One such devoured moment

I am not overt

even when good green absinthe is poured over

a sugar cube

the silver tongs holding

sweetness just.

I am not overt

will not tell you of my sinning urge to

strip you dear of clothing and chew

the very mercy from you

beneath my aching layers

where frill and fancy and the soft cotton of

longing

lie on top of one another, spilling over

in quiet crescendo.

I’m not overt

as you bend toward sunlight, creating a halo of

light beneath your breasts and I see

the coffee cream and the glory of

all that I have ever desired

drawn in chafed clamor.

With reddened mouths, we

empty our aching into indigo rivers

for to release them

and become that thing of wanting

does not possess a language sufficient.

If it did, I fear I would

spend decades

describing what it feels like

to surrender to you,  feel the rounding

of dark silver, begin to etch my spine

its crescent capture, a moon within my

shuddering limbs

as we cascade over the other

swimming like night swans

oblivious to the beckon of dawn.

I fear, should it be translated

my throaty cries will be colors without

meaning, a lake of pleasure, where finding you

I sink beneath, without need of air

your fingers playing me

like a waterlogged flute

for the merfolk who surely have

no rest in their abandon.

It is my greatest secret

that you own my heart and I

supplicate myself in yours, with the

rosy thirst of a child seeking measure

I find myself in the echo of you

your fingers deep in me, striking urgent note

sonorous and defeating sound

together we listen to the rabbit stitch beat

of our hearts, pressed in uttered motion

as you enter my blood and I

absorb a little more of you

as suppliant as a beggar for your

nectar.

I fear should you ever not exist

the part of me wedded to you in between

the trees and through time would

perish like starlight.

For only you bid this girl

alive like ancient wood-maker, setting finish

the sound of us, abseiling into the other, our

wordless joy, limbs bound, skin hot to touch

this thimble of love vibrating its frequency

out to lighthouses and beyond.

Lost from you, I would be no more than

a figment of what was, tortured by

recollection, denied the warm sustaining of

your cherished arms about me.

I am not overt

yet if I were, I should

spill like a warm wax, the seal of you

pressing permanently into my epidermis

a shape of longing and need

where mouths are elongated into song

throats flung back in instrument.

You inhabit me, as I reach for you

cresting waves, growing barefoot dance

a chant in time with quickening pulse

your eyes black in half moon shade

swish of violent love, simmering damp and lush

I release to the witching smell of your

skin surrounding us like points of

flame in absolute blackness

rising up, exhausting their burn

falling down to rise again ever

defiant and pleasured

by the anonymity of their

evoking spectacle

as if I were alive

only in that moment

when you struck me

bright with sulphur

the sabotage of my sanity

given willingly for one

such devoured

moment.

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Natural state of being

They don’t want to hear about you

you’re not their kind

color, height, smell and gait

sets you apart, making you unpalatable

cast out from something you never belonged to

your back is curved before you hit the ground

sans parachute

cowing in utero to the inevitability of rejection

this is you, yellow girl, jaundiced before birth

you enter the world with a cigarette in one gnarled hand

the other high in protest

Gloria Steinem. could learn a thing or two about

your resolve

while she grew up in affluence and chose her metal

you were given nothing but inherited disease and

a penchant for purposing

all this in the time when women were

supposed to cross their legs in polite company

and open them for their husbands every whim

it disgusted you, the hypocrisy of hate

people at your Baptist church crowing gospel

calling you sinner when they caused more harm

than any so-called pervert

sent to camp to straighten out, you

fell for your coach and she for you

making out behind the outdoor toilets

confirmation of bias in the unhooking

of her clumsy sixties bra

feeling the first areola and you were lost

to any other kind of conversion

I wish I’d known you then, when eyes bright

despite the infernal din, you struck out against

the norm, trying daily not to let that

milk of magnesia asking that you straighten out

cause shame

it’s hard isn’t it? When even those pretending to

‘understand’ leave you out of invitations and the like

because you’re different, you’re not looking for a penis

not putting up posters of James Dean but Farrah Fawcett was okay, nor

waxing your legs for Friday nights

you didn’t like what every other girl in the changing rooms

coveted and so, they turned their tanned backs to you

and left you alone

to think of why you had more in common with

Billie Jean King and Radcliffe Hall

than cheerleaders with pom poms of scorn

and football players who would rape you to show

what you were missing

was it really such a sin to want to love

another woman? What was it about how you felt

scared them into loathing? And why when they knew

did it seem such a sport to exclude you?

Until you wrote pain on the insides of your wrists

a dowry of teenage repudiation

ending up in a mental hospital where the nurses

were all secret dykes and you fingered each other

at midnight, hiding your disappointment behind

seventies lino

this wasn’t love either, anymore than lying beneath

a grunting boy, at 14, hoping to fuck out the

feelings people said were evil, though

his use of you, seemed far more abhorrent

than the dreams you had of girls

not just any girl either, not just a writhing

creche of women parts, but one startling woman

you hoped to meet, among the girls who would be boys

and the girls who would be bi on dark and cheap drink weekends

gay bars were undoubtedly

some of the saddest places in the entire world

you neither excelled at pool or darts, you couldn’t

join in anymore there with cunnilingus against bathroom stalls

graffiti the tired penitent of fallen souls

with strangers who reminded you of boys in make up

you didn’t want to be with a girl who hated being a woman

dressing more like a man than your father

you wanted to love another woman with all

her madness and her fluxes, the rise of her lace covered breasts

how her thighs were not muscled but soft and her lips

pillows for your fevered whispers

no such woman seemed to exist back then

when gay venues were often raided by bored

knee-jerk religious police seeking to molest a girl in

baggy trousers and flattened chest on Friday night

shame after all, is a universal weapon and you

had tasted its liquored lash many times by then

watching your friends beaten with sticks by

heady boys in pick-ups waiting outside bars, high on local beer

and blood lust

you were too small to protect anyone, but witnessed

with grief so sharp it left marks in your eyes to think

of how the strongest girls rushed to defend the weakest

struck down by weapons wielded by the ‘righteous’ oh! Texas!

You were such a loathing state and things haven’t really

changed so very much

they still close their doors

they still tell their daughters

“don’t play with her, she’s queer that one”

and as grown up as you are, the pain is twice folded

for you wished by now things would be different

with laws and blood spilled surely paving a way forward

you forgot, for every step, there is one backwards

still just as you resolved to go without

you found me and still I found you

among the carnage, and our own wrecked self-destruction

still we laid in darkness sharing our stories

I tracing the scars on your arms and thighs

like Sanskrit of former muzzled lives

when I looked in your tired eyes I saw

how long you had been watching

this cruel world destroy her rainbow

heavy children

sometimes the greatest love comes

from broken people

too late in their August lives

to kick up chipped heals

they find solace in the depths

of their much labored, chambered heart

for as much as they punish us for existing

we keep returning, generation after generation

unbidden, unwanted, labeled abominations

or just silent dismay

carrying our quelled pain in beseechment

the whole world unsure of how to treat us

often resorting to ignoring

for who knows what to do

with something different? I still

don’t hold your ink stained hand in public very often

fearing I suppose our heads being bashed in

or someone cutting silence with ugly laughter

I think I could handle my own

abasing but never yours

you’ve worn the brand long enough my love

I now aim to remove it, defend you

as you saw the bloodshed longer than most

young men mowed down by AIDS sucking

their last breath through second-hand

straws, emaciated by the squander of

their worth, by a society intent on

blaming someone., anyone, in their aimless pointing

Reagan in the office doing nothing

beneath his hollow cross

even Obama had to ‘evolve’ his

opinion of gay-marriage like it was a

right that should be earned rather than

possessed naturally

but after all we are not

considered very natural

are we? Funny really …

as being with you

is the only natural

state of being I have ever

felt.

Consume my hope

If we leave the letter unwritten 
saying nothing

deer leaning in the window salvaging for morsel of night 
grimacing when we stir, wind chimes with pointed feet 
dancing awkwardly in ill-fitting clothes, vindicating a 
suspicion of absurdity

turn from me then, until you stop being and I sit alone
watching faceless walls communing with plaster
you shape my days and can as easily, burn me standing
waiting for a word, a finger-tip, a smudge 

for when you strike, you are a panther, encased in skin
charboiling my heart over wilting blossom 
it is not possible to deny you
the switch of myself shivering electric 
in that, we are alike, the one who loses her hair in bunches and you
who cook longing on high flame 

hang yourself up on the back of my hook, let me catch you wriggling 
in my wet fingers made into a cup
like rounding moons with promise will become fairy circles 

when you emerge, dry-eyed and hot-skinned, let me lick the burn 
ringing your throat like the words you will 
strike out again and again in every ink
catching river stones in your mouth 
under my tongue
stretch out, beckon me, consume my hope 

Able to diminish angels (a love poem)

Was I too ancient?

unable to flatten hands upon ground

lost yogic verses in alabaster jars

will a future girl when her curiosity no longer shines like a wishing penny in carp pond? Steal your heart?

the fat Asian fish moving like they regret their enclosure as I regret time like a sweet taste after dark

not so much

was I too taut? Against the relentless sport of out doing

taking a seat from play they beckon me again

no I’m not interested, which is why I have no home phone or middle name

I can still make jelly and watch the t.v. flicker against dark windows

like fire is the stories soul and we the spectators of our calm downfall

you fit the mold

my legs are too long

when I bent to touch the floor I felt the weight on my back growing sore

for what did you ever know of absenting yourself from the world?

you were born with switches you begged people to turn on

sunbathing in rays of attention like a chimeric hot-house plant

and if we were orchids protruding from rotting logs in swamp

your petals would still be perfect

reminding me of the first time

you said no, head cast low

a bowl of gold from the sun

christening us both in shy taunt

and I said … yes

so please … say yes

meet me half way

where we shake off old hurt like moth balls

bound on their fate to repel the unseen pest

leaving lurching shadows to dust furniture

and there by opal of pearly light

dressed in rose glow you are

able to diminish angels

turning timidly into me

licking the envelopes lapel

revealing your want like

honey on my fingertips

tastes sweeter for all our longing

and age? Is a modern invention

for people who check their phones

whilst we lie

rolled like cigarettes against each other

feeling the weight of air pushed by fan

urge us deeper