mi diego

mi diego, te amo,
you are not faithful to amantes either,
but you see my belleza,
mi amante hermoso.
call me amigo, lover.
amigo will last,
its warm, steady glow,
like the hunter's luna,
will not turn to a shadow of itself.

mi amor
sings to your heart.
the hunter's luna,
a force beyond my control
pulls me to you.
mi amigo,
mi amante hermoso.

mi amor,
my eyes are of the sky,
not the earth.
their light pulls the seeds of yours to bloom.
when clouds form on your brow,
they sooth your troubled thoughts;
when thunderclaps rustle your sleep,
they nourish the drought
of your longing heart.

mi amor
sings to your heart.
the truest sky,
a force beyond my control
pulls me to you.
mi amigo.
mi amante hermoso.

mi diego,
your words betray confusion,
yet find patience in soft besos.
your touch warms my skin,
wine soaked tears en la noche
call on the moon to pull you closer.
the sun in my heart
clouds with the desire
to kiss you under every sky.

mi amor
sings to your heart.
a moon, a sky,
forces beyond my reach
pull me to you.
mi amigo.
mi amante hermoso.


Song-like, I add this today as the full moon pulls all of the water in my body to the surface on this night before Halloween. This year, it will be my lover... mi amante hermoso.

found


She lived marginally. On the fringe. Her head in pages. Covered in ideas and fantasies about what passion could be, would be, once she found it.
            As a girl, she walked alleys. The back of the houses, the yards, fascinated her. Once she found a book. It was not marked. In it were words that she didn’t understand. Women and men finding each other. Men penetrating places that seemed impossible to one who knew only the mind. The idea was frightening, though somehow compelling at the same time.
            She lived years only dreaming of the possible. Dwelling in the impossible, until one finally one came across her naïveté and filled it with what was her truth, her dream.
            The man wore a uniform. His chest was splashed with sparkle and feathers. On a night when all seemed hopeless, she found the polish. Found the letter behind the ornament. She was drawn to him. Kissed him. Told him that he was what she knew in her depths was meant to be. The night was alive. The time was not right. She pulled him into a dance that he couldn’t find his way out. She didn’t stop at the thought that others saw her. She was magnetized to his lips. Pulled to his breath. Wanting what she had no business desiring. He found her pulse and returned her impulse.
            The shower of her kisses led them to a small place. His hands slipped her dress up to her waist. The hands were knowing, determined. Quietly he impassioned her. But others found them. He sat under her. She looked down and absorbed his dark head and broad shoulders. Her breath stopped at the beauty that was between his legs. The idea of it was overwhelming. The desire penetrated every pore of her self. What had she ever done to deserve even the sight of such beauty?
            Pulled away by time and space, she marveled still at the loveliness of the man. Wondered if he would ever find her a second time.
            He came to her again. His kiss melted her. A hand on her back led her. The tongue, full and languid, pulled her out of the day. She found space to be. The possibility beyond dream, beyond light.
Wondering how to react to naked desire, natural desire, she opened herself as far as she knew how. His pulse quickened against her submission. His penetration finding space in her held dormant by years of neglect.
            The movement of him against her was dizzying. The farther he went into her, the more she gave over to the desire that she kept hidden from the world. Pleasure broke over her being. The harder he pulsed, the wider her dream evolved. Delight sprung from the core over and over again. His drive soothed every tiredness, awoke every desire.
            Sated, he fell to her breast. His heart beating love and lover. She touched his pulse and found herself.
Lowering her kisses to the source, she built the desire again. The fading fire needing only a pulse of heat. The tongue wrapped around the beauty of the first night. Madly tasting that which was fire, he sprung alive again. Crawling to him, she felt him and begged for more. His erection the life source, the difference, between living and only being alive.
            Over him, holding her warmness against him, she found the strength to ride it. Pulse against it. Hold it. Explode against it. The man held her gaze. Held the sight of what captured him. Breathed her. She melted.

let the right one in


belly button to
soft hollow
at the base of the throat
squared-
armpit to waist,
more rectangled
perhaps;
not one dimensional
but vallied and hilled in
soft waves;
my carcass is
not expansed enough
to hold how I feel.

lulled into a zombie’d
state, I thought
all I had to do
was love.
play in moments
contemplating,
you’d say obsessing,
the loveliness of you.
hours, hours, hours-
knee to knee,
sated, intoxicated,
off-kilter.

I planned, prepped,
cooked, opened bottles,
laid the table.
was that the bell?
have you come?
my door will open
to you,
I will let you in.

they are big,
these pulses,
crushing out –
intimidating, daunting,
maddening
against the tangle,
but they can settle-
yes, they have a life
of their own,
so much life
that they will
live beyond
what you have known.

ah, but you have never,
really,
leaned in-
examined,
sat down
to feast
on the savories and sweets
locally sourced across my
belly and breast.

is that the bell ringing?
have I planned
enough
for the visit.

have you come?
if you do,
I will let you in.

not for what you are,
or what you say,
but for what
you could be,
could mean.
I worry
that you don’t have
an appetite
for what is
me.
but if you hunger
and thirst,
I will let you in
to feast
rectangled, vallied, soft
hills.

I will let you in.

waiting

waiting is hard as the days move around me
            in whirling whirlpools
            pulling me in and spinning
            me around to a spot
            different from where I stand now.

waiting is harder when my lips long
            to stay on yours longer
            than the brush you measure out to me
            in rations; I can get some wonder bread,
            but I sure can't get what I want.

waiting is even harder knowing that so much time
            will pass that not much will
            be unknown to discover,
            and without contact, I fear,
            less desirable traits may become intolerable.

waiting is what I have to do you say to me,
            so my horses are held-
            they are chomping at the bit
            and kicking the shit out of each other,
            but I have got them in some kind of harness.

I'll wait.

solace

yes mother
these are
my feet
dangling
off the pier

the water
is soothing
my thoughts
don't hurt

tomorrow
I'll finish
my work
I promise

(1983)

give Ireland back to the Irish

a brightly colored wrapper
explodes
on a deserted street
as the victim's profile
is fused
to the standing wall
of the church.

a man lies motionless
in a guarded after-life
as his clan,
black masked soldiers,
mourn-
setting-off
more of the
papery colored wrappers.

copying his brothers,
a freckled child
follows
the splinters of color
whirling in the smoky air.

a lonely man,
smiles lustfully
as he stands on a cement block,
a thousand miles away,
holding a limp piece of cardboard,
'give Ireland back to the Irish.'



NOTE: I wrote this poem, originally, in 1981. I was a college student, and I ran into this guy who stood in front of the student center holding the sign that I note. I wasn't even really sure what he was doing, or what it was all about, but it is an image that I've never forgotten.  I remember this poem as I have just seen Seamus Heaney read his poem, 'Casualty,' which centers on the aftermath of Bloody Sunday. A man, someone he knew, loved the drink more than he loved the fight, and when he chose the bottle over the curfew that had been imposed on the evening of the funerals for those shot dead by British soldiers, he was killed. Here's a bit of the poem, which, naturally, is far superior to my own.

But my tentative art
His turned back watches too:
He was blown to bits
Out drinking in a curfew
Others obeyed, three nights
After they shot dead
The thirteen men in Derry.
PARAS THIRTEEN, the walls said,
BOGSIDE NIL. That Wednesday
Everyone held
His breath and trembled. 

betrayal


two stable particles in a beer’d state,
the warlock whispered excitedly,
lean against me, protect me.

he made a ceremony-
wind swept, moon shined,
autumnal pagan resonance’d.

and she glowed
in the light and the confidence
in her that he bestowed.

but the state was transient,
the collision sustained but
for a moment in time.

now, looking for the lean,
she finds the warlock gone
left only with atomic waste.

ode to a sliver of soap


On the soap dish still for forgetfulness,
Once whole, now lathered down to a sliver,
Too slender to evoke the erotic,
You slip through fingers and toes unpurposed.

Warming sudsless water rushes across
Smooth skin freckled with golden sun kisses
Crossing tendrils that navigate a path
That spirals in and through my neverland.

Oh! little sliver that you were my tongue,
I would pause at each hollow and valley,
Connecting each mark one to another,
Savoring the taste of your skins’ long day.

morning

       the spray of freckles
from wrist to turned cuff
enchant.

       dawn's dew-
they are not as bold as mine
but are there nonetheless.

       tide-like
they pull as I draw lazy circles
on the little that I can touch.

       it's enough.


unforgetting


       stumbling out of hibernation,
tripping over forgotten trenches,
pawing earth and grazing sustenance-
feeling slowly beats through
the heart's anesthetized state.
       sleepy squints brush at the rise in light
filtering through winter's peel-
the periphery a golden crown,
its warmth shocking
each fossilized corpuscle.
       the heart is begrudgingly resuscitated,
its memory impossible to erase,
the source, which resurrected the impulses,
unaware of what is harder to revive
than surviving what was
the cause of its initial incarceration.



fire

feet in the air
head in the clouds,
you burn through me
as fire.

sparks pop and fly,

melting cool skin 
left longingly
dormant.

volcanic eyes

sense hot embers
smoldering at 
the core.

you move deeper

feeding the flame,
desirous strikes
ignite

furious feeling

that lights motion,
intensity,
fever.

long hours after,

heat riding waves
press tenderly,
ready.

three pints

Never one to shy
      away from the drink,
I welcome the
      quench that the pint provides-
smooth, creamy
elixir for generations of
broken hearted men
tired of hoe and spade.
I do not sit on a stool
set in a pastoral past,
nor do I wear worn dungarees,
but my toil in stocking and heel
is still earth rich-
my nose to the ground
from moving too quickly
across a  modern manscape.
Three pints fill
my belly just right-
it does not stretch out
against a leather constraint.
Built with layers
of feminine fortitude
I can deflect their fear that
I may last longer
with my belly up to the bar.
                                   
(2011)

leaving


before towers fell
we held tight
to the gate.

don't forget

your magazines,
here's twenty in case.

don't go. don't go.

he slipped into goodbye.
stay--   one more.

wheels rolled past.

I hesitated
with nuthin' to carry on.

I so needed him

packed tight against me
for one more sleep.

tomorrow, the jet way

would still be there
for me to walk the plank.

(2012)