The Reader

I know you would come to my poem Like a tree, being fully clothed With spades and measuring lines To dig for roots in syllables of mine Unearthing the buttress to shine. Making a mess of the ground is how You prove the tree where beauty grows. I have watched you with it a full hour O what a regular baby you are Banging for its entrails like a toy Shredding it limb by limb and making Sure it never bear fruit differently After you are done. I am enjoying You enjoying the violence done to it. Some came here tenderly before To pick its bloosoms as gifts for love Or fragrance the tomb of death Where petals wither stemless and poor Dissected from the discourse of my life. You must never pick a flower Let it die upon the stem, and seed from There, the earth with poems again. I come to you like a lover, a bringer And not a taker of others joy Sniffing your body on its stem Lissom on the cool curves of wind I come to you naked to feel Your soft kisses of dew on my skin To let your balmy aroma heal My sensibilities broken like a kite. We are two poems, O let us speak Aloud the taste of words upon the tongue And feel the magic of meaning swell Beyond the verbs of what we seek. Let us expose our breast of colors Upon the milk of thirsty eyes Let us give the old traditionalist shivers And fondle only with our surprise.