Maya Angelou and You

My Man is
Black Golden Amber
Changing...

I felt a small hand move over my closed eyes and the gentle weight of my baby pressed sweetly over me, followed by the pressure of your weight next to mine. This is how you wake me when the sunrise calls. The urgent tug of the waiting day and the gentle whisper of half-sleep dangling delicately from the same finger. Bittersweet, like honeyed wine. The same wave of a hand, both a hello and a goodbye...

Warm mouths of Brandy Fine
Cautious Sunlight on a patterned rug
coughing laughter, wrapped on a foil of french tobacco...

Breakfast is a cup of coffee sipped leisurely on a terrace of city smog and freshly washed laundry put out to dry in the sun. We like our terrace, you and me. How we could look down at the world from where we are and pretend that we're in a different place from the people below us. A couple of flights closer to heaven. A puff of a cigarette smoke ring floating higher in a sea of nicotine air. A butterfly's view of a world where there are no flowers. We think we are like the steeples of the church that's in our view. Ever constant against the backdrop of an ever changing sky. But I've always, always wondered about this, Love. When we see ourselves in the memories we have woven through the years, I've always wondered about this, Love:

Are we the steeples or are we the sky?

Graceful turns on woolen stilts
Secretive?
A cat's eye.
Southern.
Plump and Tender
with navy bean sullenness...

I honestly don't know what that means!... I just know it sounds beautiful. Just like everything else there is. I catch myself listening to you without knowing half of the things that you say. But I understand that they are important to you. I understand that the object of the poetry that we have set in motion when you clasped my hand in yours, is not in knowing exactly what it is but in understanding what it feels like to be read over and over again just for the music of the words and nothing more.

And did I say Tender?
The Gentleness
A big cat stalks through stubborn bush
And did I mention Amber?...

One day you will be the death of me. I just know it. There is a glowing ember that has long been trying to die but can't... But won't... I haven't known for how much longer it would last for quite a while now... I should have died yesterday. Then today I could have gone over with mourning. Then tomorrow I could bury it all underground and plant millions of roses to keep the sorrow away. But the glowing ember has long been trying to die but can't... But won't... An insect trapped in the heart of an almost golden pebble through which some light could pass. Tied with a ribbon round some graceful neck. Alas, I cannot change it. Only you can make it die. This unabashed sadness that comes with the heavenly happiness of your Love. An eternal burning that no longer blisters. A tiger on the prowl, stayed only by your hand, with eyes locked. On me.

The heatless Fire consuming itself
Again.
Anew
Into Ever Neverlessness

I wonder if the heart of the Earth is as cold as mine. For it cannot be all warmth and heat in there, else we should have all exploded into atoms a long time ago. Ever steadily the fires of the sun consume itself. What happens when there is noting left to consume? What happens, Love, when you've waited too long and there is nothing left of me to love? Hell is not an eternal burning. It is an eternal nothingness. And you have made my heart a dying ember that cannot die...

My man is Amber
Changing
Always into itself
New
Now new
Still itself
Still...

And now because of you...
it will always be November in my soul.