M Scott Craig
Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri
Here’s to all that have split hairs, raised hairs, Split colors, becoming an isthmus for lovers To hang onto. The world can only hold so Many of us upward. The rest fall into a trough Where they remain, unexposed.
To all the little pricks that run through Amsterdam, They come for little pageants in the streets, and Follow every scent, then give blood for fuel.
To every brown or golden nipple in the ruins Of a long continent, with sunshine marks and Hairless crescent, who give men thought of Running with vintage cloaks through Norway.
Easy kisses to all kneecaps that have left Imprints on leather couches and in sand boxes. The arch of a smothered back that is handled By a merry-go-round of fingers.
There just aren’t enough shiny tomorrows And sun-breathed waterways to flow away on. All paths lead all of us to us, to find us,
To make more of us, to us being in us.
It’s not a racket. It’s life and love and living life.
Here’s to all the blood-ripe fullness, the blue Swelling under the skin, the triggers of skin-dipped
Mechanisms that fire when stroked, touched heathens, Unexamined mouths that heave into a snail’s labyrinth.
For all the wells where souls fill after colliding, For all the weaved fingers moistened, there
Is more, there is much more, more to feel, more
To dilate, more to congregate. There are still places And parts that can be kneaded.
To anyone who hesitates upon romantic sentences With fear of overexposing, a salute. Dip yourselves Into a bugged conversation and then run a gamut Of easy verbs into your stomachs. Choke on nouns
And fingers and prepositional phrases that Fill all space with tongue’s emission.
Here’s to all misprints on fogged windows, Where happy quotes from The Wizard of Oz And Pygmalion have been remembered and Stuck to walls that have had warm bodies and Breath smashed diligently. And to the paint Left on someone’s nape and rump. To those That traced that line. That sucked it down.
That drove it in between freckles.
For all spasms that have been squeezed out of A pleasure for pleasure, for the pleasing of Someone’s pleasurable delight.
Any who can climb down the stem of pleasure, Do so now and then again.
To those who say thank you to velvet and slick Nerves whose existence remains to resuscitate Your endless motions.
To those who love to be entered by gremlins
From China and edicts from Spain and bossa novans From Argentina. There is a superfluous form All entrance makers take, bowing, migrating. Let us all drizzle out and slide into the abyss