spun


my sole concept
my only breath prayer - is
not to drown like this
in these swirling shards
of shattered glass

distances are too long
in a world turned sideways

pounding, my heart
begs for liberty
and I, even now
plead for it to remain

I did not intend to die like this -
face beneath these churning waters

choking on my own fears
from a life of breathing
without air

above, billowing in the
blurred and beveled light

the curtains –
slashed with knives;

the stairs - that naked
I crashed down
faint from the
savage truth their hands
thrusted and struck me with;

the shoes that
would not fit me, and
now sustain my salted tears.

spinning, my form,
my rawest flesh exposed -
their human piñata.

when
I wanted only
only, just to
sleep.

floating
for peter

I had closed me
and floating – slept adrift
between oceans’ haze -when
you stumbled upon
my spirit - and within
your words,
unfolded it
spoke with a voice
that whispered
inside me
in rhythms caressing
the tides
till I conceived of
home and
drifting, rested.
in your safe arms
eyes slowly gazing
on a distant
blue moon, reaching
your voice, understanding
your stories
and now, brushing
land

Ode to a Beautiful Nude


With chaste heart,
and pure eyes,
I celebrate you, my beauty,
restraining my blood
so that the line
surges and follows
your contour,
and you bed yourself in my verse,
as in woodland, or wave-spume:
earth's perfume,
sea's music.

Nakedly beautiful,
whether it is your feet, arching
at a primal touch
of sound or breeze,
or your ears,
tiny spiral shells
from the splendour of America's oceans.
Your breasts also,
of equal fullness, overflowing
with the living light
and, yes,
winged
your eyelids of silken corn
that disclose
or enclose
the deep twin landscapes of your eyes.

The line of your back
separating you
falls away into paler regions
then surges
to the smooth hemispheres
of an apple,
and goes splitting
your loveliness
into two pillars
of burnt gold, pure alabaster,
to be lost in the twin clusters of your feet,
from which, once more, lifts and takes fire
the double tree of your symmetry:
flower of fire, open circle of candles,
swollen fruit raised
over the meeting of earth and ocean.

Your body - from what substances
agate, quartz, ears of wheat,
did it flow, was it gathered,
rising like bread
in the warmth,
and signalling hills
silvered,
valleys of a single petal, sweetnesses
of velvet depth,
until the pure, fine, form of woman
thickened
and rested there?

It is not so much light that falls
over the world
extended by your body
its suffocating snow,
as brightness, pouring itself out of you,
as if you were
burning inside.

Under your skin the moon is alive.


~ Pablo Neruda