I cannot stand lying close to someone,
with as little layers between us, I cannot;
a little closer, and you might hear
my tell-tale heart.
I cannot stand being held that close—
that close, and you might find
what was left of the words
of love carved on my spine.
I cannot stand to feel anyone’s skull
against my cheek—
I cannot
let anyone else
come close.
Oftentimes
I think about how
if you were Orpheus and I Eurydice;
I’d rather much run back into Hades’ arms,
just to see you look at me
one last time.
Mon cheri, ditez-moi—
were you awake
when you decided you loved me?
Or were you hallucinating
between heartbreak and hope;
that when you awoke
you’d completely forgotten,
it had been my hand
on your cheek
all this time.
[presidents (or maybe someone else) did a kiss spam (that sounds really awkward) and it reminded me of this. Also, it was really hard for me to re-find this.]
High heeled shoes were invented by a girl
who was always kissed on the forehead.
Since then the forehead gleams like shoeshine
and the eyebrow brush keeps on polishing
the eye’s electricity, after the mines on her lips explode.I remember my first kiss near a leafless lemon tree.
Someone told us if we rubbed our teeth
with a leaf, we wouldn’t smell of cigarettes.
The fog had thin fingers. The city’s neck was wide, choke refused
and the girl I desired couldn’t know I imagined the scent
of lemon between tongue and teeth wafting
along the riverbank of her lips.
You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don’t even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of
the next moment. All the immense
images in me — the far-off, deeply-felt
landscape, cities, towers, and bridges, and
unsuspected turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods—
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.
You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house— , and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon,—
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and,
startled, gave back my too-sudden image.
Who knows? Perhaps the same
bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening.
