Ananthya (,I Swallowed Your Heart for Safekeeping)

Your mouth washed over my calloused skin
like a wet brush, dipped once in paint by the artist; held hard
and firm, and slow with the sureness of reaching
that end destination which only he knows.

How can a human soul contract so and expand
at the touch of flesh, throbbing?
Your heart scatters and spills. I grasp
at your chest, fruit-flesh; and gather
to me all the seeds
Oh my love my fingers form a gilded bowl
and will hold you within in safety till you are ready
to run free

Like a scalpel,

moist-edged with love, your
neon-tinted tongue
streaked in orange lighting bright cobalt aquamarine pink
my scars; Strange how
you blushed over my bruises,

and worshiped every one.


Out in the yellow heat the passion-fruits burst
under shrivelled sun; and the longing grass
dries up into thin leather strips,
but in here it's just your skin sliding like ice on mine
A wild thing rises like a bird in my throat
is it your poor bleeding heart
that you bid me swallow

or is it love is it love is it
love


When from the arch of the bridge that was my soul I watched
the night diminish into nothingness
as the star-child fell from your eyes to earth,
and woke sobbing to be taken home.
Shoved fistfuls of soil into mouth,
choking takemeback takemeback takemeback
to the sky to galaxies of
night,
Ananthya-



But rain doesn’t rise from the earth to the skies.
And I do not want this normal life.
This ordinary sun falling in through everyday glass
window where the rain specked on dust-canvas;
these quotidian flowers over the wall, so replaceable
so nothing like you


Ananthya, I tried to reconstruct you
from the image of my mind’s eye
but like a lost poem
you slip off into the watery night
my sallow eel of light