Getting My Teeth

image borrowed from bing

getting my teeth

It was as if I had only just been able to see
colors and shapes for the first time...

It was confusing, each sound running into the next sound,
like the mingling reverbations of bells,
until I learned to separate the sounds,
and then they overlapped, each soft but distinct--
increasing but discrete peals of laughter...peals of bells

It is like this, the way Louis describes it,
a great awakening of the senses,
which is not what gripped me at sixteen,
the first time i read Anne Rice---

it was more the sexuality~power,
puberty's perspective the taking,
quenching the demon within yourself
 stick your head in a speaker box,
turn the sound up, if you really want to know---

this life among the cacophony, a clatter, a gong,
a screech stare into a strobe light,
flash, flash, flash faster until your retinas dull,
this---life, unending stimulation, a flip book, blink,
fast forward film reel---

until you turn until you learn to separate sounds,
moments into the little things,
unnoticed lady in the cross walk on 5th avenue,
lay your tongue along the line from
the soft spot behind her ear to the collar bone,
just to taste her h-h-heartbeat,
the black bruise that rests in her chest,
last night, her lover--- pull back, don't take too much,
let her live, breathe, no need to sate yourself on just one---

a man runs the fruit stand on the corner,
gives samples to children every morning
as they wait for the bus,
his joy heady wine almost masking
the remorse at the loss of his own,
feel the thrum in his hemoglobin
pop along your taste buds,
like too much curry don't hurry,

slurp like some beast,
have dignity for them,
but also yourself---pace the bus comes,
a tiny round face in a side window,
pink backpack across her shoulders,
silk black hair, emerald eyes and in them---
do you dare taste what pools there---

a cab driver, a suit-tie too tight-angry, soiled pup,
words wet on the brick, trash caught in a breeze rising,
separate each, sample,

loveHATEpainRElief SEcretsSOCietYsaltGRITgriefSIGHbeauty
pull your pen out, and furious- ly write poetry---

No better than vampires---taking intimacy,
to quench that which lives within us---
can you be- lieve, do you want to know what i see---
when i look at you?
I heard the night as if it were a chorus
of women beckoning me to their breasts.

Oh, Louis, you have no idea.

Brian Miller

Posted over on his site Way Station One