100 Views of the Floating World
Grant me the spiral staircase of kiss
the real skin to skin ascent.
Grant me the bluebird of such crazy happiness,
feathers to match the horizon of outrageous loving,
I promise famous embraces and incendiary politics.
I long
to be dusting of snow on the Mt Fuji of you,
your cherrylipped geisha avec jasmine tea and cloud cover,
a strummed shamisen, pure futon.
You are the manners brought to my grandmother’s table,
salt cellars, cloth napkins,
set silver, and please.
I a horseshoe of desire, your bauble of lucky,
I’ll ring and ring, make you such music
as does measure what tilts us on the scale of golden,
turns you iron.
Milky Way thrown ‘cross the bed sky of night
Orion in flagrante, o my delicto,
October is a wind we cannot ride,
a blur; take the leaves, then take them,
I have others fashioned in your honor.
You are magnetic north; I’ll spin there.
A miracle: Fahrenheit of pleasure, you and me,
what is utterly spoken sinuous, both shedding and enrapt.
Written language aside, everything spells original temperature.
All commas point home.
Where was I ever going,
but to you?
Lay me down, then, in the lap of the divine, candles kindled,
wine poured and new bread:
whole loaves, baked for the constancy of snow geese.
You are apple trees in full flush, doors of the temple open,
the polish of marble.
It’s the rub of love - tectonics of dream -
how ardent we can constellate into ancient shine.
I sign my name on your lips
for practice, I sew on your buttons,
make cream soups daily, simmer and stir.
I am a student of indoors and learning quickly.
I know your place, almost.
Sweetheart, this poem needs you! Come quick!
This page is incessantly made white by your absence:
you are this ink, this flowing away and towards,
these joyous words, these.
Published in Dazzling Wobble, FutureCycle Press, 2013, Mineral Bluff, Georgia
