more than this

"who gonna shoe your pretty little feet?/who's gonna glove your little hand?/who's gonna kiss your ruby red lips? hmm mmm mmmmmm/poppa's gonna shoe your pretty little feet/mommas gonna glove your little hand/and I'm gonna kiss your ruby red lips hmm mmm mmmmmm"

we hung tolling like bells no like strings we hung waiting a tuner we waited to fret our gray sky with gaily painted lightning rebounded from the river our fingers finding asphalt the taste of truth upon our tongues and the whine of approaching disaster speedily bearing down on us we ring we wring we ring we're out the wiring up into the branches and branches tiny glasscracks in the clouds we lost the trace of jade in all those lights when the fog moved in the forever falling particles forgotten in the forever rising column from that distant smokestack we bloodied our handles before the angels could swoop in and work us out like so many bad teeth and rise with them o my bitten hands my forgetting fingers grip me just so and drown me right now right down in the cool stony river then remind me o remind me of the spring we left back there its easy once you accept the evergreens for themselves, the red earth for its color and the taste of your own skin sweet with sweat and forgotten dust tracks
on           then closed
and off           then opened
and on           closed
and open          and off
and on               and closed
forgotten forgotten hung waiting to branch our lost bloodied angels rise, drowned in spring slipped and recursed, our tangled bodies painted on the earth our mouths against the soil warm and roiling the hope of coming snows upon our hunched and ready muscles naked in the steam my eyes fractured by your conifer fingers upon me your hair is ropes of half remembered sunshine as november day warms into sodium night aglow with our falling memory (so many motes in the blue smoky air) the smell of fire from your open mouth wakes me and I grow hungry from the lack of you, aching for the balm of your body against my body, the sweet fall of your hair on my neck fast like the river like buildings being built like the crash of voices in the marketplace

I pulled away then, remembering

"who gonna rock your little rockin chair?/who's gonna sing you to sleep?/who's wipe away your little tears? hmm mmm mmmmmm/poppa's gonna rock your little rockin chair/mommas gonna sing you to sleep/and I will wipe away your little tears mmm mmmmmmmm"

We ate grapes, cherries, plucked things with the sun in them. Then someone murmured memories of the taste of mussels (steamed in vermouth, fresh garlic, a dash of chili) and breathed little sculptures of language in our ears: "victory. victory." No, the chorus won't grow that quickly, we demurred, but there's plenty of room under the bridges. Let's go capture all the tiny refractions from the river for an hour, and feed them--just so--to the first lovely strangers we meet in the first open square just inside the gates of the city. I wanted to memorize Shams for him, proclaim wild gospels of friendship above the glass desert. I didn't though; couldn't let go that way, whirling into the unbroken horizon. Instead clung to my reminders: fallen grape leaves for steaming, her whispered words, a handfull of cherry pits.

I stared and stared at her, my jaw like drying gears, my heart the rising heads of birds in the nest. Your voice came at us as a white plume of water exploded upon the caked and trackless ground. Lifted eyes behind a veil of hair, then my wits so many snail shells among the sand and utterly lost in the sparks of sunlight caught there. Like unemployed gods burned their canvases, tossed cinders at the shoreline.

Were these any good once I'd seen those hands of his, the sweet dark ligaments beneath his shiny skin? oh. hanged man, remind me why I want this river, sketch something clearly in the air and let me follow. Then hold me in those arms and amaze my heart, scattered and opaque in all its pieces.

Won't you meet me there at the river, run down her banks with me and hide in the cool rich green of the leafy undergrowth? Kiss me then, find the contours of my ears and speak only small truths into my flesh. I'll reward you just so, my limbs transformed into wings at your touch. All these for those tiny reveries out of your hands, your mouth at my neck, my hands in your hair.

My love, he is a trail of gravel, hidden among the sharp emerald grasses of the riverside. Our fingers spill from spiders' webs and run gleefully free among the brown rootstocks of our bodies. I hear fire upon my hair and the flavor of her remembered through that spill of liquor from the crown of her head, the opening of our lips and those remnants. A torrent of flavors dry and hot, electric spices poured out on our food, our open palms, the cracks between the cobbles.