Who Would I Love

(a love poem in the style of Rumi)

When my sisters ask
Why him?
How do I tell them of the sweet satifaction
of laying in your arms?
They would only feel envious.

When an old lover says
Remember when?
How do I tell him that your scent has driven away
the memory of other men?
He would only feel forgotten.

When a friend sings
of broken hearts
How do I tell her that the lyrical sweep of your voice
healed me completely?
She would only feel injured.

And when the moon wonders
why my bed is empty
How do I tell you that the warmth of my flesh
is reserved for you alone?
You are not here to feel me.

Who would I love
if not you?
Who else can meet my soul when it leaves my body
at the eternal moment of ecstacy?
There is no one else for me.

Simplicity

Simplicity is so complicated.
How difficult to shed the shackles
of modern life, the drives, the assumptions,
the things that cling, us to them,
them to us.

Simplicity is.
The simplicity of my nipples, hard and long,
when he is near,
or when he is not,
when it is the scent of him on his clothes,
or the sound of his voice, so rich and thrilling,
emerging from the box held at my ear.

Then I know I simply am simply me
simply made with simple needs
and fuck the big complex brain
with its constant soliloquy.

Someone tries to take meaning
where it is ungiven
for simplicity's sake
Words are never enough,
they construct problem sets yet rarely solve them
But a different he solved the riddle of me, he thinks,
the slut wasting her talents for the titillation of others

And for simplicity's sake his assumption stands
It means more about him than than it does to me
though I cannot deny the sting
(When did his opinion come to matter to me?)
Let it all go and hope complexity does not have static cling.
Nothing is as simple as it seems.
Not even simplicity.

Being Known

Why do you fear being known?
I ask when he says
I know him too well
that echoing well deeper than his voice
He does not want to be predictable,
dull, uninteresting
But it is deeper than that


I know
the fear of being known is fear of intimacy
I know

I know this fear. I lived it
Lived it like the babe uprooted from his mother's breast
It goes back that far, yes
for all of us

We fear losing our mystery, we fear
losing what makes us compelling strangers
lest we lose what we fear most to embrace

Our intimate other selves
So we dance, dear
dance with our fear and the Other
who might be mother or father
in addition to lover

Know me, I challenge
stripped bare of pretense my body a gift
Here are my mysteries, touch them see
how my skin pebbles
fingers playing tumescent flute
same song every time

yet novelty is not lost
right now
in the moment
in the primacy of here-now

Why flee this intimacy, savor it instead
like tongue savors nipple tasty
forbidden pastry sugar-sweet
as carnal knowledge of one's beloved

I nurture you
penetrate me
Know and be known
Some things can not be lost
Some things will not keep

Love, by Pablo Neruda

(artwork by: SynfullyDigital Designs)

I've added a recording of Pablo Neruda's poem "Love" to YouTube.
I've also made some recent updates to my Silkenvoice podcast page. I have erotica episodes scheduled to post there every 10 days through February--next one will be January 15th.

I missed you

I love you too much.
I see you too little.
And I miss you.

I miss you so much
I could wear a blue suit with a capital M on the front
M for miss
M for much
M for mind
as in I must be out of mine

M for midnight
the hour I lay in wait for you
wait for your voice in my head
walking down the corridors of my mind
pushing buttons
opening doors
making me laugh
making me cry

Oh yes,
M for my love
I miss you
I miss you like the ocean misses the shore as soon as its ebbed away
even knowing it will still be there the waves rush forward to kiss the sand
again and again
saying "I missed you"

I missed you.

(podcast: listen here)

To mother on her 58th birthday

Happy 58th Mom, where ever you are
Is there life beyond death
beyond the chalk and ashes of your corpse
turned to fish food
in the shoals off the Big Island
I imagine flocks of tropical beauties glistening
like gilt tears and you some part of them
just as I am the first leg
of a three-legged stool birthed by you
I lost the middle leg, Mom, I'm sorry
Did you know Tammy died?
Is she there with you if you're anywhere?
When you died the chorus of duckbilled platitudes claimed you'd be
watching
that you'd be watching over us
and if you are
if you are watching
don't you feel fucking helpless?
Another year has passed
Tammy gave up, like you
she died
and Terri tried to murder herself
again
I am a three-legged stool with a leg broken
and another missing entirely
I am my mother's daughter
I am strong, but for your birthday
I'd like to give you my strength
and let you bear the weight
while I watch over you
Happy 58th Mom, where ever you are

Life just is

I know you think the world is a warm and gentle place
she breathed into my ear from 3000 miles away
That life is good. But for me its a shithole
she sighed and dragged on her cigarette
I heard the exhale, saw the smoke apparitions
saw grandmother, mother, and sister dying
of tobacco in my mind's eye
rolled the ghosts up and stashed them away
for another conversation another day
Oh baby, life is what it is, neither good nor bad
its attitude that gives it colour. We wear glasses
some rose-coloured, some shit-brown coloured
(she coughed a laugh of recognition)
You've just got to hope one day you can exchange
those glasses, change your attitude.
Life just is what it is, it happens
we get to choose what we make it mean

A child's tears

(For Lisa, someday)

Why are a child's tears so beautiful
seeming to chime with every drip
off cheek and chin
the tinkling of their tremble
gilding spiky lashes
with crystalline rainbows?
Perhaps it is the child's skin
smooth and poreless
the peerless clarity of which
provides the slate
that tears are writ upon,
each drop a note.
I am in awe of this child's tears
I cannot tell her do not cry
do not miss your mother's arms
do not tear me with your music.
And so I watch her weep
gathering up her salty sorrows
committing them to the well,
the deep and beautiful well,
of children's tears.

Ode to Earth

If clouds are her curls waving in the wind,
whitecaps the frothy lace of her blue-grey skirts
slightly worn and often dingy
the sandy beach her legs, mostly smooth
the pebbles gooseflesh and the cliffs her feet,
then what is the asphalt and concrete
but cracked and creeping fissures of an age
of desperation and malicious destiny?
And what am I, and all my kind
in the scheme of geology?
What of the liquid hydrocarbon,
the controlled hemorrhaging of which
keeps her weak and pliable?
Our rash of boxy blemishes a speading pox
following the razor burn of denuded forests?
When the time of reckoning comes
will she lower her skirts,
let the lace creep up the shores,
swirl past the cliffs of her toes
and seal our fates in a watery tomb?
Or will she breathe in her blood turned to gas
raise her skirts and withdraw
until our foolishness causes the end
of the Primate Period?

Footprints

We walked through sand stained black
Some ship spilled darkness that transformed
sepia brown to exotic inkiness
I tried to pretend I was in Hawaii, or some other volcanic isle
and when that failed I pondered the meaning of light
for just a moment
it being far too weighty a topic for an afternoon stroll
so I turned to my companion and asked
If some catastrophe happened,
and the shoeprints upon the sand were petrified,
would those who uncovered them a million years hence know
they were all made by the same species?

Today at the beach

The wind tasted of sunlight and salt, tasted
like the hopes of hungry seabirds flinging themselves ahead of the fog
retreated beyond the reach of the naked eye but waiting
for the wind to reap the whitecaps of their tears
and send the moist blanket of oblivion rolling up the sand

The tide exposed the sand dollars,
those rounds of creams and purples, stripped them
of their camouflage, revealing their secret palmate etchings
known to man and bird alike, neither of whom bothers to note
the underside carved by ten rivers flowing into a single hole

Life is fragile as the sand dollar broken
by the gull's beak
comforted by sea foam whose bubbles hold captive
a thousand rainbows waiting for the fog to free them
from the suffering of the light

December reflections

Disrobing mind of vocational garments
slipping into silvery thoughts
reflective as the zither-shaped pond
Coy as the koi
beneath a watery cloak of willow leaves
turned golden by the pallid light
Do koi dream in hibernation
while the year's last moon dies
and my chill fingers cry
for my lover's warm lips?
Reflections have form and shape
but no substance
like thoughts and emotions
they ripple and fade
Changeling world
the season of annihilation has come
and I will pass it in the gazebo
wearing only a robe of light
'til the dawn of my beloved's return

tantric hug

juicy with longing
impaled by need enfleshed
relaxed into the cradle of crossed legs
forbidding him to move
twining arms around each other
energy flowing from cunt to cock
curling upwards to his lungs
sexual exhalation
breathing him into me
erotic frisson gliding into pelvis
where cunt clenches cock
cyclic orgasmic tension builds
to powerful climax and delicious decline

Words have power

Words have power

and language is mightier than time

intoxicating as wine

second only to the moment

which can be captured in words

and relived

like the memory of sex.

I have power over words

the music of them flows from me

creating symphonies of sensual immediacy

entrancing you

conquering you

enflaming your imagination

stopping the flow of time

doling it out

word

by

word.

Words cleave your mind

my voice driving a wedge

between the higher-functioning halves

penetrating deep into the limbic brain

calling forth that aroused tingle

in your pelvis.

You want my words

you swallow them as they drip from my lips

thirsting for the power of my voice

for the bounce of verbs and adjectives

across the playground of your mind.

Yes words have power

the power to create language

and language the power to create problems

and the problem you have now

is the world of fire in your loins

and what must be done to conquer it.

My Lord of Life

My Lord of Life
Today I remembered the poems I wrote

words of love unfolding in the lotus of my mind

I was a flower with petals wet

long before the rains fell from your clouds

My Lord of Thunder

Yesterday I hummed songs for you

melodies timed to the drumbeat of my heart

I was a sunflower whose gaze followed

your blazing path through the ceiling of my soul

My Lord of Fire

Tomorrow, should gravity be reversed

and dirges buffet the air I breathe

I will be a flower wilting and uprooted

illuminated with joy by the pluck of your hands

My Lord of Death

May Day

CW sent flowers. And a poem. He knows my weakness for Qabbani. I've right-justified the poem because that is how the author wrote it in arabic:

The two years
You were my lover
Are the two most important pages
In the book of modern love.
All the pages before and after
Were blank.
These pages
Are the lines of the equator
Passing between your lips and mine
They are the measures of time
That are used
To set the clocks of the world.

Who am I, if not all women?

[audio-post]
Who am I,
if not all Women,
silkenvoiced and silkenfleshed?
A lotus-creature whose senses blossom,
unfolding toward annihilation of self,
abandoned to pleasure
and sun-gold enlightenment.
Oh Man, who am I
that you would pluck me like fruit from a vine?
Have you not learned Adam's lesson?
I am succulent and bittersweet, aye,
the apple of God's eye.
Oh Man, you should tremble at the thought
of possessing one such as me,
such as we,
we Women, all,
all of us the fruit you long to eat
whose flesh, numinous and divine,
once swallowed,
dims.
The all-seeing eye grows in Man's belly,
sightless and afire with desire to See.
Oh Man, you wish to bite into the apple of God's eye
to sow your seed in the furrow left by your teeth,
immortalized by progeny,
through me.
Plow as you will, oh Man,
this body is a temple
not a field.
Who am I
if not all Women?
Worship me
I suffered that you might live
now suffer Me.
[audio-post]

Pleasure, by Kahlil Gibran

Then a hermit, who visited the city once a year, came forth and said, "Speak to us of Pleasure."

And he answered, saying:

Pleasure is a freedom song,

But it is not freedom.

It is the blossoming of your desires,

But it is not their fruit.

It is a depth calling unto a height,

But it is not the deep nor the high.

It is the caged taking wing,

But it is not space encompassed.

Ay, in very truth, pleasure is a freedom-song.

And I fain would have you sing it with fullness of heart; yet I would not have you lose your hearts in the singing.

Some of your youth seek pleasure as if it were all, and they are judged and rebuked.

I would not judge nor rebuke them. I would have them seek.

For they shall find pleasure, but not her alone:

Seven are her sisters, and the least of them is more beautiful than pleasure.

Have you not heard of the man who was digging in the earth for roots and found a treasure?

And some of your elders remember pleasures with regret like wrongs committed in drunkenness.

But regret is the beclouding of the mind and not its chastisement.

They should remember their pleasures with gratitude, as they would the harvest of a summer.

Yet if it comforts them to regret, let them be comforted.

And there are among you those who are neither young to seek nor old to remember;

And in their fear of seeking and remembering they shun all pleasures, lest they neglect the spirit or offend against it.

But even in their foregoing is their pleasure.

And thus they too find a treasure though they dig for roots with quivering hands.

But tell me, who is he that can offend the spirit?

Shall the nightingale offend the stillness of the night, or the firefly the stars?

And shall your flame or your smoke burden the wind?

Think you the spirit is a still pool which you can trouble with a staff?

Oftentimes in denying yourself pleasure you do but store the desire in the recesses of your being.

Who knows but that which seems omitted today, waits for tomorrow?

Even your body knows its heritage and its rightful need and will not be deceived.

And your body is the harp of your soul,

And it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds.

And now you ask in your heart, "How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?"

Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,

But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.

For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,

And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,

And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.

People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees.

In memorium

Ten days ago, I lost a friend.

We met online just over a year ago. We never touched, never saw each other smile, but we talked often, wrote, shared of ourselves. He guided me through my first attempt at editing a poem of mine, and I listened and gave feedback on a novel he was writing. Over the past year he went through many changes, several crises, strain in his marriage, etc; and me, I was working too hard, suffering through the crisis of my sister's health, and juggling an active social life. He developed a crush of sorts on me, and I discouraged it as best I could without abandoning our friendship, because the level of communication and understanding we shared was something special.

I tried to get him to tell his wife about me, to be less secretive about our relationship. But he was afraid. He did something stupid on New Years Eve, something not involving me, thankfully, but the effects were that he sent me an email stating that he had to break off our relationship because his behaviour was damaging his marriage and hurting his wife.

I've gone through a wide range of emotions. I recognize them as the grieving process. Loss. I've always been so bad about loss. But he taught me a lot in the past year, and now he is teaching me to grieve, as my therapist says I should.

This past year I learned a lot about the pros of putting myself out there emotionally--of taking risks: Joy, pleasure, love. This past week I've learned the cons, as well: Pain, loss, suffering.

And so far, I've no regrets. I could take away the lesson that I was stupid to become emotionally involved with someone I never met, but that is cowardice speaking. My life has been enriched for knowing him, and that is the lesson I will take away from this... keep taking risks, keep loving, continue to make connections and grow.

As for him, I wish him well. I wish him happiness and laughter and good health. He knows my boundless compassion and he has it. I will continue to include him in my metta meditations. I have always said that even when a relationship between two people must change, the things they love about each other do not. Love does not stop. At least... not for me.

Goodbye dear.

compassion begins at home

Mind-chatter runs like a superhighway
over the ebb and flow of the unconscious
Day packed with intentions of activity
waylaid by exhaustion's pall and mantra
tired, tired, so tired
Over arms loaded with lavender scented laundry
I see Buddha smiling compassionately from his lotus
a position I have not mirrored in weeks
Daily life folded away into neat squares
I stand under stinging shower spray
then move, naked and dripping, to the altar
with an offering of the last begonia flower
Nag champa incense curls in the air
I bathe myself a moment in the smoke,
bow, and settle bare bottom on the carpet,
spine straight and arms loose
to practice concentration and mindfulness,
samadhi and sati
feather and sledgehammer duel
feather rises as sledgehammer falls
consciousness floats
takes wing
dives
rises again
bobbing on the river of metta
One-pointed and aware
I ease into a new mantra
may I be free from exhaustion
may I be free from frustration
may I be fulfilled in my work
may I be blessed with good health
praticing compassion where it does the most good
on myself, on myself
How can I hope to achieve for others
what I cannot achieve for myself?
The greatest act of selflessness
is mindfulness of self
metta, metta, metta
compassion begins at home