Kissing The Leper

Kiss the lepers that you meet,

as the spirit moves you;

embrace the uncomfortable in your life,

to grow in your light, as it behoves you.

Love, serve and remember,

instructed that beloved Swami –

who else had once said that and altered history?

This lends itself to no ideology.

One has washed the feet of transients

in the public parks or elsewhere;

hugged drunks, beggars, all regarded as sentient –

free of any trip about it, just showing care.

If you'd ever lain next to a dying AIDS-stricken,

body skeletal, sweaty, his mourning partner sickened,

and there hugged him together, held him close and tight,

then you've been there, you've known such nights.

If you'd been up to your knuckles in piss and crap,

or changed clothing on severely handicapped

with the same joy and aplomb with which you once wrung cotton diapers,

then you know what I mean, you know to adapt.

If you'd wiped spittle while feeding adults,

or felt love toward a huge bellowing, now quiet

psychotic in messed shorts, whose nails and beard you'd been trimming –

you know very well what I am talking about.

If your spirituality's too refined, you are only pious –

bring that refinement into the messy world and put it to use;

let no body be foreign to you, let the mess test the mettle

of that refinement, so that spirit has some gut and hooves.

Kissing the lepers is an internal acceptance

of forms as they are, not forced or imaginary "tolerance"!

It is most natural and native when about nothing

but loving, and serving, and remembering.

When A Man Makes Love

(July 1987, Monterey)

My lips parted   and I asked the Woman:  Woman,
       how does a man make love?  And she replied
       with such direct simplicity:  O - and
               are you a man?
My ears blushed and my breast flushed full
         I said Yes. I am.         Listen, she said,

For a man first makes love with his ears.
   He listens intently for the silent rustle
      of love's whisper, of skin wishing to yield itself
            to the hand's good touch.
From the fingertips to the soles of his feet
does a man make love   his tongue
    quivers at the mere thought of his beloved's form
                                     his ears
   carry the beloved's name whether it is known or not.
 

The lover is always erect,   never asleep,
                                     his attention steady.
His body is clean but washed with abandon,
     not primped as some self-adulator.  Every hair
       on his body responds to the scent of his beloved
         and his nostrils are always flexed for it.
   What of her absence, I asked, How
           does a man stand the loneliness?
                   She drew so close

 
I lost my breath in the sweetness of her kiss
   and therein was imparted - as the vital sap of my loins
      rose from root to trunk to branch - that
             Woman is never absent.
A man can never love enough.  To love as a man makes love
   is to come out his top    because
   while he loves the Woman he worships the Goddess that she is.

Woman is a body   and so she is every body
  and all that is beautiful in the eye
    of the Man who beholds her
             is Woman.
And in recognizing her she must be touched
   and kissed and carressed and looked at
     and fondled,    every inch of  her
    must be loved and dearly cherished first
       for her to be enabled to enter
         the body  where she belongs.

My eyes hazed in sweat      I asked How
     is a Woman's body never absent?  And her form
    burst over me and I was bathed in her
as though she were liquid air, and I saw with all my heart:
Woman is an aura, and even as you would stimulate
  all those areas of her flesh with your gentle fingers
     and tongue   so must you skillfully and generously
                                     speak to her.

A man makes love
   when he is direct and kind   firm and assuring.
  A man without sincerity never makes love  there is
       no interest there   and no balls.
A man makes love
    when his gifts are frequent and thoughtful -
    their spontaneity is what makes them original.
    Timing is everything  for the man.
Never an abusive word   never an abusive gesture,
  never even in jest hurting the Feeling of the Woman -
      That is how a man makes love.

For him she is ageless, a man does not make love
   by judging looks or counting rings on a tree.
       His eyes are fixed on the Woman timelessly.
I have wondered, I began - and she quietly
     inclined her face to hear -
           Can a Woman love too much?
She smiled and brushed my forehead
    and my temples with such affection I held her
        hand there with mine and breathed
            its touch into my pores.  She answered,

She might change her mind as to the choice of men -
   but she cannot love too much.  No one can love enough.
  When a man makes love he is knowing all the time
    that everything beautiful that he could ever set eyes on
          or give ear to   or touch and hold,
            every expression of beauty,
              every affectionate gesture    is Woman.
        That is Whom he loves.

And Woman?  She is herself the bottom line
        and the last word
           on the very Beauty of God.

 

Kiss

(ca. 1986/7) 

Feel the rhythm of a kiss: tongues in one another's cheek.

Learn the rhythm of this bliss: lips enmeshed – the thing you seek

is in the rhythm of this probing twisting meshing biting working

succulating pulsing ritual we call: the kiss.

Those Eyelashes

So delicate are a woman's feelings,
as when I consider just those eyelashes,
so tenderly should the lover regard the heart of her -
yet when but one of those eyelashes enters my heart,
robbing me of speech, churning me to butter,
then I know what a power is in that very woman!
Verily, she is in all her beauty -
and all the wisdom of that:  the grace of God.

Milk and Honey

Our Lovemaking is like the mixing of honey with milk,
bodies of satin, whispers of silk:
I fall trembling into your receiving embrace,
my head in your lap, then you sit on my face -
my arms receive you, and tremors in your loins equal those in mine,
we are like sovereign lions rolling in the grasses of the Serengetti...
the rhythm of our fucking is constant and steady.
There is nothing forced, artificial, redundant, or missing -
but listening, feeling, gazing, in that depth of our kissing.

They Are From Me

Those tears on your cheek you needn't wipe -
they are from me, for I just wept
while pressing my lips there in a prolongued kiss,
my brow resting against your temple.

And I, longing to return to you and enter your Temple,

now enfolded in your arms, my face burrowing
into your neck, nestling there, as you stroke my hair -
I kiss and kiss that neck, leaving more tears
of joy for loving you and gratitude for making love with you.