Autumn Sings

Leaves drip from the trees
and paint the days, Pollock style.
They curdle the ground -
do their Dionysian dance.
How brave is the breeze
to send messages about falling?
We owe gravity some gratitude -
oh to fall and fall
through time and space,
as we must.
Red leaf, spiralling
without flinching -
what a song to believe in.

Autumn sings throaty,
sings mellow.
It is a frog
bloated with beauty,
glutton to life -
its croak of clarity
confides both warmth and chill -
and is in that way, carnal.
It penetrates the air (pungent, visceral).
Our nostrils quiver.

The motionless make music too.
Catatonic cloud.
Stupor of sky.
Rigour of rock.
Enigma of earth.
Stillness
with its strange violence
gives definition,
makes the hidden visible.
Our trampled emotions surface -
all the weeds of our want.

This season exposes itself,
lets itself be -
existentially, wistfully naked.
A nudity to challenge
our trappings, our swathed beings.
See how autumn handles light and loneliness
like a cloth that covers and uncovers.
A wild yellow, to soak us
with the shining forest of its thought -
to give us the best lyric of all -
relinquish.

Frottage

Let's make a rubbing.
Prime me,
press me
into your groove.
Make me
the body you adhere to.
Friction is fact -
let's begin by exfoliating
the surface skin
with the kind of abrasive desire
our art requires.
Flesh against flesh -
an agitato
a scumbling of the senses.
Breath igniting
as limbs form
a binding agreement.
Tongues deepening,
tying our pathologies together.
Only the most vigorous meeting
of vulnerabilities
to create
a lasting impression.