my lover has said that she needs magic

my lover has said that she needs magic

from the supernaturally quiet

calm that comes with a type of kiss,

something like a whispered song.

and from my imperfect consideration,

after diving deeply into its

meaning, i have met with some terms,

thinking:

her meaning is like the texture of the perfect

day in which all the 

benevolence of Mother is received -

this kiss, if enjoined in

simple sweetness, sees two

different things happen at once:

cleaving fear and spiritual elation.

love arises from this and wears a thin veneer;

nearly impossible to breach

without her necessary components,

which have different names 

to different people: kindness, empathy,

release, joy, faith, blindness.

i don't know, exactly.

the point is, my lover cannot 

extract love from something

that does not first explode.

and therefore, in this manner,

she cannot abide a kiss that is absent 

a sacred, mystical communion.

she told me once, after

meeting a suitor for the first

time, that their kiss left her subtracted

from the moment, and

therefore darkly abandoned in that

moment, roughly accumulated.

i just didn't feel it

she explained, and to my

inquisitive brow, she said,

it's hard to explain,

but there was nothing

here,

and she placed a palm on her belly 

with the same look as having been 

assaulted by a boring, generic thought;

almost verging on a type of tear,
the way she looks sometimes
when life has gone slate.

it was - and it is not -
a testimony to the
manner in which he kissed;

she had no degrading revulsion,
no unnecessary private scold
of the man himself,

who was, by her own
admission, wonderfully
polite, attractive, even funny.

when she first meets a lover,
she expects no mistrial of the
event beforehand, harbors no prejudice.

but rather - and i am being painfully,
boorishly, nonspecific here
because i had to puzzle through it

to find her Truth, that i might join
her in the center of the idea
and understand it -

but i believe
she hopes for
something fragmenting,

something that cracks open
her sternum and stirs
the remote calm into a frenzy.

magic, she called it,
and i had to excuse the
limp term in my mind

because it rang like
a muted bell or a
water-submerged idea.

i felt it with you that
first kiss, she confessed,
and i was then floated

instantly, pulled backward
to that moment, the
muscles of my memory coiling,

to a location
caved-in by a million other
encroaching, dusty stones.

i didn't recall magic -
but rather felt the
light-headedness

that comes on the wing
of fueled fear, the same feeling
of falling in a dream,

face down, toward earth
from a fantastic height,
my breath exhumed,

and startle-waking
just as my face
strikes cold consciousness.

from the separation of our
lips, from the second the
skin of them slipped silently apart,

i was upended, my heart
a thundering vessel,
my mind compelled toward

some vanishing light,
some ascending thought,
some untouchable moon.

thereafter i craved nothing
less than to be a new alien
to myself,

to depart from what was
and had been and confront
a better form of me.

my hands tingled,
i do remember that:
they nearly hurt

with a desire to
forever hold in their tips
the ornament of her soul.

oh! oh yes
i agreed with her
then, newly birthed.

magic, i said.

she blushed:

yes...

yes!

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mere touch

what else could you say
         about me? she asked.
how many words exist? said i.

i lament that we live
in a world in which lovers
believe they're not worthy

of the inexhaustible words
of their poets, who always
have something to confess.

it's as though she asked me,
how many different ways
          could you touch me?

the answer to which would
seem foolish to those who've
felt the power of either.

to the poet in love's
apprehension, words are the
fount from which touch flows.

i know a poetess and painter
who shares her works with me
and it's like the touch

of the fingers to the
breastbone, behind which
the heart awaits.

mere touch, mere words
the poet is over-generous
with both to those who

are willing to receive,
and neither need meaning
beyond the import to one's soul.

to verse and to touch
have the same end
to this poet:

to give and to take,
to intercourse with
a lover's delicate charity.

consider the lover
and the reader the same
in this example:

radiating, next to me,
back-bared and
placated, yielding.

i listen to her hair
on the pillow when
she turns every so often,

subtle as the sound of
voices in a distant room,
muted soft secrets.

every moment of her darkness
it is required of me that
i put hands on something

of her, some part,
that i may repeatedly
witness a life teeming.

for me, touch is a guide wire
to deep inlets, a current
of the transitory spark.

it does not last, nor
could it any more than
the wick of a candle.

which is quite all right
for this temporal man,
who needs his native fix.

poetry is in no way different.
it requires the touch of the
word upon the lover's

breastbone, received as deeply
as she allows, feeling whatever
comes and no less.

i cannot control the
affect of verse and touch,
which is important.

i want each received and
swallowed, then forgotten
by morning,

so that each new touch,
each new poem, is blushed
over and makes her dizzy.

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