The Kiss

I can feel your heart
A bird beating hard
Against the ribbed cages
Of your breast
Your eyes echo your need
For escape
But I must close
Up the spaces between
As I lean
Almost in a dream
Drawn in by your breath

With blood on our hands

Some of us must have
Blood on our hands
For the redness to
Bloom innocently
Upon other cheeks

Love is born out of the debris
Of wounds
Borne by strangers

Flowers bloom
In ruins
Beauty rises
Among desolate things

Shall we lay waste then
To the worlds we've built
And risk destruction
At the prospect of love?

Girl from another world

The girl from another world
She turned to look at me
Her face framed by a smile
The shock of it lingered
For a little while
Till I happened to look up
I looked into her eyes
And there I could see
The weight of a thousand lives

We stood, rooted for a while
Exchanging stories, longing, and smiles
And then, before long, I stood alone
My eyes crinkling fields of mirth
Sprouting from seeds that she had sown.

The Lovers

For in this cruel world, you see
There is no space for you and me
We build little worlds of our own
Forsake myriad lives unknown

Memories of tender touches
Of kisses, and loving clutches
Begin to take the shape of sin
With time, they become lost in
Illusions of knowing what we do
In words that negate me and you

Innocence is such a fragile thing
It does not last the thoughts we bring
The prejudice of reason kills
The tremors of love lie stilled.

Each thought that rang out clear and true
Each act of love between me and you
Is consigned to pasts we never knew
And lost in a murky moral stew

As we pretend to know, and grow
We snuff out life itself, you know
And so many lovers, so many songs
That almost lived, now lie stillborn.

Sacred

And shall we go then, you and I,
To dance upon the edge of a sigh
And let our rhythms come undone
Forgetting the worlds that go and come
In these whorls of learning and regretting
Shall we dance?
On the knife edge of the sacred
And cast useless worship to the dust.