Prose Poem, Untitled

We have flown in and out of each other's lives like the wind, or witches bereft of broomsticks, falling softly into the deep brown ground, porcelain skin becoming undone like the buttons on your shirt beneath my fingers, sinews twisting into roots of wisteria, blood sprinkled like those of the lamb upon the altar, High Priest arrayed in white linen, bejeweled in rubies and sapphires, but the fire consumed the lamb, it ate the temple like a cookie, crumbled its brown shards into Western Walls, and last of all, it drank our love for desert, sucking the dregs like fine wine, or like a leech relishing the blood, or like your lips savoring, then slowly, slowly, disentangling from mine.

Fun

I am stained crimson from the taste of your lips,
but drunkeness is not a suitable pastime, they say,
for boys like me.

Nor is the beach, the forest, or basking in the sun.

I would rather drown in the boats of your thighs
than swim in golden streams that suffocate,
because sometimes boys like me need
to feel your lips upon our thighs.

Moonlight

"Write me poem" she said, her tongue lulling over vowels like a fairy skipping over grass in spring. Her fingers were playing with pearls that dangled from her neck, where I had dangled only a few hours ago. The sheets were blue, and looked oddly like waves splaying up against her legs.

The wooden chair was hard and a chill crawled up my bare thighs. But her lips were puckered up in kissing position, and their color was that of pomegranate skins, so I took my pen.

Your eyes are moons;
I tie myself to their shore -

The words flowed and stopped, like water from a fountain with backed up plumming.

But there is no plummer I can call, no man to overcharge me by the hour, only a form of pomegranate lips and pale skin, framed in moonlight, cold and hard and waiting to be shattered, like a glass figurine I can not quite hold in the palm of my hand.

Earthquake

The rain shivers down windows in translucent beads. My fingers tremble against the panes. I wish that I wished to reach out across the streams of silence that slide between us, to close my fingers around yours, but I would much prefer to be a lone marble column, staring imperiously at the shards of stone that surround her feet, than to be a winged statue, encompassed by domed skylights and white pillars, serenaded by water that rushes into golden fountains, only to discover, at the moment she stumbles into the crashing edifice, that she can not bear to fly.

Alternatere Draft Rework

I wish you would draw me with your kisses:

Your lips are puckered in faded-lipstick red.
Your skin is the color of curdled milk and cream.
Your dress cascades off your back.

I stay hunched by the plum-colored curtains, feeling
your eyes outline the curves of my back, like a sculptor critiquing his own statue.

"Who needs knives when your words are sharper than diamonds?" you ask,
unfolding the night like a freshly laundered sheet.

But the night is too dark to keep secrets, so I fold them in the twists of your auburn hair
before setting you free, knowing that tomorrow, when I can not hold you
in my palm like lilly petals, I will cry.

A draft rework

I wish you would draw me with your kisses:

Your lips are puckered in faded-lipstick red.
Your cream dress cascades from your back,
onto our sheets' ivory silk.

Your skin is the color of curdled milk and cream.

I stay hunched by the plum-colored curtains, feeling your eyes
outline the curves of my back, like a sculptor critiquing his own statue.

"Who needs knives when your words are sharper than diamonds?" you ask,
unfolding the night like a freshly laundered sheet.

But the night is too dark to keep secrets, so I fold them in the twists of your auburn hair
before setting you free, knowing that tomorrow I will cry when I can not hold you
in my palm like lilly petals.

Ghazalifying It (Roughly)

The steak is a mass of red unraveling; but who needs knives
when your words are sharper than diamonds? Who needs knives

when the fig-peels shred beneath my fingers, when my auburn hair
wraps around you like twine, why use knives

to cut through the silence between us like the chocolate cake
you gave me for my birthday? Knives

can not fold back this moment like a laundered sheet,
to when your kisses traced the contours of my spine. Knives

can not bejewel our silence like diamonds that slip from my fingers,
spurred on by your words, that make me ask: Why use knives?

Draft 1 of something I hope to revise

"Who needs knives when your words have the power to kill me inside?" she asked, her torso draped over the bed, pearls suspended from her neck, lips puckered in faded-lipstick red. Her dress was half off, and its cream melded with the sheet's ivory silk. Her arms stuck out like branches, and I wanted touch them, like a bird pirching on a bough that is waiting for spring. It's bark is scaly and dead-looking, but her skin is the color of curdled milk and cream.

Instead, I stayed hunched by the plum-colored curtains, feeling her eyes outline the curves of my back, like a sculptor critiquing his own statue. I wish you would draw me with your kisses.

Night stretches like one of those elastics you use to tie up your hair; the silence turns blue like a swimmer underwater. (Remember when we dived beneath singing fountains?)

The night is too dark to keep secrets, so I fold them in the twists of your auburn hair, before letting you fly like a bird from my arms, knowing that tomorrow night I will be crying, longing for the chirp that fills our room like the sun.