"But my words become stained with your love.
You occupy everything, you occupy everything."
Pablo Neruda, "So That You Will Hear Me," 1924.
For Erika
i.
What burns in you is beauty.
My life grazes your soft hands,
mother's, child's, hands of goddess, hands of beast.
My dreams rest astride your belly, looking
onward to burning strokes, onward to mutual
sway & thrash, love's rain beyond desire's cloud.
******
ii.
Kindness seems more important, now,
in the tangle of burning candles, erotic trance,
fingers spread thigh as heart nudges heart.
Suddenly, laughter. A bite. A memory.
You taste like flying. I can think of you no other way.
Slow. Slower. Then not. Our carnal notes grip the Earth.
******
iii.
More colors, wilder music, the beginning of a
new freedom. Torching the grains leaves
your body raw with magick, each of your
pores open-lidded. The music beats, beseeches,
arouses. Our beast twists newly powerful.
We swarm the window's winter light.
******
iv.
The night's new rampage. A gleam. A way.
My lips recall your breast to me. I'd lunged at you
earlier, beginning to reclaim you. My desire is
desire resumed. You near & elude me like steam
its source. Soon is not soon enough. Each passing
moment shouldered with new touch & revived echo.
******
v.
All that is, is kin. Two or three cats range about your
room, ignore us. One is curious. I tell you between tumults of
other lovers & other cats. You laugh without jealousy.
The curious cat is orange, male. My rival, my brother.
We reckon each other friends because he does not
fear my knowledge of you. When I am gone, he will lick you clean.
******
vi.
A new dream. A bigger dream. No longer a dream at
all. Our first night burns past us to return in
variation. Each touch is news, each taste is
poetry. We fuss & play with this reality.
We fly it. Land. Crash. Again. To see what will
happen. Your eyes a tender blue. Your fine wiggle.
******
vii.
Midnight sprinkles from the blue guitar, the walls
thicken. Ghostly candles conspire. The moon is fast
but we are slow. Awakening. Initiation.
The blue guitar thrums bundles of twisted notes.
The floor is earth. The ceiling is mystery.
Toss knowledge to the flame blind with a
childly want. Pages of empty scripture vibrate
with carnal bass probings. The moon ceases
as we accelerate. I lick your toes as you
squirm. The cats stalk elsewhere. The building
is quiet. Drums tap & throb. Lips on lips, Beauty
is summoned, crowds, & chants us deeper within.
******
viii.
I am learning to make you butterflies
from fire. A song in the forest's native
alphabet. A kiss so familiar you will taste me
tasting you. Nothing impossible between us now,
or ever. The butterflies for the corners of your
bed. The song to quell rogue spirits in
your heart & home. The kiss a promise of my
love, of our bonding. The impossible slithers
as we stride past it. I am learning to watch
how you manifest in my streets & dreams.
Our loving raves, recedes, raves higher. Beyond full
moon & spell, it is a new being, arising.
******
ix. Another Montreal dawn
All is maya. Dream. Art. Play. Illusion.
The pathways of Love are filled with strangeness.
Dream. The road back to you doubles back,
& again, upon its intentions. Art. You pose
in my mind, for hours, I know not why.
Play. Nude beneath a sheet, you writhe &
smile to the wilder music. Illusion. The miles
between us sum to nothing. All is maya.
A grey snowy dawn shot with wordless calm.
******
x.
This universe a mist, a light, a shimmer.
She sways & eludes, music's dream
of manifestation. Fingers of fire,
thighs wet for brighter kinds of knowing.
A mist, a light, a shimmer. Death yes, no,
whatever. She drifts through music,
changing how it dreams, with her tongue,
with every trip of her breath saying
I want more. A light, a shimmer. Danger
delight. Not a plan nor an alphabet. I
watch her cheeks trance into shadow &
know nothing but love. Nothing but love.
******
xi.
She pulls me deeper into embrace,
her teeth gleaming with hunger & fear,
& we fall continuously as her fingers
etch my back with possession & we
begin to lose daylight & language,
her breasts gnaw me for a lengthy moment's
touch, & we lose more & more to
accelerate our symbiosis. I grasp her
thick hair & bite her bare shoulder, &
something will come around after this
to teach us what to do, how to tap these
body-wild dreams, fuck righteous every day's every hour.
******
xii.
I disappear along the path riding away
from you, remembering the spirit-roused
candle at our meal, & so we were
watched by the invisible world as well
as your several bemused cats. What longing
do spirits retain for human electricity?
Along the path away from you I remember
watching you suck a cherry mocking carnal
acts with strange names & for a moment I
looked out the window to a brick wall &
a colorless sky. You asked me what I saw.
I shook my head til the moment broke & scattered.
******
xiii. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA.
To play one true note. To play
her very own, play it from sweat
& desire, from dreams of nameless
acres of pines & growls, play it
like he touched her that one time
amidst the carousing smoke & the
candles atwist with pressing spirits,
to play this note beyond the child's love
& the man's need & the companions'
gnawing familiarity, to play it & scream
YES THIS IS ME! I am the one you've
curled around all these years & none
of you knew my true note, I've just
played it, first time, did you hear it?
Returns to the midnight brushings of
her thick copper hair. The candles
flicker quietly again. The smoke settles
among the kittens & strewn nightwear. Did you hear it?
******
xiv.
This morning, my love, & thus I approach
you, the light soft as flaming wax, the courtyard
empty, these words scawled wetly on a dry leaf
of mud, I approach you, through madness & magick,
anguish & anticipation, recalling tomorrow's
better dance, the gleams & crackles of finer
clothes, I approach you, shedding sinews & blue
fancies, forgetting your name to better
remember your eyes, forgetting my own
better to dance with you through this
empty courtyard, better to know nothing
but love for you, better to know
nothing at all. This morning, my love,
& thus I approach you, with questions, with
answers, with daisies & sparkling candy, with
words of feather & chords of glass,
with a tale of nameless groves, yet untold
you, save it for another morning, keep it for another dance.
******
xv.
Riding the wave of bliss, flow just flow,
completion begins in despair, emptiness,
her copper hair frames your dreams & you
imagine finger interlocking finger interlocking
finger, flow just flow, seeking her light
in the candle she gave you another time,
dream of it not burning away in this
silly chamber but falling toward her from
a hand held high, flow just flow, her mouth
senator & songstress, but not now, riding
the wave of bliss, each limb clasping its mate,
energies twined brightly, pur, now rumble, now
roar, flow just flow, the wider sky, the deeper
magick, the completion in unity, emptiness.
Empathy. Friendship. A touch, A smile. Chocolate.
Flow just flow. Leave behind what is
understood. Stroke her copper hair. Breathe.
Speak the word "mystery" & listen to her heart's reply.
******
xvi. A Prayer for Health & Healing
And for warmth our tribes of fingers gather &
mingle, & for laughter my beard
brushes your fullmoon cheek, & for knowing
your breast lays against my breast & for
hope we follow the music's rowdy tumble, & for healing
I hold your strength with my tenderness &
there is a deeper listening in the courtyard's flicking
candles, & there is a tougher affection in
how the colors brush & swarm us, & there is
a better kindness in this moment's giving ways,
& the truth that is king here bows to the
goddess crown of daisies in your hair &
tonight we dance in every kind of our being,
& together we pray for gentleness & clarity,
the way the child kisses her mother's lips,
& our trust weaves brightly with our submission
to the subtleties of this universe's ways, the finer
ways it eludes us, & teaches, & provides.
******
xvii.
Mercy begins at the groin, love at the
fingertips, desire in the eyes or
perhaps along shafts of obscure music
I travel to you along waves of primal
radiation & you shiver at what dance
may follow my words in the later
hours tonight past full moon gentleness
as sonic coherency spirals out in many
paths & the colors say yes yes yes
stars & speed, stroking you furious
slow, goddess, muse, beyond grief,
& chance, what pours in dwarved
by what blossoms out & we discover
ourselves walking the boulevard with lemon-light
streetlamps, pawnshops, newsstands,
& approach its end near dawn where
gypsies whir & sing, a play, a feast, freaks,
at last a tent, a cot, candy, candles, mercy, & release.
******
xviii.
Years ago, my love, when I was younger
even than you, I worked for a man
with a problem. Cocaine & despair. His
father had been shot dead daylight streets
of Hartford. He fucked women on his lunch
hour & went home to his beautiful blonde
girlfriend. He showed me how to numb my
gums with a bit of blow applied just so.
It didn't work. Perhaps I did it wrong. I was 22.
Tonight Boston is cold, miles & years from
that man & the nights when he taught me how
to drink & looked at me with bleary eyes &
promised me better days coming. Curly brown hair
& blue eyes. Bit of a moustache. Skinny in his grey
suits. Tonight I think of you in Montreal, recovering
from surgery & remember Howard weeping in a car
along a turnpike. Drinking & snorting to hear the boos
better. Love sticks hard. We need to keep breathing.