Salim Gold

Revery

The little sparrows' nest among the ivy
Cries, raucous with the arrogance of birth.
Alike agog, the Aegean grates on stone:
So Rodos works white marble gainst white waves.

How I wish I could press you against me,
Or just say it: My head's a grave of flowers,
A cemetery of light, for Desire
Disgraces, disgusts, me.... Why should you care?

Look, Rodos' sky burns into the water;
Wind-swept darkness, buttercups of stars, loom-
To orchestrate your clashing eyes and hair.

I've Blanc de Blanc-white South African wine-
T'es toujours aussi belle. As tonight dawns,
May I, cavalier, ask? Might you accept?

First Eve

Your cool disciple, beside you I traipse
In rain: Wet fury nails itself to wind.

But we ascend the hotel's tower, take wine,
Negroni, sleepy alcohol, while air,
As sharp as sleet, drills grey-white gainst granite.

A jazz club's next: Topsy-turvy guitar,
Music that scorches like fire. Watching you sway,
I'm swayed-persuaded: Cease now mere Kindness.

Rain's piss-pale, white as winter, when we stop,
Nigh midnight, before the Main Post Office,
After rose, while woozy breezes wheeze.
Now a hungry man looks at you. Answer:
"Yes," and four lips meet. On the hook of your kiss,
Caught up now, in Rapture, is all my flesh.

Consolation

I come, in panic and rapture, to you,
So be-lovely and re-lovely always-
A girl of perfume, blunt, superb beauty-
Laila-thin, angular, a waist like that!

I come to you again for ecstasy
Of completion, after wine, much red wine,
Luscious, cold, red wine (nothing is sharper):
You taste like sugar and smell like fresh milk.

Domesticity is minor music
Bluesy, bland, or schmaltzy, but soothing still
As is coupling-severally, viscerally.
I can't lie: I prefer our commotion
Your wild, Copenhagen freshness-to calm,
As if copulation's Consolation.

Another Evening

Geneva: Mild lamps, anchored in metal,
Colour night yellow. Breakfast will provide
Homely teas in insufficient teapots,
Plus butter's plush, disarming luxury.

While we navigate Solitude's downtown,
The moon looks foggy in the midnight now;
Palmed avenues crowd to the lake. Marble
Floors admit us to the hotel, gleaming.
In eight hours, the breakfast staff will prepare
Homely teas in chipped pots. But, here's our night
Of showy stars. Beyond our affiance,
Bankers trust their cigars and laugh at debt.

Wine purrs into our cups. I hate to see
You dressed: Let night be your lingerie.

Venetian Eve

The final sun paints brilliance o'er the earth.
I'll channel muddy wine, then undress flesh,
Splurge virgin kisses on your urgent mouth,
To make our bed a charismatic Hell-
An opera of flames. How I like this,
Grappling you-capricious apparition,
As beautiful as The Kama Sutra
And as beautifully perfumed, et cetera.

How watery is Venetian marble,
And how ephemeral, evanescent,
And intense is this light-like orgasm,
Or Lust. Love demands desperate esprit,
To start from zero, each midnight and dawn,

And forge Fulfillment before one is far.

Toward April

O! When will April kill Winter again-
Blow snow and rain through us, and down shudder
Blossoms (such Gotterdamerung glitter)
Perfumes that hurt the air-so Clime succumbs?

That kind of light is not available,
Save when apple boughs gleam in bridal white,
And our clothes become too much, too many,
And Desire beds-disorients-us all month.

Voluptuous, this April, was Venice;
Night brought bas-relief breasts, albescent,
Plus clinging summer showers-our mutual dew,
And cries-trilling, twittering-in our ears.

Post-union, great warmth freshened us. At dawn,
Paled an orange moon, halved; a black starling chirped.

Genealogy

What's genealogy? Queyntes and coffins:
All go from one and into the latter.
It's a tight combo-taut measure-that draught
And meal elongate, no matter how short.

But too much pound cake and too little love
Defines our curse, swears one theology.
Yet another preaches, "Each face secrets
Layers of dead people laid out beneath...."

We should be christians, not pure animals,
So frequently, casually crucified,
Knowing this world entirely as Despair.

Yet uncivil Pain prompts unholy prayer,
A ferocious scripture of Need, to set
Finally-one's soul in tune with one's bones.