not to touch
for Christain who made me beautiful

I read Neruda with you
in a dream that was
worthy of your untamed mouth,
your heavy eyes, that
hold the deep night's velvet;
your roughened hands, impossible
not to touch

I woke, with you
my eyelids,
draped by May’s first dew, then
opened to cold solitude
a emptiness caressed
by dawn’s orange fingers
your touch fleeing on chaste butterfly wings
I become crumpled,
a weary memory
steeped in bleeding rainbows
imbued with my fear

my love, a transparent child
cries soft round tears
that float up and leave my
tender kisses in the
pure whiteness of clouds

I disappear
on this blank page
shattering in silence.

My Poem

~ for Sean, my dear friend ~

I had a poem the other day
wove with daisy chains and stars
and dulcet moon-gilt sighs
that breathed upon and in-between
crossed lover’s tumbling hearts

It bubbled o’er with hopeful pansies
and spilled with lemon lilies’ laughs
held sweet smiles of ever-ever-afters
freshly painted on wee buttercups
that I tossed in for good measure

but its left me now
being much too delicate
to be held by quill's light strokes
upwards it floated bubble like
verses spirited from me
into a giggled pirouette
within the teasing winks of sunbeams
it did look very beautiful

I watched it for a time
blithely billowing
in Zephyr’s twists
pausing very briefly
to brush my face
for the gentlest
of parting kisses

sound

Do not think
you may know me
for I am only
one heart
beating
in a world
too full
with Sound

My Dreams, My Works, Must Wait Till After Hell

I hold my honey and I store my bread In little jars and cabinets of my will. I label clearly, and each latch and lid I bid, Be firm till I return from hell. I am very hungry. I am incomplete. And none can tell me when I may dine again. No man can give me any word but Wait, The puny light. I keep my eyes pointed in; Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt Drag out to their last dregs and I resume On such legs as are left me, in such heart As I can manage, remember to go home, My taste will not have turned insensitive To honey and bread old purity could love. Gwendolyn Brooks