A Dream of Hanuman

Om Sri Hanumate Namah

Drowned within the monsoon air-blush,
Symphonic crush of petals, swirling
Above the tongue-chant, rushing, I

Flush delirious at the scent of you, winged
Monkey-warrior-boy, languid against me
Resting. Your wind-breath gnarls this

Smear-garden of color, your eternal tail restraining,
In a tender bondage, coiled. I, time and in between
Again, awake — dream-met, my face reddened.

Such consonant bliss grazed by your language
Always at the tips of these fingers, burning.
Those essential parts of you, worshipful and —

Maddeningly that whisper — simian and primal,
Sex and sadness, honeyed in day-sleep, coerce
My fingers to stroke your venerated face.

The gentle ache, foolish, as bestial within me
As these hands which clutch, these lips that furrow
The pools on your downy chest, re-tracing.

The iron grasp of you is — against this hurricane
Of flowers — the rose, the rock, the pinkened
Granite of the ground rising beneath us;

Is that which sets ablaze these chants
And verses that you feed my mouth. These words
That from me bleed and drain, that storm

In drops upon the stones, may not elaborate;
Nor should I trust but that the seed
Of our first meeting in the forest-dream

Flows within me still, attending. Bitter and delightful is
The urge to clothe myself a figure in your celibate skin
Or that my tongue-piece should then wish

To willow in the unceasing curves of you — to feast upon
The sun in your mouth, the glow of your wind-battered
Omens brought from heaven — for that libation poured

Out in shadows beneath this marriage bed
In the swaying branches of our sacred banyan tree.