years could separate us, my love;
obscured horrors were my beckon,
understanding my bane.

wheels of speech, laden on
each spoke with syllable, syntax, and
rhyme were inexorable in their progress,
escorted by light brown luxurious

motions, so subtle, of
your lips and your legs.

meaning (a large and fearsome word
implying understanding and sympathy)
rebounded -just like you- through my ears,
and leaked in sweaty strawberry droplets through each suture line
now so firmly bonded in my skull,
deviating from intention, becoming seduction,
again made clear by holed tongue gliding
,

teeth and mobile sour lips blanketed in red rolling flesh.
heavy in the
early morning of november,

time and speech made clear your
overwhelming desire (made primitive in a
retching blood-vomit episode)
to be known, opened and hollowed
under planes of deception and bleached cotton.
returning to this room, not having
even left but for your eyes, the
discourse proceeded, growing

steadily more intimate, more telling.
all i was capable of noticing then was
the name, backward in black ink, by the
eight-legged widow on your thigh.
light grew dimmer, the torchiere voltage
lowered as speech grew taut, as you and
i breathed words in progressively more
tortured, labored gasps.
everything was laid bare, no

offense too disturbing, no
failure too compromising.

all night i smelled strawberry on your hair.

we sat closer, leaning in
over carpet textured in
responsible tan acrylic,
leaning in over dangling silent words about
dreams in the lining of wet sticky walls.

the first time, it was, when i grew angry,
utterly furious on someone else's behalf.
regaining my composure,
now i was pulled, drawn in
erotic and pitying ways to your
dark spilling manner,

overwhelmed by the gravity of
new revelation, by the

intrinsic bold force of
torment and sweetest despair,
suddenly i was helpless to resist

staying there.
i said a prayer, silently,
desperate for our
emaciated and starving souls
.

forgive me, please, as i spill
out from intoxicated memory, the stale
reservoir of still deep waters.

always i will remember the strawberry smell of your hair,

meeting me even now, the scent
on my skin, in
my clothes,
entering my mind and leaking out
now through the suture lines of my skull in
tiny wet strawberry droplets
,

in tiny cold strawberry tears.

let this scent linger, my love,
over the sound of unfamiliar words; let
visions of extinguished possibility
evoke in you my memory,
discolored from age.

years do separate us, my love.
obscured horrors still my lure,
understanding still my bane
.

Timothy A. Clark
1997