NIGHTINGALES

Josefa de Obido-O Cordeiro Pascal 

Joseph Noel Paton 1821-1901

NIGHTINGALES

Summer breaks its face on my arm.

I can’t remember how your mouth

Felt on mine.  How your hand was

When I put my lips on your fingertips.

My heart dances on my spine, fooling

Me into believing that love has a name

That sounds like yours but ends before

I can reach out and touch your hips,

Your lips, it, as they said, trips me

Past the dream house built of pale

Moonlight and forever and a day.

Up among the concordance of moon,

sun and our loving, bop style in mouth

Jazz explaining to each other from song

To song  how wild this thing is, wind,

The keys ripping past; candles made of

Fireflies and mission bells, tearing 

Sheets of song into tiny pieces.  Oh yes how

And howl, spurl myself digningly, plutridly

Fornicoulted, intensely exploding in charcoal

Mouth bar-b-que laughing.  There is

No further town we can be found in.

Every stop on your skin unveils the

Brisk night, irresponsible, tales told

By the blind about how the hands

Know the name, the name of all the rains,

Their particular voice, their night thoughts,

On sidewalks, opened at last, no streetlights,

No mouth of song following.  I touch

Your crazy traffic and burn acetylene yellow,

Pure green.  Aircraft land in the middle of summer.

My skin stretches, explodes and contains all

The mysterious rainbows from which we reconstruct

The language of all the endless nights of our youth.