ghosts of felt
flowers
145
you are a warmer body, a liedown
flower with petals strewn here and there,
decorating the room with your light
like shimmering water reflecting the
stars of my heart, and you plant rain
in my mouth where the blooms go to
dance with delightful delirium, a dripping
echo of a song that slithers its softest
silhouette onto the dome of your silks of
skin on sky
146
i watched your hair, i saw it lay
in the shine of the sun, gleaming
with gold light, probably warm to
the touch, hot on hopes of hands,
like fire on unfurled fingers conniving
into combs,
but the breeze, a baby's breath dabbling,
dribbling across your head like some
ballet coming unbent for the scent of
spring's marriage to magnolias
and a thick strain of that light slithers over
your eye and you push it away with careless
elegance—a gesture so soft and fragile that
the wind laughs, begs you for another
147
you lean in for interest,
sweetness tazed on your tongue,
your eyes dewy from the rising of
passion's shivering shores,
and as a smile spreads across your face,
some rain falls on this paper,
wiping off all these worthless words, while
my lips wipe your smile into a kiss
sweeter than the cotton candy wisping
away at the blue skies,
bending dreams across your bluer eyes
148
you don't know your eyes like i've
known them—from this side, wondering
how pristine the world might look standing
inside those bluest planets
you don't know your mouth like i've
known your mouth—the shape and
pout of the lips before words, between
breaths, and the smile that turns your
face from breath-taking to radiate
something like the sweetest stutter of
suffocation
and your legs, when you move to
cross those singular sensations, and
you lean your head to stroke your hair—
it breaks me to know that you don't
know like i know all the springs i'd trade,
all the years i'd squander...
149
you tease me with your timid tendrils
of arms, hiding that body like a flower
waiting for the sun, but your roots of
legs are smoothly splendid, delicately
desiring more dirt, and my hands shine
for you, touch you, open you up, plant
seeds in your marvelous mouth like
tasting the fruit of all fruition with the
exhilaration of eternity balancing over
bigger black holes, petals falling into
the abyss of what gardens our bodies
make, messing up the magic, making
a mockery of mediocrity
150
you are a fire that burns, a spark that
blew up into a million little flames,
making the heart wild and the skin
jump,
your burn has frayed these nerves,
singed the words on my tongue,
and the kisses we made were splayed
across all the water we'd ever need
until our embers breathe out and
away
and as the quieter gasps of our last orange
ashes of bone and wind blown love turns
the sky black, we slowly fade away
into a single, white, infinitesimal glow
of a star
a shine that still burns
151
your black dress—resting on your cool
shoulders, dappled by sundrops and the
blacker mists of leafy shadows—rests
against your breasts with gasps of
unsuccessful nonchalance,
and from this view, the shadow across
your knees mesmerizes all meaning,
a warmth of flesh beneath the
charcoal breath of light's slightest
absence,
and the hem of that whisper of a skirt
dances across your thighs like a thousand
angels traipsing down the edge of a pin,
sprinkling the greyest girl petals onto
your miraculously shaped ankles, as if
god took special care to shape them with
his most careful, quiet hands
and that slope that slips down your ankle
means something better than breathlessness
and wanting, something that flickers in and
out of a boys most dewy daydreams
and those legs carry the light you are all
around my head like some float of a song,
hardly disturbing the world around you,
just demanding that it look,
daring it to stop
152
the sun is coming
to make highlights in your hair,
to gold-light your showy shoulders,
to lie across the air of your arms,
to wait for you,
the sun is coming
to rub its hands across your shine,
to ask you to lean up in that way you do—
that tilt—leaving the neck for a
little yellow taste of summer's secrets,
leaving the distant taste of lemons
dancing on the tongue,
mesmerizing the mouth with
the care of your color,
the shiver of your shape
153
i can smell the oceans in your hair,
feel the dance of the waves in the
sway of your hips,
lose my balance on the swell of your
back,
forget all senses,
get them garbled and mixed when my
fingers find your chest, slide like trickles
of wet sand across your breasts,
and when i melt into your mouth,
sink into your flesh,
i'll either drown or become part of
your water,
taking tumbles of breath from your hair,
making meaning from your air,
absorbing truth from the quiet crush of
your giant, wet kills of kisses
154
you are at your most beautiful
before you speak,
the words wait—holding imagined
poetrys in your mouth—
your eyes tell stories of storms
before you blink,
and you are a dream of the most
colors before you breathe
your almost words are an always
kiss that fills my pages with
wings and rainstorms,
possibles and maybes.
155
i've watched you with wants of eyes,
drawn your shape with my fingers in
the darkness of my daydreams, felt
your hair on my chest while asleep
at night, and imagined the burst in
your kiss, the flavor on you lips.
i have wondered about the softness,
the smoothness of your inner thigh,
what it must feel like to have those
lyrics of legs sing songs around my
body, to hear the breathing and the
gasps and high-pitched exhalations
to angels and demons and the moon'
s
meaning pouring down around us like
snow or the dust of the sweetest
swooning stars colliding
156
a packed room, blurred faces tilted
down, contorted by turns of heads
and conversations, and there is one dot
of cool clarity,
your face is a brilliant light, a perfect
puzzle put together by better hands
than mine,
and you are apart from the crowd,
shining, singing like you own the room—
own the audience—bedevil them with
your icy eyes, your daydreams of kisses
the miraculous mumbles of the mush of a
mind made dumb by the most milky
secrets you carry in your heart
157
i've seen you move—infinitesimally
small breaths—
i've watched you swim in your sleep,
i've swam to you,
decorated your body with wettest kisses,
traced slithering showers of secrets across
your skin,
and dived so deep into your dreams that i
lose myself in that mumble where the
unconscious meets the consciousness
of hands,
and the echo of the mind melts into a
whisper
and those tiny shards of breath i have
felt you blow like sweetest air into my
drips of dreams,
eases me to stare at this sleep,
waist-deep in you
158
glimpses of your ghost—those gorgeous
hints of your smile, your hourglass
silhouette—burn away at my hours,
these pieces of you, the prettiest petals
of spring, are forever etched in stone,
buried in the caramel amber of your hair,
flaxen and, like a breath from your mouth
—milky after a kiss—your spirit will slide
with me staining every tomorrow with the
startled silence of a sensational rain that
suddenly stops after some storm, sacred
and waiting with hurt huddled over the
clouds and these lips, whispering waves
on the blood of this beaten heart
159
it's the comfort in the way you move,
the fluidity of your arms, the pristine,
feminine motion of your legs, easing into
a cross with effortless grace, like the natural
currents of waters matriculating down the
hills of your hips
and when those lips part for kiss-making,
all words dive into a mumbled meaninglessness
and all life washes over me
and the world outside these stars is startled,
waiting for the shiver of raw nerves to settle
and grind into the teeth of my gut where love
goes to grow and feed the hands of this heart
to touch your lips, to taste the meaning in your
mouth
160
all the pretty girls have gone
away,
the summer is rising and the
spring has fallen
and
i am left looking for a place to
wallow while the willows of
her hair hang on someone