Kiss Me Poem by Michael Nabert

Kiss me
Kiss me because you can,
because I dreamed last night about you kissing me,
because I see your lips flutter
like butterfly wings of pearl and I want to dance with them,
to brush them softly with my own,
afraid that the electricity of my wanting you will blow my fool head off.
Is it not enough to want you?
Do I have to ache?
Do I have to dare forwardness
and put my hand in the small of your back in the stairwell one day
and when you turn I press my lips into yours before you can protest
like a moth pressing his lips to flame.
I see the moon in my head,
she is whiter than the white in your eye
but no less consuming, no less tempting.
It wouldn't matter if there were no moon,
just diesel trucks,
it would still make my limbs feel like molassas,
like I'm trying to walk through buttermilk,
and it wasn't until I began to feel actual physical pain
the moment you left the room
that I realized the sort of trouble I was in.
I want to wrap around you like a warm cocoon,
like a mud bath with fingers and a tongue.
I want to part your hair and feel its softness on my skin:
I know what it smells like
it smells like madness,
like being dissolved by the earth,
like forgetting how to use words, how to breathe.
But your breath is too precious,
it is potent like good vodka and it insists,
entreats,
and entirely without demanding,
demands that I surrender myself to it
and now,
now I am hunting you.
Like some fluid deer of legend,
like the nymph or dryad you reveal yourself to be
your laugh is like wine it makes me dizzy:
I don't know which way is south in the forest
unless by chance it's the way you flee.
Kiss me because my mouth is a coal
and I would risk burning to give to you of my heat,
if I could write with kisses your lips could read this page.
Kiss me for all the yesterdays we didn't kiss,
for the tomorrows we might not kiss,
I cannot taste your lips but I can taste wanting them.
I can taste it in my chest
and my limbs that you change into rubber with a glance,
the shock of your pink tongue as you speak spears me like a hooked fish,
a nerve in your neck twitches and I am paralyzed.
I cannot think of a better place to die than in your arms.
Kiss me.
Kiss my fingers and my palms almost too much to bear.
Kiss my eyebrows and my eyelids shut I am blinded
but I can never sleep again without your kiss.
Kiss me,
kiss me and be kissed.
Let me kiss away all your fears and hurts
and get my kiss warm inside you like a knowing wink.
Kiss me and feel.
me.
kissing.
you.

©Michael Nabert