Velvet Hand

And you know,

When I touch you,

I try to ride the molecule

Just on your skin,

Hovering, not touching,

delicate as velvet,

Casing you in my tactile desire.

And you know,

When I have you under my hand,

I feel down to your marrow.

I know your skin with a tailor's intimacy,

But there,

Beneath the skin,

Muscles the mind's eye sees,

The mind's hand slips

on the slick of,

Vessels the mind's grip feels,

Pulsing, pumping,

Red bath of blood.

Bones the mind's hand polishes

Pink to white,

Moist to dry,

Marrow the mind's mouth nuzzles,

The mind's tongue suckles,

probing one layer more.

I look at you,

I see the skull below the skin

And love those stark geometries,

long to nestle in the caves and

hear the hum of sleep

and breath and murmurs—

words dreamed then half spoken.

I see the brain cased in the skull

And love the dark and shadow,

Love the play of current where

dream files realities

and mind hides, making its

grey meander in the canyons

of your sleep.

Your body claims me,

It is not surface but content,

It is not obstacle but domain,

It is not a wall I lean against but

a sea I swim,

bathing my mind's body.

When I am in you,

Your flesh grips me, tight as a child's fist,

And I am not a tube of alien flesh;

I blossom into you, penetrant as roots of grass;

I touch, with delicate tendril, every organ;

I weave through your bowels and lungs,

Filling capillaries,

bursting silently, gently,

from the pores and follicles;

I fill you all and feel you all around me,

Home at this last, at last.

There's no love like this,

There is only being,

And one being,

The one we are.