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and

I will forfeit good sense
for this momentary opening, a chance to taste
sensation.
Touch it,
bask in it
rather than intellectualize and don my normal cloak
of standoffishness

Govern our movements
with a gentle push, a slight twist

a thrust. Rule if you will.

Dictate where we climb —
summits explored on a rainy afternoon
with open eyes
and burning limbs. Have I told you
how much I ache when your eyes darken
at the end?

No, of course not. I wouldn't.

Do you hear my gasp when your teeth nip
my left shoulder. Or does the sound echo
only in my mind
where it will be kept holy, revered?

And do you know
that when at last you exhale,
I place my lips lightly against yours,
(so lightly you never really feel them)
and I inhale,
capturing your air,
filling myself with you thoroughly.
But I won't tell you this, either.

And when you leave

I will write a poem,
one that you'll never read.
A song
you will not hear.
I will sit out on the front porch; blow smoke rings
in the dark
and whisper a loveyou to Hydrus
as he slithers on velvet sky—rather that
than in your hopeful ear where the mere
admission
of that banal phrase
could perhaps increase your hold on me. No —

that, Sir, is where your reign ceases.


P. Gomes © 2002