The Kiss

"There is some kiss we want with our whole lives, the touch of spirit on the body." ~Rumi

"O let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth... for your love is sweeter than wine, and your name is perfume poured out." ~The Bible, 'Song of Songs'

“Jesus loved Mary Magdalene more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on the mouth." ~Gnostic Gospel of Philip

Beloved, if you understood this mingling of mouths, you would not fear the spirit or the body. In pure meditation, they taste alike. After all, in kissing, one is two and two are one. The full moon is fierce sunlight, cooled in the mirror of a caress. Breaking foam is the dance of the immoveable and fathomless sea. Your heart on fire with me, my heart on fire with you, we need not grasp for form, we need no fuel to burn. These are not lust flames, but petals on a white peony. Just let it burn! Healing without destruction. What do you want, Friend, what do you really want? Moments of passionate forgetting, or one eternity of breathless splendor?

Don't mistake this for a love poem,
or an end of life poem,
or a poem about mouths of flesh.
This is a poem about a kind of prayer
in which darkness burns up our eyes, 
our faces forget themselves in mirrors of fire,
and the metaphor is death:

the touch of widening selves.
Unlike plum blossoms bursting in moonlight,
our opening never closes.
Knowing and unknowing, nakedness 
and the wearing of wine-stained garments,
secrets we whisper and secrets we keep:
all one kiss obliterating lips, body, spirit.

In this form of prayer, I am your wick, 
you are my flame, we are tongues tasting 
God, scorching the earth and sky with song, 
annihilating even annihilation...
Then we rest like weary knives, sheathed
in each others breathing.