Two Horizons

In a summer of ennui and youth
One glimpse remains, a lingering still-frame
Murky in the haze of its own languor.

In that strange hour of husky sweet dawn
When the sunlight and starlight entangle,
Quietly I watched you under bed sheets.

Your hips the white mountains of cool satin
Your silver sensation like snow soothed me.
In summer sweat I let myself shiver.

Your wet hair blossomed like some strange flower
Upon the still shores of our crisp pillow.
I buried my eyes against your wet neck.

When you turned the horizon unfolded
Briefly, into milky pools of white sighs.
But the hills slowly tumbled back again.

Could I leave you there in the blushing dawn?
The morning air blanketing you, melting
Your rolling curves? In another day I will.

But as sunlight licked the blue hills outside
I traced my finger on your quiet peaks.
The two horizons blurred in starry sleep.

What the Water Sang

Your hands the calm hands of some tribal Chief,
leathery with faint fumes of violet smoke.
Carved from the old stories of aspen trees.
Your hands, somehow so soft in their coarseness.

Your hands submerged me into the current,
My tears enflamed the vigorous pool.
You let the water cleanse me in your hands.
There in the water you taught me to sing.

There in the current’s hush you laced into
my mute volition the dreams of water—
murmurs among the rocks, the sweet pool!—
“Coalesce to the mermaid’s elegy.”

In water we bore our love together,
Your hands trembled like the kingfisher’s wings.

Reaping and Sowing

And then she said,
"Love me please,
please love me please,
or these lonely days
won't ever leave."

And I replied,
"I love you so!
Oh I love you so!
But this kinda love
from lonely grows!"

My Better Half

Sometimes during the night
When I wake up lost in that limbo
Between cognizance and the purgatory of sleep,
I see out of the corner of my half-closed eyes
My own leering wickedness.

Undulating in some type of rhythmic lurch,
He throbs like some primordial artery
Always in access of
the ancient deposits
of shadows lost in the cold
fractures of consciousness.

Slithering in periphery
He—I—seduces with gnarled
Fingertips of mirror-like obsidian
The Fetus of memory trembles
Inside its dismal shell.

Quick! I feel his head tilt
And the eyes like drunken nebulas
Tumbling gently in the frost of the night
That drapes upon us as he sings:

“Merry lost child! So far from the green path!
How many lives you have trampled upon!
Your happiness the solemn fruit,
The red liquor drenched across
Your arduous trek—how many children
Have you transformed to lonely
Women and men? So quickly
You grabbed her neck and felt the power
Surge through your arm the sabre.
Know this, child—before you squeezed,
She could have sworn in the midst of that
Inferno, that blur of rage and shame,
That hairs sprang up on your coarse neck,
And fangs of venom and white white love
Corrupted your sweet sweet smile.”

And before I turn away from
My manic, leering self,
Before I rid myself of guilt and agony,
Before I dream easy,
My loving wickedness, My
Better Half,
Whispers so sweetly
To the night (our cool sweetheart):

“You love so much child, you
Gon’ be the death of someone!”