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O SAN FRANCISCO
your living memorials glide down
Ellis and Geary streets
on weary feet:
FIRST,
(TRIOLET)
sailing, assailing, old clothes’ flapping
winds and floating
barges in traveling lanes,
dense of humanity bait, barracudas on
strike,
sailing, assailing old clothes, flapping
winds and floating,
down the hill towards Powell and Market
streets’ sacred cement grounds, bleeding gutters,
forcing pathways; slicing people, one
way or the other, lingering old residue, ugly karma trails,
sailing, assailing; old clothes’ flapping
winds and floating
barges in traveling lanes.
First phase in “O San Francisco”
N. Unpublished final draft
from: Nature Passion Poems
In Seasons Of Transition, ms.
Copyright 2005 Kimi Julian
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SUTTEE FOR THE LOVER
Suddenly I cannot connect to his spark.
Every chakra that fires up at the thought
of him stops
fizzles out at its frayed extended ends
madly coughing synapses.
His presence within me begins to atrophy.
I stare up at nightfall as black mist
dims moonshine with a smoky cloak
and know as I think of you:
You left
or plan to
will confess if I force you
that you desire no more of me
except perhaps at your future convenience
on your terms.
I am trapped in a sealed urn
cremated alive
still burning with no mouth to shriek
from or kiss you
charred powder among bits of bones and
small gnarled knots of tough sinew
beef jerky for hedge hogs and food for
humus and your pointed drilling worm.
What is left of me that is buoyant
popped the lid open and curled out like
a jinn
steamed into the hemisphere blue hued
cigarette breath—suddenly
collapsing
descending on your head
fell as small dark stars at your feet.
Kneel please.
Recall dipping your hands in my resinous
myrrh
spilling from my ruby lips liquid amber
heat as I clung to your fingers
extensive tongues
when I was alive inside and out.
Lick anyway.
Taste musky brown caked earth
with bitter charcoal crust that is me
worship before my gate again and beg
before what was my temple door
its dusty remains facing you
still
opened.
Look in the direction of Hades for me
ground down
now:
Remember Orpheus begging for Eurydice
to come back to him
as my thin wisp laps an obscured image
of your face
peering at me wide eyed with sorrow.
Me
gazing up through hard undersides of
packed clay
a thirsty bitch
digging a hole to you with reflected
appendages of a vessel I once owed
that once stoked your skin while you
slept
sweetly moaning
like a woman so pleased
she melted into our bed below us.
I will become the spring flower that
blooms yourself
back at you.
My ashes as fertilizer.
Consider bits of me at this point in
your personal observations of
everywhere you looked and went inside
others.
Parts of you saw as clearly as mine
did
a puzzle unfit for your interior design
of the time
the rest diverted by
a little here
a portion there
in another
but most pieces were in one place
more than any other during our lifetime
sharecroppers that we were
harvesting gold with your pick in my
tunnel
exploring together the learned
the foreign.
The repeating us inside periodically
awakened by your persistent expeditions
identifies the noise and
cracks my soul door open to hear
the lover that will say
“I will wet my fingers and dip into
you yet
consume you
even if I have to wait until I am old
at your fiery end to have you.”
To him
I offer my total containment
the joy house we once shared
or should have more
did to some extent
burned down into dust for want of you.
If you had gone down deep enough for
me
my ash blonde taste
through my cut lime green eyes.
If you can perform this ritual
whatever you ask
I will say “yes!”
with or without lips
filled or uninhabited by you
but this time
I am finally gone
to an empty place I am familiar with
Kamala as my traveling partner
Eurydice as our guide
Shekhinah concealing us in Her unmistakable
shadow.
Our heartbeats
match rhythm with Hers
as yours fades into an expanding distance
of requited death:
My flaming ardor
my rose’s odor.
N. Unpublished final draft
from Passion Poems For Kamala, ms.
Copyright 2005 Kimi Julian
This poem is dedicated to the courtesan,
Kamala, a primary character in Hermann Hesse’s novel, Siddhartha (trans.
Hilda Rosner [1951; rpt. New York: Bantam Books, 1971]).
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