Inspired by the novels of Calvino, I will use the opening
lines to tease you a little bit.
For I am drunk and awake the same moment your alarm sounds in dark. In this light
the lines blurr against jim morrison and french lingerie and green cigarettes
a sweet yet intoxicated haze to wrap around you like uncertain cadence and shaky rhyme
incense ashes and prayers i cannot deny
this is a seduction and
You were distracted by my perfume anyway.
When I have your full attention
I will smile just for you.
I promise to do nothing
else until you have recovered.
I like using the body of the poem to relax,
notice the beauty, the small details, feel the drop of moisture sliding over muscles and
down my back as I toss my head
way back, stretching my neck.
Even I can smell pleasure building as my spine
purrs and undulates.
I love that we have learned to drink to one another
a hundred different ways
and chilled tequila has become a happy prescription
for damp afternoons.
I run my tongue along my lips and taste salt.
Here is the moment I wish poems could take all night
because there is never just one rolling,
shuddering, echoing climax,
not if it is done well.
The poems you like best
are the ones that leave you breathless,
reaching for
the poet’s heart still beating
behind the crystalline lattice of ink on a page.
Time and again, you pull my work off the shelf
because it always seems fresh to you;
in secret I come to the library at night,
erasing and rewriting every page.
You are not alarmed—
no one would guess you are searching
for an author who can communicate
a longing as wide as yours.
When you open the book of my poems
you detect a faint smell, not like settled dust
or yellowing paper;
a sweet smell that hovers just out of reach,
a scent that you wish could fill your house.
You lick your lips, already thirsty—
nostalgic for a dream not quite formed or remembered.
You are bracing for the ending, and tremble at my
patience, how I revolve slowly and say
Let us toast pages that have never been written
Let us toast the pages we may hold in our hands.
I will never tell you what is in my perfume.
You will inhale the last drops into you,
never knowing where else you could find it,
turning each and every page, until the last.
I cannot help but save the last lines for the end.
These are always a little sad and I try to make them clever
but Darling I know
there is a tender sorrow to even
the endings we choose.