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 

Icarus

Did you carry my kiss
With you?

A crown of light
Haloed your fine brow
Hard lines framing soft skin
To touch
I put my heart in
And watched my blood boil
Is there a way
Within you
To cool my wayward desire?

To love you
Is like touching a flower
Whose most beautiful petals
Fall to the ground
I take them up
One by one in my fingers
My lips poised
To catch you
As you shudder in release

How I long to be there
When you fall, like Roma fell
When you triumph
As presidents and kings triumph

But loss
Is the hard edge
Of your sword
Felt too swiftly
Before I garnished satisfaction

My eyes unwrapped you
Stripped you bare
In your glory
Like the midday sun
Captured in a glossy blue canvas
I tasted the air
Pretending it was your skin

Did you carry my embrace
With you?

You stand so proud
Commanding even the free birds
In the clouds
As you could command me
While your fear holds you back
Inflaming my desire

I reached too high
And fell back down
Into the mortal earth
Icarus became me
And I became a fool
Ensconced in my passions

The sun incinerated
My ambitious wings
Tempted my ego
For all the beautiful things
Far outside my grasp

Did you carry my mortality
With you?

I thought to become a god
So carried myself above
The mountains
Where the shifting sand
Could not burn me

A tender wind caressed me
Promising a deeper communion
I held fast to my vanity
A reflection in water
Enticing me to draw near
How hard the fall
Beneath the deceptive surface

Did you carry my ambition
With you?

I fell through the air
Cut to ribbons
On your airy tongue
Such things you say

To burn my feathers
Beyond repair
To bring my vanity
Crashing down
Heavens cannot hold me
The earth will not receive
My singed countenance

Without regret
I fall much further still
Back down into you
Of air
And my heart's desire

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

Ophelia

Blue Lake, outside Wendover Nevada/ Photo by the author

(For Brent, omnipresent in my heart)

If ever you leave me
I will go down to the lonely edge
Of water
Where the day and night meet
In unwatched embrace
And I too will embrace the water

My face to the sky
I see not sun
My back to the depths
No limb finds rest or rescue
My eyes open to the clouds
They see nothing beautiful
My blood settles
In my veins
There is no breath
To fuel my battered heart

I cannot breathe
When you leave the room
I hold my breath
And wish the Gods had not
Granted you free will
How terrible is freedom
And how daunting
The changes of the seasons

I warned you
Of my intemperance
Sweeping in like the blustery days
Of Fall
Covering the mountains
With a penetrating chill
This is what happens
When you leave me alone
The flame is deprived of oxygen
Lungs of breath

How I am drawn
To water
And fear cannot placate me
My greater fear is the absence
Of your flesh
Your brawny legs
Thighs built like monoliths

To be alone and strangled
Between those thighs
I would condemn my soul
To everlasting purgatory
Never fearing God's displeasure

If you ever leave me
I will go down
To the very bottom
And never come up again
For air
And when they find
My body
Wet and disheveled
And without life
They will say that in the end
I could not be deprived
Of your life in my lover's veins

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

Gold Covers Me

A liquid gold sky spreads out over the Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah/ Photo by the author

(For S, even though it doesn't quite make sense)

Gold covers me
To live in your twilight
Where no man has access
Jade becomes my heart
You greedily possess
Locked away inside you
The flame of me strikes
The earth like turquoise

Uncover me
I will find you
Having thirsted for redemption
I find in your cool arms
Cool arms
Warm fingers
Marble lips, sculpted by the Gods
A light you once concealed
I bring back to the world
Above

Gold
The sun brings me back to life
For loss had claimed me
I staggered to and fro
To and fro
Wading through casual flesh
Skin and thighs

And so many available beds
Regret has never known me
But sorrow has taken me
As an ardent lover
Not as tragic as death
When darkness falls
Is it still not dark?

Gold
A treasure clasped
In patient hands
A heart gathering souls to it
As light to shattered glass
How you cut so deliciously
To feel you
Even in this terrible way
Is finer than the vain promises
Of God or man

What have I not sacrificed
For you?
My treasure, once guarded
For only the Gods to see
So easily revealed its turquoise light
The dewy leaves of trees
Playing in the breath of Summer
Faithfulness undaunted
By deceit
Love uncowed by a heavy hand

How could I fail
To serve the best in you
When the light in me
Longed to rush in
And placate the shadows?

Gold
Let me hold you again
Press my lips against you again
Hard and wet and salty
Let me cut loose my eagle's wings
To wrap around you
And in the dead of night
Defend you

Finally life descends
Into the other world
Casting out what frail breath wove
Into the fabric of your flesh
All is gone, all is silence
The earth reclaims pleasures and triumphs
But in its stillness is covered
In the spreading gold of the morning sun

I Carried Them Away With Me

The startling beauty of the mountains west of Wendover, Nevada/ Photo by the author

(For S on your rainy day)

I am not afraid
To give everything away
For a moment, an hour, a day
When, with you, time has lost its validity
The power of the future is undone

Immortality, I can taste
The beginnings of you
Which the Ancients sought
And some found before
Their own glories collapsed

And what monuments shall you
Leave behind?
Fame, fortune, the admiration
Of the masses?
Those pale and are ephemeral too
I want none of them
Between my legs

What takes hold of my senses
Is the present field of your body heat
A light-dappled shadow
Casting its essence
Through the room

I feel as if I never lost you
Your skin was my skin
Your sorrows, my suffering to carry
And where have I carried you?
With me, with me

Sunlight gives way to invading darkness
I know you dwell there
Secrets half-revealed
I know you unveiled these, too
Did you ever reach the bottom
Of these mysteries?
I did
And I carried them with me, with me

I had a dream
When you and I were alone together
That you and I were alone together
Your fear having been lassoed
In a golden net
Your tongue was the sun
And my body the sky

You drew a map of stars
Across my trembling sky
Where I felt the Milky Way
Burst as a shower of white
Liquid light
I took you all in, all in

When we were done
I left behind me
The invisible scent of my passion
Well expended
Sun, you knew me
Moon, I will never fear you again

My arms may once have been empty
But this mythology I had written
Is now dust on an empty page
And as for your fears
Your disjointed memories
Your fine-tuned misgivings
I have carried them with me,
With me

Let the clouds gather
I laugh and defeat them
Let the desert storm take hold
On the horizon
I cast these out of my heart
Quietly you make love to me
And I take you all in, all in
But now that you have gone
I turn my back on the lacerating present
Let you all in, all in

Darkness, I call you the companion
Of my days
My days the companion of him who
Departed me
And where have I carried you?
Away with me, with me
 

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