the colour and the shape

I brought no bridle,

only salt for the tongue,

a whisper in the grain

where hoofbeats sleep.

I have loved like famine loves a field —

slow and total.

Ven,

let us speak in the dialect of thirst.

You tell me horses scream

At one another

When comes time to meet

Unwelcome friends.

I imagine that they rear and stamp

And make a ruckus,

Like slasher movie teens.

And I know you for the creature

That you be,

For we are critters both,

Basted in the atoms of a Fall,

Such things as vessels

Full of love.

I know

Not

How

Much

Appetite for the sensual you may contain,

But I crave

To plot the points upon the slope

Of your heroically geometric nose

With such tremulous lips as I possess,

To feast upon the flavor of your breath

And drink your name in fervid mouthfuls,

Big messy gulps,

Like a man so parched.

'Til we are as

Two cisterns linked by an aqueduct.

Water the horses

And tell me what color are their shrieks.