Salim Gold

First Sight

A blast of sunlight haloed your entrance—
Or shadowed you, all that gold drenching you,
Starting with your hair—copper-fire, alive.
I saw you, pale—and dark—against the sun,
Surprise the corridor, then light up stairs.
Dazzled, a gentleman wafted your bags.
I felt a blow: You were aglow—all smiles,
Oblivious to my teetering thought.
I knew then that something had changed; sudden
Feeling disjointed Sensibility.
And I was disoriented, Desire-dizzied.
I’d always charged, “love at first sight” a lie,
And I cannot say that moment was it:
But it was close enough to close the gap.

Of Rome

In our Rome of walking and of statues—
Great Keats entombed beside a pyramid—
Sunlight—more clean than popes—scoured marble white.
We bunched, munched gelato, brunched on Champagne.
No prose for us! Too vivid for mere dreams,
We loved—stuffed, ripe, with electricity:
Rome collapsed before our dizzying light.
Thunderbolts fissured our room's walls, cracked them
Into a plein-air cathedral, crackling
Black and white—me shadowing your light,
As erect as a saint, while you fountained
Bright bliss—sweat, sun-scintillant and sin-hot.
Our Rome contracted to a Sistine Chapel
Of glitter, then embers, then sparks, then stars.

Rapture

Arguably, our euphoria’s too raw:
For us, lightning masquerades as sunlight—
Or white blossoms of stars, or snow, or fog.
Our moon lists—sugar-coated—like each kiss.
If I'm as heavy as a bull, just lick
A bit of booze, and I’ll seem merely air—
As delicate—if as vast—as the sky,
So gravity, gyrating, goes giddy.
Our love's a triumphant impulse, wedding
Desire and sweat; each date metes gaiety—
A binge, I mean, exemplary coupling.
I don't womanize; I don't sermonize:
Animals destroy Innocence; angels
Defy it: That's us, naked, twining.

Consummation

You breathe, "Oh," almost whispering. I growl,
"Ah! Ah!" So sounds our cruxed, happy crisis,
That excruciating pleasure, fleshy
And resonant, that only kissing quells.
When our thighs clap—slap—together, the bed
Also bangs and shudders, and moans echo
And shiver walls, silencing all worries.
Operatically, we harmonize.
All too solo, I crave the aria
My flute (trombone slide) and your mouth compose,
That music that doesn't soothe, but pitches
Passion to a crescendo as true as
Cacophony. When we rest, I hear sighs:
Our organs, our instruments, craving play.

Perspective

Rooms 135 and 531, our 'roofs,'
Relinquished now, on you wing, Denmark-ward,
Vaulting heights where rainclouds show sunburned backs.
I train along the coast, th'Adriatic:
The sea—prima facie liquor—factions
The strand with surf, or chameleons gold
Under the supreme flame—the sun, that suave
Sparkling. (Italy’s light shows weight, body,
Even fragrance—tangerine—seductive.)
Blinding is the glare after silk shadows—
Two rooms where we picnic'd, no, made riot
With wine and cake and backbreaking union.
From Rome, I roam, a Moor, unmoored, unroomed.

Eve

My burgundy clears; night drops down its shade.
I go to bed to muse and dream aspects
Of your beauty no other man can have,
Even though Time takes much time to bring us
Within each other’s arms again, as if
Love’s whim—a passing chance, or bitter tears
Mere honey, plagiarized cheap, or lonely
Complaint only the hit tunes of a saint.
Broken sentences, blues lyrics, curses:
Our hearts should sing them since our nerves tangle
Together now, mingling orgasms and hurt—
The piercing angst—crises—of cleavage
That castrates our “double-backed,” two-mouthed beast,
But not so we can’t recoup our coupling.

Holds

Ink or seed, neither is cement for love.
Craft sweet letters or sweat all night, neither
Guarantees a hold as hard as concrete.
I rue this fact, but what to do? That’s life.
If only the heart could show engravings
Or the brain never lose hold of moments
When fire is all—breath, blood, and bone, and being,
Or flesh takes Love’s markings of tooth and claw.
In our separate living, days divide us,
And it takes will to remember a glance
That holds laughter, or gleaming nudity,
Or how a hand holds another—or falls
Away, if only temporarily,
Touching and going. We must love like that.