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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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