Palermo

You have burnt me too brown you must boil me again
Veronica Forrest-Thomson

    i kept having this hunch that pleasure was a philosophy    but i couldn’t explain it
      peach juice   going down   my cheek   wet penis hovering over the blue dip of my
crotch
    thin dramatic   trees making the wind romantic      as it lifts my cotton sundress
      breasts as tangerines   in a new style of existence

    my own romance      is   very pale wines
    artichokes   that i have rubbed in butter      capers in hisses of dissolving oil

      blue mountains   giving nothing       offering nothing      but fine to stay like that
        body      hot garlic altar     for a new belief system
    where pleasure     runs from between your     legs until it becomes scary

    in the new belief system    I adore the blue mountains   the sea slug
    my peach and pink slapped mouth   runs over rocks with the tenderness   of lips on cock
    with the knowingness of   unbroken ash-heavy   swooned bacteria    hands on labia
    hands on    flint when it’s been warmed in the sun    ferns like single origin dark chocolate
curls
    threshing  pleasure into  being

    here it   is then    after so long    –    the slick honey of a newly born   female
cosmology
      eating the moon creamed on brown bread
    eating cold green   olives   slowly one by one     as if we  cared for  and  respected
ourselves
    as if   we could write   a version of the waste land where the woman gets three orgasms
    where she     tightens a blouse that fits    and walks into the bracken of history

    to finally  make it  will mean    entering an unbearably vulnerable self    where i do
some version of complete love  complete  forgiveness  complete   acceptance complete
difference
     but properly    not only touching the human bits    but touching everything

      fish fumble and  sing  in the shallows    cacti suck at light blessed lemonade on sharp
straws
     blue mountains  shiver    and frame against  a   glut of  rainfall
    this belief system   brings moving bodies into the frame   heavy trees   arms and legs
    beetles   fucking jewel-like and   knowing it     sea slug with its own containing  joy

      i will have  to finally   step up   and bring the new  cosmology out  from dust
    women  and women   and everything else that there is     the living things
        peach  lips  with   orvieto rubbed on them    hot  blood  bubbling up from all this
asking

    i will have to bring the sea slug to my   mouth as if i      really   mean    business

      holding it with tender lightness   loving its thick glutenous folds   loving the silence
    it presents    its own entire self    its pleasure in the dark

      i will have to admit i’d commit  deeply to it   passionately   if the conditions worked
out
    if we    could build

            a   rapidly expanding       entire     volcanic   language       of delight