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Loving Words

Tantalus' Equinox

drink, dreamer, from the malty sweetness that spring surely brings
to my sensate skin, my full and plaintive mouth, quietly murmuring prayers,
sanctifying against the slash and burn your slap-happy hands
might scythe from our tomorrows. you who dresses even the fallow girls in fallal.

planter, your senescent seasons have yielded little
but rotten pitted fruit, slack-skinned seedlings, nothing
to sustain more than your dreams, which you dream feverishly.

taste, Tantalus*, the tangy dirt in which you plant this season's dream.
can you smell its earthborn fertility? swallow its untainted blood-red intention?
Tantalus,
what would you do if you knew you could not fail?

embolden and embellish now, says Eros,
this equipollent, unembowered day,
this embryonic night.
but stay yourself against the ephemera with equanimity--

do you realize what torrential rain, what torrid sun
are necessary to transmute your porus dreams
into succulent harvest? are you willing to enslave yourself
to the travail, its intractable task? And, of course, make
whatever preparations for empery you must make?

and what god must i supplicate?
what wrath must i endure? i ask this,
as i willingly lay myself on this damp, makeshift altar
for you.

this yielding year is assuredly y/ours.
have you chosen as yet a scent from my body
for its flowers?

*Tantalus was a legendary king of Phrygia who was condemned to remain in Tartarus, chin deep in water, with fruit-laden branches above his head: whenever he tried to eat or drink, the water and fruit receded out of reach.


Relocated

Seeing you at the Neighborhood Pool
As always, a butched-out sunflower.
Insecurity leaves me wondering
If pleasant surprise is feigned.
Swell of pride when you remember my name
As if old college chums.

So you've jumped from your pedestal
And come to New York City.

Crush on you, flushed face,
Pixies in leg hair and jade
So now I notice friends,
How they laugh and cuddle
In freakish platforms and everybody's a bartender
Sundanced matches burning bread
In an oh well kind of way.

You make me awkward
Like someone who loves calculus
And discrete mathematics,
The ennui of a closed umbrella
The "ums" better than gawky schoolgirl silence
Tangible again,
Only one to make stigmas worthwhile
A pulpy, bulbous currant dished echoes
Hell, I'd ditch everything
For you.

If I have the nerve,
Welcome to your new pedestal.

*

Alone on a Saturday Night

I've lit seventeen candles
Scented glow casting scented shadows
Me, the angelic siren
Unwittingly treasured, no mention
Of my life smudged soul.

In this light I am beautiful.
In this light I am loved.

Rain makes it romantic too
(though the cabby scooped love out
with his small car and his wet hands)

In the bath I have drawn
Rose petals float
Dozens of drowned Ophelias

And faith absolves itself
Dissolved in the salts of tomorrow's heathered rosary.

*
Discoman

Sometimes you make magic at twilight
And it gets me drunk
And it takes advantage of me
And it quells something inside me
Like a sadness
Or a heartbeat

As nighttime takes out the trash
Stuffed in hefty ephemeral bags.

And sometimes you dance
Seven up and three down
And one more to go
In a cocoa mood
Luxurious like fresh sheets
And still the rain pounds
So many sloppy kisses
Cold, like unspoken thoughts
Nestled in shimmer and glow
Fantasy like brandy, brain candy

As the disco lights
Glitter candle-like on an alter.

*
On this Ferris wheel

No tomorrow
Next week next time
Promises enslaved
Encapsulated in rhyme

Darling, stars
Will never glow like this again
Bright like eyes
Shocked like children

You, my faithless companion
Entrust your soul to a sweeping hand
But we only get one go-round
We only hand pick snippets
That become memories
While our souls still fizz
And your hand still fits mine

Can you promise
That the cumin-luminous
Sun will always love us
Two circus lovers
The dog and pony show
That never impresses?

Lover, we only have these ideas
Kissing with hearts so full
Once in a clear moon
We only choose chocolate
Tones in the nosegay
While we still see ocean and horizon
As lovers making earthen love

No, tomorrow
Is for those who fear
Who never just jump in
Without first testing
With tentative toes

We, for all our salt
Can laugh and cry
In the elapse of a sunset
We kiss ellipses when we kiss
(Sometimes we just melt
As in "I end and you begin where?")
My sunburn seeks only the shade
Of your eyelashes, only hope
Like mango on your lips

And no matter how drunk I get
We're still at the top of this ride
Blurry festival colored lights
Competing with the stars
Crisp exhilaration rumbles around us
Accordions and flutes,
Tunes made dissonant by motion

And all I want is to know
If this is my heart's butterfly
Or if this moment means more to me
Than life itself

And all I care of safety
Is that your knee is forever
Touching mine
In this universe of inflating balloons
And soap bubbles, sawdust and love

You know, if the moon fell on me right now
I don't even think I'd mind dying, pancake flat.

*
Moving Boxes

So the top is down, baby doll, sunglasses
And scarves to the nines this crazy day
In hills and cities simultaneously and we're laughing,
Laughing… the world is faded browns and there's nothing wrong,
Painted toenails and hey, let them stare, at this crazy
Couple let loose in a mad mad world where I'm Sophia Loren
Or some new starlet ingénue, star-lit nights and imaginable
Sunsets set to contrast our mad crazy thoughts- cut!

Spider fingers and you are the most darling thing
In this damned mad world, dancing
Down the street while I watch, laughing,
Soft melodies spill out in slurs from the bars along the street,
People in crazy clothes and, hey, what do you know, it's carnival
And we're okay in this mad mad world…

Except that we're in our new place, boxes everywhere,
One light plugged in, record player plugged in, and we dance
Real close-like, and the wine is so close to our dancing feet,
Slow shuffle and all there is is your eyes and the melted glow
Through the window of yes, this is right, me and my baby doll
All shacked up for the winter and I don't even resist
When you dip me, gentle kisses behind the ear like perfume…

And the wine puts us in Harlem where Dexter Gordon plays for us,
By request, and suddenly the crowd is gone, the chairs are up
And my hair is in the most elegant bun and our feet are shuffling
With old-time crazy style, but all the while we're barefoot and in
Love in our new home with wine stains on the carpet
On our very first cardboard boxed-in night…

Can we even really be this wonderful? Who would have thought?
I want to be a jazz song for you, baby.

*

Sex

When I think of you, I want to be
So close to you that I snuggle closer
Until I am inside you that we are not
A you & a me but an us, under your skin
Your heart's mind I snuggle closer
Until there isn't a space to be filled, not
A you & a me but a complete, a happy,
A love, oh honey, cant snuggle up close
Enough to being with you; if kisses
can symbolize, let's make them effigies
of not a you & a me, but an infinite, oh
sweetie, oh god yeah, let's fall in love…

And I get scared when we make love
because I want it to be consummation
of an us so beautiful & sometimes
I fear it's just bodies…

(But most of the time I do feel our souls colliding,
honest I do).

*
I fell in love with you today

And decided that I appreciate you
Well meaning
(though sometimes poorly enacted)
one of life's pleasures.
Lovesongs make me happy, make me sad.
Singing @ the top of my lungs, top o' the morning
Bottom of the ninth
Nine lives and sixty ways to leave your lover
Me? never!
(well, I never say never)
Am I farsighted? Do I lack foresight?
Dreamers must only look ahead
The delicacies of life are of our own making.

I fell in love with you today
Even wrote you a letter I won't send
(though you send me, honest you do)
Never regret
Slices of our youth are quick-like breath.

I fell in love with you today and
At times I am scared to lose you
Because
The best is yet to be?
No. I know
The best is today. Today is best.
Everyone is envious of a real dreamer.
Everyone envies a dream.

*

Sometimes everything inside of you sighs. Gently, like
a whisper. Sometimes something makes you feel
complete. And you don't need laughter or holding
hands to make you feel delicious. You have all that you
need, sometimes, somewhere inside of you.

It's in your own reflection as you clean the windows,
languid springtime sun flitting filtered through. The
image becomes clearer as you scratch the surface. The
world and, superimposed over it, the faintest you.
Sometimes, in the distilled light, if you look close enough
and your skin has chocolates and reds in it, you can see
little rainbows in the pores of your cheek, hiding delicately
under eaves of eyelashes. And even though those
rainbows can be explained away by sciency photons and
light refraction, it doesn't make you any less special.

It's in the way you feel as you walk in the sun. Not sweltering summer sun that makes you sweat and feel sexy, for those walks are not for you. Those walks on the beach or, if you're lucky, on the hot city pavement, are meant for the eyes of others, all the men who have nothing to do and no choice but to adore you. In these moments you are directing your own pornography, softly hiding it in the loping of your hips and the subtle swish of your thighs. "Girls! Girls! Girls!" the men sigh, leaning against the nearest object at the height of their swoon. If you're unlucky and your skin has chocolates and reds in it, sometimes the thing they lean on is a jealous girl. Her eyes follow you too, spewing venom on your well-turned heels. You just keep walking though, through her hateful puddles, stopping traffic and, at times, business as usual.
"Girls! Girls! Girls!" you say in the shimmy of your ass.
No, the walks that are for you are the ones in the spring, where you embody all that is feminine. You make the
wind gasp. You bend the trees beautifully. And when
you sit, all the leaves want to cast their patterns on your
face. Sometimes, if you sit on the grass or in a snazzy outdoor café, you can eat and drink your fill, making
poetry with the movement of your spoon. When you finish, you are satiated, the floral print of your dress tightening just slightly at your waist. You do not cover it with your white cloth napkin. You are not ashamed
because you are too pretty to be ashamed. You simply
sit a bit straighter and stroke the fabric with a
clandestine hand. You are as beautiful as a little Buddha; you are an icon cast in the most wildly unrealistic chocolates and reds. And sometimes you are completely at peace.
These times are not few and far between if you
take the time to know yourself and know that you are
the most perfect imperfection there is. But if you are ignorant, you will not have these precious moments.
You will pass each day in cowardice, waiting for happiness
to approach you. You will be a scarecrow (instead of
being beautiful and lucky), hung in a wheat field in the
middle of nowhere, watching the world unfold around you like unstarched sheets. And you will stay there, hanged and crucified, ignorant and full of nothing important, scaring things away for the rest of your life.
You mustn't miss the springtime sweetie, nor let it miss you. You are much too delicious for that.

*

Everybody is prettier in the spring. And you can eat oranges like sausages and make your lips feel so sticky and dry like you've kissed a boy so much that you have to kiss him again just for lip survival. And the boy is cute and sweet and you are cute and sweet as you leave the drugstore with a sleeve full of contraband lipstick and go to meet Anne at the Cuban restaurant where nobody speaks English and that's okay and the plantains are sweet and the rice and beans are good and the courtyard steps afterward are warm.
Everybody wears Wayfarers and Doc Martins. Everybody has a crush on everybody. And in the afternoon you can go play softball with girls from the South Bronx, and Puerto Rico before that, and then you can see how very cute your cute and sweet boy is.
The seed you planted in winter has indeed become a pretty flower of a boy. He is the subject spoken of over many a pint of coffee heathbar crunch, and many many crates of strawberries. You don't even wish you were a prep school girl anymore. And you feel a hint of regret for Anthony, the first boy you went out with, then dumped him that same afternoon in sixth grade because your friends (?) were mad at him.
You remember unfortunate floral jumpers and really bad hair, but you are pretty now, as you were even then, and your hair is long and your legs are long and you are cute and sweet just like you are supposed to be.
And The Meadow is just so cool and Keisha is just too cool and then suddenly you are what they were and nobody can tell you you aren't.

*
Somewhere some children are playing hopscotch. And somewhere else a girl is pretending not to listen to a boy because she very much does not want to hear that her name has been forgotten.
And a fish sizzles in somebody's pan. Somewhere.
I often pack for trips I never take. It's always best to have two extra pairs of panties, in case you shower twice in once day. But you still should wash your undies when you take them off and hang them to dry in the morning's filtered sun.

My grandma sits on the porch drinking coffee and listening to PJD2. But mostly she's doing her crossword puzzle. And thinking. She knows more than anybody. You have to get up pretty early to be awake before her.

And breakfast will be grits and sausage; and a guava will fall from the tree while we eat; and the rental keys will always be on the bar; and cola champagne will always be drunk before pineapple; and pineapple will always be drunk before grape; and grape will always be drunk before coke; and coke will be used for mixed drinks anyway; and I will always stick to car seats and put my bare feet on the dash.

Except for when it's cool and dark and we can't see the ditch in the middle of the driveway. The car will be filled with my mother's perfume and my lips will be very red. Then we shall sit like ladies in the a/c because the wind would muss our hair. I will no longer smell of salt water and can't feel the sand in my bikini anymore. The scent of barbequed chicken grease isn't on my freshly painted nails and my freckles are back in the bedroom with grandma, lost in a powder puff.

We drive to the place where men make me beautiful. Where sixteen is never said and drinks come for free with conversation. Hot sweaty men dance nasty, not feeling the music with their souls, but groping for love in the rhythm. They measure love in the squeaks of bedsprings. But I know this so I am safe like how you don't step on cracks once you realize the pain it can cause.

*
Thanks

There are times when I feel I have no one to turn to,
That my pain must be carefully tucked away,
Then, in private, examined, mourned
And returned to its hiding place.

There are times when I want to walk toward you,
But I turn and run instead, farther and farther away,
When, just when we start to chip away at my walls
I discretely, clandestinely, begin building new ones.

There are times when I cling, resolutely, desperately, to you
When I build my world around you, and push myself aside
Times when I want to strike out at you
If only to prove that I don't need you.

Loving you means loving myself first.
Accepting you means accepting myself first.
Being true to my feelings means being true to myself first.

You help me to understand.
Thank you.

*
Masala

Your kisses have an edge
Flavored with spices still unopened
That came with the rack.
Some come from specialty shops
Names I can't pronounce.
They don't even come with descriptions
"You're just supposed to know" you say,
plucking from the shelves
like a schoolboy's first flower.
I sit in your kitchen, waiting,
Watching your hands pressing garlic,
Knowing they will knead that scent into my skin-
The flesh between the scapula
And the spine-
When the plates are cleared
And lay forgotten in the sink.

Your breath heaves heavy
Syncopating my own redolent murmurs
While spices simmer over cerulean flame
Under heavy lid, left open just enough
To unleash musty, curling billows.

My lips still burn spicy
While you tend to your pots,
Uncovering them, letting their scents seep into the air
Soaking the fabric of my shirt
While I sit, waiting
For our clothes to lay, a drunken heap,
Our bodies covered in the thick musk of cotton sheets

And the ginger sound of your sleeping breath
Rising in dreams
With names I can't pronounce.

*

Crazy, how fast I'm falling
I want to stop it, but I can't
I won't.
Love feels so good and so do you
Love,
What am I to do?

God makes few as wondrous.

*

There was once a girl who was more beautiful and more gentle than any other woman in her town. Tall and almost slender, with cinnamon sprinkled skin, a head of dark curls like lambswool, and big fudgy eyes that spun with pinwheels in the sunlight, she was quite a prize to be championed by the handsome brown gentlemen who saw Saturday afternoon as an ideal time to prove their strength and, therefore, their worthiness to have her. It became quite the thing to do, for her heart, as big and embracing as it was, had not yet been won. And, as men of comparable beauty and desirability to hers had tried, and failed, to achieve the goal that was this girl, the men of five towns, and even spots and places abroad, felt certain that it was another quality, hopefully the one that that particular gentleman possessed, that she demanded in the man that was to be her man.
And how they tried! Displays of courage, skill, cunning, and even brute strength were to be seen on the front lawn of her home, as townspeople gathered to look on. The girls of yellower pigment with hair like ocean waves and green eyes that wanted to be brown looked on from a neighbor's yard, dressed in their finest. They were friends to the girl when their eyes met hers, but they spun wild tales and spat at her heels as she walked away, for, until her arrival, they had been snatched up quickly by the town's men like hot buttermilk biscuits left unguarded.
The girl, though brilliant and talented, knew not of her own virtue. She did not realize that she was the reason that so many people enjoyed Saturday afternoons. Her vision was clouded with things others could not see; imaginary things like hungry ghosts of excess on her hips that others called womanhood and a spray of cursed freckles that crossed her upturned nose and spilled gaily but obtrusively onto her cheeks. She confused difference with ugliness until all that was seen as different about her, she was as ugliness about her.
Desperately wanting to love someone with all of her big and embracing heart, this girl searched far and wide for one man who would be willing to love her and, perhaps, even love her in return. But all the men of nearby towns, and even spots and places abroad, were too engulfed in their weekly rumpus to pay her any more attention than beaming a bright smile her way before pinning an opponent to the grassy mat.
So, convinced that no man had time to spare for her, she took her cinnamon sprinkled self to a far away place where the women were fairer than yellow and, therefore, she felt, fairer than she. She would miss all her beautiful browner playmates, but there was wisdom to be gained in this place, so she packed her belongings and left the town that was her used-to-be-home, looking back only once.
The former town of the girl renamed itself The Town That Was No More, in her honor. Every day became a weekday, with the promise of a month of Saturdays upon her return. Men reluctantly accepted the now lukewarm biscuits that were fair skinned women, and imagined how much sweeter they would be smothered in golden honey or dark, thick molasses. But they took what was given without more than an internal grumble. And happy smiles were often beheld on yellow female faces.
The girl of beauty found her new abode to be frequented by men with eyes the color of oceans and yellow hair that lay flat in heat. They told her of her greatness and plied her with punchy drinks that made rooms spin. In her utter desperation to find love, she believed them, letting them put their puny pinky lips on hers and feel the silken softness that was her skin. Some even made the bedsprings sing in harmony with their cries as she lay still.
But, still, nobody let her love them.
She started to not believe their words, started fearing that no one would ever love her until she shed the darkness that was her beauty.
Until, one day, as she sat by a window, she looked back, again, at her town, clutching her skirts all the while. She saw that where words cannot be found, actions and playful rumpuses on sunny and rainy Saturday afternoons often had to suffice.
And in the reflection of the window she saw a woman more beautiful and gentle than any other she had ever seen. Tall and almost slender, with cinnamon skin, a head of curls like lambswool, and big fudgy eyes, she was quite an amazement to behold. But, unlike the girl with sweaty palms and dampened skirts, She was aware of her virtue.
And a brightness that reflected off the pinwheels in Her eyes nearly blinded them both. And the brightness was Love.

*
Liam

Serenades in serpentine wine
And fingers that cradled my won
With as much craze, as many fragile eyelash kisses
As they contained when they held a pen.
Nestled and cozy and crazy and
Yours,
As they say so many have been before.

I wonder if they all dreamt.
Still, how beautiful to stroll beneath the stars with you.
How beautiful to love you.

I pray that you are safe
That you know you are loved
I pray that beauty & wisdom still course through you
Hot & hard, as I imagine you.

*
O

My two ends have met, melded
Into something faintly symmetrical
A silver ring, enmeshed with your mouth,
Gold, and mine, bronze
And this quiet O
Tempers my disposition
Peppers my lopsided walk
With haloed shadows
On sidewalks littered with clicks of my shoes.

*
muse

I told you I might write a story
About you
Said mainly to make you feel special
But you shook your head no
That such a dull
Such an aged soul as you
Would have nothing to offer
To fiction.

But when I think
Of how very much I wanted you
To kiss me,
How much your smile pleased me
And how very much I wanted
To kiss you
If you wouldn't kiss me
First, well, I think you would make
A lovely subject for a poem
At least.

*

Terms

I've always loved the epistollary genre,
letters fitted with words we might never utter
(for utterance infuses them with nervous life, through breath,
makes real reflections inextricable from the tongue, the lips).
With words I can coyly curl around you
copper kitten-like with holographic eyes,
weave worlds for "us", discursively,
full of languid summer-light day, humming humid night,
fire-flies and murky pond water
aged in the exquisite casks of these two
bodies, graceless and unapologetic
like children.
But speaking this world makes it true-
Makes us kiss in that Sunday rain,
that Sunday movie, that Sunday inclination,
Your imagination frotting against mine
rendering it almost-pregnant with images
of what-was-not-but-might-have-been-or-be,
pale shapes with color-soaked edges, vivid, laden.
These words, written first by hand,
possess a different power from those spoken-
chest rising, falling, lips fellating the enunciation
expelling/coupling words with breath, the thing without which
I am not. These words cannot be divorced
from breath, from body, cannot be made
any less real than me-
So I do not speak.
These words, formed by precise jitters of my left hand,
jiggles, giggles of my wrist across blue lines
begin a dangerous lovely triangle of you, me
and words, those dazzling darlings
I've held so close and for so long,
chicken-scratch signifiers in still-fresh ink.
Words speak volumes to me, you know,
colors, layers of scent, texture, memory,
snippets of imagination, more vulnerable, revealing
than my naked body in wind or bad lighting.
Dare you meet me on these terms?
You shan't escape unscathed
("shan't," you see? This is not reality...)
My passion, my livelihood, these words
rapier-like at times, dagger-like at times-
and often gentle as peach-fuzzed nose breath
whispered with fairy-like precision
into that crescent crevice behind the ear-
might bind you, slowly, to me, as wood glue
drying in a garaged woodshop might,
without them ever being spoken.

If I say what I mean, and mean
what I say, take care not to fall
for an amorous alphabet of unspoken words.
You see, I only occasionally have the balls
to live them.
And I haven't said a word.

*

What I'd Like From You

I'd like to feel you at a reggae show
Slide up behind me gently
Slide your arm around my waist
And silently meld your body to mine
While the beat sways us to and fro.

I'd like to know it was you behind me
Just from your smell,
Your sway,
The familiarity of your arms around me,
The way our melded body sways to and fro.

I'd like to incline my head
And feel your warm breath on my sweaty neck
Moments before kisses tumble onto that same salted spot
And your arm tightens around my waist
While reggae persuades us to and fro.

I guess what I'm saying,
Even if it's not possible,
Even if it scares me, is
I'd like every day to be a reggae show
with you. And
I'd like to forever be swaying to and fro
with you.

What are the odds of that happening?
*

Lover,

You would come in the night. I would lay asleep in the dark room.

You would undress me and take me. Brutally, hungrily take me.
Perhaps I would fight you. Perhaps I would just lay there.
Perhaps I would not be scared. Because I would know your scent.
I would know the feel of your skin. I would know and not be afraid.
I would just lay there and let you take me.
The room would reek of pleasure.

It is the suddenness of it all that would make me gasp.
All of a sudden, my dreams would be interrupted as you penetrated.
But with you inside I would not want to sleep.
The only noise to fill the room is to be the ticking of the clock
And my breathing. My heavy and helpless breathing.
You would make no noise. You would be too intent on pleasure.

The body would be weak with sleep. It would offer no resistance.
And though we were together, we would think only of our own
Pleasure. Each would be excluded from the other.
It would be perfect.

You would not stay the night. As quietly as you came,
you would go. I would resume my sleep.
It would be a dreamless sleep.

I leave my door unlocked at night now,
waiting.

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