Falling In Love, #4

Blue Nude, Henri Matisse, 1952, oil on canvas

The winter slowly melts on the city.

I saw a kingfisher today, maybe for
the first time in my life, and I don't
know which type yet, maybe Alcedo
atthis, but I know it was beautiful,
and trust me I know beautiful when I see it
I know how words are forgotten
                       questions abandoned
                            worlds disregarded
I know how the excitement builds in;

that time you thought you'd pass
the sea all alone, but a friend finds
you out of nowhere, or maybe the
kingfisher, or why not both? And
you think of who's left and what's left
behind, of nights spent thinking on
being thought back, of the mother
that fed first from her stomach and
then fed on. I know how badly I want you
to go to a bakery with me, or to a Pâtisserie
(but do you like French? the stuck up,
the erotic?) or to some other place at the
other end of the world and so on and
so forth. A barbershop would work -- I'd
get a haircut, and you'd wait sitting behind
on sticky leather sofas reading some
magazine, and I'd glance quickly shyly: your face
on a barbershop mirror, and you'd look too,
and our eyes would meet, and then
our smiles, and then your blush, and then
the barber asks how is it? beautiful.

For now, I am content to watch
the cold cracking through the crevices in
frosted windows and through your skin, you
jabbing your chin to the glorious breastbone
and the kingfisher seeking a chimney to
                                                          nestle by.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Her Lips

The Kiss, Edvard Munch, 1897, oil on canvas

The Kiss, Edvard Munch, 1897, oil on canvas

An ode for the infinite space between

"making love and love made"

I

Of all the things that move on Earth,

and of Earth itself, the only two that         

clung

were her lips.

II

As a body leaning

into another is a sin,

and as the sin is an

occasion of celebration,

if the blood flows to her lips.

III

Her lips, too, fall

yet it’s the common

courtesy of muses.

IV

(Except for maybe when

the 21^st century machinery is too tired

to endure the metallic cry

and our souls like sleek industrial cogs

desire to go up & up & up

o how? how would they know?

of heaven’s rosy and timid gates?)

V

The universe revolves nonetheless,

and with it, us, and with us, our gazes,

and our gazes around her lips.

VI

entangled

he says

entangled to the blood

are the lips

and the hands

and entangled must be

the lips and the hands

too

her lips untangle.

VII

I am of many minds,

yet all seem to flee the brain:

her lips like time.

VIII

Dusk in Canaan,

the dust not yet settled,

my heart:

the oracle of a love

that never yet was

but surely will be.

IX

There are earthlier things

like the stuff that moves

in the hunter’s hands

and breathes warmly;

her lips the beast stripped

of the fur and the fury,

her hips alike.

X

We fall

amidst the leaves of fall,

and cling together: Sun

lights up her lips, the color

that fall leaves have.

XI

Her lips were childbirth,

mortality, endless veins,

the circle of life, the inverted

pyramid of priorities, and

among many other things

herald of something eternal

like the bird that sings the spring.

XII

The spring blooms, and with it

terrible lovers! Terrible lovers

everywhere! Under the trees!

In reflections! Between minds!

Terrible lovers! Her lips alive

through the seasons, except for

maybe the harsh winter that

cracks it open. In those cracks,

terrible lovers! What good

is a lover not terrified?

XIII

And on the eighth day,

they created the dimples,

the smile, the red and the white

and the everything in between

the cheeks, and fields of rye

the color of her hair and the sea

and everything else.