Birthday Dialogues

I

I am become visions:
archer without horse;
water without sea.
I cannot swim this confusion,
cannot pierce this effervescent veil.
I ride an ocean's expanse,
poems rendered without words.

II

Doubt has stricken me this afternoon.
I am succumb: plague of insecurity.

The laughter of your voice
exhumes my soul.  Insouciance broken,
I am uplifted: your buoyancy carries me.

I cannot speak these words,
cannot reconcile this disparity;
dichotomy splits me, halves this self.
I cannot look for fear of finding you.

III

Raven-haired reluctance withers my
stony gaze.  Lips full as mountains
glazed, and I'm mesmerized by
a bounty of asparagus and mint:
green flavors in oil and vinegar.
Your bosom bleeds blossoms at my feet;
lost in your lips I muse on my muse.
To refuse such blossoming flower's shrouds --
How selfish, how vain!
Your lips drive me.

IV

I am in love with the death
that comes knocking at my
door.  Each evening I am reduced to this:
a spur in a rail, a life loved, lost --
locked in a room without
walls without fears -- I write
in the dark to chase away the words.

V

My ears hum your absence,
speaking your voice in words I cannot hear.

I am a rabid dog in love with the foam
of my death.  Your absence defines me
like a spade without earth.

I am undone.

VI

Your body defines me with its absence:
gentle swelling of silky calf sought,
sibilant stroke of sensuous thigh uncaught,
striking flare of missing hip,
swale of collarbone by fingertips missed,
the sweat of your neck absent from my lips.  

My pillows lack your breasts' depressions.
Your eyes do not burn me.  I no longer sleep
in the absence of your body.  Tossing
and turning, burnt by your wick,
the shaft of me shudders with
the thought of you.