--YOU LOOK BETTER THAN ALL THE GOLD IN THE WORLD

                                A Thousand Sweet Kisses

1.

You kiss me abstract, with one eye blushing, your lashes on full alert.  Every gear is in rotation, in 4-wheel drive, in all four corners of the globe.  Your gums taste like key lime pie, your tongue a cinnamon stick doused in espresso.  We kiss and perspire, kiss and perspire.  Our bones Salsa and Tango.  Our breath never tires.  Like the sun, we keep hanging, until it’s time for one of us to go down.

2.

Your lips are sewn on me, like a moveable monogram.  You sing me color, sixty fountain suns, a new life more malleable, but better than the last one.  Our tongues sword fight, get a couple’s massage, and rewrite all of Shakespeare’s sonnets.  Your tongue has tricks up its sleeve, a pistol in its holster.  You fire away, never miss your mark.  I take each bullet, die over and over again, never happier or more alive.

3.

The sound of you sleeping is like the desert in a jar, soulful and worthy.  Then you stir just to stir, a cricket nudging my knee one second, the next a mirror in need of new polish.  The way around your back is across the overpass, and so I take it slow, steady as she goes.  Even in this shallow light, I find new galaxies on your skin, lily pads floating parched in a sea of skin.  But there’s a tongue for that.  There’s a reason why freckles incite riots, a reason why they giggle and whisper, “That tickles,” under the covers.

4.

Your mouth is spun sugar, lips pulpy and gummy bear soft.  I sleep on the lower one, feast on the upper.  I am the lipstick you no longer need, the breath swimming around each tooth.  I am the slippery brook spooling on your tongue, the faucet that’s never dry.  Dead or alive, I am where I’m supposed to be.