A cool hand gracing mine Curved and cupping my breath These rituals for his amusement- A stem twisted in my fingers His smile shines in this light He tells me how life flatters me The blood reddens my lips- May he Oh should I deny this frosted touch When one day all my kisses and night walks Shall belong to him The waves tickle the sand His thumb traces my knuckles- Silent suitor doing inventory Your soundless footprints echo mine Are you impatient until the hour I must slip into your embrace Or would you steady my hand As I reach through the veil Smile cold one to feel my warm touch Perhaps the marble-smooth arms Of a thousand perfect beauties Pale after a millenia or two Is it time for something that pulses And shudders at your touch ********************************************** Let me stare into your sun until my fingers loose the nets and hooks Of numbers and photographs Of ancient crimes Borne against a girl who is not me She bears my name She is an ancestress She breathes no more Your lover s lane Strolls over her grave If you listen you may hear her She is a spindel Her yarns a tapestry Of bright-eyed cannibals Each eating a candy-apple red heart These tapestries have served me well I have often bundeled my milk-fresh skin in them Their threads weave such subtle gauntlets for me Dazzing my heart still You are melting them Leo As the metal glows and freshens this silk-skin Your cool fingers whisper As they secretly pluck The ancient metal from my viens Freshets of healing book Soaks our fingertips and stains these cautionary scenes I have learned well enough -Tapestry