To the Flame

Our limbs

flail and stretch

the membranes

of these crowded

corporeal cocoons.

Our bodies

are pressed

breast to breast,

antennae-arms entwined.

We grapple,

feeling each slick

segment

as we complete

this courtship

of devotion.

Our teeth

scrape in gentle

gnashings,

our tongues

coiled together,

our legs lashed, a

True Lover’s Knot.

We are

a nighttime creature

but full of luscious

blushing colors, we are

warm and vital, a

pulsing, fluttering

heart that

seeks the sticky core

of this fleshy

conflagration.

Our breath

is ablaze as we

trade it

from mouth to scorching

mouth

to abdomen

to sparking hearts

and then beyond,

rapture bound.

Walk

You breathe ready

Snorts and fervent grunts

Rump smacks the floor thump

Tail beats an impatient cadence

On the dull door frame

Leather in my hand

Flat, warm, animal, binding

Click-clack

You pace, a yearling at the gate

Grousing like a hinge long neglected

Click-snap

Tether in my hand

Dingy doorknob in my hand

Cold release

A slam shakes the parting wall

And we are off

Like an arrow whistling

Or a hawk loosed for the kill

Off like Atalanta

Who never wanted doors or houses

You are all go

White feet flashing

Through nursemaided yards

Each miniature meadow

A verdant coffer

Bursting at its seams

You are all stop and go

Muzzle tip a passport to the surging world

One breath and all journeys

Are revealed to you

You glimpse the passage of the postman

And every roving stray

You know the deepest yearning

Of every fellow beast

I hold your leash

Close, a tourniquet

But you know

I’d really like to see you

As you were

When you were young

And prowled in packs

And pronounced

Your wailing compact

With the moon

Ghazal (Poem Love)

Morning comes. She sits to write a poem.
Raptured now, she dwells within the poem.

Plumes of feather snow that mute the world let
streets rest wrapped in peace that is a poem.

Put your hand upon my rising chest and
feel in your cramped heart my fondest poem.

Children swallow squalor. Parents, helpless,

murmur grief that punctures like a poem.

Words assemble here, but they strive still to
fit the mystic form, becoming poem.