First City Kiss

Magic in New York City...

There was someone singing about the rain
outside your window,
saying that it was such a good feeling,
a summer thunderstorm in the city,
lifting the curtains,
the soft orange streetlight haze spilling over the couch,
the repetitive tubes of the cold radiator,
long shadows of your bike and the books along the shelf.

The stranger’s voice fading into the night,
his song about the rain becoming the sounds of traffic,
of the city bus and its lonely fluorescent passengers,
the braying horns in the distance,
like muted lovers calling,
the silhouette of your plants behind the curtains,
sway to the music lifting,
to the street cooling,
to the red-eyed wanderers who float from bar to bar all night long.

You weren’t asleep and neither was I,
pretending to be asleep,
only waiting,
until my racing heart forgot the city,
and no sound existed on the earth,
and my hand,
it moved,
found your hip beneath the blankets,
no sound,
no city,
no rain,
just your skin beneath my fingers,
and that was the world,
every planet and every star and every life I’ve ever lived,
there in that touch,
at the beginning of mankind,
in your bed beneath those blankets.

The song outside the window was gone,
the people carried on,
stepping out of taxi cabs,
smelling of the subway,
airbrakes at the intersection,
a bell jingles above the door at the deli,
I kissed your neck to ask for your permission,
and you said yes when your lips turned to find mine,
there in the orange darkness,
the city outside,
and rain on the way.

11.2010

Jim Bilt

A cowboy love story...

Jim Bilt held the cracked leather reigns split,
Dust canyons formed in his swollen knuckles,
Disfigured fingers a monkey’s fist of rope,
The sweat crystal on his nose under shadow thrown from  a sun-bleached hat,
A dry world of scrub and barbed wire,
Rusty tin and oaks bent,
Upside down in the prism hanging from his crooked beak,

He stood in broken boots in a sharp puddle of his own shade,
Heels buried in the soft brown powder of the round pen,
Where long dead men spilled blood,
Where the hooves of wilder horses were made to stand still,
In the field the bones speak,
The old nails back themselves out,
Jim Bilt swallowed his spit and watched her eyes,

She refused to blink,
But stared back at him through muddy pupils swimming,
Wide and alert and reading him – waiting for him,
Her black hair stuck to her neck,
Her chest was full and heaving,
Her waist high,
Her legs strong,
She had broken his heart and was testing the limits of his love,

The wrangler let the reigns slide through his fingers,
So soft and slow over what tough years had hardened,
He lowered himself before her,
Offered his head to be taken from his body,
Beneath the hot sun where nothing moved,
They spoke in soft whispers,
In silence,
To decide if the Devil had gone,
His heart struggled to find enough blood to fill his body,
But the limits of his love were endless,
She bent a knee,
And then another,
Until she was on the ground before him and resting her head on his chest,
Crying,
Jim Bilt take me home.

5.11.2011