Making the Love Scene

 

you slamming the door is
(…a beautiful place to be born into
 
if you don’t mind some people dying all the time…)*
a smack of arrival.  I hear

squeak of Nike on linoleum, accented
by the rain outside.

it’s hard to pull myself off the couch
my butt lazily glued there during the

rainy day.  I do, to glue
my lips on your face before you

set down your bags.  Close your eyes
while my tongue dances on your

tongue, your lips.  My eyes close because
(Oh the world is a beautiful place to be born into
 
if you don’t much mind a few dead minds in the higher places)
your feel is a memory of my taste.

(Pictures of the Gone World can wait;
but then right in the middle of it comes the smiling mortician.)

And open—

Your skin smells of peppermint (that’s odd)
I never knew your tongue to be so sharp, nor your lips
to be so
                open.  Your mouth
     seems hollow.  Your eyes don’t follow mine
                                           as they dance from the nape of your neck
                                to your breast.

No bra?  Your nipples erect, a deep brown I
don’t know.  Your neck tastes like
candy.  Take hold of my hand
to the places I should know.

                                         I feel your left breast for the first time
                                         the white wet shirt a tease
                       I don’t know this panting
                       the heave that matches the pinch.
                                       Your hair breathes Herbal Essences, I thought
                                                    you used Pantene.

What happened to the cinnamon
that used to dance on your exhale?
The honey that used to drip from
your thighs?
                                                It’s all peppermint and crème,
                   it’s all liqueur and chocolate.  I don’t remember
                                              the join of your legs.  Wasn’t it
                               smoother?  Take
       my hand.  Do you know it?
Put it where I can remember.
Not between your legs, or at the sweat that
                                tingles between your breasts,
                                          but at the curve of your ear
                                                         or the slope of your navel,
                                                                take my hands
teach me.

I’ve never known you.

*all quotes, L. Ferlinghetti