sleep
40
there are pictures i hide, movies that slide like secret
lights when i lie in bed, waiting to sleep, swimming in
and out of the shine of some memory, some mouthful
of a kiss, a word spoken but not heard because voices
—beautiful vibrations of throat waters—are the first to fade
into the distance of years,
and yesterday you were telling me things about tomorrows
and forever, and today you are a quiet movement in my mind,
a spot of silent light fading into a different dream where voices
matter half as much as their mumbled meaning
41
we have made colors, earth shades,
floating into space tendrils,
stars have spoken our names
we have swam in the muck of water that surrounds
the planets we have planted with wishes and
kisses
we have laid down to dance, drowned in the
lazy yellow lights of sex streams to watch the
flowers of the stars tumble into storms
and we massaged blooms from our fingers,
stepped into pasture's paradise with the
stomps of our feet, sinking away in stupefication,
buried in a beautiful bath of black holes
where nothing is hidden
and everything exists
42
you left me with a wing,
a sprightly thing,
to touch and remember
the weight of your face,
the softness of a smile
waiting to be kissed,
a laughing of hands and
a flight of fingers
that takes years to recite
even with poetry piling up
on a man trampling time away
in search of the tiny truth
you hide when you slide your
body out like some cloud succumbing
to the blue that birds drink in the
rarefied air of stretching for the stars,
breathlessly reaching for the wonders
that you reflect in way-away water
43
something i can not touch about you rises and falls,
opens and closes around my heart,
fading in and out of this musical mind i have,
collapsing like a cubist mirror on the river of
memory which washes away old hands for new
touches,
and though it comes and goes—this song—
it can hardly be heard,
(the sound your throat made when it was waking up
my name) and though its mouth speaks and kisses,
it can not feed the heart the same leaping,
the jumps and dives in the gut,
the slips and slides in the chest,
when you used to find your fingers falling somewhere,
anywhere across my body, and though the music
is a meandering watery flow of blurs and shadows,
there is a place you still sing when i stop for a swim
in the silent stream of dreams,
which allows for no time,
no limits on the landscapes we color when we hide
love from this real world,
this weary chase i make,
windburned and running to catch that drink of river
you painted on me with the patience of whispers and
waterfalls,
all flowing back to here—right here
44
who cares about love poems or lollypops?
who knows anything about the mystery of her hips?
or the breath of god?
but when the lights go down and i lie with the
summer sweating all around me,
i skate across those winter skies—
those twinkles of eyes like sparks fighting for shine—
and, from the air, a cool, foggy breath shakes my heart
awake, and my pulse stutters and
there is something like a snowy vibration
that sends a smile like a race up my spine
who cares about metaphors or daffodils?
who knows anything about the shape of her shoulder?
or the depths of death?
but when i trip about on the winter lights tonight
i wake up the stairs of stars, climbing
the dreams of songs that slip through the fingers
of her hair,
and i hang on until
there is a rush of blood swarming in my sleep
that leaves a trail of snow angels leaping in my
throat, flying in the drink of a wintery kiss
45
the wild strawberries of your kiss still visit me
on days when the sun is full of steam and the body
moves with the slow deliberateness of lips opening
and closing for unconscious kissing,
and the sound of your breathing is a further
articulation of the lazy curl of your hips swaying to
a rhythm of the only dance that matters, our bodies
swinging and sliding down the miles of moons we
have imagined with make-believe hands
(and there are still secrets i carry with me to bed at
night),
but your voice is a place i have lost when it
is quiet and the world teeters on the buzz of wanting
to stack a string of wonderfuls on the stubborn stars
of this slightest swim of sleep,
and the mind waits for better birds to fly with
weightless wings, floating on the feathers of long
done days where every whisper was a meditation
on touching, where the lights were languid and
lying loosely on a dream, unwilling to fade, eventually
going quietly away and distant from reaching with
ripe fingers feeling for stolen strawberries, as sweet
and sad as the summer rain
46
asked about inspiration, i take a muse breath—
leave little replies all over the air as if crystals of lazy,
streaming snowflakes were sliding streaks of girl
silhouettes all over the strands of these skies—
instead of stuttering some stupid statement colored
by mumbled metaphors and missed kisses
as i walk away from questions, i wonder, even myself,
why your hands hold all the pretty flowers, their curves
and their colors, their fragility?
what do the stars say that make me hear your name at night?
and why is it that the better beauty of the beasts we are
bubbles, always, back to you, inviting friends and fingers
over for poems, lovely lie-down lullabies that decorate my
heart with meaningful metaphors and bluer moondrops
that shine for paper birds, waking up words full of wanderlust
wings and willow trees?
47
was your love thing a more alive thing than my love thing?
or was your thing a lesser, simpler thing perched delicately
atop floors of flowers, superficially swimming in a slush of
sparkles, a delusion of sweet spots tossed with tired kisses?
and was my thing a reckless, scared thing twisting in
the trickery of whispers on webs, sick with heart stains,
tumbling through the vertigo of violence in your hair,
trying to catch a better balance from the lovely brutality
of our thing?
and my thing wanted to grow more things,
and your thing was a dull thing, a playing thing, like
something that melts quickly on the tongue,
but your thing was as sweet and soft a thing as my thing
and i still carry my thing, kept quietly alive, tied to the
head of my heart
48
i've watched you run through flowers,
your hair on fire from the sun, your mouth
hiding a laugh from a kiss, and the face of your
heart turns in for sunny smiling, tucks a picture
of this—this piece of us—in a pocket you hide away
for later dreaming,
and the world leaks something like a meaning in
the moment(immeasurable) between your hand
and my hand,
and a touch happens, breathes with the echoes
of eternity water and calmly pours somewhere rain,
burying our bodies in the dirt for mud dancing,
pushing delightful daisies all the way to the top of
death, as delicious and sweet as your lips, dappled
that day with sunshine and slowness
49
she has spilled secrets like stormbursts on this paper,
hidden sentences like kisses that phrases have forgotten,
and the sounds of these secrets sail on subconscious waters,
sing through the sands of this dream, constructing mythic
castles from the quiet carnal whisperings of the water,
asking the night to count how many seasons have past
since last your fingers found my face,
and i have searched the days, page after page, but the
dumbness of everydays are not somedays and the truth
knows no hair like the strings i have erased from your
face,
and love letters get lost in the lazy sound of a larger lullaby,
a melodic pause where a pleasure pierces—carefully, precisely—
some small sound that makes silences from words i never
spoke, but have never stopped uttering
50
i remember laughing in the water with you,
our clothes sticking to our bodies, wet and warm
with laughter, your hair stuck to your face, and
a memory streams across my mind's window
like a dream of your fingers, clasping my hand
as you lean in for a kiss,
—and it is true that kisses are always softest after
the rain
and i can taste salt now, flavors that trace the
shape of the heart,
—and the heart is a hardest thing to recreate,
but i chase that vision, still, quietly, and when
no one else is listening, i reach with hands washed
by whispers to wish the wisps away from your lips,
—and, yes, kisses and rain are a truest thing
51
you are still the sweetest stain, suffocating my heart
with your old singing, bouncing breath sounds and
word strings across all my useless dreams and
finally you are somewhere other than an echo
crossing my mind with lay-me-down lips or find-me
fingers, but
eventually these mouths, mindful of missed kisses,
might chew some new stardust, make a softer song,
steal a smaller singing from the music of your moons,
but
you are still a quiet that even thieves can't know,
and you hold a hunger in your hands that feeds endlessly
reveries,
and i can not stop your stillness, or escape the simplest,
most basic beautifuls you are, hiding again, always, a stain
of an echo in my heart(soft as death's slowest hand, as white
and perfect as where life might have been bent)
52
what is the poetry in a distance,
the colors and the shapes of your
hours? how does time count your
petals away, measure the meaning
hidden up and down the length
of your legs?
there are answers in your art, but
shhh-shadows cover all your kisses
that might, maybe, lay lazily across
your face for teasing the lights with
possibly perfect sex smiles and
sneers
and the slow recognition of the
softest lines bent and sprayed by
your silhouette are something as
quiet and deliberate as a breath
pushing a whisper from a secret
but there are theories that travel
the distance of the heart and the
mysteries you make are as white
and perfect as the hope i hang
on this poem
53
sometimes i taste a memory of your kiss,
or breathe the air that surrounds you while
standing next to moonbeams—bathing in melted
blue light—
but even these pieces are only shadows
of the heartlights that used to reflect from your eyes
when you looked in my direction
like every time was the first time
and that life was an echo where the full moons of
your eyes would always lay its lazy pale waters on
me, carrying the air of my breath across the ripples
that forever shine, one light rolling after another,
over the brilliance of your body
54
the air is hungry for your kiss,
and i have tasted other loves,
eaten my way through daydreams
and measured all the miles
of moonlight that have been
shining since your muse has
met me
but even as i make mischief
from the recipe of your touch,
you are still the only and every
real thing i have ever touched,
and you are the only most tiny
and delicate wish that i have ever
wanted to hold,
and, though you can’t be held,
you have left stains on my fingers,
whispers on my palm, that will never
let me touch another without hearing
your name,
seeing your colors in every sex breath
that sails back to all those meanings we
made when we were all the music and
none of the noise
55
the fingertips of your kiss,
the stain in your song remains,
drips across my dreams where
i search for language and meaning,
sunshine and warmth
like sex or
your teeth caught in some stupid smile,
like a joke catching you by surprise, or
a chill told you a story about love or
like something i said rung a bell inside
you
56
the light of your legs tangles up and down me for moon
drinking, and the slippery splendor of all those specks
of starlight that lazily float in your eyes are like a slowest
memory were coming unhung from a dream to drop tiny
remnants of rain across my hair for gush drops and
gasp breaths waiting for another kiss, another taste of
the mush of your mouth
and the shape of your shine is swimming like some silly
string that flies around my fingers when i lay hands, like
some softly blown prayer being answered, on the flesh of
your waist and run my palms—warm and weathered by old
hopes—up and down that curve where all meaning is measured
and every thought chases thighs to fingertips and the lips drop—
droopily dripping kiss-wishes, waking up the waves, mixing all
the milk of the moon
57
the saddest song of rain washes out the old heart places
where you walk,
steps steeped so thick in the muddy rhythm of the rhyme
of this rain and the sound of its loveliest consequence opens
an eye,
waits for the wash to walk you away again,
and the gut grabs the heart,
tugs and pulls out all the wires and the weeds
and presses on a pause for the wonder of your rain,
falls like the first time—a cloud on full pour
58
her hands like the softest hammers on the heart are
the masks of all those make believe touches gesturing
to a kiss that fades into some song being whispered by
the faintest flute fluttering her wings of legs to tie a knot
around my memory of her mouth, the shape and color of
her pinkest pours of lips
and some soundless warm thing, as precise and ecstatic
as the whitest snow, crawls into my ears and somewhere a
star of sweetest silence has touched the end of the blackest,
most beautiful infinity with the calm fingers of her lips
clasping a kiss like a petal to a palm
59
to rest a hand on her hip is like slipping time through
a kiss, the breath of my name on her lips like a glass
of rain spilling on my heart,
and yet her fingers are far away, and her taste is
something i remember on nights lit by moons and
wine lights that leak little sounds and sudden trembles
across the window of a place i can hardly touch from
a wish on a reach
but still she slays me with that smile, even vaguely
reflected on this frosty glass of my tired eyes, barely
hearing her whisper something to take with me to that
grave, a lovelier thing to dance with while i'm dead and
deeply dreaming
60
i try to mimic your shape with the weight of these words,
attempt to curve your lines with the sound of some silly
syllables like lying a softer whistle down across your body
with the sweetest air resembling the lazy whippoorwill, or
the tumbling of ceramic snow, as loopy and lilywhite as
the streams of your skin
and yet all that wakes is the water, the ever-moving wave
of a moment melting into the mind like the drips of winter
dreams falling from the skies of a dustier music that makes
meaning from the memory of the sun pouring around the
breath of your body, cresting over this kiss
61
i grab words with rain soaked hands,
push clouds away with punctuation
and celebrate the sun with singing
because today is spring,
and the light lays you near me again,
and i have been waiting all winter
for the snow to go,
for darkness to die,
and for you to shine a little smile on me,
your hair, yellow like it used to be, once,
when we were really alive and words
were not as important as time
and kisses and.... breathe
—it's spring and you are so lovely
in this light,
a shower of warmth and memory and
rain-stained words
62
this sky holds a thousand star stories, and their
shine reflects against our dreams like mirrors on
the water, undisturbed with quiet
and the lights of these stories, old ones and new ones,
bend across the back of some beautiful girl i've never
bothered to forget,
and the water shakes a little from a breeze
—the softest reminder of spring—
and i come out the other side of this sleep
holding starlights in my hands, waiting
for a place to let them shine on the heads
of angels, or on the heels of the dew of
flowers with color and cool rain,
making waves like making love on the water
of a story caught in the shimmering light of
slippery sky, skating across the lines of her
dawdles of dawn and the droops of shoulders
bending to the shore
63
you are a house of light in my heart,
a place where the rain of the world can't
find me,
a place where the moon makes puddles
of blue flame bounce off the walls,
where, when the sun rises, you are seen
waiting in the doorway to a bedroom,
holding the yellowest rose beneath
your mouth,
watching a petal fall, and me,
catching it with kisses and plumes of
hands, caught in the bright beast of your
brilliant heat,
listening to the calm of the rain on the
roof of my heart
64
we walked in the mute moonlight—
only the sound of our hands coming together
to keep us company,
tangling fingers into that pop love makes when
it breathes that first newest air of folding two
hearts into a dance of paper red plumes
and a white wind chases us down the street like
the lights had come on in all the sleeping houses,
and a kiss happens, quietly decorated with the
dabbles of darkness, hiding in the shadow of a new
spring's arms,
and the blood runs to our fingers and we fall into
a folded heart, fumbling into its filaments
65
we wrestle the water, kicking wishes
around with our toes, climbing our limbs
for breathing through the mist-kisses that
float around this dream,
and the shape of a stone angel, smiling
above us, pouring sex and cold sensational
rain over our heads, leaving shivers to smile
and stain the skin of your face, your
laughing face,
and you wrap those perfectly clear legs
around my waist and i slowly—softly
submerging—sink down, counting the stars
in your eyes as they delicately fall into
the shimmering sky of this cool drink
of most spectacular drowning
66
your hair lays lazy on your shoulders,
muddy streaks dripping from your neck
like fingers spreading across your back,
your head tilts far to one side, stretching
the skin where the melted cream of your
shoulder creates a valley in that spot
where the hollow meets the bone
and you write words across my mind,
scrawl sentences and sensations with
your leaning towers of fingers, writing
love letters to language with the art that
science has solved with your face: your
soft features, your lips, those kisses yet
to be sent, muddy memories yet to be
caught
67
today the pink blooms are
popping on the stooped trees
you stand to tiptoe into a clumsy pirouette
and i bend to drink a cup of rain
68
looking up and seeing you smile—
the sun playing like a halo around
your head—
and there was so much happiness dancing
that day:
my head resting on your lap,
your perfectly long fingers traveling
the thousand different strings of my hair
and i know that moments move, the past
suffers delusions and dream world additions,
and yet somehow the rules went south that day,
and that sun 'round your face—that glow of a face,
a face burned in my memory's movie—has forever
preserved that slowest, yellowest stillness, sent it
to another star, where it waits for us, holds its shine—
until its time
69
the water of my hands rushes down
the hills of your hips, and the fingers
of these hands are like stones—smooth
and numerous—skipping across your thighs,
waiting for the magnificent mind of your
most feminine flow, where the falls meet
the stones and i rise, dripping and drowned,
to your lips and we speak in languages
silent to the seas and the stars, only echoing
in the flesh, flashes that stay damp even
when the rivers have all run dry
70
i have ranted and raved all these years,
raising words, planting poems in honor
of this thing you are, this truth we told,
our bodies sharing secrets,
and minds can’t retain, hardly remember,
meanings and shapes that hide away in
dreams, beneath softer songs
and yet every spring, for a moment, when
the best of first beauties peel open for sun
peeking, i hear the words again, faintly, and
i lean in and feel your breath on my face, brush
my hand by an echo of your hair and try to
remember, again, that your kisses are where
i find all these forgetfuls, all these first flowers
of fullest love
71
the air we share was once so thick
and full of flirtation that gasps could
be heard from passers-by
and there was a dance, a stillness in
the anticipation, the clutter of the chaos
of hands and arms,
and the world slowed a turn, just enough
to fade into a kiss, closer and closer to
the absence of language and shapes,
a place where i can feel your eyes
and scream your name without
ever opening my mouth, touch your
face without catching my breath
72
her hair lays lazily across her head,
her face—seriously beautiful—is
decorated by naturally reddened
flesh, like softly roses waiting for
smiles to rain the petals down to
blow through a windy laughing
where lips wait to speak but gasps
for possibly kisses
and her hands hide her knees
—together things—hiding something,
hushing the voice of secret telling and
storm selling
but there is that waist, a place for
hand-clutching and breath-catching,
somewhere to hide my wishes, wait
for her sun to help them bleed and
grow
73
the way she curls inside herself, her body—
a delicate tangle of limbs—fitting together
like dreams etched around the shape of her
sleep
but she doesn’t know how sweetly she sculpts
my heart, how her hands teach me silence,
and her feet, propped up on the wings of the air,
are songs to fragility,
and though i am careful with words and clumsy
with hands, she has softly whispered a breeze,
a drizzle of electric rain falls on my face
from the buzz of her breath,
and as she presses her fingers into her lips she
makes me know hope, wallow in pictures to
wake the wishes of her mouth
—careening on a kiss—
her sweetest wash of hair sweeping across my
face like fidgets or shivers slithering against the
softest snow
74
the way her legs cross is
like some movie opening,
pictures breathing into life,
reminders of something
prettier than ordinary,
a delicate reminder of a
something higher than the real,
a superficial reminder of beauty,
a nudge toward the truth,
but the truth is a plundering
thing too, a leak of words that walk
knowing that knees and lips are
where all the world comes together
and the sun projects a shine on my
body as i witness a flicker of her
slightest gestures—
a girl being the greatest art,
evidence of better perfections
75
as the rain dapples a design
across this world, we do not
hide our wet hands, washing
our bodies like some frenzy
were alive in our flesh
and it is no accident that we
drink these kisses with the
thirst of desert thieves looking
for cactus hearts—the way i
surgically massage your throat,
rinsing away your floods of hair
with my fumbling falls of fingers,
flicking thunderbolts away with
disdain for competing electricities
and the world is dark around this
frame we are, flickering frenetically
lights, fireworks in this wettest of
desert desires
76
there falls a drizzle of a dream
out this window, a veil of rain
falling as the weight of your body
decorates my body,
and your hair tickles my face with
its fluid fingers and laughter fights
its way into this dream and we fly
ourselves out this window,
a wetness wakes up that sliver of
sleeping heart where we hide all of
our truth and we lift the world with
the loveliness of this lazy lullaby,
our bodies swaying a song like a
cello stroke across each string of rain,
making a vibration that sends a million
shivers across dreams like waves swallowing
every cynicism, hiding every horrible
77
i watched you stretch your jaws,
treading tired legs to the shore of our bed,
those floating feet, stepping
like softest floors toward a neighboring sleep place
where you go for private dances,
quiet lands where you can secretly touch the paint
of tulips and shower in the waterfalls of
wondrous planets that
decorate your head, falling
on your pillow, sliding
down your hair,
and words wither in your mouth because dreams don’t
speak the way we do, but kisses—yes, kisses—decorate
the doors of our houses
78
i used to part water with my footsteps,
like some giant who believed in the
fruits he held in his hands,
i used to touch paper with fingers
stained with strawberry words, chocolate
covered sentences waiting for a girl to
climb t
he vines of my high house and
tangle me in webs of candy and shellacked
with kisses,
and when she sailed across the sky’s
deepest water, i split the stream with
petals of tulips and squeezed the perfume
from the clouds just to watch her, slowly,
come together within me, an old idea, a ghost
of a girl, emerging from sleep's fog holding
all her merely fantastics in the poems that
break when her palm meets my face
79
the dust that falls on dreams is as
rich as the rain, as apparent as the
rings on saturn, and it is in this gauzy
scene of sleep that you sit, reclining
against some tree, flowers falling around
you, white and pink petals peeling away
like the fattest of warm and silly snowdrops,
and you read aloud from some brilliant book,
verses about hands and lips, legs and fingers,
and all the words are raw,
and the breath that is perfumed by the paper
embraces a poem, casts it over its audience,
a science of shadows measured and weighed,
poured across your skin, your hair crawling like
a cooler fire, fumbling up and down your neck,
a clumsy adolescent learning to drive your heart
with sentences sliding across your body like
whispers—night words—quietly falling into
silently sentences that build rings around your
prettiest planet, pouring out every petal on
the paint of this poem
80
her wings are delicate things, whispering tiny
fragments of words in my ears, breathing sounds
and muse breaths on my neck, tracing old movies
in my hair with tiny wake-me-hands
and those hands are building a better beautiful
within me, making poems move and memories
metastasize from nothing places and deeper dreams
that descend from the mist of her mouth
81
i can hear your heart(hardly breathing),
bruised and beaten by the absence of hands,
by the stillness of snow having laid long on your earth,
and yet the grass whispers greener,
like a breeze blowing a warm kiss into your throat,
stretching jaws (many mouths),
for bloom singing where whites and pinks,
yellows and purples, play your body with the fingers of
finding love again(breathing deeper now), like for the first time,
learning you all over again,
every inch of you,
every great blade of your heart
82
your air eases into me as spring awakes again,
eyes opening on a brighter bulb of blue, a more
brilliant water than the rain washes the words
from your mouth, secret words that only birds
understand,
and only the breathlessness of winds can translate
your poems, the songs that fall from your sky, petals
like some spring snow sprinkle—softly with your most
playful plumes of fingers—tiny tumbles of scented voices,
different versions of sounds already sung, kisses
already plucked, just waiting to taste the rain again,
to dither in these crumbs of clouds, catch them
with the clumsy cups of my hands
83
there are lines on your body i have not traced,
borders around your shape i have not crossed,
lovely lyrics are tucked in the corners of your
thighs, secrets hiding beneath your knees,
there are words you have not spoken, lovely voices
stretching skies in your throat like new breathing—
air from new, undiscovered planets within you
i have not touched these worlds, orbited their meaning,
waited by their vastness, surrendered to the gravity—that
sweet pull of body against body—to make us meet and
make moons to watch at night when we are hovering
together and tugging at the distant stars
84
you are a poem i have touched, ran my fingers through
like water,
or your hair,
and i have counted the words,
measured the weight of the meaning and the shape of
your body,
built books from your breath,
the sound of your voice
like a softer chirping,
a song that see-saws my heart,
climbs into new verses
like flowers growing in a garden, abundant
and as radiant as your face after i shine a little light
to catch your almost slurred sentences,
slowly opening for the light,
for the rain i have touched,
the stains of your hair on my hands,
your kiss smeared like a sonnet across my lips
85
you hold the cup against your face
—as hands—
warming your cheek for remembers of kisses,
or dreams of what kisses could have been,
and i stretch to reach,
but these fingers don’t remember something
as wonderfully rainy as your hair,
and hands can't stretch to reach the depth
of the harmony in your heart
—brand new with billows of meaning, beating—
my fists full of the cloudy ghosts of your
whitest flowers, singing
86
you twist your hair with fidgets of fingers—tumble
the time away with the brilliance of bitten lips,
and you are a mystery that only softest songs can solve,
that only the whitest kiss can capture with a mouth
so lazy that there is time to taste only one
—just one—
before the gauze of this moment shakes away,
as petals pouring down like lost possibles, kisses
tumbling away like fingers falling from all the
hows answered in your hair
87
i have plundered the darkest nights,
stretched the stars atop the highest
hills, and the echo of the vast sky
is blackest when sleep is absent and
dreams are wakeful things where i
build characters from pastnesses,
shapes of words and kisses form
where clouds might be, and somehow’s
become maybe-again’s and from those
heavy almost sleepy strolls through the
oldest touch, the most tender breath you
are finds me, a mist forms around the
world and i fade away into something
like the swirl of milk and water we are,
spinning myself into making you again,
easing this somewhat world into the softness
of sleep, sifting through smiles and the sighs
of stars
88
their heads poke up like a hundred little suns,
blinking near the dew of our mist,
and our mornings are windows where birds
whistle and beep and the earliest cars putter by,
bleary-eyes and coffee stained faces decorate the world,
but you are crisp—face on-point—
ready with eyes and nearly kisses soaked through with night,
the dreams we trip over on our way to this day, these arms,
this spring beginning
89
y
ou came to my last night,
unaware of the rules of dreams,
with tulips in your teeth and the hope
that flows when the light drips down your hair just right—
quietly rolling—
and you were smaller slightly, leaning on a surprise,
pushing through the pools of the moon,
shoving and swimming with the greatest arches of arms,
arcs made to spark the heart,
trying to catch me before the release,
but i have held funerals for your face,
sent eulogies from my hands,
i have wrapped my tendrils on someone else’s name,
carried their kisses to the streams of sleep
90
i watch her mouth and mix words up like
winds were to wake up these laydown lips,
i see kisses fall from some ripe tree, and she
says things with the startle of any moment sex,
her voice always halted, scared in the wait,
stopped in the rolling pleasure she presses
into her thighs with her forgetful fingers,
shifting her weight to one side, wishing for
him to whisper, just to feel his breath on her
ear, a wind crawling down her neck,
but, oh, those lips know no lonely like the absence
of his hands, holding a kiss like a flower he opens
with his fights of fingers,
closes with the lips of his
punch-drunk palms