Bad Hygene- for Jake
i won't wash my face today
don't want to erase
the last traces
of your mouth's delicate dance
across my face last night
can't brush my teeth
without washing away
the last few hot breaths
we shared as we searched
each other's body
for a home
can't clean my ears
of our pillow talk
my mouth so close to yours
that my words echoed in your mouth
and were lost
and if i wash my body
all the fingerprints that evidence
how well you man-handled me
will disappear
and my smell
will replace
our smell
so i'd rather stay dirty, smelly, sweaty
happily covered in funky memories
of you
*
Fantastic Morning
I awakened today wishing I were in your bed- sleeping, sweaty, partially naked
(except for undies,
I got my P last night when I came home),
intertwined. Noise and dim light from the street gently reintroducing us.
I would drink coffee / tea in bed with you and we
could turn on
A dvd and mostly pay attention.
You could absent-mindedly rub my belly,
where cramps are today, And say “good morning, lover”
My body is one you would like, I think.
I look best nude, 3 decades worth of dancer’s muscles covered with a bit of womanly fleshiness…
its smells and flavors are nice too.
My world has expanded, recently, to include
you, your sweet weirdness
Your kisses that blew life
into my zany bubble
Inflating it with possibility
And yet it feels strangely
empty now
that you’re not with me.
*
Alone on a Saturday Night
I've lit seventeen candles
Scented glow casting scented shadows
Me, the angelic siren
Unwittingly treasured, no mention
Of my life smudged soul.
In this light I am beautiful.
In this light I am loved.
Rain makes it romantic too
(though the cabby scooped love out
with his small car and his wet hands)
In the bath I have drawn
Rose petals float
Dozens of drowned Ophelias
And faith absolves itself
Dissolved in the salts of tomorrow's heathered rosary.
*
On this Ferris wheel
No tomorrow
Next week next time
Promises enslaved
Encapsulated in rhyme
Darling, stars
Will never glow like this again
Bright like eyes
Shocked like children
You, my faithless companion
Entrust your soul to a sweeping hand
But we only get one go-round
We only hand pick snippets
That become memories
While our souls still fizz
And your hand still fits mine
Can you promise
That the cumin-luminous
Sun will always love us
Two circus lovers
The dog and pony show
That never impresses?
Lover, we only have these ideas
Kissing with hearts so full
Once in a clear moon
We only choose chocolate
Tones in the nosegay
While we still see ocean and horizon
As lovers making earthen love
No, tomorrow
Is for those who fear
Who never just jump in
Without first testing
With tentative toes
We, for all our salt
Can laugh and cry
In the elapse of a sunset
We kiss ellipses when we kiss
(Sometimes we just melt
As in "I end and you begin where?")
My sunburn seeks only the shade
Of your eyelashes, only hope
Like mango on your lips
And no matter how drunk I get
We're still at the top of this ride
Blurry festival colored lights
Competing with the stars
Crisp exhilaration rumbles around us
Accordions and flutes,
Tunes made dissonant by motion
And all I want is to know
If this is my heart's butterfly
Or if this moment means more to me
Than life itself
And all I care of safety
Is that your knee is forever
Touching mine
In this universe of inflating balloons
And soap bubbles, sawdust and love
You know, if the moon fell on me right now
I don't even think I'd mind dying, pancake flat.
*
O
My two ends have met, melded
Into something faintly symmetrical
A silver ring, enmeshed with your mouth,
Gold, and mine, bronze
And this quiet O
Tempers my disposition
Peppers my lopsided walk
With haloed shadows
On sidewalks littered with clicks of my shoes.
*
Terms
I've always loved the epistollary genre,
letters fitted with words we might never utter
(for utterance infuses them with nervous life, through breath,
makes real reflections inextricable from the tongue, the lips).
With words I can coyly curl around you
copper kitten-like with holographic eyes,
weave worlds for "us", discursively,
full of languid summer-light day, humming humid night,
fire-flies and murky pond water
aged in the exquisite casks of these two
bodies, graceless and unapologetic
like children.
But speaking this world makes it true-
Makes us kiss in that Sunday rain,
that Sunday movie, that Sunday inclination,
Your imagination frotting against mine
rendering it almost-pregnant with images
of what-was-not-but-might-have-been-or-be,
pale shapes with color-soaked edges, vivid, laden.
These words, written first by hand,
possess a different power from those spoken-
chest rising, falling, lips fellating the enunciation
expelling/coupling words with breath, the thing without which
I am not. These words cannot be divorced
from breath, from body, cannot be made
any less real than me-
So I do not speak.
These words, formed by precise jitters of my left hand,
jiggles, giggles of my wrist across blue lines
begin a dangerous lovely triangle of you, me
and words, those dazzling darlings
I've held so close and for so long,
chicken-scratch signifiers in still-fresh ink.
Words speak volumes to me, you know,
colors, layers of scent, texture, memory,
snippets of imagination, more vulnerable, revealing
than my naked body in wind or bad lighting.
Dare you meet me on these terms?
You shan't escape unscathed
("shan't," you see? This is not reality...)
My passion, my livelihood, these words
rapier-like at times, dagger-like at times-
and often gentle as peach-fuzzed nose breath
whispered with fairy-like precision
into that crescent crevice behind the ear-
might bind you, slowly, to me, as wood glue
drying in a garaged woodshop might,
without them ever being spoken.
If I say what I mean, and mean
what I say, take care not to fall
for an amorous alphabet of unspoken words.
You see, I only occasionally have the balls
to live them.
And I haven't said a word.
*
Tantalus' Equinox
drink, dreamer, from the malty sweetness that spring surely brings
to my sensate skin, my full and plaintive mouth, quietly murmuring prayers,
sanctifying against the slash and burn your slap-happy hands
might scythe from our tomorrows. you who dresses even the fallow girls in fallal.
planter, your senescent seasons have yielded little
but rotten pitted fruit, slack-skinned seedlings, nothing
to sustain more than your dreams, which you dream feverishly.
taste, Tantalus*, the tangy dirt in which you plant this season's dream.
can you smell its earthborn fertility? swallow its untainted blood-red intention?
Tantalus,
what would you do if you knew you could not fail?
embolden and embellish now, says Eros,
this equipollent, unembowered day,
this embryonic night.
but stay yourself against the ephemera with equanimity--
do you realize what torrential rain, what torrid sun
are necessary to transmute your porus dreams
into succulent harvest? are you willing to enslave yourself
to the travail, its intractable task? And, of course, make
whatever preparations for empery you must make?
and what god must i supplicate?
what wrath must i endure? i ask this,
as i willingly lay myself on this damp, makeshift altar
for you.
this yielding year is assuredly y/ours.
have you chosen as yet a scent from my body
for its flowers?
*Tantalus was a legendary king of Phrygia who was condemned to remain in Tartarus, chin deep in water, with fruit-laden branches above his head: whenever he tried to eat or drink, the water and fruit receded out of reach.
*
Lover,
You would come in the night. I would lay asleep in the dark room.
You would undress me and take me. Brutally, hungrily take me.
Perhaps I would fight you. Perhaps I would just lay there.
Perhaps I would not be scared. Because I would know your scent.
I would know the feel of your skin. I would know and not be afraid.
I would just lay there and let you take me.
The room would reek of pleasure.
It is the suddenness of it all that would make me gasp.
All of a sudden, my dreams would be interrupted as you penetrated.
But with you inside I would not want to sleep.
The only noise to fill the room is to be the ticking of the clock
And my breathing. My heavy and helpless breathing.
You would make no noise. You would be too intent on pleasure.
The body would be weak with sleep. It would offer no resistance.
And though we were together, we would think only of our own
Pleasure. Each would be excluded from the other.
It would be perfect.
You would not stay the night. As quietly as you came,
you would go. I would resume my sleep.
It would be a dreamless sleep.
I leave my door unlocked at night now,
waiting.
