by Doug Tanoury

August Rain

  
I remember an August once  
When I could talk to him  
But didn't and each word unspoken  
Rested like a brick on the silence  
That lay thick as a layer of mortar  
And grew into hardness between us  
  
These days I think of him  
Mostly when rain falls in gray sheets  
With a soft hiss as droplets  
Paint the pavement with color  
Of an overcast sky and collect  
On the road in pools brought to full boil  
  
In summer storms with the  
Sound of thunder on my skin  
I recall in the air's smell and  
The wind cool in my hair  
An August once when rain fell  
In mortar gray hardness on our silence 

Salome Dancing For Herod

  
If I was in the great hall  
Of the palace  
Watching Salome dancing  
For Herod  
I too would marvel  
At movements  
So erotic and executed  
With animal precision  
  
Her heaving breasts  
Swaying pelvis  
The white waves of her skin  
Moving in soft undulations  
Across her abdomen  
And I smile knowing  
That the king and I  
Are both drunk with dance  
  
And the beat of the music  
The rhythmic flashing  
Of bare thighs  
Naked belly  
Awaken the pagan in me  
Who knows that lust is to love  
What poetry is to prose  
A sensual awakening of sight and smell  
And sound and taste  
  
And I would swear too  
At that moment that the bounce  
In each breast  
Was worth the heads  
Of a hundred prophets  
And is more moving to me  
Than the words  
Of all the holy men in Judea  
 

At The Waldorf

  
At the Waldorf  
Where desserts are done in art deco  
And abstractions in chocolate  
Twist in many shapes  
Everything is golden  
  
The lobby a cathedral  
Large and brightly lit  
At a table draped in white linen  
Like an altar prepared  
For solemn High Mass  
  
I study the ceiling  
Done in Greek revival  
Where reliefs of nudes  
In white plaster  
Resemble marble  
  
At the Waldorf  
Where words are whispered  
Like prayers of the devout  
At an altar  
Draped in white vestments  
  
And in gilded murals  
On Peacock Alley  
Where I see a sugar-coated sunrise  
Over the rundown landscape  
Of the far eastside