Saturday, April 18, 2015

Honey




Saturday, April 18, 2015

I lick the honey from your lips
where it drips at the corner of your mouth,
This breakfast treat sweet
With churned up cream over strawberries,
Fruit just now ripe after a long raw winter
We taking it all in until we nearly burst
More than mere hunger drives us
So that even this drip from your lips
I dare not miss,
These lips and kiss that leads to bliss.


Friday, April 17, 2015

Pasta in Paterson





 (for Roe)

June 3, 1981


I feel every part of you through our finger
Entwined at our side as we walk down 21st Avenue
Me as stiff as the pasta you must buy from
The tiny Italian shops in this part of Paterson,
The sun warm on my brow as to make me sweat,
I feel your lips without ever kissing them,
And the press of your chest against mine
I have never felt for real except with a hug
Aching as I ached back when we first met again
Me always strutting at your side as proud as a peacock
Thinking about what it must be like to be with you
To touch you, to do more than just dream you,
Though on this day in Paterson, I felt it all
This tingling in my fingers that didn’t stop with the tips
But rushed through the whole of me, making
The dream I always dreamed seem real
My fingers firmly fixed between yours
Lip to lip, hip to hip, chest to chest,

Churning up a warm to which the sun could never compete.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Apocalypse





I touch the hands
To keep from exploding
Knowing at kiss
Would consume me
And even the brief touch
Is too much
Lingering first on the finger tips
Then a spreading
Wild fire elsewhere
Beyond control
Searing to the bone
Scalding me
From inside out
This lust for life
Unseen
Only felt or tasted,
The linger desire
For more
Tingling at the tip of finger
Or tongue
Each a tiny flicker of flame
And heat
Leading to apocalypse


Friday, April 10, 2015

Spring’s painful ritual





Friday, April 10, 2015

The ache is always an ache
This earthy time when things burst
Inside and out,
The remnants of chill
Chipped away with each rising degree,
This elevation that pounds away
At the containment
Until everything explodes
The ache is always an ache
Rubbing against the world
Until friction set me free,
This time, this moment, always painful
In a way that is not painful at all,
The elaborate ritual
We need to succeed at the most basic
Of faiths, this belief we will rise up
And flow out over this frigid existence.
Each time this time, I come to love the ache
For what I might expect it to lead to,
The bursting and the delight
That comes after we churn up
The heat, and blossom,
This ache is always the ache
And will always make me feel free.



Friday, April 3, 2015

Pink peas



Friday, April 03, 2015

I pinch it between my thumb
And forefinger
As if a pink pea,
A pea that grows hard
With heat, not soft
And drips wet if I
Pinch too much,
A juice I lick
And let linger
On my lips,
Each sip rich
Not like wine or honey
Though I get inebriated by it
And think it just as sweet,
Pumping the curved surface
Between it
So as to drink even more

I live for the feel of this,
For the hot or cold
The hard or soft,
The sweet or bitter of it,
Aching for what makes me ache
Needing to touch or taste
All that I am told I should not,
The fire on the stove,
Things that would make me blind,
The forbidden fruit,
The pink pea that oozes juice
Only I think of as sweet
To covet what the Bible says
I should not,
To feel and in turn be felt
By all there is
And all there will ever be.




Thursday, April 2, 2015

Nothing at all



Thursday, April 02, 2015

I tremble
When it happens
When the knot comes undone
And I can finally breathe deep
Without fear of explosion,
The shake and shape of it
And how it fits together
Like the proper piece
In a jig saw puzzle
When it slips in
And completes the scene
I have pictured in my head,
How cool it feels
When first touched
Then grows hot
When struck just right
Like a boy scout
Rubbing and rubbing
Until it all bursts into flame
How its motion is my motion
And how connected I feel
To whatever it touches
All my senses tied to whatever
Space it invades
Feeling whatever shape it takes
And whatever shape the world
Takes around it
Soft or hard,
Hot or cold,
Painful or full of bliss,
This thing I become
Leading me where it will
For its own purpose
Neither right nor wrong
What it must be
And I must be also
Or be nothing at all