Project: Unstable balance

08 — UPON THE LIPS

Sweet lips, lips with the taste of honey,
Eager lips, weightless lips, bright and sunny,
Lips that know when to speak and be still,
Knowing lips, honest lips, saying what they feel.
Along endless roads disappearing in mist,
I found one rose and the thorns I had missed,
A smile, a safe harbour, a moment of bliss,
Then happiness waiting upon your lips.
Warm lips, merciful lips, parted in sighs,
Disappointed lovers with tears in their eyes,
Hesitant lips inventing excuses,
Greedy lips, jealous lips, nursing old bruises.
I travelled as far as the ends of the world,
Chasing the light as the sunset unfurled,
Then peace at the end of the journey, pure bliss,
Then happiness waiting upon your lips.
Living lips, fearless lips, breaking their chains,
Shameless lips, peaceful lips, easing our pains,
Lips that bring comfort when sorrow remains,
Sensual, heavenly lips, sweet as refrains.
Keeping watch by your side, I saw a world made new,
And new ways of making love slowly came into view,
The deep, quiet fulfilment of skies clear and blue,
Then happiness waiting upon your lips.
Red lips, vibrant lips, ringing out bright,
Debts wiped away by their sound in the night,
Sold at a discount to strangers in sight,
Sometimes so close and sometimes out of sight,
Lips that can bend even kings with their might,
Filling the pages and setting songs alight.
Then happiness waiting upon your lips.
Then happiness waiting upon your lips.
Then happiness waiting upon your lips.

Some elegies sing of ladies, knights, weapons and love. Others, humbler and perhaps more sincere, are content to celebrate one small part of the body—apparently marginal, yet always on the front line when it comes to complicating, consoling, diverting and sometimes even saving our lives: the lips.

Lips kiss, promise, lie, forgive, sell, pray, seduce, command and fall silent. They are the delicate border between thought and the world, between desire and its confession, between hunger and speech.

Upon the Lips is a light-hearted, smiling bossa nova: a miniature poem dedicated to this tiny frontier of the human body, capable of holding honey, guilt, peace, sin, music and, on the best of days, even happiness.