i yearn for the unveiling release

i yearn for the unveiling release
of the artist who can open life
with the stroke of
the brush against canvas

she paints with blood,
and each approach is the
forfeit of her virginity
again and again

such an artist longs for
an appreciation of her
existence and must stand
naked before the canvas,
ready to give birth -
a rendering on the weave
of her pale womb

and the pains of it are
tidal, each stroke
a violent lashing
against the quay
built with chaos

i have an image of her
in her flesh holding the
instrument of her art
while i burn in my place

i consume her
while she stands
there, devour her
with hungry teeth
sunk slowly

if i truly risked it i
would press against her,
in her nakedness, and
beg to feel the pulse
of it in the skin

her head tilted, hair pulled up,
neck serene, the flesh
risen to the touch
of each purgative stroke
of the hand

how the hips stay square,
the feet apart, the shoulder
of the working arm tense,
the bicep and forearm
taut, and from heel
to finger tip a shuddering

and all of her everything
transferred at once to the
flat canvas now made round,
made deep, made open
by her deliberate pressure

i would beg to feel that
energy as a hand searches
for the heat of the
sun-bathed stone after
a cold swim

she paints not what
she sees, if she is being
true, but what she feels in
the rhythms of her
surrender: life beneath the life

i am jealous of
such an artist, clothed
as i am and remaining
clothed as long as i
drown in my fear

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her smile is the thing

my mama, she holds the puppy

in one of her black and white histories

and her smile is the thing

a bare-footed gypsy in the 

early years of her epoch,

building up those resistances

i think i might believe that 

that smile is for me-in-waiting, 

because i called for her even then

her youngest child, who

would be heir to her runty,

her lush lips and lank

and i would be picked on for it

during the early school years,

but she loved the hell out of me

the best way she knew how,

with her little body and 

deep well of blood-fever passions

there is everything in that 

picture that needs to be to 

tell her future

the uncomely summer dress,

whose hem is soiled by the

daily drag on the ground,

gives voice to a life in the 

shade of a forced frugality

on a teacher's salary

the toes in the dirt sing to

a future of days treading an

eternal path of stones and ruts

the arms, in a desperate clutch,

cry to a soul made out of the

effusion of a heart's radical charity

but her smile is the thing,

the beacon for so many of

life's migratory love-makers

who will find themselves

on a reckless sea, thrown and

imperiled, raging and raw

her smile will cast out and

in that sweep, capture them and

hold them fast for a better port

i know this as much

as i know those small hands

and tranquil, sufficient lips

my mama, who played

in the dirt with her bare

feet and hands and who

grew up wanting me in

her womb and loving me

in her wondrous way

felt no poverty but that

which was poorly placed

at her feet by others

i have her smile

i have her smile

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lost joy found

i see in you a flicker of the joy

that hides now in the well of this grown man

a flame lit when he was an active boy

a prince of all the fields in which he ran

a certain seed was planted in the rows

within the hallowed virtues of his youth

it is with love and life that something sows

to bring to fruit the wellspring of his truth

and in a time he sees the goodness drowned

by all the labors of the evil kind

who whisper death to joy without a sound

and swallow all the passions of the mind

but now i've found the courage to be brave

and rescue this: a flame from certain grave

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the love of many

i'd wish for you a second lover's lips

to sing the praise of your passion's passion,

for the largess of your engulfing love,

how it spills from founts to

overtake the seas

love is not a bound volume, to be spent

judiciously or loaned with the frugality of

the moneylenders, but a thing refreshed by

the vitality and desire of the giver, who cannot

stem the tide any more than cease her heart

i'd wish for you a third lover's lips

to suckle at the bosom of your

engorged wants and soothe

the oppression of the constricting

vestments of the prepossessed

drowning those who would march in arms

against the native urges and authentic

conscience transfused to us from the

Original Mother, yet suppressed in the name

of a specious piety

and i will remain your first lover,

your primary, lips uttering a prayer

to the Goddess of the Divine Universe,

asking for Her blessings on us on

the eve of this embarkation

to entreat her with a question: how

does one divorce oneself from the

flock of the sedated, and approach

the true divine, the epic universe whose

manifold nature is the model for love?

for there is no sin in the love of many

so long as the lovers partake in a feast of

harmony with their eyes equal to the

same horizon and the sun, at her zenith,

illuminating all

there is a moral chisel against convention,

a subterranean river that cuts through

the hard rock as veins beneath the

surface of the skin, pulsating with the

genuine power of the soul

the heart has more than one chamber,

after all, and a multitude of ways

in which one approaches her and leaves

her, bringing life to her and carrying life from

her, and her strength is in the love of many

i'd wish for you a life of lovers, on a

migration toward the source of light,

gifting what you have in abundance,

to unlock all the gates so that it will

flow openly as it was meant to be

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