If the Book Closes

if the book closes
walnut eyes, draperies before
a countenance without a face, your
eyes are jellyfish—soft, colorless, juicy,
tender, and jealous—but with electricity
you keep me and sting me.

allow freely the
smoke-glimmer along the crescendo of
your lips, smoldering soprano
your voice as distant as juliet's tomb and
the showers in danae's ungodly womb;

your body, limbs free
as a supermarket: wild as the stack of oranges and apples
giggling under rows of cornflower mist,
trust as cherry-kissed
your mind as the door which
has opened many times before, to which
skeleton keys may find their way and roost the path
into the keyhole at last; but one key
at last

gold fused the light of day
with the bosom of the night; oh you. and you
are the silence gathering at
the bottom of the stairwell, and you
well up your soul like a book, richer for
depth and the
liquid of yourself, placed inside the
dream of a dusty sunlit shelf.