from your wrists
evening comes robed in silver laughter
your feet sing to the earth
her beaches, grained syllables
soft with time
against your lace the day
draws back
blue mountains, their dreams of cloud
reveals
your skin of honeyed stars,
your eyes of new moon;
your soul on steps to mine in slow kisses
along ropes of candles, filigree shadows,
where, amid columns of our whispers
we conjure this
incandescence
beloved,
observe the artifacts of our kisses;
cities of song that bead a desert!
their high walls, coarse silk against daylight,
blush like skin under spangled capes of night
dressed in blurs of violin and flame
our laughter dances in city gates
our poetry bursts in doves from parapets
our high windows unfold the morning
grow around me, beloved,
let your jasmine talk to me of cool summers
sing of endless caravans under umbrella thorn
as our shadows fall against dunes
among countless embraces
look, your hands are my rivers,
they flow along restless verses,
tumble sweet words from depths
to drift into shallows
and sigh around our feet
dusk breathes us
we waltz sinuous spines of evening
i weave saffron blossoms in your hair
your whisper the rain
at the white altars of failure
my hands sing their thirst of your skin
they sleep in tremors;
small quakes across deserted wrists
far away your eyes burn;
lanterns on hills of solemn beauty
you gather stars from night
and place them on rivers
in spangled tongues, bridges of joy
between earth and sky
you glide to disturb them like a swan
graceful punctuation free from coarse mountain lips
silencing wide maws of time
the dark earth
holds me to you
you speak the alabaster moon,
wait for my hands to open
like rolled leaves
and you kiss them
forever
without f.
there will be nothing,
no evidence of pain
no birthday fusiliers,
stirred geometry beneath trees
your breath will not hold butterflies
nor your hands the rain,
in meaty grimaces
parapets, shadow puppets,
all good smells wash away
roots embrace you
as you wear an old day
of muddy feet
at night
amid rubble of spring, dirty moons,
hate chews on its leash
right behind you
i would remember you with
hair sung of sunlight,
your shoulders small, free
from the world’s heavy heavy cape
laughter buoys us
along our afternoon
to the ocean of a bathing sun
there is a light that rests around us when we’re together,
my eyes hold your face, your hands your feet
as if to recognise a garden,
an old city from another life;
a room of evening
your eyes hold me;
candles to guide my feet
across our delicate bridges
your ageless beauty
circumscribes me;
we dance on our soft beaches,
wastes where eagles keep their vigil,
dark filigreed paths stars tread
to breathe on the face of the moon
our kisses overwhelm the world
we die and are resurrected in them,
our breath lingers in unspoken syllables,
blossom in aches of desire
rent from clothes, books, pieces of electric sky,
we draw the many curtains,
under canopies of eye lashes
and all barely contained by skin;
we word the unutterable
Girl As Forest
the forest heaviness rings in you like a bell
foot prints stutter wildly
clumps of lilies
your sweet displacements
a rhyme of rich mulch
stains in my blood
(i)
i try to draw your hands
your thin hands of light and autumn
but they come out wrong
i laugh because only men who tremble will draw them
your hands make me tremble
(ii)
i stutter along the fields
like wind i try to make violins of the grass
yet, here is your laughter
in rivers of afternoon
you find my note
beloved,
let us be a waltz of lanterns in a darkened street
~ the poet
i wait for you on white steps with singing lilies
in the bird of evening i hear your voice
behind curtains i hide candles, like smiles of young love
in an old language of starlight and shadow i call you
come to me, tired flock of starlings
bury the day in my arms, let fall your hair over my neck
kneel and drink from our pools, our breath
let us be moonlight on a field of wheat
send your hands to my chest in tremors
smother deserts of my mouth with red rain
you are a river above me
as i gather you from between stars
my hands course your smoothness
you rise a full moon
we spill from roofs with jasmine tongues
you slit the wrists of night
(i)
the seasons have readied me for your hands
for your mouth and the morning of your skin
they have hardened me for doves in your voice
like a hill i was broken for herds of your feet
you graze upon blossoms of my slumber
(ii)
clouds rush me, easily fold me
the sun finds me naked, pins me to myself
rocks, hard shadows, come, cover me
my tongue sings the roots of forests
(iii)
sightless fish swim me
drown me in white dreams of your wrists
sing, broken heart, sing!
i will listen
unspiral from my shell
in your acetylene maw burn
brighter than a sun
jonahboat 