Asking you out on a winter night

Tell me, if I asked for
a part of you tonight, would you
let me take a sip of that thunderstorm
raging through the shores of your heart?
Tell me – I ask you
for your city of dust and ashes, those
congested streets that you love, the ideals
of your forefathers; your dream, dark and looming,
transcending bodies and time... your dream,
dark and looming, that lends you blood
and wings.

I ask you for the hunger of your people, rising,
like a ghost in the colour of your eyes;
for your chaotic memories, crowded
with scruffy old men, shrivelled women, children
with begging bowls, lives lived
and died on footpaths, closed-down factories whose
rotting gates reek of blood. I ask
for your path of fire – pre-destined – scrawled
over a piece of paper.

And I ask for your whirlwind evenings, the usual games,
cigarette-end conversations with ladies
with strange surnames; your nights
of careless passion; and the
emptiness singeing your soul, as you walk
out of yet another lover's door on a stagnant dawn.

And at a rhythmless moment - you look
behind, your head tilted like half-sculpted
marble (the rest of you still
undone), your hair thick sheets of rain
over your shoulders, and your reflection
filling you with the bitterness
of a disenchanted traveller, who realizes
that the horizon has eluded him
again. And at
a rhythmless moment, when you think
your soul defeated and lost – I ask for those thoughts.

Tell me, if I asked for a part of
you tonight, would you let me hold
your hands, moulded from centuries of soil
and song? Would you place them – expressive and
warm – on my hips; would they
melt, with a drowning
madness, within my flesh and self?
Tell me, if I asked for a part of you tonight,
would you let me
Become
a part of you?