soul rapturing, dervish dancing with Rumi

 I can sure pick 'em, can't I?

Everyday I fall deeper in love with
Bukowski contemplating his navel
writing poems about characters too common
for poets to greet like old friends,
the dregs of society
coughing, belching or puking a sodden truth,
impolite like the rest of us when we are alone
with ourselves,

my man is a cardinal returning to me in
flaming feathers, like Icarus I am drawn
to his fire.
I scream as my face melts:
fuck you Bukowski!
I need you too much....
I need your mouth to speak my poems

I have learned to compromise,
however,
I read Neruda
I long to be his fisherman's
wife, forever captured in his net of roses and shadows
warm bread, tender green leaves and kisses that
make my mermaid's legs wobbly
and sink into stones, light as spring rain

I have been taken apart and put back together
my soul lusting in the hands of Picasso,
my neck adorned by the string of time dancing
like liliums, I am always a young woman arising
in Dali's mind,
I am thankful for his interpretation,
I am a nude at his window

What can I say of Magritte and Van Gogh?
The pleasures of flesh, a certain blindness,
hovering doves over the grey flat land
a tantalizing churrasco of sunflowers adorning
a simple table, searing my heart with a primal
voice that asks: "What shall I leave behind, oh
dark world, for which I suffered an ear,
is an apricot or an almond tree in blossom enough?"

And then there is you,
my Beloved
now coming to me, strangely from behind
our images entwined on a wall that have yet
to be written into a poem,
a song on your lips
you sing my name.