White ermine/white semen,
green eyes jade from the night.
Eternity falls in sparrow,
an inch-worm down
a pear-coloured leg,
within this droplet
lies coiled raptures
of a snake,
anointed coils
musky as in woolen handshake
where tributaries turn into socks
wrapped to the vertebrae clasp
of a teenager's leg.
My fingers are
frying skillets
slow-boiling water, with precision,
your rivers & chasms,
a vagina white knuckle rafting
across your enchantment.
[77]
KIPPER, TEA AND ORANGES
Our lives evaporating as we talk,
flypaper from cosmic ceiling--
We gather stardust,
mnemonics, perhaps,
re-arrangers of mystic twigs
into a pattern.
Look to the sky,
les nuages, l'ombre
les arbres alla primavera
"magnificio", said I
with real relish &
snap of ring-encrusted fingers,
distant God, not quite Himself,
behind a podium exiting the band shell.
[78]
TANK-TOP
I was playing sonatas on your skin--
no beauty & the beast scenario
though the Tower pulchritude was intact
with enough purple agape grape leaves
and ivy for a fig-leaved Eve
with wind wet at the windows
(and later the willows),
where gravelly, cloven hooves became party
to my thoughts; for you,
blessed with a triangular patch,
--and something like strawberry--
lay moist & woven into strict tapestry
like a mantle covering
abrupt oasis of skin
(the better to peer in).
I scaled the heights
not castle vaults, mind you,
but the elevator shaft and draw-bridge equivalent
of a white charger--
fierce visor in place
--armour gleaming--
a sabre rattling at my side
be-jewelled & twinkling
the key clinking
there, to corner distance
(time & space)
dragons to be dirked and slain.
Fiery eye, forked tails
donut-sized scales
plastered as a calendar
or shingler might a tiled roof
--the empty spell
Bellerophon spying his Lady in a belfry
on driving home.
[79]