the hours sway like Kanagawa,
like the limbs of pine and plum trees,
unconcerned by curves
of my bent and discontented discs.
the breeze has been brewed for days
under a hot shock of midsummer current.
there ride fish and
friend upon its
exquisite fiction.
you are defined by depth, a wishing
well of beauty like blue
stones in pools of quiet water.
kame, blushing shell and shelter, pot
and paper veil, languid written word like a vent
in the earth leading east to where beasts lie gentle,
let me move with the fall of your breasts
in our evergreen of exhalation.
I will wash up on the cadence
of our breathing, and lose my bitter mind
in the springs of your earth-cradles
and the folds of your clothes;
better there than amongst the dull rings
of daily concrete that sprout in all the dirty seasons.
lay me in the cotton of our meeting,
between your arms where softness
blooms in newsprint shreds, where our paper stars
cast themselves against the starving rocks
of ill-rendered red.
keep me in this web of tears that hangs
in the orange hour when sunsets sit alone
to watch themselves go down.
I long for the hold of your heart, as though
all the world might lie within it. carry me
behind your pageantry, in the scarlet surround
of life's great swell
printed on your porcelain wood pulp
and palm. let love lift our breast,
a breath in unison, a blanket of promises
re-spoken in the basement of mid-life.
kame, no matter whom your love and breath be for,
let me sit inside the ache of youth while
you sing your fragrance to the hollows of my bones.
kame - 瓶
