From the lip
of the forest green leaf
I drip
into the infinity of falling

Tumbling down the bright air
to capture a millions suns
in the dazzling rapture of a splash

And all the tiny beads of my becoming
like oceans
in the acres of time

Until evaporation
as vague as night
gathers the dreaming clouds

One day
perhaps a thousand days away
I will collect myself
Into the brief holiness of rain

I remember you standing
in the full and easy living.
wearing, that night, your slightest frock

a conspiracy of breath.
that collected, around your body,
like the murmuration  of tiny birds

a loose smothering
of soft luminous folds
smoldering like a dusky halo

the merest graze of weave.
a delicate trace of distance
that clouded the sound of flesh

the skirt fell like an ocean
or a breeze rippling the rain
onto the reach and flow of your limbs

Like an old unwritten story
from the dark earth and brimming sky
it whispered a forgotten language
in the rustle and sigh of dance

The blessed bright being of dawn
with all its fevers yeasting
into the fermentation of day.
The light rising beyond the window
speaks to me of intimacy and wonder

So I dance my words along your flesh
as feeble fingers trembling at your skin?

So I anticipate your anatomy
beneath these lisping lips
and gather the taste of you
into my adventurous mouth?

So I tangle my tongue
with tease and tensing lips
tingling in all the levered arches of your body?

Look how the words tumble wrinkles in the screen
as sure as sheets
beneath the hunch and shy of shoulders
echoing the lap and splash of waters
kissing at the shore.
Safe in the sound
the sweet water salt of your harbour
to taste and savour the blessings of ecstasy.

I conjure these words to wake you
like the early morning sky aching to be alive;
to run a ribbon flush of goose flesh
like rivers in your limbs

Can you feel all the world
like the rioting race of rushing ******;
feel the mad blistering hammers of the sun
with the same pure moment
of daylight kissing the earth?

It starts
in the quiet
itching in the fingers
like new skin knitting under blistered burns.

I have always written.
Before I had my letters
(before the lessons
with stubby pencils
curving sense out of the air)
I would scrawl nonsense waves
folding and boiling
in a crash of senseless surf
onto pages meant for pictures

I scribbled a whole Atlantic
before sense and sound
delivered the waves to reason.

I still find it hard,
when writing,
not to let the rolling sea
scatter into fragment waves
that whisper into the breeze of my fingers.

I have tried many addictions,
I have spent people like money.
I have tied my hands
to stop from fussing at the leaves.
If I ever loved I left it still spinning,
but I have never lost the itch

a pen to scratch its bleed of ink
into a sweet clean ****** page.
To scrawl my feint history
in every broken harbour
of her yielding skin.

Before I come and wake you
With hot tea and kisses
I will say some quiet words
In the dark
where you cannot hear them

I founder sometimes in your beauty
As if the side or depth of it are out of reach
I sink beneath its density
How your body shudders
With unwinding joy
When everything and breathing stops
In one intense point of space and time
Resounding and fading
A sheer pulsing drift of wonder

Then I feel your flesh vibrating
Like strings beneath my fretted fingers
Like an ocean of dazed and dazzled being
Exploding beyond your senses
And flooding your soul with holy vespers

And I am blessed to be in your body at such a time

And I am further blessed
By the intimacy of your secrets
Those fears and hopes
Your most precious self that no one sees
Beyond the energies of life and death
Beyond healing and forgiveness

You let me touch your prayers

In grace and bright dawning
When being is done and the universe explodes
Will the murmurs of our love
taste like Sanctus on the lips of angels

And I will be blessed to be in you at such a time

I was caught in a day-drift
A smoke of flaky minutes
Piling into pillows
Collecting into hours
Until the white sky dulled dark
Swamped by the snow of time
A day of drowsy dreams
And dressing gowns
With cupped coffee going cold
And occasional hands
Waving from the carousel clock

I want to taste
Her breath again
From the lips of
My dearest Friend

To take the salt
From of her tongue
Pretend again
That I am young

Oh let me rove
And let me writhe
Against her flesh
As fresh as sky

I want to thread
My needle’s eye
In her sweet cloth
Until she cries

I want to drown
Beneath her skirts
And worry there
Until it hurts

Until the fog
Invades my thoughts
Within her clasp
Forever caught

And leave me there
A broken man
Without a breath
Too weak to stand