"SELF"
We don't know yet what it means to be touched
To be the recipient of caresses,
what the ear learns of itself when it's lines are followed
by the finger of someone else.
We don't understand what the mind percieves
when the thigh's length is measured by the dawdling of a lover's hand,
when the girth of the waist
is measured by the arms of a child.
An affectionate ear on a pregnant belly must alter
the conception of the earth pressing itself against the sky.
An elbow bent across the chest in modesty must anticipate
early light angling over the drape of sheet on skin.
The curl of a pea tendril can be understood as one hand caught carefully inside another.
Cores and cylinders, warm boundaries and disappearing curves,
What is it that we realize when these interruptions of space
are identified with love in the touch of someone else?
I must try to remember what it was I recognized in the sky outside my window
As I wish for the line of my shoulder drawn
by the trace of your lips.
"TINY DEATH"
Just moments ago
it seemed you would explode,
the fierce angle your spine became
your eyes grown wild, bursting
filled with sights beyond my knowing
by shades of light unseen
as you sleep,
your face toward
the window, soft in the cool light,
warming in the last rays,
arcing from the treeline
beneath all clouds.
Soon that angle too relaxes
curls upon itself, fades.
"INDECISION"
Moonlight tells
the story most truly
while it flows down
the curve of your jaw,
as it falls lost in your hair--
the eye may know only so much.
How is it your skin seems
to hold and to let pass
this silver clarity
that both warms and chills me
to the marrow?
"verse"
i am not content to write without passion
staring off beneath a halogen sun.
A cold pen is boring;
paper is dead without tears.
My verse must sigh heavily;
must love as I do.
I am not content to write uninspired
to waste these borrowed words.
Forced verse is adultry.
I write as if I'm dying,
my tired heart pumping lines of blood.
I cannot write any other way.
A poem is like making love
One should finish spent and blushing,
breathless, and momentarily
inarticulate.
"as if only i knew want"
Night's sky will pale
toward tomorrow's reckoning
as I stumble across your doorstep
foundered, neck deep, lost.
Under my falling weight you'll rise
as if only i knew want,
as if only you might answer me.
Though my every fiber may strain towards hearing your heart whisper, no, this is wrong
Your reason will slip so softly by--
