A Flower Story

see your darkness move
behind the pale curtains
in your hidden cove
taste the roundness
of the smoke on his tongue
in your burned lips
hear your soul breathe
as down you slowly slip
to heaven, he said

and touch the flowers in your bed
one by one, smell, caress
capture their essense in your nakedness

for tomorrow gone he will be
while the petals rot
and turn to dust
and you wait for the curtains to sway
and again paint the crazed
craving of your flower spirit.


17 November 1993
- an earlier version of one of my poems published
by the Philippine Free Press in June 1994