It's another gray Sunday
and you have left me raw,
exhausted,
and to full.
My feet itch.
I'm looking at my book of places and all I want to do is go.
Each page I flip
is a place I haven't been to yet,
a sight that hasn't filled my eyes
with contented wonder and awe yet,
a scent that hasn't teased and tantalized my pheromones yet.
I want to lay my hands all over this Earth.
I want
to stare down the vistas of Central America
as she trembles under my lecherous gaze.
I want to trace my fingertips around the faded
thousand-year old alphabets on ancient Libyan desert cave walls,
then gently press my parted lips to every last freckle
in the mosaic-tired floors of Morocco.
I want to lick that addictive sweet nectar
from Khanpur's poppy-petaled valley,
pleasure every last glacier
as they melt beneath my tongue.
I want to tongue the scars of Machu Picchu,
dirty dance with Venezuela,
sit on Cannon Mountain's great stone face,
caress the swollen aching hills of Scotland,
and clamp my teeth down hard at their tip,
strip Southeast Asia down
and walk her stretch marks around China,
erected brick by brick from the labors of her body.
I want to keep Paris and London and Berlin
and Istanbul and Rio de Janeiro up all night.
I want to learn Greek-
alpha and omega and crazy eights-
and spell it out with my hips on Athen's tip.
I want to float on Indian Ocean's buoyancy
as he yanks my hair through his currents
and thrust his salty fluids down my open throat.
And finally,
to climb and pant and force my way to release
at Nepal's peak where together we stretch our bodies,
rigid and tense, as close to Nirvana
as they'll reach.
But
I'm still here,
sitting on my couch,
my book of places dog-eared and coffee-stained in my lap.
And there's something about you
that tells me to stay in this place,
It's the way sometimes I want to inhale you,
like that exhausted sticky aroma
of another country
that comes from my suitcase
only after I've returned Home.
You are as close to Nirvana as I'll get....
