you look at me like

you look at me like
you're looking at an approaching
storm that

growls across the horizon,
the colors of godawful
bruising and retiring embers.

so i whisper something into
your neck, perhaps a prayer
to the moon and her lover;

something about wanting
or about will or about the
salt of passion in tears.

we lovers all begin with something
to die toward; it's the bellows of the
heart that keep it stoked.

my kingdom for the keys
that would unlock these manacles;
the fetters of my soul-sinews,

that i might release
myself from the Mother and
into the harmony of free-life.

i don't like the strangers
in our town, with their half-closed
faces and shattered hands,

but i'm not pure so i will sit
in silence and beg forgiveness
'til the day they die;

or swallow the hemlock blood
of the best people i've known and
be done with it.

love is edible and her consumption
is a rite of all the warm-blooded
fools who dare.

it props you up and splits rocks
and draws venom from blood and
expands eyes to the point of being crazed.

i look at you like
i'm looking at the beginning
of a wave

that growls on the horizon
of the sea, the colors of
fallen sky and doomed angels.

you're not supposed to
be made sense of like
an algebraic cloud of sand.

and that's been my mistake,
(i apologize)
but you're too beautiful.

so i ask for your mercy;
that you break the rules
of natural law for this one time

and allow me the chance to
love you with the power
and uncertainty of blind yearning.