Stop me before I hurt myself

Jesus, I don't know where this is coming from, but it's soothing as new rain.

GAIN
for X-tina

The best part is when I think
she hears my voice…

an earth-brown sound—pure rumbling
grainy as groundnut shells.

Last night I dreamt up volumes
with velvet ridges—

spinning, metal knobs for
when she is alone

and it seems, almost—
She wishes I were a knee-high boot,

so she can feel my tongue
along her legs.

Eavesdropping

A SIMPLE QUESTION

Is there a ticket into the reserved seats,
The roped off balcony in your head above
The quirky movements of the orchestra?
What can be read in the sheet music
Of your half-smile with its curling clefs;
An ancient oboe brooding in shadows
Or an internal organ piping its blues
Into your blood's oceanic motion?
Doesn't a subliminal sonata
ripple through this moment's facial flicker,
Coding your face's random freckles
Like a bowl of bruised bananas
Sporting spotted notes below attached stems:
Secret notation of the unsung soul?

Dreaming

LUCKY LADY

I wax for your witching eyes when the moon
Mints its shiny coinage high in the sky –
When the black chips of midnight and its boon
Of bright stars are flung nigh like dotted dice.
The dozing sun reclines in Jackpot dreams—
All the slotted machines flashing red lights
As their trays are heavied with coins in streams
And your eyes waxing now, like mine, excite.
For some coins are cool circlings of silver
Wagered on the green tables of a dream,
A smile pressing the next bet. In this room
Where one awaits embrace: a flicker
Of fluorescence kisses quick. Sudden gleam
Of subtext; a winning wink of the moon.

Status Update

Every once in a while as a poet you produce a poem that you feel like you didn't really write, but instead just happened to be holding the pen while it came through you. Below is one of the those kinds of poems for me, like all the technical aspects were internalized and I was just spouting pure poetry. It may be the fastest I've ever written any poem. I'm sure it can use some polishing, but there's plenty of time for that. Anyway . . .

[Untitled]

Once I was homeless
staggering down dark hallways
to snore in a sterile stairwell
where I dreamt your lips
kissing along my collarbone.
In the dream
your voice is cashmere
brushing my earlobe,
girlish and high
as Barbies on a shelf.
The curve of your spine
makes the small of your back
a jewelry box.
Like a snake, my tongue
can taste what will moisten
when I release its secret latch
and finger the velvet lining.
I have fallen down
enough bushy hillsides
to know how water
shimmers into a pool below.
I trace my name
in the sheen
on your inner thigh
Doesn't the forecast
of the first gasp
call for a firestorm in the brain
followed by a heavy downpour,
then the slow rhythm
of bright beads dripping
from eucalyptus leaves?

I have heard
that after the Autumn Equinox
you become Persephone
white knuckling the rail
of a long escalator
into a dark depression.
If, as we lay tangled as strands
of just washed hair
I held up a sliver of mirror
to reflect your laughter,
would it be sunlight enough
to seed the ceasing
of your smallest sorrows?

Or would it suffice
if you knew now
that last night
I slept again in a stairwell,
wrapped tight in the ragged
overcoat of my imagination
and felt the soft feet
of a nude descending
the staircase of my spine,
that her lips wore only a light gloss,
that this creaking morning
I'll stagger and stumble still,
but wearing her lip prints
like a necklace of light
whose gauzy glow hallows
whatever ground I cross?

Nude descending the staircase of a spine

Once again, the view from the curb. The whizzing and splashing and passing of tires adorned with shiny rims and women's feet, in knee high boots, bopping past you into forever. (The refrain is from 'True' by Spandau Ballet)

SWAN SONG

The logic of your neck is fuzzy
The fuzziest peaches tender scented
the tender flesh, most willing
willingness wells like ocean waves
the wave and beach involved in a bite
the softest bite somehow best

I know this much is true

It would be Monday with a muted trumpet
there would be a piano flickering
your fingers across ticklish keys
the mood almost aquamarine
a Flamenco is scantily sketched
a solo dance, then a sigh
the trumpet blows air kisses:
the last kiss is pianissimo

I know this much is true

The kisses now miss your neck
The neck of logic isn't long enough
I long for a tongue, fuzzy as the sun
the sun sinks into the ocean's mouth
the mouth says goodbye with a thousand waves
waves won't cleanse the memory of your scent

I know this much is true

Caramel cameos

Found a new muse, gonna follow her where ever she leads. Messing around with some haiku, senryu, pseudo-haiku and micro-poems. Need to get back to reading poetry everyday, whether I write that day or not. Anyway . . .

My thumb
parsing the soft parts-
of her peach

Lost, I feel
the trunk of her leg-
this moistness, moss?

The ocean's salty
tongue laps the brown lips
of the beach

fondling her ear
she licks her lips-
starshine

As I decide-
the waves race up the beach
and back down

On Love and Anger

Consider a clenched fist,
a flared nostril.
An expletive salting
the afternoon air.

Or a cashmere caress,
lips wet on a neck.
A whisper's velvet whirl
into an ear.

Two streams cascading
down different sides
of the same mountain.
Same fluid clarity.
Same foam
surging over
whatever lies
in the creek bed,
stirring turbulent reflections.
Who among us can bathe
and remain unswayed?