back to the times when we could escape?
When we would run across the neighbor's field to the tree,
OUR tree, overlooking the river.
I want to smell the gritty bank mingled with your citrus scent.
I want to hear your secrets again, the ones you'd slip into my mouth
when we kissed.
Do you remember when we held hands and watched the leaves speckle our
skin green and gold?
I want your ocean eyes to warm me more than the sun,
for the grass to bend underneath our weight as skin touches skin.
I want you to sneak home with me again, lock my bedroom door,
and crawl under my blankets to kiss me for real.
I want to run my fingers through your satiny burnt umber hair,
look into those sapphire eyes as my lips mold to fit your pale pink ones,
perfectly.
I think I just want to love you again.

At the blooming age of 18    
I knew what i wanted
Face up to wrinkled canopy and
smoky waves crashing down on me
I inhaled smooth
Blueberry clouds
releasing thick waves
Softly through
My lips

I thought about her that day
I closed my eyes
picturing
aquamarine eyes
that could drown
city after city
Consuming everything in its path
however cool
and calm
Like a  river

Laying there with the hot sun
on my face
I recollected that day
slow and sweet
kisses that left sparks
that caught fire
burning everything around us
until it all melted into a
brilliant river of light

Her velvet touch
Honey milk kisses
and a voice that dripped
like wet paint

She reminds me of blue
like a bright
sky
One that made you close
your eyes to feel
the sun bath you
with sweat trickling down
the soft edges of
your jawline

She reminds me
of sunflower fields
that swayed lightly
in the cool afternoon of summer
A hint of dew
That seemed to melt
off their petals

She was beautiful
her mind, body and soul

She saw the world
as it was
Like delicately blown glass
filled with dandelion fuzz
and saw dust

She was art so greatly defined
made by satiny
clay
and as years
flew by
she became more defined
with age

and her soul
was a jewel
undescribable

Whose dreary face now becomes warmth – an ash turning
  into a single drop of water

I love and I have – and I know that when she looks
  she does not. Nothing moves the bird of her dawn but

her. Proletariats sing of steel in the night and I deaden
   within their homes. Whose dreary face now becomes

the steady light on the porch – a thigh, or a river, turning
   into a single gasp of song.

I love and I have – and I know that when she sings
   she does not. Her silence moves the moon deep within

its womb and annuls. Each moment in her shoes, she is absent,
   and I taste the pale death of her precise waist,

her sharp tongue having me curved when enough was said
  when empty was sure. I know whose face I am talking to,

but knows not what day has escaped me. The possible:
to bring her so small in my hand, and invent her this fate,

to be unclenching like water and virile like stone. I know
  the singular act of her likeness is born out of my lack:

there is a spring-clean image traipsing the water. I must chase
  where it streams, and its origins not my own.

The city borders us two as we are demanded by the daily:
  the smell of a home shoals me a satiny sob. Still the marvelous

sky, a knife, if not referring to me, the cut lily that is the Sun.
  Whose dreary face now becomes a store,

commerce, becomes the silver of hills, becomes the gray assault
  of an old cathedral, becomes the surety of a transaction

and then becomes wind chiming through cities. Becomes inquiry
  between I love and I have – becomes dearth and is proud.

   Nothing will stop the train arriving: when thirsty for a glimpse
  like mine a fountain or a singular wave from an opened window,

she passes – and does not look for me.

I wake up with your smell braided through my hair
                            Saturating my senses from the night before

Starlight and moonshine lit rings of soft fire in our eyes

                            Falling asleep in your arms
                            World stops, fog settles in
                            No one here but our body heat
                            Syncopation at it's most natural speed
                            Cold fibers seek solace in lip kissed goose bumps

You push me deeper than ever before

                            Our hands parting but pried apart
                            Occupying the spaces between hello and goodbye
                            It is never that easy though, is it?

Straight lines curve when wrapped around your tongue

                           Making the most out of deep sighs and slow, easy smiles  
                           The subtle shifts in your geography have my mouth watering
                           Causing a wild flutter to awaken the dead ache
                           In flesh once thought to be silent

It beats only for you

                           Ink and I have been forged since birth
                           Soul seared and thirsty for it's satiny black quench
                           With it I paint you immortal
                           Dancing through veins and sacred neuron firing
                           you are held
                           Where I can always keep you safe
                           Where in memory you are eternal

You want to create beautiful things
works of detailed art and diamond ******* rings

You want your face to be perfect
Porcelain. Pristine.
radiating a poison
which captivates them in a dream
You want your bones
draped in satiny skin
jutting out in all the right places
taunting the world with sin

Your eyes bright and beautiful
Lush.
You want the entire world
in your bejeweled clutch

Every person you glide by
to halt and to gawk
out of jaw-dropping bewilderment
of how you look when you talk
The slight of your lips
your gaze in your stare
the way you brush your lithe fingers
through your luxurious hair



And you wake up, you realize
in tragic defeat
What you want and obsess is just out of reach

You can never be beauty-full
as full of beauty as she.

i spent the glowing sun today
in a little meadow, a thin dress on
and nothing else, hair twined
not by your fingers, but
the wildflowers replaced them
                                     sadly.
the glowing sun was warm, like
heat from your skin but
not as rough, nor as dark, nor as rich
            and your quiet laughter was replaced
by hums of bees & solitary creasing of smiles,
                                       sadly, but still sweet.
i spent an hour in bed, satiny skin all alone
my hands had to make do
in your absence but i still thought of you.

What are in the presents under the tree?
Boxes are covered in smooth satiny wrapping paper
A puzzle full of colours, solid and stiff, waiting to be pressed together by little hands
A doll that can walk and talk, in a frilly dress like a princess, eager to be posed and played with
A shiny new car making noises when it is bumped patiently waiting to be pushed across the floor
New dresses, ironed and ready for wearing, sewn to perfection
Socks, waiting to be recieved with a fake smile and 'thank you', that are later found to be warm and soft
Shiney new leather shoes, that are not so soft,
Accesories covered in sparkles, that rub off as the small package is opened  
A new book, waiting for someone to crack its spine open and start to read

‘Ore the feverish dunes of Rothmana breaks day,
as the mesmeric, gold-dusted shimmer and sway
of the generous peaks of the land
Echoes she whom I’ve sought so, from lands far away
With devotion that burns like the sand

To her temple I trek, the fates guiding my feet,
The wagon I pull bearing gold, wine, and meat
Till the hills, sweetly splayed, show her sanctum to me
a retiring cave i’ve been waiting to greet
and its mouth, at long last, receives me

Threshing sand from my garb, I begin preparations
Lighting candles, strewing gold, mulling lewd machinations
Pressing herbs to the skin I so need to refresh
Then reclined on the sand, I lay bare my intentions
With a ponderous tribute of flesh

From an olive skinned figure, shy sand lizards clamber.
Obsidian shards housed in bright eyes molten amber
Scan her cave and trespasser within.
Those eyes terrify, yet all that I am
Burns with a fire the sight lights in my skin

Rage at first, a ghastly hiss
My life at stake should Cupid miss
yet my stony conviction does not falter,
This minstrel’s fingers at your service,
Lips to worship at your altar

Now melting, swooning, serpentine,
The touch of your skin like the sweet spell of wine
As your emerald bustle and train
Meet a throbbing, hungry serpent of mine
That parts your hot seamline in twain

The graze of your fangs, the breath from your lips
The touch of your sweltering, satiny whip
Lashing and lapping and torturing me,
Helplessly bound in your titanite grip
On the cusp of pain and ecstasy

As your willowy throat goes drifting lower
With skills to call a cyclone slower,
I think to myself as my eyes start to roll
What marvels those lips that I worship so were
As they’re making to swallow me whole

Now, the beast within you shaking,
the ground beneath us quaking
a rapturous dance, our senses boiling,
lost in feeling, writhing, roiling.
A final surge, our limbs encoiling…

“Oh!” the toiling low roar rolls, until
Though bosoms heave, our forms lie still
So slick with dewy sin - divine
till wrangling my limbs at last to my will
I pour from our bottle of wine

And those ***** spirits sipping
Send your eyes to slumber slipping.
I rise to go, “Goodbye,” and then,
You catch my hand, and tightly gripping
Say, “Please, won’t you do that again?”

The Last Bed We Buy

Grateful not to find myself
disembodied hovering high above
this stark cake of soap, gazing down
laboring to put names to faces, the couple
so familiar, side by side, palms down, still as

miller moths displayed on pins, I drift off  
to the drone of Bill or Ted, rumpled as
a morning after motel king intoning
soft or firm versus memory foam
or pillow top, hypoallergenic …

the last thing I hear before we fall
fast asleep spooning on a plush queen,
not too soft and not too hard, but just right,
satiny raft to ferry us the last stretch of river.
Waving like the Queen we float past the last new

roof over which we will preside, nod in solemn
recognition of our high efficiency gas furnace
apt to burn on years after I’m gone, applaud
politely what jolly well may be a farewell
drive north through the Tunnel of Trees

some biting October afternoon, weep
softly for our old squirrel chaser sawing
soft imprecations to hips gone tender some
blustery April night dog years from now, blow
low Bronx cheers in a fond adieu to life mediated

through screens. Even Bill or Ted knows that grace
lies just ahead around the next oxbow, leaves us
to dream, two dormice cupped in a leaf, rills
and eddies bearing us seaward, buoying us
downstream on softly rolling shoulders.

The Last Bed We Buy

Should I be grateful not to find myself
disembodied hovering high above this stark
cake of soap, gazing down, laboring to put
names to faces, the couple so familiar,
side by side, palms down, still as miller

moths displayed on pins, our salesman,
Bill or Ted, rumpled like a morning after
motel king, reading my mind, musing on
this pair of worn porcelain dolls
painted in chipped shades of hesitation?  

Soft or firm versus memory foam or pillow top?  

Hypoallergenic pipes Ted or Bill, the last thing
I hear before we drift off spooning on a queen,
one not too soft and not too hard, but just right,
a satiny raft to ferry us the final stretch of river.

Waving like Queens we float on by the last new
roof over which we will preside, a nod of recognition
for the last new water heater, too.  Applaud politely  
our farewell drive through the Tunnel of Trees

one biting October afternoon in the not so distant future.
Cluck our tongues for the poor dog snoring soft
imprecations to hips gone tender some coming
rainy April night.  Blow twin Bronx cheers,

fat, wet, and sloppy, as we bid adieu to one last
shameless act of televised hubris.  Grace lies
ahead around the next oxbow, two dormice
cupped in a leaf, rills and eddies conveying us
to the sea on softly rolling shoulders.