Free Verse # 383 (her poem stepped into my eyes)

I looked at her
and the wind breezed,
and my heart
like a shivering leaf
was carried
far beyond the silent hills.

~

The wind blows,
the thunder claps,
my hand
into the dark reaches
searching for your hand,
and my mouth for yours
aches
like a wound
for its healing balm.

~

One winter morning
you look out the window
and snow covers
everything;
just like that,
sometime in the night
your poem touched my cheek,
now, at morn, looking out the window,
your breath covers everything.

~

Her poem
stepped into my eyes
and closed the door,
ever since
I could only see
through her veil of light.

~

My breath
a river of mist and fog
circling her neck,
its dew falling thick
lacing her white hills,
her breasts, belly, and back
all soaked with the shiver
of poetry…

~

In the shadow
of the poem
let us surrender breath
and rise again in spring,
two rose-trees
from a single stem.

~

How do I write?
I feel your hand
on my chest,
over my heart,
and writing happens.

~

Howling winds outside,
on my table
a candle flickers
by a dreaming book,
her hovering breath
in the air drips –
the ambrosia of silence.

~

The sound
my poem makes
when touched by her breath…
in the silence of the night
a candle praying

~

At dawn
my breath is a butterfly
from flower to flower
fluttering
searching for her mouth

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How you live in me

I live with your voice,
seashells against my ears
roaring inside of me
the wildness of your waves,
thus all poetry inked by my fingers
is but the froth your sea,
your pearled secrets
inside of me twisting and twirling
and pouring out
the eternal dream,
the deepest reality.

Free Verse # 341 (the candle of her eyes)

I am a fool for her belly
where all the flowers of the world
burn like stars
and exhale their colours
in flames of fragrant light

~

I want to bend her,
a bow aching to shoot
poetry’s hot arrow
into the throbbing core of love.

~

My heart
is a dark corner
lit by the candle
of her eyes

~

By a waterless river
I am a willow tree,
my silent tears
course the dry riverbed
and in endless roots
stream up her spine
and claim her, free.

~

On her lips
my poem takes form,
a flower at dawn
reaping
the silence of the sky.

~

I think of you as the flower which breath is poetry.

~

Last hour,
when the music
is the stillness
of two hearts in love,
in unison beating
to the ultimate mystery.

~

I yearn to merge with her
as the shadows of twilight
melt into dark rivers
and flood into the sea of night

~

Darkness comes
and I turn to you
like a bird always knows
from where the wind blows

Free Verse # 340 (on her lips the full moon)

She held his poem
against her belly,
pressed into her naval
like a fiery seed being sown
in the womb of the earth.

~

On her lips
the full moon
a wild flower

~

Two in appearance; in reality one light, one body, one soul.

~

Wrapped in the silk
of a thousand dawns
she comes to me
and I unwrap her
one dawn at a time,
unfolding
her ineffable essence,
poetry…

~

I’m not a poet
I am a perfume maker,
in the oil of her skin
I dip my brush
then paint her,
a burning fragrance,
poetry.

~

On the nourishment
of your skin I subsist
the way a butterfly
dips and dips
into the heart of the flower,
her tremulous sea of poetry.

~

Of all my yearnings
only one remains…
red flower on her lips

~

In the quiet of my heart
your flower grows…
moon in the night

David Whyte – Sweet Darkness

“When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.”

— David Whyte, from The House of Belonging

Free Verse # 333 (free to walk the earth)

Her calm sensuality
a silhouette at dawn
falling over my sky,
a blanket weaving
all my breaths and stars
into the waterfall of her hair.

~

Like birds at dusk
returning to their nest
into her boudoir
my breaths steal
and there cluster
against her breasts
and nest like stars

~

In the liminal spaces,
at dawn, at dusk,
at the turn of the seasons
I feel you most acutely,
a thorn in my chest
radiating throughout
the pain of your absence

~

Learning you
the way the flame dissolves
wick and wax
into a fervent intimacy,
a union of light.

~

In vino veritas –
and that is how I sip her,
with religious fervor,
with veins aching
to flood with her truth.

~

I felt her breath
move into me
as the mist at dawn
seeps into the silent bay

~

Look at her…
the dew of dawn
in fervent folds
raining from her skin

~

Slowly
in endless ribbons
the nocturnal wind gathers
the waterfall of her hair
into a blanket covering
the face of the earth…

~

Eternity in her skin
a shapeshifting poem
displaying all the forms
the world contains,
from her inexhaustible womb
hurling them as waves.

~

Photographer unknown

In the deeps of darkness
your voice was the starlight
leading me home

~

Gazing your way…
a mariner
long lost at sea
looking at the horizon
and remembering home…

~

My arm
through the darkness
extends your way,
a branch heavy
with the rain of longing,
poem with each breath
invoking you…

~

Photographer unknown

Free to walk the earth
as a rain drop dissolved
in the ocean of the beloved

~

The olive complexion
of your skin
I caress like a flame
eager to take root
and flourish therein

~

Photographer unknown

Naked in these arms,
inside the rose a dewdrop
coming undone to become
the fragrance of this love.

~

In the silent eve
her face flickered
as though a candle
were lit within it,
its flame calling
the moth of poetry.

~

The fragrance
of your absence
slips over me
like a second skin,
a burning tunic
shedding my skin
and wearing me as you.

~

How you live in me…
for a mariner
long lost at sea
home is the absolute absence,
the sole reality.

Free Verse # 330 (her skin is the book of genesis)

Photographer unknown

We danced like this
alone
in the darkness
where no one sees
even when we were
in a crowded room
full of prying eyes

~

Photographer unknown

The exquisite pain of fire
curling along her fragile neck,
the unbearable gentleness
that brings each poem to tears.

~

I gaze at her like a bird
stares at the sky,
under his wings
her fiery love calling him
to fly and never return.

~

Even light is shy
when touching her face,
even water
and all the natural elements.
At her feet all resides,
and her skin is the book of genesis.

~

Pen obsession…
inking her skin,
trails like rivers
coursing,
rising and falling,
indelible marks
of tears and years
soaking wounds and scars
and tumbling deep down
to where it all begins.

~

His touch…
tattooed
with invisible ink
into every fiber
of her skin

~

Like pilgrim birds
her breaths
amid my ribs travel
venturing far back
into the virginal land
that bears her name,
the source of my flame.

~

Like a moth
caught in a flame
all my life
in fiery rivers
is running to you

~

All my poems
inked passion bottled
and drifting through the sea.
When you wake at dawn
to a skin laced with dew
know, it’s me.

~

Afternoon coffee…
I sip it with you
dreaming of your eyes,
the rain outside joining
your breath and mine.

~

As a moth
drawn to a flame
I concentrate
all the fire of my being
into one act of consciousness—
merging with you,
opening, unto eternity.

~

I only have a heart to write her name.

~

Let us lie together like clouds,
our lightening
grazing the earth,
our rain nurturing her,
dissolving in one another
as we become the sky

Free Verse # 326 (how you live in me there’s no way to say)

The stars falling
from the eaves of dusk
peck at her cheeks

~

Time passed
and as I grew older
each new crack
in my flesh and soul
filled with her scent,
the light of her face,
the fire of her heart.

~

Kissing her…
the rain of her mascara
dark particles igniting
between our lips burning
soldering them as the forests
inside our chests flame

~

From within her ribcage
in tender strokes
night unfolds,
a city of stars,
flowers rioting
to the music of her heart.

~

At dawn she wakes…
his breaths the tangle
of fireflies in her hair,
dewdrops soaking
the milk of her skin.

~

Her ribcage…
a city of stars,
honeycomb of poetry

~

Stargazing…
the sky,
her eyes

~

Beat after beat
love wrote my heart
in the folds of her skin,
the pages of her heart,
there to live,
there to grow,
forever…

~

Thorn by thorn
I pluck out your sorrows
and plant them in my heart,
nurture them into roses
that I offer back to you.

~

I’ve waited for you,
and I’d wait again forever
to touch you once more.

~

In the distance
between each heartbeat
you are the voice
that fills my all,
fills, and overflows.

~

How you live in me
there’s no way to say,
here the pen breaks
and the poem is no more.

~

I come to you,
a wave through the night
drowning you,
taking you home.

~

Through the flesh
of a thousand nights
I kiss you,
and this kiss knows
neither beginning nor end,
this kiss is
existence itself.

~

At the sea’s edge you stood
a pillar of smoke
against the dusk sky;
breath by breath
I inhaled you
until I drained you
into my blood.

~

Every night
I sit before your face
as before a candle’s flame
and sip your warm light
into the corners of my heart

~

Through hidden skies
we spoke,
words like thunder
roaring in our chests,
like tender flowers
melting in our eyes.

~

Slowly, imperceptibly
you grow in me
as the light of dawn
fills the nightsky,
diluting all the stars
into a thundering kiss of life.

~

October’s autumn…
against the cold sky
a bare branch flowers,
a bird singing
the colors of spring.

~

Without restraint
into each other’s arms
we flow like waves,
deeper and deeper
embracing each other’s souls,
soaking, beyond the bones.

~

Your eyes are the frame
where poetry unfolds,
an ever shifting painting,
a sea of endless waves,
dewdrops soaking
the earth to its core.

~

I open and give you
my heart to its core,
and if your gaze crushed me
in your blood you’ll find
my spirit poured,
my poem and soul.

~

So it is…
night merges our ribs
as between us all space
comes to naught.
One breath,
the tremors of a single flesh,
one lust, one soul.

~

The dawn air
is cool and crisp;
like a hungering wolf,
like a thirsty butterfly
I taste you on my lips.

~

Even the wind is restless
searching for your breath,
prowling mad through the trees,
over mountains and seas,
shaking all the stars.

Between Our Hearts

Between my heart and hers
an unspoken pact:
to meet in the silence
where no one knows,
under the stars,
in a lone grove,
and naked
outside all roles
with one another to merge,
experiencing each other
from center to center,
from heart to heart,
opening up,
clear and transparent,
giving all.

Writing Her

During the day she passed her fingers through her hair to find the poem he weaved her in the darkness of the night…

From the womb
of the night
the stars I plucked,
with poetry for a thread
into a quilt I weaved them,
then, with tender hands,
with this sea of quivering light
I dressed you,
bathing your skin,
soaking your soul,
wild embers dancing
as they entered your bloodstream
to gather in your heart and womb,
my sun, moon, and stars
populating you,
my poetry in endless bursts
of exceeding gentleness filling you,
your face a radiant pond
of sunshine, moonlight, starlight,
water so pure
where life comes to drink
and is blessed, overjoyed.

Free Verse # 310 (filled with her light)

Undercurrent of silence…
beneath the dawn a river
in her skin gathering
all the world’s flames

~

Her face…
supple
like a bird
from whose feathers
emanates
the light of dawn

~

Filled with her light
my poem is the harvest
of the sun, moon, and stars,
the radiance of dawn,
the softness of twilight.

~

She lived in him
in his most solitary hour,
in the secret hallways of his heart,
for a bird in his breast always carries
the eternal sky.

~

Her body became his world,
each freckle a star,
each curve a river,
each breath a bird
with each wingbeat
unfolding a sky.

~

Our lifelines tangled,
from the roots upwards
we grew as one tree

~

Feel me,
within you,
all around you,
a fish in my water,
a bird in my sky.

~

I imagine us a home,
a nest where the sun, moon, and stars
come to sleep and rest,
and from which they rise
every day and night.

~

Purer and purer
under his touch
she seethed,
shedding all veils,
naked to her core,
swaying like sea
of honeyed flames.

~

Our simple touch
is fraught with the fires
of a thousand lovemakings

~

To pluck the moon and stars
and place them at her feet,
an adornment for her hair,
a bonfire in her skin.

~

Her eyes
a black spell,
an incantation of stars

~

Into each other
we rise up like clouds,
raining, weeping,
white shadows dissolving
then merging with the sky.

Pablo Neruda to Matilde Urrutia

To my beloved wife,

I suffered while I was writing these misnamed “sonnets”; they hurt me and caused me grief, but the happiness I feel in offering them to you is vast as a savanna. When I set this task for myself, I knew very well that down the right sides of sonnets, with elegant discriminating taste, poets of all times have arranged rhymes that sound like silver, or crystal or cannon fire. But—with great humility— I made these sonnets out of wood; I gave them the sound of that opaque pure substance, and that is how they should reach your ears. Walking in forests or on beaches, along hidden lakes, in latitudes sprinkled with ashes, you and I have picked up pieces of pure bark, pieces of wood subject to the comings and goings of water and the weather. Out of such softened relics, then, with hatchet and machete and pocketknife, I built up these lumber piles of love, and with fourteen boards each I built little houses, so that your eyes, which I adore and sing to, might live in them. Now that I have declared the foundations of my love, I surrender this century to you: wooden sonnets that rise only because you gave them life.

— Pablo Neruda to Matilde Urrutia, October 1959

He Lived in Her

He lived in her
like the wind
inhabits the land,
knowing each rock and cliff,
each flower and tree,
her heights, her depths,
and everything in between,
shaking her with a tempestuous force
to toughen up her branches and wings,
caressing her with unbearable softness
to awaken all the flowers
dormant in her skin,
to allow her to flow like liquid light
and fill the sky and sea.

Senryu # 94

His lips on her brow
A quivering flame searing
The white vow of love

Plenum

His fingers knead her,
longing carved into a poem,
a sea ready and aching
to burst into a soft weeping flame –
then touching her lips he lights her
the way a candle touched by a spark
becomes a well of light –
he lights her,
his opiate breath sustaining
her slow burning flesh,
the fiery beatings of her inebriated heart –
he lights her
and as a candle in the night engulfs her,
her light fluttering
the endless landscape of his heart,
open, surrendered,
becoming what she is,
a being made of light.

Letter, February 19, 2015

There is a depth in me only your silence can touch; for that, beloved, you must become the dawn, the still eye of light, so that I could become the poem, the flower exhaling her fragrance into your luminous heart. Together, perfume and light, we’ll melt all shadows as we become a being forged of love, a heart so pure it beats wide as the desert sky.

Letter, February 15, 2015

Your back, beloved, from your dimples down low to the nape of your neck — I always envision it as a sea of poetry, each rolling wave a poem, and the waves are infinite. Ah, to delve into that current, caress it tenderly, my fingers like sailors coursing the endless waters, drowning in this house of mystery. Let all poetry be, this is my poetry. This be the temple where I worship, where my sighs and longings unfold with the rolling of each wave.

Free Verse # 261 (in the warm tea your lips and mine)

Along her skin
his kisses,
a trail of jasmines
flooding into ecstasy,
a sea of silence
reflecting the moon.

~

His poem
upon her lips bled
into a faint whisper,
a flame writhing
with dawn’s soft passion,
into her being sighing
a silent prayer,
an incense burning
with the longing for eternity.

~

Before her eyes
I stopped to wonder
and before I knew it
the moment lapsed
into the sea of eternity

~

Mer ultime,
dans l’arôme de ses lèvres
un jardin à fleurs rouge.

~

In the warm tea
I feel your lips and mine
tangled in a melting dance,
honey and ginger
burning in our throats
the sweet cadence of ecstasy.

Free Verse # 241 (lost, and found)

Her skin
A river of vaporous sighs
Drunk with the memory
Of his lost touch,
Home.

~

Like a ship at sea
They held each other,
Waves against their keel breaking
As they sailed,
Open to the sky.

~

Her eyes,
Fangs injecting
Silence for a venom,
Its fever absolute.

~

His hands a river
To perfection sculpting her,
The poem of dawn.

~

May poetry be the balm which, applied to your lips, is then burned into my skin…

~

She wanted him to envelop her
As the night devours all,
Be the womb in which she drowns,
Heady with an endless fall.

~

His touch within her swelled
And night was a kiss
Embalming her whole

~

Her perfume
In his flesh
A burning blade

~

He kissed her
And the embers of his breath
Danced upon her tongue,
Travelled deeper
To fall in burning letters
Upon the mad pages of her heart.

~

Her open thighs
A virginal womb
Wet from dawn’s embrace,
And he the sun god
Into her spilling
His river of lustful flames.

~

Curving in his embrace,
In the welter of his heartbeats
Lost, and found,
A belonging deeper
Than the beginnings of time.

~

His each touch
An eddy of stars
Whirling in her skin

~

The fog upon my skin
A cool hand undressing in me
An ageless touch,
A flower older than time’s memory
Bathed in the waters
Of our sacred kiss.

~

Moments in time,
A breath of dewdrops
Fading in the sun.

~

A poem
Perched like the moon
On the shoulder of dawn

Free Verse # 227 (the thought of you)

From my lips to yours,
from your lips to mine
the winds of homecoming
forever blow.

~

Your face –
An image carved in mist
Burning in my heart

~

Softened by her breath –
the stars of the night
in the river of silence.

~

I am all the rivers and the ocean into which they flow.

~

Silence became the cup frothing between our souls.

~

My past, present, and future—a full circle in her womb.

~

This morning my life is a poem in the river of her silence.

~

As water to the sea her breath in my heart.

~

The thought of you
through me seeps
like rain through the air,
like lightning uniting
earth and sky.