Bill Wolak is a poet, collage artist, and photographer who lives in New Jersey and has just published his eighteenth book of poetry entitled All the Wind’s Unfinished Kisses with Ekstasis Editions. He has been a featured poet at The Mihai Eminescu International Poetry Festival in Craiova, Romania; Europa in versi, Lake Como, Italy; The Pesaro International Poetry Festival, Pesaro, Italy, The Xichang-Qionghai Silk Road International Poetry Week, Xichang, China, The Ethnofest, Pristina, Kosovo, the Chengdu International Poetry Week, Chengdu, China, and the International Poetic Conference, Poznań, Poland. Recently he was awarded the Grand Prize for Poetry at the the 2022 International Poetry Festival Mihai Eminescu, Craiova, Romania.
Kisses
I want to explore your entire body with kisses,
kisses thirsty as light, kisses that open the wind.
And I want my lips to excite your shivering body
with an insatiable delirium that invites more kisses,
kisses brief as a smile passing through lightning,
kisses reaching inside you deeper than silence,
breathless kisses that leave your lips still moist with tomorrow,
kisses that arouse the haunted silk of your breasts,
kisses that make your scars sing, dazzling kisses blind as ecstasy,
kisses that make you writhe and shudder then squeeze me tighter,
desperate kisses that stun the flesh, awaken the muscles,
sink down into the blood, and course through your tingling body,
indiscriminate kisses down your stomach and up your thighs,
kisses like a bouquet of roses sweeping over tempting nakedness,
kisses that polish the swirling whirlpools of your flesh,
kisses long as summer, kisses for beginning a journey.
The Shower
The first time you pulled me
into your steaming shower
with only the hot water streaming,
I thought our bodies would be scalded.
But with your flesh pressed against mine,
the pain dissolved as my hands explored
your skin that was pale as fog
rising just to the cliff edge.
Holding your slippery body,
my mouth found yours
under the steaming spray,
and your kiss soothed the heat
out of my skin like flames licked by rain.
Now when I need to remember you,
I stand in the shower under the hottest setting,
and in the gushing, burning surge,
I can feel you once again
pressed against me like roots
suddenly tightening in a tree
split by lightning.
In the Silence Between Love Songs
I miss your body
sliding over mine
sleek as lightning
with your hips tilted
a little toward delirium.
I miss the hint of dawn
in your fingernails
and the dwindling moonlight
of your hair.
I miss the arching
of your long back
smooth as a snow heron’s
neck feathers
and your upturned
legs kicking at the
ceiling when I slip my tongue
inside you
I miss your blue eyes
where I lost the sea
and your broad shoulders
pressed against my back
while I dreamed.
But I miss you most
in the silence
between love songs.