kali

Winter’s white cremation—from its quietus
shoots arrow-tipped croci. She greets this bed
of nails sprung from the ashes of the elements,
from anger and lust
                     with a rush of pirouettes,
a dervish, her girdle of dead man’s hands
rising towards the heavens. Her unaffected thigh,
her sun-darts lance the heart of the white child
watching. Immortal,
                  primordial, the blackest moon
garbs her body, a black swallowing the pigments
of day—the boy grows on the whip of her fabric.

~

streets blue-black with spilled rain,
he eyes the copper head tilted back
     against a twenty-foot leg

  which climbs the store-front into antique
violet lace     / a lingerie advert lost on him /
   he's captured instead by the little crooked canine
                   exposed in a smile

in his mind, he nibbles her lip,
         licks that topsy-turvy tooth

until he is distracted by the dark sprite
boarding the bus       the curve of her calf
     invites him, conscious
a beckoning

                  wait, that girl there!

    he itches to squeeze her
like the political sandwich boards she's wearing
               as she scratches her nose
and examines the sky        burns off the clouds
with her intensity, loosens knots
     of trenchcoats all around

where underneath, the fair ones
       call for summer

~

Play Shiva to Shakti—face your fears
in the multi-faceted dew of her bracelet.

Watch Kali in her white dance, light ascribed
to the unbridling, the parliament of woman,
   
a male undoing. Dance her dance in wholeness
and wine. Recognize, in her face, all the knowing

of a goddess—the goddess-all-knowing.

~

        his key, their lock
through this doorway      on hot moonlight
she stretches, her thighs scarcely in check
  as she says hello in a stage-whisper

left-handed darkness, moonglade
  on the river between her shoulder-blades
down where, her down        her skin
     the skin, the rising to and fro     deep, her
       breathing mingles back
and back she comes in his gaze

hips and breasts disarranged
  head and nape askew, the theatre
she’s surrounded in plays
   his desire, a blueish shadow
        riding, illuminated, sliding

incendiary this moonlight, fingers ignite
    the rhythm on frosted fur
he takes his first
        warm taste, slips his tongue inside

   what perfume is undone!
on his tongue come the others
  snaggletooth, hot dark sprite
springing from between sandwich-board
         sheets

these faces the window loves, the window
      pouring night heat
over her advances      she of a breeze
climbing up to stand over him, one foot
on his thigh, the other on his breast
  climbing down to

            ride light, full

      with weight

     riding astride, equestrienne
a necklace of skulls bounces off her arm
her rose breath rains secrets       he

            is undone