wild Roman love affair

The wild legacy of Rome has sprouted

tall fiery children who leap from ground

sowed thoroughly with shark's teeth

 

Ya! shout the encouraging ones;

'break the fishing nets as if they were arrow shafts over your knee'

 

Listen! whispers the dangling coquettes;

'are you kissing my lips

or feeling yourself kissing my lips'

 

Fire! hiss innocently the fascinated boys, studying the flickering veladora candles

slow patient breath... exhales the sincere lover... slow patient breath;

 

my sex voluptuously breathing inside you

 

I am walking on a thread which seems to tie itself about my feet

hence I have begun walking on my feet -

and now I seem to be tying my legs into knots.

 

I find myself looking deeper still into the rich Chinese mirrors

that I had fashioned for my lover at one time:

I see myself clearly enough in the elsewhere...

 

where what is brown is my laboring body

what is green are the hills made fertile under my hands

what is golden are the life-fragrant kisses of my children

what is the deepest blue are the sincere eyes of my loving

the seduction of a Chinese mirror however is - simply -

that the more one dreams inside it

the more entangled you become in the dreaming of the dream;

tying your walking legs in knots...

and collapsing over and into yourself

 

So I could regale you with softening conversation

of the exotic or the perfect or the glorious,

I could engulf your beautiful listening ear with my warm sincere tongue;

but in your elegant passivity I will become lost and overwhelmed -

thinking you are listening to me because you love me

and from there diving - without saving a breath - unto You;

But Woman! you are not the luxurious reception of a fertile life-bearing sea

but rather the cold scorching expanse of stratospheric sky

 

Salut!

this is not a lamento nor a provocatio

 

Actually this is the allowing a feeling to bloom that I allow myself to say:

Inside these lips and behind these eyes,

running through these sturdy legs,

and

carressing your pleasures with these hands

are the tall fiery children

born in my fertile soil

from the wild legacy

of our entangling Roman love affair.

Done