Temptress

Meditation on Her Bust
Raised a Southern gentleman, I’m obliged
somewhat to euphemize these sentiments,
oh alabaster goddess. Rudiments
and archetypes of Love coil, and are pledged,
in those ivory hills (it might be alleged
yet that I am a scoundrel), torrents
of allure grace soft lips, curving laments
from mothers lost to sons astray and hedged
all ‘round with Biblical pitfalls, and yet
we [...]

Love Myth

Another Myth of Love
Desire is love’s seed, they said, but I knew
better even as I planted deep my
seed. Their infertile hearts desired lust’s cry
of carnal longing, and nothing more. Few
have learned as we have learned, love, and lust, too,
are but fires within our hearts and selves. Try
as we might, they smolder and never die
while we [...]

Drowned in Beauty

I Almost Drowned
Spring, and the water lilies were in bloom,
so I took my Grecian urn down pondside
to fill with water for my hyacinths
and Labradors. What a delight to find
seven maids swimming naked and brazen
in spring’s mad equinox. And yet . . . oh pale-
fleshed goddesses, how can mortal choose one
beauty’s epitome from others? I
could not! [...]

Swimmer

Swimming Choppy Seas
It was calm when first I set out to swim,
but then Aeolus let loose his howling
winds and waves rose. Swimming against currents,
strength nearly spent, I spied you chained to stone
and waiting as though sacrificed to some
Kraken or stormgod. Weeping, naked, you
called out against the sky, or some father
coward enough to forsake you. And [...]

Desert Nude

Wandering in the Wilderness . . .
It was a boyhood fantasy, coming
across a bare-breasted beauty in some
deserted place where she might rely on me
to rescue her, and her all willing
to reward my capable action with
tenderness and something undefined . . .
 
But now a man, I find myself here
in this deserted place, with this bare-
breasted young [...]

Ulysses

After Twenty Years Estranged
You wouldn’t believe, Penelope, things I’ve seen;
I barely believe myself. Such wonders in the wide,
wild world. But no beauty above your own, greater
now even than when I left, unwilling, to tear down
walls at Troy and slaughter hapless men whose
only sin was to raise a sword or spear against me.
But even after, I [...]

Wild

 
My Wild Love
Must have been the wine . . . can’t seem to recall
how I found you there, lying naked on
a spread out leopard skin, or at least
something patterned that way. Oh, and that
convenient golden sash. But mostly
I recall the haunting challenge of boredom
in bedroom eyes, at once sad and longing.
The pout of your [...]

Psalm to Bathsheba

Song for Bathsheba
Bathing as an angel, you, my naked
beauty! From first I saw you airing dry,
I knew my heart gone, saw cupid take it
 
oh brutal arrow! slayer of three, make it
right to wrongly act! Oh, but tell me why,
bathing angel, you stood outside naked
 
for me to see . . . my heart now yours, rake [...]

Showers

After Spring Showers
Her beauty is the sky of my world, her flesh
my earth, her blood the rivers and ocean,
her eyes peridots faceted and star-brilliant,
her bones and hair are every forest and brush;
I fall to worship as drops roll down those hills
toward southern climbs, where the triangle
of her altar to femininity calls me to worship
and I [...]

Tanner’s Demise

Thief of Kisses
He was a fiend of hearts, was Jon Tanner;
seducer of women by wine and by song.
But one day a maiden too fair did Tanner
meet and kisses steal and away into the night
stole as though no promise lied through
puckered lips might hold him to a single
heart. But Duke Marinton’s daughter
had no will [...]