I.
MAY YOU

May You Breathe Easy My Daffodil,
For If There Be A Will Of The Winds
Let That Will Find Itself Governed
By An Authority Totalitarian In Its
Desire To Match The Serenities Of
The Sky With Your Liberated Nose.

May You Sleep Well My Begonia,
For I Pray Washes Of Blue Midnight
Drown You Layers Deep Towards
A Coolest Ocean’s Floor Dressed
With Seashells And Sand Dollars
Granting You Eternal Rest Entire.

May You Feel Beautiful My Tulip,
As Humidities Of Longest Summers
Reward Your Pores With New Life
While The Shops Shutter One After
Another As We Walk Alongside Each
Other During Low Sunsets Once Again.

II.
TÊTES-À-TÊTES

Here we are!
(watching stallions and sheep),
Shoulder arches by windowpanes…

Here we are!
Our skin, our surface,
sloping furtively away
from our sanguine river…

Now we’re beyond the docks rimlined with rust.

          —There lies The Cove!
          —Soon our Innocent Cove!

And the Primrose blooms
best in Northern Africa,
in Algerian fields as we crest,
and your soon freckled neck,
with sound gashing,
reminds me:

          —Tête-à-têtes!

III.
MY SWEET LOVER

You possess a most sonorous singing voice, My Sweet Lover. A voice that puts to shame all other voices, My Sweet Lover. But why do you rarely, if ever, sing for me, My Sweet Lover? Is it because you think I’ll judge your fierce lustful tenor, My Sweet Lover? Or is it that you’re afraid of me hearing the baritones in the lonesome low registers of your voice, My Sweet Lover? I simply won’t anymore accept you never singing for me all the time, My Sweet Lover. I’ll prove it, My Sweet Lover. I promise I’ll embark on efforts aimed at easing your fear of singing to me, My Sweet Lover. I’ll sit at your feet silent as if I were in a pew at your Mennonite church, My Sweet Lover. I’ll watch you sing nativity carols under spikes and blood-stained lumber like you did in the choir at your Mennonite church when you were a young girl missing her two front teeth, My Sweet Lover. And I’ll cheer for you with only a smile, My Sweet Lover. A modest smile, but a smile that will let you know that you possess a most sonorous singing voice, My Sweet Lover. Oh, how I’m blessed to be able to hear you sing and to call you my sweet lover, My Sweet Lover.

IV.
SUNDAY’S SUBMISSION

In the dimmest silver winter of boorish fogs and twines,
You and I roll through fractured visions
While passing time (We simply herd the sleekfooted canines),
While underlining ourselves unto equal positions;

In the crimson snowbeat lies our hope and glory
Of the furthest unnatural order,
Timid lover, speak now, speak lonely
And know that, in a past life, I was but a railroad porter;

In the histories beyond our Sanskrit epiphanies
I knew nothing of your bleeding nails during Sunday’s Submission,
Our desires: We knight them all…now an army…now only hostilities,
Totaling a unified collection of indefinite longing;

V.
WEDDING VEIL

Though I’ve not seen her face for months,
I last night had a dream of
the wedding we were to have
had I not failed her in every which way.

In the dream I peered through
the rusted keyhole in her doorway
and caught a fleeting glimpse of
her dress being hemmed
before the ceremony at the Temple.

Her braided fuzzy hairs
were akin to infantile silkworms;
sometimes parallel,
sometimes crisscrossing.

They crawled underneath her
wedding veil,
its brilliant white rivaled only by
loose-leaf December snows,
summer’s first burning clouds,
and the purest Sephardic souls.

VI.
DOUBLEBLUE

In between the bugbites and thornscratches…
     You introduce me to Mary;
          On your necklace of newborn silver!
          In a clothwrapped locket!
          a place for Her divinity,
          Her grace.

The metallic lightlined backplate…
     Shimmering beside our secrets;
          I caress Her!
          As I do Your voice!
          Your singsong voice of wonder,
          with My ears tuned slightly younger.

We were all born under the same stained glass…
     The same moonpossessed dimming halflight;
          Ancestors near!
          Lordwilling!
          Yet I adore you independently,
          free from the bonds of Unreason and Unfinding.

Doubleblue our matching eyes move…
          They pirouette in slippers pink and return to Mary;
          Each of us breathless,
          Murmuring parallel verse:

               —Kiss me foolish and without fear
               and remind me of our past lives
               filled with figleaves and wines.

               —Remind me of yesterhere
               and its Hail Mary’s
               (as is only customary)
               while we taste
               (on our tongue)
               the sugarfilled
               Jerusalem Berry.

               —Then we’ll be free
               to sleep sidebyside,
               free to wake
               out of sight
               (and without pride).

 VII.
ALLEMANDE

Allemande!
     There is only You and I.
     Let us go twirling deep under inks of night.

First focus on my Voice;
then I’ll focus on your Voice
as it creates infinite Counterpoints
with the solitudes of my original melodies.

We’ll feel them partake in a ballet.
We’ll listen carefully for blessed spirits.
We’ll watch as they form a most secretive Kabballah.

Allemande!
     There is only You and I.
     Let us go twirling deep under inks of night.