I Never Found the River

Sunrise found me out
Languishing on the river bank
Where the sound of peacocks
And self-important finches
Dipped and darted over
My ears

Have you ever watched
The sunrise
Over the river
Rushing by
Tasting your feet
Bringing immortality
To bear on the present
Moment

I meant to go down
To the riverbank I knew
Expecting to find
Molten gold
Dancing to and fro
On the tips of sapphire ripples
Splashes of diamonds
Waiting for me
To take extravagance
On my tongue

But I was halted
Breathless in my tracks
By the sight of your
Fresh body
Wet and naked
Though clothed in the
Eternal sky

I could not speak
To the busy finches
And their arrogant kin
Weaving their industry
Like a tapestry of lapis
And gold about you

Muscles firm and tight
Loins slightly apart
Rich in the treasure of manhood
For my prying eyes
A peacock soaked in the envious sky
Whose azure beauty
By evening fades
Behind the dusky groves

Mangoes weighing down
A heavy branch
Lusty and sweet
I dream of plucking them
With my mouth
As I watch you
Dip and rise, dip and rise

Your skin alive
With millions of diamonds
My eyes devour you
Dark and becoming
The sun adores every curve
And sends the wind
Back where it came from

Somewhere in the distance
A sitar strikes
A haunting melody
While the water at your feet
Pays homage to an earthly beauty

My tongue between my teeth
Hungers for those mangoes
A branch to grasp
From a fertile tree
Beneath him
I could compose a melody
To carry my desire
Down through the ages

Such lofty sentiments
Fade as the sky fades
As the shadow of timeless mountains
Flickers over the earth
All gone so fast
But what remains?

I hold on
To this moment
Longing to savor the taste
Of mangoes
With the sunset
To wet my skin
With the libations
Of your naked youth

Invigorated
Never chaste
My thoughts run away
With that river
Those ambitious little birds
Those million diamonds
Shattering over your torso

How many hours
Did I give away
Waiting breathless
In the shadows
Thinking all the while
Of everything I could take
With my starving fingers

My lips never coaxed
The nectar
From a heavy mango
My toes never kissed
The eternal water
And I never found the river

One of Your Beautiful Things

I could not ask
For tenderness
But for your hard hand
Taking possession
Of my weak body
How quickly I became yours
And my will
Deserted me
For the call of your bedsheets

Rumpled, strewn about a sunlit room
Your shirts
Your pants
The sweat in your underwear
I fell hard
For all you had
Hard
Is what I asked for
And my heart got what it deserved

Your scent
A spring morning
Beneath a fresh powder blue sky
I held you so fast
Between my legs
Your stubble cutting into
My soft pink cheek
I was oblivious
To the afternoon
Simply to become
One of your discarded garments

How foolish
In my youth
To think of becoming
One of your glorious adornments
Something to scatter
Across your floor
Like all your other beauties

Now gone
The afternoon in your light
Quickly rushing away
From the spring day
In your sweaty sheets
When fast we rose together
Descended to the depths
And I became
One of your beautiful things 

Emerald Canopy

Moss covered rocks and Fall leaves decorate Galina Creek Park in Reno, Nevada/ Photo by the author

I risked a walk
In the garden
Virgin fruit trees
Blushing with their first blooms
An open path
Welcoming
With desire I moved in

Beneath a canopy
Of emerald
The scent of the earth
Drew me down
Down, down
Green liquor
Assailed my senses
Mesmerized my intellect
Until I was prepared
To be taken
Fully in

When you came inside me
Beneath that emerald canopy
Satin finish, the dew
On your skin
Setting my mouth alight
Biting my yielding heart
Into submission
How I still longed
For more

I brought down
The clouds
Upon us
Moving together
Without time
Without constraints
But for your arms
Firm around me
Your body
Firm inside me
Making the dew
I would taste you
Long after your departure

Bruised fruit
Once blushing, once virgin
Moved through
Your fervent hands
So anxious
For diamond droplets
Salting your tongue
With the offering
Of my thighs

Was that a martin
Calling
Chirp, chirp
Into the Summer sky?
Or was that his laughter
My passion's follies
Brought out clear
Into the hot breath
Of the sun

I blush to think
How quickly I came
Under that emerald canopy
Where blushing petals
Held onto the morning dew
But I, Never fresh again
Never innocent, shining
My skin, decorated
With bites and kisses
Found its way back
Into seclusion

I left your garden behind
But with regret
Tried to become a virgin
Again

Pink Triangle

(To the memory of all those souls incinerated in the Holocaust.  May we remember and cherish their humanity, together with our own)

I try to remember
Our humanity
Which once decorated the sky
With Shabbat candles
The soul
Flickering, flickering, flickering

I try to remain constant
In my love for Hashem
Lingering, lingering, lingering
But where were You?
Where were You
When the night fell upon us
Like bricks
Stamping, stamping, stamping

Kristallnacht
Burned bright into our memory
And where was Your humanity then
O Hashem
Who made us chosen
And then chose us for
Extermination

Broken glass
So many shattered lives
The Shabbat candles
Would never burn, never burn
Never burn

He held my hand
Still  warm with sweat
Lips that had prayed
Had kissed
Had tasted
The forbidden fruit

This, Hashem
Is finer than Your justice
For wherever You are
Life cannot be good
Never good, never good

Your silence, deafeningly loud
Was the answer to our enemies
And that silence was the sentence
Of our death

Come now
The black, white and red
Stretching your talons
To the four points
Of the compass
Hurling starved and broken bodies
To the four points of the globe
Come power, constant
Religious in its irreligious fervor
Casting a stone, a stone
A stone

Take me away
From his body
This forbidden knowledge
You fear as degenerate
But feel not so secure
So self-righteous, so indignant
For this too can happen
To you, to you, to you

My love
Denounced by the black, white and red
Becomes a pink triangle
Laughing at me
From the hole in my heart
This grants them a prison
To lock us away, away, away

Cattle cars are for cattle
And what are we now?
Under Kristallnacht's skies
Where glass is cutting, cutting, cutting
The fires of Shabbat candles
No longer burn still
And their eyes have been blinded
By their own fists

Think not for a moment
That you and yours
Are safe, are free
For what happened to us
Can happen to you, to you
To you

Take my heart, and his
And around it wrap a wire
Whose barbs and electric smile
Conceal the promise of annihilation
Let the fences shut us in
And let love die
One bright and yellow star
At a time

What light shines
In the terror of the frozen nights
But the fires of chimneys
Sinister synagogues
Replacing the warmth of my home
In your bed

Bed, your degenerate bed
Within whose white sheets
I found the purity of humanity
Loving only for its own sake
Giving pleasure more natural
Than the dawn's certain light
Now gone, gone, gone

And the fires
Work night and day
Casting a dance of ash
Swirling humanity upon a breeze
Blowing them all away, away
Away

The chimneys haunt the grey sky
Where once Hashem reigned
And who has power now?
Not Your good word
Not Your Shabbat candles
Not Your Torah
Not the nations You founded
For the eagle has clutched them
All in its talons
A fight to the death
Without mercy, mercy
Mercy

In their place
The skies burn
Churning out ashes
In the place of the stars
Whose lights we may
Never behold again

How many men can you burn
How many Jews can light
The sky by day and by night
Dark or light
The chimneys burn

Auschwitz burns
Birkenau burns
Chelmo and Belzek burn
Sobibor burns
Treblinka burns

The human heart burns
Faith burns
And Hashem Himself
Burns, burns, burns

Our purification has been
A trial by fire
Our spirit
Our humanity
Our dignity
Are gone, humankind incinerated
Love consumed
The black and the white and the red
Cast their eagle's shadow
Over the burning, stinking fields

How many souls can you burn
Burn, burn

I try to remember
Their humanity
That their pleasure and laughter
And pain
Was equal to mine
They prayed beneath the same sky
They loved the life I loved
They breathed the air
We breathed
What difference was there
Between us?

We try to remember
What it was like
To feel humanity
Between us
To light the Shabbat candles
From one to the other
Do we still carry the Light
That men pass between their souls
Even though the darkest night
Has transfixed us
And we are now marked forever

We must remember
Our humanity
That the air we breathe
Is the same air
That the love we feel 
Between us
Is the same love
That the light we pass
Between us
Is the same light
That daylight shines equally
Upon us
What difference is there
Between us?

Take Your Sacrifices

The flooded plains of the Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah at sunset/ Photo by the author

I would have your hands
Be rough with me
But your heart be soft

Dreaming of your body
Covering me
Like the newly fallen dew

I am wet
Carried away
The soft parts of my form
Tempted to ripen before
Your eyes

Sent down
I fill my mouth
With the elixr
From which my life
Came forth

I would have your mind
Be empty
And your hands
Be full
Of me
But when you have taken
your fill
I would have
Your consciousness
Imbued with my scent

Overwrought with the moment
Of me
So you can never sleep again

I would have you
Inside me
The tender part of me
Filled with the inflamed mind
Of you
Stirring, the world fills
With iridescent droplets
Of life
I too am filled
Never wanting to be redeemed

god, what use for you have I now?
You jealous, angry and posessive
Monster of the ages
Take your sacrifices
And fall on your knees
Before my love 

For love
The greatest of these treasures
Is greater still than you

A sapphire lake shone forth
Like the sky
A jewel whose light the Gods envied
But how I envy him too
The sky that took you

Ever empty
Yet full in the spectral lights
The sky beneath which we make love
Makes love to the earth
When we have departed

Unobstructed
My heart sits still
In your monolithic embrace
Fixed firm on your love
I am liberated
From the temporary nature
Of mortality
Respectibility
Which hinders creation
Strangles the ages
With shackles for the mind

I am free now
Swimming in the lake of you
Where you once swam
In the embrace of so many lovers
But now, the seed that sewed you
Has sewn a promise in me
And let that god be jealous
Commanding
Vengeful

I shall make him bow
In awe of a greater love
Whose name knows no chains
Whose passion can never be bound

The greatest of these gifts
Is love
Where stirs in its lonely cage
A heart on fire and liberated

Come take your sacrifices
On the distant shore
And while you are there
O god
Bother never to return

Gossip of Sparrows

(For S, no matter where you go)

Betwixt heaven and earth
The eaves clad in trailing vines
Summon the nests of sparrows
Little birds, little birds
I heard your exasperated calls
Such conversation
Tumbling over a morning breeze

Your gossip reaches my ears
Content not to alight
On ancient willows
Bending beneath their own might
A scent embracing
In the arms of the morning dew

I returned again
To the place where we first kissed
My eyes not innocently caressing
Your hidden skin
Were those chattering sparrows
Eavesdropping?
Did they carry my lust to your ears
Even then?

I passed the afternoon
In idle pursuits
Dreaming of the nightfall
Decorating your bed
With my sweat
Your hard thighs with my kisses
Like prayers

I prayed for you
Locked away my dark secrets
For you
Became a virgin again
For you
But none were taken
You, a god, remained silent
To my prayers

The willows rustled
Over my grave
Waiting for you to bring me flowers
Perhaps jasmine in bloom
Perhaps lilies to entice
A lusty bee

Your sting has captured me
Not deterred my heart's intentions
Your protestations
All were in vain

When the scent of you lingers
Over the dusky mountains
As the stars are ensnared
By the midnight-black veil
An alabaster moon strokes the
Naked earth
As I in my dreams stroke you

It is a blasphemy for any other man
To speak your name
As I do
For wherever you travel
There shall never be another disciple
So penitent at your feet

Betwixt moon and royal sun
The eaves in the evening sing
With the gossip of sparrows
Where lie my intentions, trembling
And you, too, will one day
Wait for the pleasure of
My hand

Pelican

The flooded ground of the Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah/ Photo by the author

You swallow the sun
Every morning
When the fragile earth
Still sleeps
Beneath a pallid sky

Fragile too is my home
Beside the churning ocean
The air captivating my eyes
Its memories dancing,
Laughing, crying with joy

Bereft of wisdom
I came here
To find what was left of me
After the broken glass
Of my childhood

I buried my father
As deep as I could

As for my body
It awoke to find freedom
From the storm of parentage
Blood is much more thin
Than water

I learned this in your bed
But I opened up a window
And fled to the dazzling ocean,
To a bright shore
Unscathed, unsullied,
Still a virgin, untouched by
His desire

Far away, far beyond the horizon
I see a shape glinting,
Promising a relief from my shadow

Will it come
Before the Afterlife?

Sinking beneath the waves,
Shattering, my old life dies
Yet I am renewed by solitude
In the silent kiss
Of your contentment
Content to lay without touching
Lips without posessing
Ecstasy without violation

Where did you come from?
From the raging blue waters
Or from the naked sky
Decorated with gilded stars
And the hallowed moon

It is all a wonder
To my boy's eyes
That life should hold
Such ancient mysteries
That an entire life
Can be renewed
After it was lost

Not by chance
Did you come
Not by a happenstance
Did the ocean part
From his lover's embrace
With the sky

You open up your mouth
To renew the light of the sun
To spread my wings again
To stretch my two wings
Over the salty and dangerous sea