Poem: eight kisses

One


You can call
it emptiness, breathing, epithet,
or love, or the thing we can't

touch, while in motion.
The rush
of your mouth in me like icemelt water,

innocent, surging
like a creek,
touching,

stopped.


Second Kiss

I'd like to eat sunlight like an orange,
and let lighty juices run down my jaw
And neck and chest like afternoon rivers.

I may burn my lips, but that is nothing
to the sweet, resinous heat of summer
Roving over your body like a golden hand.



Third Kiss

And we're shine-lit
on the hillside in
the only star.



Fourth Kiss

The soul has no glimmer,
Even in this midday sun, and still,
Like a screw I would raise it always to drink
From the flowering well of your mouth.



Five



Sixth Kiss

Fishing a line made of average brushes,
Casting for angels in the glen of your mouth.

I spied them sleeping on your neck,
Watched them rise and fall, white thoughts spinning
From a dandelion in low summer, endured
A lure made of white quiet
To gather them as if by magic.
The cousined string stretched itself like a lover’s hair
Across the shoal of your coral shoulder,
The indefinacy of your collar’s gentle hollow.
I am the fisherman who works with craft;
The settling is delicate, and sounds like
Small metal inside of a fragile tumbler.

The enzyme cast.. .

I am slipping the fingers of angels between my lips
Making them lazy with pleasing
Then I eat their gauzy wings;
They disappear like spun sugar
In the heat of your mouth.


Seventh Kiss

Am I trying to write durable journals,
Words that will weather or remain intact?

More, I’m trying to scribe myself
In the pond of your soul,
Moving my hand, writing my name
As a man in your water.

How can I separate the narrow sweeps
Of your body from your strangeness, highway light?

True, your body is only the first reflection.
Everything holds your aspect, love.

Movement in good hope,

Cover me all like an infused honey sun.


Eighth Kiss

We left the blinds up last night
To watch the snow and lightning,
While the storm of your body
Pressed its anger against my sea,
Your rain greenly beating my ocean,
Useless, useless.

This fine morning you're happy'go'lucky,
Idle lioness, indolent, golden and lazy
And making dream'sound in the erotic
Deep beneath your yielded lips.