i shut my eyes and all the world drops dead

The soft braille of a tongue lets you feel whole,
the insipid lyricism of a kiss
caging you up in filigree and bone.
So much meaning derived from a sigh,
you think you own the feeling
of the notches in her spine.
Excavating bliss through phalanges intertwined.


A many splendored thing, hardly.
Honey lips? –– No, acidulous kiss,
spines curving together in the shape of a heart,
human leaches sucking on cerebral chemistry.




In the absence of sentiment the tongue is a silent machine
peppered with nerves and blue veins.
The heart is a muscular organ in the chest,
pumping only blood. Fear is a synapse that we called love.