August (a love poem)

 

August languishes
Like the ass end of summer.
The streets are littered with melted carcasses
Slumped on park benches
And outside store fronts.
Half spoken conversations
Float laboriously in the air;
Collide into one another
In the middle of five o’clock traffic.
Horns blare, drivers swear
And interrupt the ‘thump, thump’
Of stagnant vehicles.
Sweat runs like rivers on foreheads,
Around necks,
And down backs to pool in crevices-
Uncomfortable and stinking.
Dreams of cooler weather fill the brain pans
Of malcontents, asthmatics, and anyone alive.
We sit outside a crowded ‘Tastee Freez’.
You eat your ice cream
While I drink a soda and grimace.
Children squeal and threaten each other
With their ice cream ‘swords’.
Sticky streams run down their bare arms
Attracting gnats and copious amounts of dirt.
“Street urchins” I spit out
As I lean my arm on the table,
Only to withdraw it immediately.
A milky, ketchup mess coats my skin.
“Oh, son-of-a-bitch!”
All I hear is your laughter.
My lone napkin just smears it
Leaving bits of cheap paper hanging from my arm.
You roar with hysterics,
“Street urchin!”
I pout as you clean me up,
“I’m not a child, you know.”
“Yes, you are. You’re an urchin.
But you’re my urchin and I love you.”
I melt.
If you cut me with razors
I would willingly bleed for you.
Instead, you feed me your ice cream
And drown me in your smile.

GOOD MORNING

As the dawn awakens you reach for me.

I burrow down close into you--

Feeling your warmth encompass me--

Breathing your muskiness mingled with mine.

Your flesh is my flesh.

Your heartbeat is my heartbeat.

I become you.

Our bodies are as fluid as one motion.

Arms and legs intertwine into one being.

We dance our dance before the rising sun

Brazen with desire--hungry with need.

Throbbing, pulsating rhythms tear at

Our thighs, our backs, our bellies.

Our bodies convulse as if possessed  by some demon

Shooting hot molten lava through our brains.

And in one long breath you relax as my own body gives way to peace.

We lay there full and at ease with the world as the sun says, "Good Morning."