tango 1

dance of a few words

the heart, in beating, shows itself blue and red

against the parchment skin, a parchment torn or sound.

the heart's beat flowers at the wrists,

barely clothed, hardly protected from day's white

machinate light. vessels fine as hair

spread under a skin not a centimeter deep.

blood's beat is as a dance, enacted deep

down, in some center hot as earth's iron-red

core. blood's dance is as the sheaf of your hair

rolled in wind; blood's dance is the sound

of the wind that has touched you, the punishing white

light that glances off your naked wrists--

i see the sinuous shield of your crossing wrists,

and this ever-lengthening hunger spears me deep;

blood seems to drip away; i shrivel to silence, to white,

as the heart performs its dance of red,

a red to feast on, a red as impossible to sound

as is the blackness of your dark-shining hair--

like parchment, a surface, your hair

off of which the light rivers--like parchment your wrists,

which display the writing of your blood--the sound

of your heart like parchment, on which, inside, deep

down, is written that which can't be read

by one who writes only this, standing outside the white

enclosure of your body, the glancing light, white,

dancing like blood, light in your hair,

light dyeing red

the curve of your ear--dying red the curving wrists

with which you wrote such deep

messages, messages i could not sound.

the sun was setting like blood, the whisper of sound

was the word carved on your heart. my white

lips pressed themselves whiter, deeper, deep

to the point of red; the writing light red on your hair,

red on your hair, your wrists

lit red--your wrists laced with what i had not read--

the red blood word,

that wild sound

that beat in your wrists,

that turned light from red to white--

it was not my name that lit your hair,

not my name that thrust in deep.