Empty Journeys

This is a three-part poem that was published long ago...why am I telling you this? You'd see it has three parts. Now that I have said it, I have emptied myself.

Empty Journeys

***1***

If we were to peel off our clothes
And the garbs we hold
To shield our sins from us
Then we’d see
How we have got under each other’s skin.

Warts will die
Beneath the laser beams
Of glazed eyes.
The acrid scent of gaping pores
May open up new doors
As you enter mine
And I
Your world.

In that emptiness
We find
Voices echo
Unspoken words…
Nothing need be said.
We will be rejuvenated
For we have found the hole
Where the heart once dwelled.

*** 2***

Touch me, you said.
I felt your breath
On my ear.
I thought that was touch enough.

Do you need skin and flesh
To mesh?

Are words not adequate
To say yes, no, always, never?
Don’t we use them
Like sweat dribbling down our bodies
As we burn the heat?

How can I touch you anymore
Than I already have
Without singeing you
Or myself?

*** 3***

It was a free fall
An unseen call
As I jumped from the cliff
Into a river.

Breathless, I drank off it.
I was thirst itself –
My desires
A never-ending stream.

I went deeper,
Entangled in creepers.
Fish licked my wounds
As my blood trails navigated me
To seek something
That was never to be.
I crashed against a rock
And hit the waterbed.

I saw you there.
I could not touch you.

I think I was dead.