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.

For _________

Your hands molded melted silver,
arranging amethysts and amber.

My hands grasped the clasp;
your fingers fingered my breasts.

You serenaded my neck with your lips,
dusting me with specks
from your grass-greening hands.

Bearded boy beneath my palms;
labial lullabies beneath sylvan shadows.

Love was the word I could not speak,
the word you would have spoken.

When your hands molded my necklace, our token,
did sapphires sing beneath your palms
like our love unspoken?

Sulking

I stand by the window whose pane is crying.
The flowers you gave me are specks of dust:

Your lips were soft against my own, my hands
explored your pubic hair like love.
We would
explore ourselves in naked summer’s mirrors.
Your nails got stuck in hair that shook like leaves;
I see leaves shake outside my windowpane.

Are you at the parade? Your hands once took
my own. Drums beat outside; I stand alone.

A pane of glass now deigns to slice our lives,
a sheer, sharp blade that keeps us from each other.
How happy I would be if I could touch
your skin that once would touch my own. My love
can’t wane, my love.
If I could steal a kiss....

Walking The Dog

July 4, 2010:

I hold the night in my palm, walking down West End,
ambulance lights' shimmering red reflections on my legs.

Ahead I see your hair: black silk overwhelming your shirt's red.
I hold the night in my palm, walking down West End,

drawn to you like a dog, or a woman, black-satin-bound
to your bed. (Lilacs mingled with wisteria, on the nights

when black satin bound me to your bed.) Now I hold
the night in my palm, walking down West End.