Ripe Poem by Whit Leyenberger

A gentle brown shoulder escapes straps.
Oh, to live unflourishing!
Wanting this placid geometry, beneath a tongue’s tip for
it possesses the gasping electricity that makes a thing vital.
Desperation is sown in tender things:
the shoulder’s stillness is alive
tamed malices teem over its unbroken planes
buzzing around the naked wound unsatisfied,
longing pirouettes silently turned
sustained by a festering appetite for delicacy.
Her bareness essential to microscopic life,
my carrion replenishing its means of production.
Cycling slowly in musical decomposition