Turkish delight

I didn’t have time to un-knot my hair or brush it down

it used to hang to my thighs and I had to cut it

when the sickness came and I was green with bile

all those years I held my hair as my calling card

for I had nothing else

so when you see me this way you know

I’m not pretending anything anymore, this is me

this is the girl you once loved

I remember thinking I was old back then

what a laugh

and time is a cordial of horrors and trickery

what we need to know is, it’s all in the eye of the beholder

so if I feel tired and beat up now, remember, I tell myself

in ten years I will rue the day I forgot to dance

I dance now

bare footed with dirty soles

to the memories of

our liquid union

and planes do not fall out of the sky

the day is quiet

despite the tornado in my mind

I would let you in and not let you out

shut inside me like a favorite book

chapter marked by the sinew of my want

clasp you tightly with my muscular need to belong

within your kaleidoscope, a star in your universe

behind these accoutrements and forbids  I burn electric

you never get too old for longing

I want you to take me in your arms

crush me into sugared pieces

eat each one and never spit me out

I want to become you and stay

inside your candied warmth

where amber things are less real

set in time to wait out storm

but you care about them more

as part of your compass, to set your destination

I was born of your desire

I am now without wing

soon I will fade into pieces

and nobody will pick them up to eat

 

 

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Into water

There was grief in the last time I was myself

long-faced, retroussé nose, thick hair

broad shouldered from swimming away

cutting through water, weightless

not carrying your stare, your aprobation, your disregard

if ignored, let us ignore better, make an art of failure

suck the pipe, squeeze the last drop, inject, pop

those blue pills, as blue as you made me feel

psychiatry says nobody can make you feel anything

you choose

did you choose to feel nothing and by nothing

cause my center to crush softly inward

like the river flowers we press in our books

before you were born

carried over generation from generation

I laid in the grass wondering why

no lover had sought to please me

and the boughs of the trees revealed themselves

as my hand wandered back and forth

drenched in sweat

for who can satisfy a tin box with its lid hammered shut

who can know the heart of a girl who is told before she can walk

she isn’t enough, she’ll never be near sufficient

then you walked out of the river

green and shining like forested afterbirth

you did not care about forms and structure

spelling and photographic reproduction

you had a tongue and eyes and hands

like a thought with action

you claimed me beneath alders and pine

stretching so high, embracing unseen faith

I became a woman that day

crying out beneath your stones and mud and lillies

as white as an urge

with pink in the center

craving to crest in sun

and fall wilted back into water

Remember

As you age invisibly within your glass

sometimes you forget that time, so long past

when desire welled in your heart and between your loins

like fast, sound breaking barrier

it seems like another person inhabited those limbs

another life captured the longing

to pull them close and within, before flame grew dim

sometimes it is good to be mindful, remember then

the girl you were, bracing for rejection

spending your longing on the long gamble

sometimes, you’d catch a ride on the upside

in that golden arc of wheel, when fortune seemed

impossible to smother

lovers would become eternal

a kiss would reveal the language behind your skin

all the cries you stored inside, chiming for their flight

stroked like an instrument, you gained wings

fingers playing you deep, as river bed will

sift and edy before

releasing her secrets

sometimes, as you turn your fingers in imagination

against the cast of shadow, splayed on plaster

and build within your mind, the press and assault of love

coursing in your veins, as you lie beneath the world

sometimes, as you conjur that first unspoken swallow

of all salinated emotion and the convulsion to follow

inhabiting one another, like thirsty fish struck from sea

will gather close and preserve their need

sometimes, when I think of your fingers stroking my ink

the weight of you, capturing all I am capable of bringing

our motion resonating against mirrors of time

and in the gathering dusk, a mutual cry

folding over sleep, like pressing lips will open

just enough for feeling

then, as I recall the need for you

it is an empty and lovely feeling, of past and new

to walk through time, held aside in wash

O for love and her nourishment

just once, again, your touch, where I have grown parched

asuage the feeling, no-one has climbed inside me, to make their homage

an electricity of joining, cast far into dark waters, dark hearts

Iluminary, please light the way once more

that I can lie salt-blessed, on reversing shore

feeling your claim again, as a flung open door

with warp of sea breeze, denying closure evermore