Lips of Democracy

John Davis 

Remember that slick kiss on Main Street?
Mercy was rockin’ a dizzy breeze of electricity
more roll than rock ’n’ roll, our tongues young foals
snapping sunshine. So what if fountain stones
were listening, if the city was cinched tight
in traffic lights at the peak of afternoon. How many
dismissed kisses have unhealed bodies, cold-cocked
skulls, shaken bones back to hidden paths of loneliness?

Even if melody sprung from the scent of magnolia
is the only rhythm to summer your mood, the lunacy
of love is still in you. Maybe you nibble on nightmares
hoping for prophecy. You see something in the rain—
nape of neck, steam ravished with iris. Your lips are
dueling pistols at twenty paces waiting for bullets
to slide wide. Don’t dominion the Indian summer.
There is hyacinth to be had.