Night falls,
her dark hair in rivulets
fills its lonesome corners;
the candle of her breath
ignites somewhere
inside the vast darkness,
casting a play of shadows
against the spinning walls;
a cloistered world,
an intimate world
of poetry and wine
and our lips
and our naked bodies
tangled and merging
somewhere deep inside.
Tag: spilled ink
Tanka # 194 | Haiku # 653
On my birthday
the barber trimming
the white of my years
~
On my birthday
I only wish for my heart
to remain soft enough
to crown its poetry
with a wreath of tears
October 26
What It Means To Touch Her
My thoughts
my breath
my words
melt into her
and I touch her
silently
where she has never
been touched;
I touch her heart
I touch her soul
I light a fire in her blood;
I welcome her darkness,
I embrace her light
and I feel her in my heart
growing deeper than the earth
shining brighter than the sun;
I take her everything,
her past, present, and I future,
and I give her the gift
of my masculine heart:
I open her to God,
I open her to life,
and in that connection
I become a man
living his days
to the fullness of his heart.
Letter, October 05, 2019
Lived simply, in deep attention and presence, a life can be so full that its echo reverberates to the stillness of the stars — the garden’s dust on my shoes, a good book, a cup of aged wine, and your face, beloved, hovering around all things like a cloud, their inner light, their intimate aura. I write to you today as the sun sets over another autumn day, as the wind withers away the leaves and grass leaving nature and my thoughts bared down to their essence. Time is moving and life is trickling away, yet a deeper stillness is settling in my heart. It feels to me as though, if I lift my hand, I could almost touch your face; as though the warmth of your breath is mingled with mine. This silence is a prayer. I listen to the wind in the yellowing leaves. I write another poem penned with the ink of your love.
Haiku # 648
His words in her ears…
Seashells divulging
the secret of the sea
~
A la table du poète
devant l’encrier
songe le vieux papier
~
Ses cheveux noirs
maison aux eaux coulants
au fond de la terre
~
Matin brisé
par la brume…
Le souffle de la mer
~
A l’abri du silence
la chandelle fane
lentement la nuit
~
Peignant la nuit
le noir
de ses cheveux.
~
Notre amour
dans dix milles ans…
Etoile sur la mer
~
Eight to five job…
the bird at my window
teasing with his smile
~
Haiku pond
the shadow of a bird
passing at dusk
~
Fallen in love…
The changed color
of her eyes
Silent Dithyramb
In the still night
my heart surrounding her
is stiller still,
a dithyramb composed
of an infinite yearning,
a longing deeper
than the womb of the sun.
My heart surrounds her
with the tranquil charm
of the silent sea at dawn,
as my touch in wave after wave
falls upon her skin,
languidly burning,
my breath wrapping her
like a dreaming cloud.
Now she sleeps,
and as her eyes close
her other eyes open,
wide awake
inside the infinite landscape
of poetry’s own heart.
Letter, April 30, 2017
I feel the press of your breasts and soft skin around me, everywhere, coaxing me to flower into you the erection of my body, the life of my poetry. Your light comes in flashes of intuition, falling upon my face as through the sunlit openings of an orchard, and I heed with the attentiveness of my whole body, the animal soul in me. Your dew falls like an erotic enchantment and a buoyancy comes like a fountain rising from the depth of my soul; suddenly I find myself harnessed in shafts of wheat upon the altar of your body, ready to burn, ready to become dough and bread, ready to feed upon the milk of your breasts and the honey of your skin. Your body is the world, the element I am living in, moving through, and this eros, this tension between us mercilessly opens me and challenges me to become in the thrust the man that I am. So I take you, as I give myself to you, as through you I slingshot myself into the sky of eternity.
Woman of silk and fire, woman of milk and honey suckling my wildest desire.
Free Verse # 403 (the fervency of my longing)
His poetry
veiled her eyes
and poured into her heart,
back arched and hurled deep
into the sky of orgasm
he fired the chakra of her belly,
the sun of life.
Radiance embodied
she then moved,
forming and transforming
everything around her,
a world reshaped
in the image of love.
~
Amid the folds
of her skin
his rough beard
pricking
as his lips,
famished,
move in circles
grazing her flower
and melting her
into a seething moan
bursting with the ink
of his poetry.
~
I want to kiss you
as on the first day
when spring flowered
in the bosom of life,
when birds learned to sing.
~
I am a cloud roaming
the meadows of your silence.
~
My poem…
the light of a candle
slowly gathering
in the silence of her heart.
~
If I cannot cry
let these words be my tears
pooling in your cup
the fervency of my longing
~
When I am down
I breathe in and out
as deeply and widely as I can,
centering myself
in the clarity of her light,
the intuition of eternity.
~
Even when old I wish to die in the youth of poetry.
On the Cusp of Spring
Her falling dress
a breath of fog and dew
lacing the forest,
naked she then wades
the blue water of dawn,
in the kiss of her skin
the morning sun rising.
In countless streamlets
the fire of her fragrance
replenishes my inkwell,
out of the hardness of stone
coaxing my will to rise
and face the world again,
shape the world anew
out of the depth
of my love and passion,
the maturity of my manhood,
the rejuvenating vigor of her presence
flowering in my heart,
pervading my being
with the light of eternity.
Letter, March 12, 2017
Woman, by virtue of being woman, casts a light upon the world — and we poets, aware and ravished by the sacredness of her ray, find our hearts burning and our words rising like smoke from within the burning. And what do all poets hope for?—well, their life at its deepest root aches to get to the source of her light, to travel her white stream upward and back into the source, the core. This, poets with a fine intuition know can only be achieved through and with a single woman. Women are many but woman, in a sense, is one. The woman the poet loves, writes his heart to, and in whose light he lives is one and provides him with the highest possible unification of life. Through her he asserts himself and reaches his peak and harmonizes his strength; through her he becomes more than a poet, he becomes a man, and, dare I say, achieves his freedom and independence of women. He finds his calling in the arms of the greatest woman of all — life. What woman entices him from now on?—the woman whose light is so ravishing that, in her presence, he feels that the physical world cannot contain him anymore. You, my love, are such a woman.
One Quiver, One Drop
My breath of words
inside of you travels,
a shawl of mist stroking
your hidden sea of dew;
the red leaves in your garden
shiver wet
as your damp limbs and boughs
gently sway;
your skin flowers
into a blood red moan,
from between its petals
a river gushing,
scarlet whispers hushed
on a quiet summer eve,
one drop from its flow
diluting a thousand aching seas,
one quiver of its passion
burning a thousand universes
on the altar of eternity.
Free Verse # 396 (a life of wandering)
Dawn; the silence a sea
of radiant heat,
a universe permeated
by the want of our touch.
~
Night,
the wind trembles
and in the scatter of leaves
I hear your voice,
an ancient yearning
reaching into me,
opening my soul up
to the clear obscure dance
of desire and poetry.
~
The bird on the branch
sings the end of winter
as a flower slowly
takes shape in my heart.
~
A life of wandering,
taking in the world
in still images distilled
with the lens of poetry.
~
In the shadows of the night
your breath comes to me,
page after page of a poem
burning in my chest,
its words, set free,
buzzing in my veins.
~
In the bonfire of longing
my poems to you burn,
freed from the paper
their words rise,
the wings of a deep intimacy
taking flight
and like a song of praise
covering the world.
Tanka # 96
My hands wander
across her skin…
with poetry for boat
two oars rowing
across the sea at night
Free Verse # 395 (my hidden journey with you)
Poetry, a voice
far away calling me,
into the solitude
of mist and stone…
~
Locked in exile
until a word comes from you;
word after word I chronicle
my exile and imprisonment,
my hidden journey with you.
~
Let my poem be a touch
burning against your heart,
unraveling like a prayer
that sings my undoing.
~
I am lost
until I hear your voice
murmuring in the silence
under the world’s noise,
your breath then flames
like a gentle summer wind
and in my heart there is poetry.
~
Dawn…
in the light of her face
the world begins again
~
At dawn
the rain of your heartbeats
splashing on my pillow,
your light in waves
washing my life, my face.
~
His breath brushed her lips
and the words that lingered
all her life under her skin
burst into color
and flowed to strum
the shores of infinity.
Haiku # 457
Dead at twenty…
the torn ribbons weeping
in the winter wind
~
With no words left
the rain alone speaks
the silence in my heart
Tanka # 95
Last days of summer,
in the tall, yellow grass
our love poem resting,
the wind of winter creeping
in a grasshopper’s song.
Haiku # 456
رائحة الليمون المهترىء
من على أرض الحديقة تقارع
ابتسامة الياسمين
~
On the branch of dawn
a bird listening
to the sea of silence
~
Nimbus moon…
the wind at dawn stirring
the leaves of memory
Free Verse # 394 (a bag of poetry)
Wanderer
chasing flowers
fallen from her hair,
on the pathways of the world
traveling
carrying nothing
but a bag of poetry.
~
A woman who can grant me
the love I always longed for,
between us the silence
of the poem-sky.
~
Summer in a vineyard…
grape by grape
from her skin falling,
a wine burning velvet
in the cup of poetry.
~
Shriveled kisses
in the midst of winter…
figs clinging still
to the promise of the sky
~
Writing always follows
a sacred ritual,
her fragrance burning
along the edge of the pen.
~
Poetry is always a companionship, an intimacy between two beings.
~
Humans are doorways opening unto little ponds or great oceans, water bodies as small or as great as the deeps of our longing, the rootedness of our understanding and love.
Tanka # 94
In the cold of winter
visiting
my sister’s grave,
the jacket she got me
warming my skin.
Free Verse # 393 (her poem had a bee sting)
Between us time leaps
in long lapses,
the words we write now
we exchanged in kisses
a thousand years ago,
our fingertips
now touching unlock
the house of eternity.
~
Her poem had a bee sting
wrapped in its tail;
finishing it I could feel
my tongue and lips swell,
and could read nothing else
for days, for days.
~
Girl with a sword,
girl with a pen,
girl whose fragrance
is a sword and a pen,
and O the ink!
O the blood!
girl blazing
an innocent smile.
~
A thousand years old poem;
my heart a leaf trembling
as the wind blows
from the abyss of the past,
how fresh the wound,
how poignant the red fragrance
of the gleaming rose.
~
My aloneness,
the heaviness of my heart,
a wisp of smoke vanishing
in the fragrance of our touch.
Rooted in Love 