Falling

I.

For the first time

hearing my name in your mouth:

a fluttering, feathered nestling

all sweating skin and clouded eyes

stirs inside the hollow den of my body

pulls itself from the braided nest of sleep

flick of lightning shoots up the spine

a summersault of stars

II.

At your touch

my body

would open up to you

unfurl itself

like a flower

III. Symptoms of an Unknown Illness

Appetite:

Usually, a raging battle. Today easily ignored, dismissed. My tongue has no use for bread.

I feast on images, on pieces of your body.

Insomnia:

The mind, a tornado imprisoned by walls of the skull. Eyes trace every notch, every crevice of the ceiling. Breaths bleed into minutes, into hours. Until the pastel sky begins to marinate with rose and orange clouds at the horizon.

Pain:

Something inside is red, raw, pulsing. Scraped roughly with a butter knife. Limbs collapse on the bedspread; knees buckle. The body cannot remain upright.

Bed wetting:

Something liquid seeps. From between my legs, passion leaks out. And from eyelids, tracing the ear, onto the white pillowcase. My skin cannot contain it; a tide rises from within. I awaken to damp sheets.

Breath:

Cannot center itself. Tonight, caught in a gale

in a boat that will not let down its sails.

IV.

The question that haunts me:

What is the meaning of all this?

Why does it keep returning,

masked in different forms?

V.

It sprouts beneath the greyness of things:

a creeping moss, a froth rising

shoots up through cracks in the surface

vigorously, like weeds through pavement

in the smooth earth— a scarlet tear, a gash

ardor bleeds through

a ribbon of horror

and of ecstasy

the bow’s pressing, leaning on the string

the voice’s sweet dagger

the carved intimacy of the face

which contains within its single glance

the immensity of beauty

unraveling through time

all beings coalescing into one man

the world folding back upon itself, in pleats

VI. The Voice

From your lips

to the conch of my ear

where memory of sea sleeps

on the burnished shore of generations

It pierces through

the mind’s woven veil

with its delicious blade

Spirals through seconds

with moist and silver echoes

a rivulet of vowels eddying

swirling around scattered stones on the river’s bed

Consonants, like protruding branches

or a cloud’s teardrops that punctuate

the water’s soft body

rippling the fur of the placid lake

Its song leads me down the labyrinth

with its thread of

amber honey, warm milk

Contains within its velvet reverberations

the fragility

of the human soul

Together, with the glistening of the eyes

it drips into the shadowed, fathomless cavern

of the heart VII.

The world’s underside cracked open

Its yolk is slippery and saffron, sticks to fingertips

What was once dull has been made sharp again

Somnolent senses awaken

A rumbling drone, burgeoning from underneath soil, plants, water,

emerges through the cacophony

Whether consummated or not

this yearning keeps me alive, my youth renewed

Held at the knife’s edge,

my flesh is ripe and ready for it

Despite age, we never stop falling:

what bliss, what cruelty

One tenderness does not replace another

rather, a big fish swallows the smaller one

Nothing diminishes

it just grows and grows

this loving

this loving of men

VIII. Withdrawal

Later, in your absence

the head throbs like under fluorescent lights

for days, the heart labors

to pump its thick, crimson syrup

the body endures withdrawal

from this strange addiction

there is suffering, suffering

it is tender and green