Salim Gold

Proviso

Lovers should spend all night, all day, in bed,
With alcohol—cool, frosty, in the fridge,
The woman’s flesh—sleek, wet from Love, gleaming
Like a belly dancer showing off sex;
And her man’s sweat blazes out bright as gold
In folk tales, until he ebbs, leaks away,
Like heat, or wind, and their doubled voices
Twine, sighing in their private wilderness.

See her eyelash, fluttering in lamplight?
No blink can interrupt her loveliness.
For him, Desire is tremor and spasm.

Beautiful they are, and yet so are we:
Hot, supine hare and drooling, hot-tongued fox.
Who pretends such fierce love does not exist?

Gimme Shelter

Paris: Rain hurricanes upon the roof.
To rap on strangers’ doors and gain welcome
Isn’t foolproof—not even in this gale.

Unlike loves trapped—coldcocked—by pap fictions,
You open unto me, unlock your door,
Your arms, your mouth, your legs, your mind, your heart….

(If I mistook bile for honey, I’ll go,
Forego your tarts, truffles, chocolates, and wine:
Let thunder smash water into my face.)

We’d screw on the sofa, save it’s rented—
And wild postures would wreck the small kitchen.
We ransack wine and then we’re hotly sacked….

Outside, cold, wet monotony goes on—
Gothic. Then, white moonlight glimmers where it brushes….

Dawning

So now, let’s watch the sun undress the night;
See light—like melted butter—cover us,
While we’re cushioned in Luxury, plush Pomp
Of bed, deathbed of diabolic Chastity.

As limber as gymnasts whose physiques arc
In fluent algebra, violently
Beautiful, so must we erase divides
With fiestas of movement in siestas of Delight.

Momentous waist—as small as a moment,
Your beeline waist, I’ll pincer. Let night waste:
Our history mounts wholly moments!

Our watches’ second-hands scythe down the dark.
Awake! The hot cry of flames blackens the stars.
Love proves temporary—but like Eternity.

Mid-Autumn, Remembering Summer

Autumn’s gilded desolation wreaks waste
Of light: The bright wreckage of flowers—pretty
Sewage—gleams and gutters. Seedy sunflowers
Droop, mimic derelict ships scuppered by debt.
Though scythes scintillate, shimmying through wheat,
So cold falls it now, mosquitoes must freeze.

(It’s good that Memory stands evergreen:
Thus, summer’s sheen lives on as metaphor….)

Leaves school like flames—or flags; become cooled stars,
Ground down to dust. I remember your white
Farewell, that bright whisper, from a Paris
Boudoir, as the door closed, sandwiching light
To a sliver, and I fall—a foreigner
In my own bed—a blown leaf—abandoned….

Take Off and Landing

“Ex orient lux,” you said. Gold tinted
The sea, the horizon, as we hurtled
Toward divided homecomings and hours,
Excommunication from Harmony,
Until more light, more light, day after day,
Moves us from mutual exile to joined breaths,
Il cielo in una stanza—ancora,
Where I’d hate myself if I loved you less….

After the awe of cameras gawking
At pictures, hurtle home in ice-sharpened air,
And touch down, sad, on a flat, grey landscape,
While stifling fog rolls up, trifling the stars.

But your leaving prepares your arrival—
Quitting dark—like a babe struggling into light.

Scene

Laila, let’s ply the champagne’s cordial chill:
Each gleaming glass sparkles special feelings;
Each sip proves as clarifying as light,
Until we’re both happy, writhing like eels.

After talking, we fuck, to continue
Our joyous wit, and our loving’s lush craft,
Not half-hearted or clean cut, but raunchy:
Intercourse is salty, not saccharine.

But I’ve said nothing that really matters—
How it’s Joy that captures and raptures us,
So ideas turn sweet nothings as we sweat,
Becoming, more and more, much more—moorings
Cast off with mores—because what we must say,
In the moment’s heat, is said this one way.

Noh

Desire—that total tyranny—dictates
Quittance of strict grammar. Such makes me sick!
How else, but wantonly, to say, "I love"?
Besides, ice cannot trap fire forever….

Love mandates extinction of Ceremony:
Our words pour into night; our words channel
Or corral other words, or make others
Unnecessary:  Touch complicates Speech.

Choice follows Chance, and so, three years ago,
In that old, isled municipality,
I saw you flit—butterfly—baffling Greek,
Tumbled temples, and I trembled, but knew
I'd rather not know you than know I'd not
Tried to know you—if you would not say "No."