Our Plum-Plump Lips Mottled Mauve

Music & Visuals created by author with generative music app “Bloom: 10 Worlds; Karabekian.”

Two strangers

on opposite sides of town;

their 2-D renditions,

mere simulacra of selves;

each history

mere wood for each cross —

code paths by computation hyperlinked —

ranked by symmetry of face,

features shuffled as cards in deck

designed to vanquish solitude

of disenfranchised daze.

By algorithms swipe-matched,

thenceforth flow words

enhancing their pixilated faces,

each man drafting credo, ethos, taste

reduced to mimetic memes,

acronyms of experience

between portable screens of sensual touch.

Empathy drives rhythmic

syncopated screen-taps &

an invitation is made

as Poet Faun weaves homespun wordy web

& Philosopher exits jazz-horn club to hail cab

who makes way

to Poet’s abode,

who led by sound climbs

staircase of the brain, landings of the soul,

approaching;

where to the sound of Rosseau’s

Village Soothsayer Overture

a door is opened & two body-minds meld

interdisciplinary, each forged of scintillant soul,

strangers no more: synaptic symbiotes—

may sublimation commence—

dialectic dance of beautifully executed posits

with no fall from grace

from either mind.

By febrile hoary moon of pearly quest,

each takes their tool, quintessence unearthed,

foundation of them-home laid.

Knowing full well they alone are not enough,

both invoke respective mentors.

§§§

Nietzsche falls from your lips

with weight of basaltic honey,

your Promethean Ubermensch

makes eyes at my Baudelaire's bilious spleen,

seduced by milky globules of my godless Sade.

Our russet mud hut barely begun —

it needs more people —

the room we first erect

sprouts lush garden of

kaleido-hues:

the chartreuse of chance

tones, blue notes, scents unknown.

My bed of smoothed opaline skin

by tawny vines bound, gun-metal mortar

to the advancing pestle of our bodies

Our plum-plump lips mottled mauve

by their history of bruises,

coral-crimson crimes of the heart—

your beard my hair entangles, a single strand.

When you press your lips to my neck

I cannot tell whether my neck

is giving or receiving:

my entire flesh becomes your lips &

when you trail your fingers down my back

your own spine tingles.

I take your hand &

lick your orb of indigo eye

I take your fingers, slip tips

past lips inside mouth to tango

round my cherubic velvet tongue

what kiss or caress is mine;

what kiss or caress is yours

matters not;

there are more to come

but they will not be ours:

See?! The room fills with heart-ghosts of old,

weeping elated by the bed— can you hear them?—

troubled, silent tongues peel away clothes

from our bodies sinuous, slow.

Turbid eyes drink us up

& we are undressed to the ancient sex of song,

their voice mellifluous melody

they now believe theirs is the first

ether-chord plucked within our hut.

We allow them the lie;

our garments, disrobed, turn to tendrils & tap-roots.

They veil over us to recover what is not theirs

our lidded eyes pressed shut

they create an embrace and in it weave

a vessel of you,

a vassal of me

& in our melding of minds

their multitudes moan,

& a snake hangs

& hisses from the bougainvillea;

an apple falls from the tree

& something better is created anew.

© Pedro B. Gorman

15.5.2021