When I think of you
I come near
to something unsayable;
when I try to say it
I sink in the afterglow
of a deep prayer;
quietness opens
a door in my heart
and there you are,
a mystic sunk
in intimate conversation,
a flame kept alive
by the grace of love.
Tag: union
Tanka # 125
Things half whispered…
between us
a candle-light world
merging the sighs
of our aching souls
Free Verse # 379 (the face I loved before I was born)
Silent moon
passing over the hills
and I am here
in the poem’s abyss
writing your breath
a quilt of flowers
covering the silent earth.
~
So I think of you
in the moonlight at dawn
and I am a poem
full of remembrance
of the face I loved
before I was born.
~
Liminal light at dawn
and I swear
with the fingertips of poetry
I can touch your face
made of holy white.
~
For eons I could wait for you,
the moon will be the moon,
and your breath will be the womb
in which I live and write.
~
When I can’t sleep
I hold your hand in my hand
and fervently write
with your breath for a pen.
~
Her buoying breath,
the incense of honey
burning on the altar
of moonlight at dawn.
~
Alone in my poetry,
a moon weaving his verse
on the other side of silence
waiting for you.
~
Night is suddenly
filled with shadows
all falling from her hair.
~
The moon moves closer,
her breasts overfull
with the lure
of immemorial centuries,
the starlight in my poem quivers
reducing my soul
to a shining white.
~
Clad in fog we vanished
into the mystic mountain of union,
inseparable we rose again
breathing open
wide as the sky.
~
I live in anticipation
of your next breath
that will come
like an autumn leaf
to rest against my cheek,
that will come
like a summer breeze
to wrap my neck.
~
I am a worshiper
in the house of mercy,
with the mesh of your pen
drain my blood
then write me in the sky,
with the wick of your candle
drain my tears
then light the dark night.
Free Verse # 376 (we are poetry)
Le poème en elle
achève son corps ;
la poésie
dans ses yeux
plante ses feux,
fontaine qui arrose
terre et cieux.
~
Her breasts…
a spring of flowers
blooming in my mouth
~
With silver moonlight
I braid her hair,
kiss her freckles
to burning stars;
with the jasmine’s breath
I balm her neck,
rouse the dawn
in her eyes;
with autumn’s sun
I water her silence,
ripen the last figs
on her lips;
with dawn’s light
I rub her eyelids
clear blue as the water
of infinite skies.
~
On the evening wind
your voice
calls out to me,
breath of tea,
breath of jasmine,
a simple intimacy
open like the moon.
~
On the bank we sit
whispering secrets
to each other
and watching
the river flow,
soon, soon,
the river becomes we
and our froth
the world’s poetry,
soon, soon,
into each other
we merge and melt
and when someone asks
Who am I?
Who are you?
We look in each other’s eyes
and smile
as our silence whispers,
We, we are simple,
We are the moon’s white heartbeat,
We are poetry.
~
Morning…
I rinse my face
with the water
of your fragrance;
I fill my heart
with the cup
of your silence.
~
Each month
when the moon disappears
for a day or two
know it is sailing
the sea of her hair
down to its dark roots,
know that as she sighs
it will rise again,
rebirthed from her womb.
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 # 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.
~
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…
~
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
~
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)
We danced like this
alone
in the darkness
where no one sees
even when we were
in a crowded room
full of prying eyes
~
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 # 328 (a thousand lifetimes converged in one)
Between your fingers
let me be the pen
scribing the silence of your heart
in words we alone
could read and sigh
~
Through my ribs
nocturnal winds blow
and your name like incense
rises to the stars
~
Passion was a simple flower he placed in her hair.
~
My heart is on your altar,
do not show me mercy.
The hammer in your hand, use it!
Crush me into a million stars
to impregnate the sky!
~
My poem in her womb:
birdsongs in a forest,
small flowers in the rocks,
and the heat of a simple fire
bespeaking home.
~
One image at a time
distill my silence
into the chalice of your lips,
drink my wine.
~
Afternoon tea…
rose petals steeped
in the red chalice
of your lush lips
~
You touch my heart
and I am a titan
rising from the deeps
of emerald seas,
you brush my lips
and I am a rose
wet with the dew
of eternity.
~
Night in a flower
this poem in her hair
a womb of stars
~
He gazed at her
the way a burning candle
gazes at the night,
with a heart of infinite softness,
melting, filled with love…
~
You breathe
as inside my ribs I feel
the tremors of your breath
~
Your lips on mine…
this breath exchanged
is the breath of life
~
All my longings…
the curvature of silence
along her aching lips
~
Long before we met
our breaths found each other’s skin,
enwombed each other’s bodies;
in each other we loved and lost,
secretly grew, oned…
~
Whatever is in her blood
Streams through my veins;
Whatever flames her breath
Pulses in my heart.
~
He looked at her
with eyes made of longing
and her fingers trembled
like the light of a star
that traveled eternity
to find home in this touch
~
Embrace me into you,
between your thighs,
over your breasts,
a poem exuding
her starlight into you,
drowning you in a sea
of immemorial love
~
Morning,
the tide ebbs
and we recede,
our untangled bodies
two curving shores
littered with stars and seashells,
the promise growing in our souls.
~
In this breath dissolved,
fashioned again
from the soil of love;
you write,
a poem in my heart
is penned;
I cry,
your cheeks
burn alive.
~
One breath at a time
lacing her naked body,
dressing her in a poem
made of light,
a vibrating sea of love
wearing her skin tight.
~
His love
a sea in endless waves
lapping over her,
in the heart of night
unfurling her,
starlight poem,
womb of fire.
~
All the silences I wrote you
the glowing moon
in your ears whispers
~
Red orchid between her thighs,
a well of secrets leading
beyond space and time,
a sacrosanct whisper,
the heart of poetry.
~
My heart’s blood
I wrote into the moon,
as it sinks into the sea
it rises in you,
sacrosanct love,
its prayer book.
~
This touch
in your womb will grow,
a rose wider
than the widest sky,
its perfume
all the fires of the world,
its colour
the sum of its blood.
~
This thirst is your water
and I’ll leave you parched,
that is,
soaking deeper and deeper
in my passion fire
until you break open,
bloom, a sky.
~
One kiss from your lips
and I am born again,
a thousand lifetimes
converged in one.
~
In the darkness
the shape of her soul
inside my ribs
~
Our breaths
write the skin of night
a love letter unfurling
between our souls
Letter, October 11, 2015
Oblivion, the great Master — to vanish amid his folds holding your hand, what more can a man aspire for? Of what more can lovers dream?
On this autumn morning I write to you, a stillness in my heart, a silence in my veins. At dawn the sickle moon made its way into my room and you were there. I felt your cheek brushing my own as our eyes were united in a single gaze beholding the moon and stars. I felt your breath in mine as your heartbeat made its way to merge with my own.
You do not believe me. But even if you’re not here, even if you will never be, in the end what is my life if not a dance with you to a music we alone can hear?
Forgive my fragmented thoughts, but if love is true then the poems are complete, flawed as they might otherwise be.
Yours,
P
Free Verse # 323 (in the lonely crowd their eyes met)
In her touch
a thousand years of sleep
fall away like dew
~
At dawn
the flutter of her heart
in mine,
two birds
on the world’s edge
tracing their own sky.
~
This poem…
the annulled distance
between our bodies,
our breaths interlaced
for a moment baptized
in the waters of eternity.
~
Rain falls
and my solitary heart whispers
the syllables of her name,
a poem with the raindrops soaking
the earth to her bones.
~
A moment’s silence…
catching my breath
on the dew of her lips
~
Through the rubble
a butterfly flutters
following your scent
~
The wind at night
breezed through her hair
stroking her bare neck,
and suddenly she felt
welling up in her being
the kiss forged
with her very flesh.
~
Flower skin soul…
with a soft desire
I yearn to touch her,
in my blood ferment
the nectar of her core.
~
In a world of strangers,
of hollow hearts and stuffed men,
in the lonely crowd
their eyes met
in an instant that bore
eternity in their souls.
~
She is nature embodied; between heaven and earth everything is a metaphor approximating her being, her ineffable aura, her light and breath.
Letter October 09, 2015
Rain falls, soaking into the darkness of the earth, replenishing her wells, and an immemorial sigh rises to our lips, spills like a hushed prayer to an unknown god, making our flesh transparent to the floating mist, the breath of creation. This space we inhabit, osmotic bodies no longer called yours and mine, but passion-sealed veins and heartbeats, a skin inwardly fused, pulsating, continuous curves rising and falling into hills and valleys, rivers and springs. The topography of an ever shifting one, breaking, through tension and heartache, through laughter and shared breaths into the ever deepening mystery eternally birthing existence from the inside. We open to the mist and memory carries us into a past, a future, awakening in us the tremors of who we were, who we will forever be, passion embodied, the tangle of inseparable fingers, a poem surrendered in the house of love.
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 # 311 (poetry in hushed breaths)
Nothing
but her breath,
the silence in her eyes
~
One caress at a time
liquifyingher skin
into a sea of ripples,
wine, milk, and honey
pouring in my cup.
~
Poetry — a breath fading into the softest hue of dusk and raining back, stars.
~
His touch anoints her
grace embodied,
a fountain of light
surging endlessly,
filling the world
with the incense
of a honeyed sea
burning.
~
In bed
laying next to her,
her hair desert dunes stretching
wider than the sky,
each a breaking wave
frothing with stars.
~
Each night
her flowing hair
rakes the stars in puddles,
pools of liquid flames
weeping over the earth
poetry in hushed breaths.
~
Few words
one brushstroke
a whole sky
~
Our fingertips touch
and night in endless leaves falls,
each a poem
each a star
floating on the surge
amid our beating hearts.
~
His heart broke on the shore of every hand he touched.
~
And so she wanders
butterfly of the night,
lonesome amid stars
burning cold and bright.
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
On Gardening
Like water
through the soil
his hands into her
flowed
soaking her
to the bones,
uprooting
reviving
nurturing
seeding
pruning
grafting,
growing her
into a garden
burning with wild flowers,
an orchard heavy
with fruits of lust and joy,
birds of fire
circling her skin,
in her womb converging
to consume her whole.
To L
Eternal Feast of Light
All my poems
pooled into her skin
filling her to saturation
then flowed,
outward,
inward,
decanting her in my heart,
there to live,
there to grow,
there to burn as my art,
there to become
my secret breath and thought,
a poem made of fire,
the ground that sustains
the cycle of life,
the sky where divine messengers
go to dwell and hold
the eternal feast of light.
Haiku # 126
Shared breath
how quickly we fade
into starlight
Tanka # 53
Circling him…
silken thighs swelling
white as the moon,
a sea of waves
burning on his shore.
Free Verse # 305 (sown in his earth)
Breathless passion,
words like flames
flickering,
into the night weeping
a heart gone wild
on the altar of her skin.
~
Her skin
the shuddering sea,
and I
ever the mariner
longing for eternity.
~
He touched her
and she knew
she was a being of fire,
the linings of her skin
burning blades weaving
the ether into a vortex
of voracious sin.
~
Sown in his earth
his profusion
in her gathered
the elements of her skin,
his breath
in her igniting
a life of poetry.
Free Verse # 302 (how music is made)
As for my life
it begins and ends
on the hidden curves
of her shore
~
Poem of fire
in her flesh weaving
the sun for a nest
~
Twined at the artery
that pumps fire
into the sun
our flesh shivers
as the seams of our skin
melt and merge,
oned, a being of light
exuding poetry.
~
Smearing her lips…
the nectar of a poem
bloomed in the sun
~
How music is made…
bodies entwined
like crescent moons,
their light quivering
the soul of the night.
~
Wearing her kiss…
one crescent moon
at a time
~
By my window
the candle flickers,
its whispered breaths
birds of fire
roaming the dark night,
their flaming wings
etching in the sky
the way leading you home
to me…
~
In her navel
the dewdrops of dawn
he gathers,
a fountain
of tender moss and milk
flowing
softer than the light.
Rooted in Love 