The Only One Kind of Love

I had given you my stone studded love.

Love, roaring like the lazy lion,

love, rising like the tawny sun,

tiptoeing, unnoticed, floating around

high altitudes of your unuttered wants,

scrabbling across your sky

like inconvenient polka dots.

And when you came around me,

I felt you grip my chin,

triumphant, I thought I knew the hill and smoke

and the curves and creases of love.

Or, did I, really? I never claimed I did.

I was just a child woman, walking, dreamy,

creaking, sighing, bleeding pink, purple,

smelling of rain and flowers in the crosswalk.

I had known, when I had died, and reborn then,

the slippery, impish, inflamed undulations,

the volatile, spasmodic, earthen texts

seeped in my own skin, as I wanted you

in wild, tender, epileptic spurts of tears…

…..The phone connected sounds, thick, wavy,

ether-like, through the clots in my throat,

depressive, psychotic, stretching on.

There was only one kind of love I had known,

the kind where tears swirled off the ground,

crystallized, danced, like snowflakes.

the kind where hard kisses germinated

in bumps and bolts, hungry, soiled,

smudging our faces, as we flickered,

melted, slowly, softly, peeling away like paper.

There was one kind of love I had known,

a dreamy mind embroidery. A seed sown

in my womb, craving the flesh, tissues, blood

of your own, the wild cries of a newborn.

A dream nestled, thickening, as I looked

Into your brown, brimming eyes.

…….. I had let him sleep, reaching across

the scattered ashes. I had loved

the seething unrest, the dirt and dust

as I tasted my unshackled calf-love

growing in flesh and bones,

ebbing and flowing inside of me.

You had known one kind of love,

the rich brewed color of hormones and longing,

the fleshing out in leaves and skin

as I had roamed around with you,

unfolding myself as I pranced

in the old, lean nooks of the city.

You have transcended them, while you may

Ruminate some day—the fits and storms,

The bursts of rain, the tainted fairy tale

That once you had named “true love’.

I had known only one kind of love,

An invincible, bohemian surge,

A language gone awry.

A dying out

And rebirth of the child woman,

Scraped, burnt out, in throbbing pain

And chanting melodies.