Spring Song

of all this long life only one event seems real

touched and kissed entwined in your embrace

there were things I wished you would say, in your

lovemaking all burning questions sank, unwritten

melodies nestled on my lips; slightly off-cue

I dare not catalog their rippling tune, rapture beating

upon the smoke-grimed ground like rose-fingered dawns

have we met before in an incoherent dream?

you trotting along humming two lines of my song

drawing me close in rapid arpeggios, like an open

casement a note missing, all that brightness beyond

rushing in, a bough bending in the warm breeze

thin leaves swept summer-brown stirring spring

you are not perfect, slipping in and out like scurrying

clouds; distant in your masculine cruelty

I am afraid of your perfect beauty; mystical, so young

settling to sleep beside half-eaten chocolates,

vases crammed with roses, lilies, your breath

hot on my temples carrying sweetness of red wine

toes touching, arms clasped, your head on my breast

enflamed verses on loop, when I have these safe

in our metaphysical unity, what more did I need?

Conjuration

I play with images
you set floating in my mind,
every illusion casting
an identical shadow as we race
surrendering to the delirium
of which you remain in control
knowing it’d be over soon,
that the ground would become
frozen again.

I don’t even know what I say
at such moments,
you are growing silent every day
it’s always night where I am,
“I love you,” you say
if something has to be said,
what makes more sense?
we tell each other
we are lovers, in love
while my conviction
that we are on divergent paths
is revived from one conversation
to the next.

I wonder at the letters
I begin to write,
left unfinished
phone calls I break off
dialling before the last digit,
if this isn’t me on the brink
after a brief intermission
as though nothing has changed
and if I am not back
where I began?

“take this yearning seriously
you want me,” you say
and I rush to see you
in solitude I ask myself
if love is really in question
if it isn’t vulnerability
and embitterness
the neediness to which,
I am attracted?

Translucency

And how? You constantly arouse me by presentiments;
a sweet and strange mix of relief every morning
at waking up in the gusts of your musky
fragrance, and the renewal of misery; fear of
impending loss, the wondrous outlines of your lips,
just out of reach, when I am looking into the mirror, smiling,
combing my lustrous hair, each strand casting
wobbling patterns of shadow and light, my ageing skin
immorally beautiful, like an envelope folded over several times.

How solemn is soppy celibacy? Suffering as much as delighting
in air of expectancy, our bodies growing hot, chasing
each other around a track sown with violets and thorns,
tongues lapping, hunger for flesh on fingertips;
I am unfolded, unarticulated, deluge me with pails of texts,
magical nouns, verbs, adjectives of beautiful, douse the burning
phrases, white lines, when you take me, my hair, my throat,
my limbs, the world lays on floor, slightly broken, chequered
with colours, the splinters of cracked mirror make music.

A Reconciliation

Together in an erotic dream they speak to the star-strewn
sky, naked. She hears him stretching his arm to string stars
like pearls with all his skill, her skin glittering in milky veil.
A streak of amber in his eyes shatters the woman he holds
in delicious splintering. Confetti in her arms, ungiven kisses
splash the clusters of jasmine, she trembles like a struck violin,
for the man she loves had walked away in a bubble of music,
on the previous night in the middle of an unending poetry.
In the cleft of clouds a succession of moon-lit puddles float
drowsily toward her, she cranes her neck to meet the necklace,
his fingers lingering on her throat, ecstatic jewelled specks
slipping down her soft body, the round and full tawny moons
creeping to his side, her lips part like a bruised strawberry
to reproach him, Ah! How well he knows the autumn wound
laid bare on her breast! ‘What does she want?’ he searches
himself for reassuring words, long misspent in ambiguous
whispering. At the brink of illuminating destiny, an insatiable
hunger in her eyes, he fingers the circle of sparklers writhing
around her neck, caressing her shoulder blades, his heavy
fragrance permeate her nostrils, ‘You!,’ her silent shriek
reverberates in the dense blue sky, their souls divested of
bodies; the one fair, and another dusky, mate in the dank air.

Platonic

I mustn’t think of you, the ripples of love over moist skins,
the stinging world of magic, soul-sex, your hair tinctured
with gold, of the times when you meant what you said.
I must lay your thoughts aside, like the shrill buzz of cicadas,
cover your pale face out of sight, like cardinal motes of
daylight, which might diffuse one day in thick coral folds
to suffuse my glittering surface chequered with old frights.
I should simply doze on rickety chairs, delighting in far off
tenors of memory, bewailing the parting with spent dreams,
a wonderful craving in the gut, strident screeches of pigeons,
running taps, a game of truth and dare, credible lies. I’ll look
back with empty eyes, at the tiny month of ecstatic nights,
foolishly sweet, instant fires, hold my soul in flat palm, it’s
unhappy warmth clouding your splendour of silvery white.
I may be right I may be wrong, but I am out of way,
smoking lighted ends of cigarettes, stooping shy,
in the mounting sunrise your unbody merging with mine
my mouth on yours, just as I knew it would be one day ..

Delirious…

“To me you are but a distant unreality,
an unattainable river-boat sailing away
to horizon,” he says. With a few yearning strokes
she paints the air crimson and gold; a new conflict
pressing around his temples. She looks steadily beyond
dark curtains of his piercing eyes, her lilac gown
open in the front to a quilted knot. Six pulls
at the uncertain threads, and he could
strain extensive beats of a heady Arcadia
stretched out to meet dashes of turquoise blue.
He restrains a smile, lurking like an offender
behind dewy mouth, blowing fitful shreds of warm light,
traversing his rusted needs she writhes like a serpent
wrapped in twigs and thorns.
“The mishmash of a saint and a satyr,
I was always yours. Always yours to keep,”
his voice penetrates honey-slick archways,
fingers in hair tracing her name, the one he called
the most beautiful among women.
There’s softness of moonlight,
harshness of midnight, pleasures of wooing,
brutality of pinnacles, thrills of familiarity,
something and everything, shocks of delight.
Fragile and decrepit, squirting clamour and heat
she was lying in wait to come alive and be young again,
“Darling, I missed you,” she says. His voice
transforms into a fleshy mouth, his cruel teeth
engraving savage melodies on her rhythmic heart,
their supple earlobes curling like lotus-petals
in the wanton glow of approaching daylight.

Valentine’s Eve

Sorry, I could not
kiss you today
I’d conjured
a heavenly smack,
leisurely gentle,
between delightfully
ticklish, and
savagely orgasmic

A feeling of repose,
which passes you by
without scarring;
rose -scented
exhilaration of life
in fairy realm.
Why I didn’t, you say?

As I lay enmeshed in
relentless skirmish of
forever and now
the emptiness of moment
welled up my eyes.

Even perfect love
ebbs and flows
hour to hour;
is the most lonesome
oscillating emotion
that pitches the moon
freezes the sky.

For once my darling,
I’d struggle against
masculine indifference
suffer defeat
hide rainbow heart
conceal bruised lips.

Tomorrow we’ll overcome
incalculable worries
turn fluid in
pure rapture of being
rupture in
poetic coarseness
speak the language of
nightingales and ravens.

Could we ever make do with
anything less than excess?

Lust

When he is away everything’s just a sense of
wrong; indescribable, gritty, un-gettable, blue-grey.
Nothing at dawn seems right; sunset, moonrise,
it’s half past ten, night unfolding her black petals.
Gleaming fangs. She smacks the droplets of sweat
he’d left to bloom in darkness. With the tip of her
tongue she traces a crescent moon, molten ivory
spread in circles, steeped in his smell. Physical
stimulation pounding after her, choking, choking.
She waltzes like a hymn; unabashed. Open.
Her feet speeding through the lowering sky,
shuffling over his body’s firmament, falling,
falling like a shooting star; miserable, triumphant.
She shuts her eyes, desire flaming in ringlets.
He spreads his naked arms, disturbingly intimate,
hot illuminance reaching out from neck, spilling
across his cheeks. Sexy. Her love is an ebullition,
infectious, full-blown rose, prowling in an
erotic fantasy. Revengeful. She keeps him awake
for one thousand nights. He clasps her in moonlight,
mental osculations, sinful breaths. She is a volume
of music; a multihued blur, longing to be windswept.