And when I remember how you lick your lips

And when I remember how you lick your lips

I feel the taste of honey on my own

The soft pressure of your kiss,

The wetness of your open mouth inviting as the sea.

There is an echo of these phantom touches

A memory of smell and animal closeness,

The cool touch of popsicle engulfed in melting juices,

The round gum rolled and sucked in its own sweet sugars.

My hand feels the tender tips of pointed flowers

And flicks up and down the switches on your wall;

I scoop out the flesh of figs with my tongue.

With my hands I hold the heft of solid flesh that leads to heaven.

I interlace my fingers with the ends of branches to recall

The stretching of your arms and legs to receive my outpouring all.

reunion

Standing in the midst of a crowd

Submerged in dry humour like a body in dust,

A uniform gray that floats up to blot out the light

Alone behind a façade of smiles and routine banter,

When a shimmering distant shape breaks through the flakes

That dance about it like motes in a stream of sun

It bobs and weaves and brings with it in golden hair and

Radiant smile a burning piece of the solar disk itself.

Her face un-fuzzifies as if the lens of the world gave sudden focus

To her open blue eyes that pierce me with wonder,

That draw the sharp distinctions of her upper lip and cheeks

That send to me the joy of seeing, the parching of a thirst I did not know I had.

Everything in me wells up, my chest is full to bursting.

I smile.  Our two faces burn holes in the air and obliterate the gray.

I cannot breathe but manage to say a hoarse hello.

We take hands and prepare for an embrace that will recreate the universe.

White lily

A lily in the field, white and blooming, fragrance of a new born wish for loving, half forgotten now come back. An old innocence, the pure offering of regenerated life taken up, inhaled, possessed. White hope for better times, the open petals draw in the curious bee for learning, lust and longing. The merry making flower in a bride’s bouquet, it holds out hands to all young lovers and also gives some comfort to those who’ve lost. A sheltered refuge from what is cruel, the leaves spread shade and warming shadow. Proud and noble blazing light, a shining beacon on our stones, a gentle cover for our monuments. A rich and worthy guide to love and life full of wisdom and of grace, its lessons cannot be forgotten. I have held a lily to my breast and felt its essence sink through my skin to permeate my heart and soul, like white ink into darker waters once raging like the sea, now calm as deepened pools. There it lies unmoved, entwined in every sinew. No flower is in front of me but at the very core of who and what I am, the white lily blooms forever.

A valentine

Out of a clear sky blue, your face warms me like the sun. Out of the random chaos you hold my self together like glue. Out of sadness, you have lifted me, a weighted body, out of the flow. You are an anchor in the earth as the random winds blow. I have poured into your bowl like liquid and was given your form. I have seen beauty and colour and shape through your shimmering eyes. You open me like a book as I read from your inner pages. I am immersed in the endless generosity of soul that gives and gives some more, a quiet strength, acceptance, which infiltrate me and which I now return. Take all, my love, Take all that you need from what you have already given me.

Anticipation

Your naked hand meets mine in a full embrace.

The digits intertwine and press the bare flesh of our palms together,

Then withdraw as nails lightly touch the plump heel

Suddenly pressing in like sharp glass,

Collapsing and curling up in my enclosing fist,

Your challenge and surrender.

Like a flower, it opens to accept the knuckles

That push in the extended forefinger

To trace patterns in the lifeline and circles in its territory like a dog.

I lick the path the finger followed,

And suck the thumb with open lips

And clenched teeth that softly bite.

You pull my hand to your face to do the same,

Mouth so wet and inviting.

Your eyes are glazed and closing,

The half parted lips are trembling.

I move towards your face with mine.

Time stops.

I kiss your open lips open.

The only way to eat it

The hard round shapes

Are broken by the blow of white incisors.

Their softer centers seeping onto wet flesh,

The saliva springs from hidden founts like floods

Called to meet the thick sweet syrup in its droplets,

Which gather into a sea like longing.

The sloshing basin overflows and oozes over parted lips.

A pinkish tongue dips into pools of brown,

Slow circling in a darkened mouth.

The twinned muscles meet and touch and lick

Wrapping round and round.

A soft caress of lips on lips.

“This is the only way to eat chocolate.”

Satyr and nymph

Walking through the cool moist air,
Your figure precedes me on the path.
The stark trees close in and fill my marrow with their longing.
I thicken with the tree trunks,
Grow hoary scales that will scratch against your smoothness.

Underneath the vast heights of pale blue heaven
I am shadowed by my wanting,
Your body rustles underneath its clothing
The last remnants of the leaves that are not yet falling,
The last seeds waiting for their liquid savior.

You are wisp of air enwrapped in gossamer
The light steps of open striding
Peeking out of hooded depths
That are entrancing, you are the masked and hidden pink
Not yet buried for the fall.

We sit astride a fallen log,
Facing what we now are needing
Joined by the wide girth that keeps us stretching
Swallowed by the mutual tease of chase and capture
Swollen by the sap that flows from me to you and back.

The trumpets of the swans, their sudden quiet wings enfolding,
I have dreamed of you and stroke
The soft white down with my hardened hide
My open hands caressing where you should be,
My far off love, fading quickly into winter.

The lush green forest stays guarded behind my lidded eyes,
The hope of spring.
My ursine fur lies beneath your phantom hands.
I take your image and encase it in my heart
Until I wake again.  Until we meet again.

Dreams of you

There are moments when I am in your arms that I am striving for perfection

When I feel my insides reach up through you and out your open mouth.

I am tied to this body moving but I’m reaching towards some higher goal

And want to bring you with me as if we’re climbing hills together.

We are like a conjoined beast that rocks its way in inches up the slope

A two and fro that brings us both one step closer to our heaven.

 

There are moments when I am in your arms that I want to obliterate my self

To tear down that barrier keeping my mind from yours

So that you can feel yourself in me and building to explode

And I can engulf your body with my own.

And at the moment that we shake and tremble

Your cries and mine would be but one.

 

There are moments when I am in your arms that I want to keep you there forever

To feel you pinioned by my chest and torso to hold our hands outstretched

To have you sense every inch of my physical being

And to feel I know your every hidden corner.

To press ourselves as close as possible

To hold your legs around me imprisoned without end.

 

There moments when I am in your arms that I want to grasp your beauty with my sight

To drink in your presence with every sense of smell and touch

To simply listen to you talk and laugh and weep

To comfort you when you are sad, to give you strength when you feel weak.

To look at the world through your eyes and see just what you see.

To walk and talk together,  whatever world we’re in.

 

And when I’m far away I dream of these

And see your face through the veils of haze that cover the moon,

And feel the press of your tongue in licking ice cream

And hear your voice and words and laugh when I live through the day.

And in the soft patter of gentle rain, I feel my own imaginary tears of longing:

The mingled joy and sadness of a distant dreaming heart.

At first, you possessed me in pieces

At first, you possessed me in pieces.

The pungent smell of my body in heat, the taste of my lips on yours,

 The map of my naked skin,

 The low rumbling in my throat,

 The love that I could give you.

 

And then, your face shimmers above me like the moon,

I pull a shirt over my head and inhale your scent

My empty palms lie open upward to receive the weight of absent breasts.

I perform a geometric twist and surround the you

Who engulfs me in your depths.

 

I take root within your heart as you burst out from within my chest.

We are mutually implanted like conjoined twins

Siamese souls separated by time and circumstance

Now rejoined by stronger bonds

Which cannot break without destroying each or both.

 

Or so it feels to me, your far off twin who swims to you in dreams

And treads across miles to reach your door in giant steps

To knock for entrance to your self.

Or simply turn inward to see you huddled at my very core,

Arms outstretched for the love I seek from you.

 

And as you hug my spectral self I enfold you in my own embrace

And love me love me love me echoes from me to you and back

As we wordless speak, our mouths open as if straining,

Gasping for the breath to say again across all time and space:

Love I love, oh love me, Love!

I dreamt I was all nose sniffing at the air in search of love

I dreamt I was all nose sniffing at the air in search of love.

I smelled the crisp fruity odour of red apples and mangoes

The dripping juicy essence of berries and plums.

 

I walked down narrow paths strewn with cracking branches and crumbling brown leaves

The mint of evergreen pine and cedar,

The smoky draft of burning rubble and logs in fall.

 

I searched white covered fields that stung my nostrils with cold

The pure frozen scent of ice and water

The air empty of taste, the colour neutral.

 

I burst into spring and found your traces there,

The creamy yellow and white of daisies, dandelions and daffodils

The burning red of rose and the stirring up of sap as it rises in woody glens.

 

I tracked you here, where I hold you

Trapped in the new green grass that stirs up hunger

As if I could taste the very air.

 

Oh love!

There you are!

In the thick and musky violet of lilacs!