Five Poems By Doug Tanoury Salome Dancing For Herod If I was in the great hall Of the palace Watching Salome dancing For Herod I too would marvel At movements So erotic and executed With animal precision Her heaving breasts Swaying pelvis The white waves of her skin Moving in soft undulations Across her abdomen And I smile knowing That the king and I Are both drunk with dance And the beat of the music The rhythmic flashing Of bare thighs Naked belly Awaken the pagan in me Who knows that lust is to love What poetry is to prose A sensual awakening of sight and smell And sound and taste And I would swear too At that moment that the bounce In each breast Was worth the heads Of a hundred prophets And is more moving to me Than the words Of all the holy men in Judea ------------------------------------ And I Am And I told her Matter of factly That indeed I am A poet of naked breasts And that umber nipples Centered in amber aureoles To me are pupils And Irises that serve As windows to the soul And I went on to say Confident and self-assured That I am too the bard Of the bare thigh That to me is nature revealed Tan like the underside Of sycamore leaves in fall Softly wild and untouchable As a sleeping doe And I concluded by saying That I am a lyric that can versify The plump lushness of A pale ass In still-life form Like so much fruit As if it were a honey dew melon Sliced in two and resting On the kitchen table ------------------------------------ At The Waldorf At the Waldorf Where desserts are done in art deco And abstractions in chocolate Twist in many shapes Everything is golden The lobby a cathedral Large and brightly lit At a table draped in white linen Like an altar prepared For solemn High Mass I study the ceiling Done in Greek revival Where reliefs of nudes In white plaster Resemble marble At the Waldorf Where words are whispered Like prayers of the devout At an altar Draped in white vestments And in gilded murals On Peacock Alley Where I see a sugar-coated sunrise Over the rundown landscape Of the far eastside ------------------------------------ August Rain I remember an August once When I could talk to him But didn’t and each word unspoken Rested like a brick on the silence That lay thick as a layer of mortar And grew into hardness between us These day’s I think of him Mostly when rain falls in gray sheets With a soft hiss as droplets Paint the pavement with color Of an overcast sky and collects On the road in pools in brought to full boil In summer storms with the Sound of thunder on my skin I recall in the air’s smell and The wind cool in my hair An August once when rain fell In mortar gray hardness on our silence ------------------------------------ Habeas Corpus Years from now when I am gone And you sit at the kitchen table With people who never knew me Show them this so they will know That I was touched and slightly Giddy with the silly art of poetry That to me was harmony and Melody floating everywhere They should know too that with Eyes and nose and mouth and ears And every organ that ties us to the world That I love you and it grew and multiplied Like fission in the nuclei of cells and Was carried in corpuscles speeding Through capillaries toward lips and Fingertips and other body parts That celebrate a passing touch -- ________________________________________ Funky Dog Publishing at: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6915/FunkyDogPublishing.htm Athens Avenue Poetry Circle at: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6915/