Steel Switches in the On Position

There aren’t any more ways to tell you I need you,
no more storms to pull off the African coast
There are no more apples left in my basket,
no ways to convince you that I love you the most.

At any other moment I might be a happy man,
At home in the shadow of looming trees
Turn away from the falling cicadas,
away from the dying bees.
But tonight I’m a cormorant stuck in an oil slick,
the honey of the moment is thick,
and at this second I’m here at your knees.

On any other day I’d take my pain,
make it grow like a barbed wire vine,
let it slice and thrive
until its iron sheathed buds unleashed relieved exhalations.
But today the hurt settles in,
a Siamese cat on satin pillows
licking its fangs, reminding me
of your lazy, supple stretches on Sunday mornings.

When I’m with you
All my steely switches are in the on position-
The incendiary bottles stuffed with gas soaked rags
are loose, hot missiles
flying at the bridges I want to burn.
If I can’t walk on the Pont Neuf,
If I can’t kiss on that small cleft
In the middle of your chin,
I’ll feel like a passenger left
floating in the garbage of the Seine.

You are the river underneath me
You walk the red coals searing all of me
You float down my rapids and laugh at my deserts
You direct the caravans in my wandering mind.

I am a french horn engulfed in flames,
a trumpet burning hot in cherry embers
Your heat melts my mental metal
into unrecognizable curlicues,
an instrument without a name.

Baby raise that little red bar of mercury,
Lick the numbers and shatter the records,
keep teasing and stoking the soaring temperature,
Shatter the glass and help me escape.