The first year I lived with dreams of travel;

of climbing mountains in Switzerland with my love,

relishing spaghetti in Italy, sharing sushi in Japan.

 

In New York I would climb the Statue of Liberty,

and the morning mist would kiss her face.

Just like my love would kiss mine.

 

We’d stroll a Spanish village flanked with shops,

and holding hands we’d hear sweet music makers

strumming their guitars made of ash and alder.

…………

It must be two centuries ago when I felt my lover’s hands sliding

over my tender parts and places; in the days when we shared

our aspirations of roaming the world together.

 

But for now, our baby’s breath is sugary

and replaces long held desires for us to hail a cab in Barcelona.

With love and our red umbrella, we shield our infant son instead.

 

Our plans of travel replaced with little things

like watching him sleep. This precious child who has captured us,

and whose baby breath is sugary.

 

Perhaps I am eccentric. Sure,

my oddness rises to the surface.

I question: whom among us is conventional?

 

Transporting to the aesthetic embracing

us, we revel in earth’s promises.

(not to be overtaken, but for buoyancy)

 

Will you strive to be an iconoclast

carving (tearing) my beliefs apart,

reducing my metal from its ore?

 

Perhaps I am eccentric and my peculiarity

rises from the floorboards, but I must not

permit ordinary vapors to fill me.

 

Nonchalant, secure;  disapproval does not worry me—

it isn’t hubris. Do not accuse me (please)

of being full of excessive pride, full of conceit.

 

I merely suggest we trust our guts, our instincts,

and listen to our animal voices; why not

permit mysterious spells to challenge logic?

 

Allowing an impulse—a sweet whim

to overtake us in moments of fancy,

to live fully formed, radiant, and crystalline.

 

Candied pineapple sits on my tongue

sensory, sweet and bursting with a

joy of homecoming and you

resounding off the walls

…memories swirling in

 

 

The rules were broken yesterday

hammered and torn into private pieces

mostly warped from personal pain

choked down to lie where nothing else matters

…where nothing else makes sense

 

 

Naught is heard or felt or known

to stop the flow, the flow of emotion

where only the small and tender can find

their way home where summer dresses hang

…in the closet next to winter coats

 

 

To scarcely touch and be touched

an awareness of my heartbeat

from an inner core of percussion

while sensations turn in swirls of hot dust

… blindly settling into corners

 

 

Back from the dark, the starched and strident past

of bent and broken chairs

the chairs that tried to place you there

You…sitting…there

…darkly handsome with perfect posture

 

 

Lips on mine at this feast

when you fed me candied treats

to coerce me into loving you

forcing sweets onto my tongue

…in full measured spoons

 

 

Only the small and fragile resolve

to find a place to fall undamaged

a place to rest, to please

to will and to allow

…for a hand to press a soft and tender thigh