A Few Short Words

It’s so hard to leave

when you’re lying there,

almost bare, supine, divine,

with soft warm thighs

and deep wide eyes.

Lips that part invitingly,

inviting me to stay a while,

to kiss your smile

and tour the contours of your skin.

To draw you in with eager hands.

To feel you, hold you,

let my arms enfold you.

To mend the schism

wrought by my decision

to get up and out of bed today

instead of stay

and play with you,

a game of words

that leaves me breathless,

strips me speechless,

submersed in the sublime,

removed from time,

panting, warm,

and satisfied.

Hands that seek and find with ease,

a thing thought lost, some inner peace.

Lips that search the midnight dark

and meeting generate a spark.

Enough to power all the world,

or so it seems, for when unfurled,

this peaceful, placid passion,

while not demure within it’s fashion,

is still somehow so relaxing,

a gentle love that is not taxing.

Even let me dare to say,

that when this paring has its way,

the world will see it’s for their taking,

a universe that they are making,

of hands that search

and lips that seek,

of minds that match

and hearts once meek,

rejuvenated by each other.

One simple thing,

the perfect lover.

It resonates in the silent, shared,

pared-back comfort of company,

in the affluence of affection

of an arm around my waist

and fingers laced to hands

so sweetly sewn together,

palm to palm, so calm whenever

they chance to find the other.

There are pictures in a gallery

I curate in my mind,

they’re made from words

and hung with twine,

and in these perfect pictures,

I can see that you are mine.

A radiant array of rhetoric,

carefully composed,

clad in colored consonants

that leave my heart exposed.

A simple skirt of syllables

that sits on slender hips

and slowly draws the eye

from waist,

to chest,

to lips.

A portraiture of poetry,

hung on haiku hair.

Laconic, lilting, lyricism,

like sonnets made from air.

I can tell you the moment,

the first time I fell,

when my stomach jumped

and my heart skipped,

when I felt my shell

crack, crumble and fall away.

I can tell you the moment,

though it happens again

a dozen times a day

and each time like falling,

caught by the thought of you.

There are traps

recessed inside my mind

that spring upon me suddenly

with steel-intentioned teeth

and gnash against my pride,

but do not kill so much

as mutilate my self esteem,

to make it seem like my wellbeing

were some woodland creature,

worn down and wounded,

wailing and writhing,

waiting for redemption.

She laughs at me

in the simplest of ways,

no guile nor malice.

She laughs the way

a light illuminates.

She’s incandescent

in her joy

and I fall for her.

In the midnight susurrations of my city

I discovered the reason I’m not real.

I perched on the night’s sill,

trying to believe there was more

than worn out words

and misshapen meaning

scrawled in erasable ink.

While the emptiness of my hands

holds so much promise,

I listen to the ocean

in the cup of my palm,

dreaming of something more

than memories, the sting of salt

and the dying echoes of skylarks past.

I stand under a long grey sky

and wish that it were cold again.

There are promises on the wind

that never get fulfilled,

only made, shaded,

and blown away.

I wish that it would rain,

at least,

and wash away my sins,

but a handful of wishes

under any sky,

if not fulfilled,

look just like lies.

Some days I feel,

minuscule almost,

diminutive certainly.

If not for you

I think I’d fade

like weak, old, jeans.

Just a speck on the horizon,

the vanishing point

in an artists eye.

I shrink myself down

and crawl inside her pocket.

She doesn’t feel me there,

carried through her day.

It’s comforting,

the closeness of the fabric

and the presence of her skin,

so close to mine and warm,

it pacifies me.

I wake up in the palm of her hand

as her eyes slide over me

like the inquisitive fingers of a blind man.

I am an artifact, a pocket relic.

The noise of joy forms scenery around me.

I’ve built walls around myself

from stronger stuff than mirth

that finds me isolated,

and wondering, alone,

what part of me

is shaped by these people?

These shifting, shapeless,

that present all that is

and isn’t much

of who they are,

and all that is

nothing of any substance.

She walks with music in her sole,

a 4/4 swagger in bluegrass jeans.

Her heart beats a salsa

and her eyes talk of tango.

She keeps the time by making it,

takes the lead and let’s you follow.

Her words whisper waltz

but they read like rumba.

No timid, tepid two-step,

her lips are dirty dancers.

A muse, a muse,

give me something I can use.

A wisp of hair,

a scent, perfume.

The sweet caress

of silk and lace.

A summer dress,

a pretty face.

A soft and supple female figure.

A woman I can hold with vigor.

All I want, to be inspired,

to send that shock

that once is fired,

sets ablaze

that cunning spark

that in the night,

the gloom and dark,

will afford some comfort,

peace of mind,

and dare I hope

just might unwind

that tricky, tangled

web of wonders

so entwined

with all the blunders

jostling heavy through my brain,

that woeful mess

that causes pain

from all it’s inarticulence,

that finds me left

with no defence,

but hope,

but longing,

but self abuse,

when all I need

is just a muse.

Light, skin, the smell of sweat,

the taste of salted lips.

Hollow things and bloated

baobabs and overripe fruits,

fallen, split and spilt,

coursing remnants and empty,

still, touché to all things

between two parties,

flesh touching, cursing,

passing, unannounced,

gone in instances

from insecurities

and now, years later,

wandering allowed,

what’s lost? Only

what ifs and maybes.

Still plenty left unattended,

broken and unmended.

Past has passed

its haunts and harries,

the sun has set,

its light but lingers.