Hunger & Thirst Poem by Butch Decatoria

Oh hollow Thirst!

How it drowns out life's liquid scenes,

All trenchant memory now

It dries the tongue;

When recollection swims with dire aches

In the stomach lingering

Deserts

once oasis-providence:

the ease of us

sifting with the sand

Minutes limpid between caress.

Creation our chalice overflows

Quenching in and each other

Love for water

As the hours go touching vastnesses

To open us / one heavenly sky:

Illuminating you

Both assuage and succor...

But I am drought and man both

Flesh heavy / crawling through

War's searing hills

Chafed of what made me fearless

Once a Traveler discarding haste,

Still Thirsty for the palm trees'cool shade

Those Still-pictures of our bodies we felt,

Still continuously feeling.


It is as though an affliction's game

To wait

Between search and weaning

No swift elixir

I am just a bare tree leaning.

(praying for love's rain...)


This Thirst is deeper than remembering

The drink that once was Us.


. . . .



Halcyon,

I'm bathing in your adoration,

Nothing so sinful, or minuscule, as to need

Redemptive rinses of the spirit

When we were

With what we only knew how to be,

Ourselves,

yet together sharing feasts...


Which we lay out for each other

Ceremonious only through the unveiling,

Knowing how to trust in this (just between us) .


Oh How to feed that old hunger, I long for you,

Love soft mornings dew on skin,

Like when we had the outdoors with our mischief, bodies

Attentive as the grass when we look within…


Those bright eyes that pierce me deeper now

Understanding / how my breath always quivers

With the slight tips of your tender fingers.

Wish makes the body famished and weakened,

Needing

The food from in between kiss and spark

Lovely of smiles that shares heaven's glee,

In each other's sensations, feeling the answer

Rather than being told to eat…


The Reveries of wines tasted, the lifting of all things

To a memory, yet not having the full course

Of dining with serenity, finding that destiny

Has yet to begin

When love was the race I was questioning,

Kindnesses were supposedly human,

While dreams came true with happy endings..?



Hunger can make the world seem cruel

When we give up on searching for meaning,

We ourselves make

The feast of All meals

with our believing …