wrapped in heat-foil

there's a secret place i found to keep my fear
to hide my tenderness & be vulnerable --
it's next to the smallest bones in your inner ear
the fluid skin blanket of your swooping neckline
lily-soft & somehow stiff enough to break open
the seed pod of my heart

the one i thought no one could pry apart
but with rosebud breasts -- lips --
the figure of biblical magdala takes me
away from a lone orange tree raising its
shriveled offering from the crippled earth
on sunday strolls through duckpond parks
kicking cobbled streets of augusta block
or scooping water at me smiling in cutoffs
on a hot hometown riverbank

you came to me on barefeet out of the smoke
& rain silence where i was invisibly sobbing
where heat-lightning waltzed
sneaky-pete over the prairie
& what are you if not a rain -- a wind --
a zephyr flowing through stone temple
just as the dog days of summer brought
hell across the southern field

so i've abandoned the hermetic existence
no longer a young man in retreat --
i've breached the cusp of consciousness
& buried my old dead shell with a
harp song hail glory to the contortionist god
in the back of my mind beneath the
rain soaked topsoil of dawn
among the mound palaces
of ants & mourning mud hornets
while the gray shadows of the magpie
dance & writhe on the mosaic faces of
the trespassed lupine forest

& the sun still comes up on time big
gold fluttering like a delusional cicada
over the empty pink street
i'm still fidgeting because
clouds with tails like jellyfish sting
with memories of azaleas but
you kiss away my all my latent
restless gypsy fears & keep the harsh
light dimmed or wrapped in heat-foil
in your front dress pocket & you only
give it back to me in brief drips --
pinches -- wet tongue kisses --
we talk with our eyes as only animals
can our butts in the damp sand
beside the blue sea where streaked
clouds seem free to finger the horizon
but are always cut short by the
city skyline -- a switchblade

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/5efyjt/your_sympathetic_strokes/daci81d/

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/5eezq6/a_testament_to_form/daci36z/