a month of poetry - november 1, 2011: icarus.

once when i was young, i tattooed
the words of flight on my skin,
in the hope of wings.

the sun hid behind its low dark clouds and i began.

they grew as the leaves changed
- red and green and yellow and i found
the morning mist then in your eyes -
my wax wings were strong and sure,
and i felt the taste of your hands on
my back morning and evening.

i flew then, i did.

the low dark clouds buoyed and hid me,
cloaked me and warmed me and
my voice and yours twisted together
to reflect back upon me.

the nights were cold then and without rain.

i was the wind; the fallen leaves swirled among my wax wings.

and all at once, in the touch of you and the sky,
i knew the eternity, the forever-times of
sea and sky and the forests of redwoods
that had grown about my childhood home.

the infinite world stood as one beneath my wax wings.

the sun cowered behind its low dark clouds
and the moon was black as it turned away.

the sea stood still.

the world breathed and the sun rose, sweeping away its low dark clouds.

i was fallen. i was ruins.

a lock and key.

the way you fit over me is a lock and key.
your arms like the sigh at the end of the world,
simple and strongholding and ohsosomething.

built like the bricks of the factories of my youth,
the ones that would tumble and fall during the
earthquakes we never got used to,

but you are strong and red and tall anyhow.
you, wrapped close to my body like the clothes
my mother sewed for me during the war,

though she died before i fit in them.
the way we turn together,
like the stars and the compass's needles

during the earth's switch from north to south.
(once we loved so hard the earth moved eight feet on its axis).
awake tight inside one another like bones

and the fractures of the desert during the spring rains.
pieces of my flesh break and crack and crawl
towards you during the night; the morning comes heavily

and with trumpets and i watch my jigsaw-body
fit itself inside yours in the purple and blue dawn.
(blue like bruises and the falling night).

the last of the amazons.

that's what my mother
called me as i was growing up.
literally, up.
up and up and up further and further skywards

like i couldn't stop.
towering, strong. dark hair and white skin
and strong white arms made to hold and fight and hate -
the last of the amazons.

and maybe my mother hated me as i crumpled,
as i fell, as the sky turned gray and eyes-downcast
and pressed me back towards the ground, back into myself.

i am not like the amazons not like the ships
and the wide seas they sailed, not like the strong tall brown women.

and amazons are not supposed to
drown in the taste of chocolate almonds and desire
or get swept away by boy-eyes and gardenias
and the scent of asphalt late in summernights.

and amazons are supposed to cut off a breast
the better to hold their bows and send arrows
singing towards the enemy, but mine are soft
and warm and heavy and made for a man to cup them in his hands.

orpheus and eurydice.

the first time i fell in love
(with you) i was waking,
peeling my skin from yours.

your eyes were half-open,
deep blue, but you were asleep
sun light coming

in on petal-soft feet through
the venetian blinds.
you were no orpheus,

to make the trees bend down
and whisper my name,
to climb the long stair,

to hang my name in the stars with your lyre.
i followed you all the same.
you looked back (once).

there were no clouds that day.

winter loving.

you held me once, a great while ago,
in the cold light of the rain outside your window.
the trees grew thick and young about your house

but their thin branches could not stand under
the weight of the snow that fell that winter.

that was the winter you twisted your fingers in my hair and kissed me.
you used to sing then, sing that song to me, that hallelujah.

our love wasn't all-consuming, but it was.

the shape of you was simplelikesleep and
sometimes like the closing of eyes.

once i think you asked me if death was the true tyranny of humanity

(i think) i shook my head.

but i was lost in you by then and
blinded by the snow climbing along your windowsill.
i couldn't see past the shadow of you.
and you couldn't remember anything but the curve of my legs against yours.

the sad times.

the small warm noise of rain that starts in the dawn,
the rain that taps on the window by your bed.

turning over in the cool morning,
the softness of skin and the calm down blankets.
the cosmic center, slip a hand down between the sheets, who knew?

my whisper in your ears; i could never say no.
soft blue glow that illuminates the faces
that haunt every corner and

the street lights never get brighter,
the harsh white light only reachers so far.
the brown grass that sweeps down to my window rises in the rain,

throwing itself up towards the sky,
as if it could pluck the stars out from between the clouds.
last night was another turn in the darkness, another tumble and fall

and the moon never shone so bright,
never came down to rest in the space
between the door and carpet worn with a thousand repetitions
like i dreamed.

heavy fluorescent kitchen lights and the sounds of people waking,
an intrusion upon sad small private lives;
i'm hunching under the shower head,

watching the drip of water on your bathroom mirror.
morning loving, listening to the dog howling next door,
whispering, lips too close to skin,

and reaching out to cup the day in soft bare hands.