First Kiss

for Lips

Her mouth
fell into my mouth
like a summer snow, like a
5th season, like a fresh Eden,

like Eden when Eve mad God
whimper with the liquid
tilt of her hips --

her kiss     hurt like that --
I mean, it was as if she'd mixed
the sweat of an angel
with the taste of a tangerine,
I swear.  My mouth

had been a helmet forever
greased with secrets, my mouth
a dead-end street a little bit
lit by teeth -- my heart, a clam
slammed shut at the bottom of a dark,

but her mouth pulled up
like a baby-blue Cadillac
packed with canaries driven
by a toucan -- I swear

those lips said bright
wings when we kissed, wild
and precise -- as if she were
teaching a seahorse to speak --
her mouth     so careful, chumming
the first vowel from my throat

until my brain was a piano
banged loud, hammered like that --
it was like, I swear     her tongue
was Saturn's 7th moon --
hot like that, hot
and cold and circling,

circling, turning me
into a glad planet --
sun on one side, night pouring
her slow hand over the other: one fire

flying the kite of another.
Her kiss, I swear -- if the Great
Mother     rushed open the moon
like a gift and you were there
to feel your shadow finally
unhooked from your wrist.

That'd be it, but even sweeter --
like a riot of peg legged priests
on pogo-sticks, up and up,
this way and this, not
falling but on and on
like that, badly behaved
but holy -- I swear!  That

kiss, both lips utterly committed
to the world     like a Peace Corps,
like a free store, forever and always
a new city -- no locks, no walls, just
doors -- like that, I swear,
like that.

(c)Tim Seibles               2004

from Buffalo Head Solos

Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH