Has it been?

so many nights
when the moon over and over again
bathes
in streams
looking for dead lovers,
sighing after lulls of love, pauses
of not knowing.

we met in secret
covering our flesh in shadows,
shut out from black and white, like souls
stealing to heaven,
sealing our lips with each other's silences,
searching through the shades,
wanting it more than lust...
were we not right to be lovers
when right and left were up in arms
bullets shooting through nude eyes
to leave only prints of faded being.

so many nights, the wind chased us (we
could hear the gunfire of our parents' voices
going against the canvas,
it drove through the air
cut through the whirls of hair:
you taught me calculus, literature, and
opened my eyes completely
til my eyes were moons
lunatic fragments of lost light.

was our love real? All those nights
that we ran deep into the forest,
drove to Jazz Bars in Harlem looking for relief,
looking for recognition
that race could be cracked open,
forgotten,
laid bare.

tell me that it was real
that your heart blossomed and leaped
into the stars
before my touch, that
you were alone celestial in my embrace,
pumping blushes into my face
and coloring me with the colors
of your inner signs.

the moon above
dances with the ripples, I wait here
in the shadows
for your canvas, for your
love.