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mercurial you flowed in between the bed sheets, your forms adapting to creases, folds, pleats, never breaking your wholeness like a gigantic drop of mercurial flesh playing havoc with my eyesight, other senses dulled into insubsistence... or almost. careful!!! I wanted to shout seeing you approach the middle of the bed afraid you might thin to paper and flow between mattresses to soak into some unplastered hole in the floor and leave nothing behind. just clothes, and who needs clothes? as I mentioned and you obeyed, unquestioning. paralyzed, I couldn’t shout. I couldn’t even move, even fall, could one be paralyzed rigidly upright hands hanging mouth open, drooling?... no, drooling had nothing to do with paralysis neither certain rigidities I did not mind. I would not mind, if I could move. coming? the alien seemed to say or gesticulate or both changing from one amorphousness to another in something that could have been called languorous the mercury way, or freshly spit magma way, or porridge and I still could not unfreeze my eyes glued to tremulous breasts and quivering belly and liquid hair afraid the flesh blob will either swallow me whole or repel me all. since when do mercury blobs deny gravitation? I asked my dwindled intellect watching the blob stretch into some formity, displacing the air around it as it arose, migrated my way through unclear propelling means and penetrated my textile hideout removing it as inelegantly as possible and preparing me for ingurgitation. do they always taste you before swallowing you? lover?... a worried voice came from somewhere, the tasting over and I let myself be carried to the altar laid down on its wrinkled whiteness and accept death as the flow of flesh slowly covered me, inundated, assimilated... hey, I was still alive, neither swallowed nor repelled... well, a bit of both but... lover?... the same voice again, this time sleepy, as the flesh poured away from me. funny, I thought, mercury derivatives are not supposed to be sticky, but being alive was already an improvement on earlier anticipation so I did not complain. not to mention the phantasmagorical humanoid that materialized next to me reviving the rest of my senses and licking my lips clean of salt and of that inebriating, persisting, invasive female species perfume.

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The Woman Screamed The woman screamed. The woman screamed rain, she screamed lust, she screamed sighs. Her way to scream love. The woman borrowed her dreams from others, she borrowed her dance from others, she did not own a sky so she stole from others, from me. The scream was her own. As her love. U2 blares Desire from a 6+1 system followed by Uriah Heep blaring Lady in Black from the same system. Santana blares Black Magic Woman. I turn the volume higher until the sound in my car is as thick as swamp, not Elvis this time, I’m in no mood for romance, I want to hear her scream louder. Her love.

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Unexploring To unexplore your body, my explorer’s dream, to drag you back through the one way street of time and I don’t give a damn about other dimensions to re-instate your youth your unbitten nipples your hymen just to rip them open once again... no, not once again, just to rip them open once. Single. I. My explorer’s dream. You slide alongside, aroundside me your youth long done your nipples long bitten your hymen long forgotten slithering all snake all muscle no bone every night, every time, every touch the eternally pebble breasted young virgin again and again and again and I relive my explorer’s dream every night, every breath, every touch.

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Magnificent Pleasure My flesh dismounts your flesh, a shivering lump of meat rends asunder along an undefined sweat line bleeding, no anesthetic within reach none wished horrific pain a welcome tribute to its dead sister - magnificent pleasure, our baby. You wake to life, the seconds ago debacle visible only in breasts heaving half way to ceiling, your cupped palm culling a few of my tears a few of my sweat drops you taste... “...salty...” you crush a grape into the concoction chewing delightedly the result and offering me some of it on tip of tongue to tip of tongue, we chew together mixing teeth, tongues, lips, hips... “...don’t cry...” you smile between tears, “she will soon relive, then again, then again, eternally...” you say as meat lumps turn anew flesh lumps and flesh lumps join into that flesh-flesh continuum... “...told you so...” you find a last mouthful of talking breath before losing all of your living breath and magnificent pleasure relives. Your flesh dismounts my flesh. How many times? Who? We count suns by shadows and seas by waves and deaths by the carrouselling magnificent pleasure again and again and again.

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Alzheimer I remember a mountain. I don’t remember the mountain, I remember the woman on the mountain, maybe it was not even a mountain but there was no mistaking the woman for womanhood as she bit the rotting pillars into palace and the crumbling kiosk into golden baldachin and my lips into mincemeat with both my teeth and hers, I remember hands. I don’t remember whose invading intimacies growling inside hidden cottons cowering underneath unhidden cottons all of it and us beneath a roof held together by cobwebs and flowering bindweed and heavenly slime sticking to our fingertips together with torn threads and curled hairs into bricks, I remember forgetting. I remember shame and innocence and world just to forget it, all, everything, even passers by, even passing elephants... no elephants passing?... even ravens cawing envy and squirrels cawing ravens and four-leaf clover chewed by you and swallowed by me and balloons and garbage trucks and discarded underwear as I took you and you took me and we took us there and then and again and the mountain but a gigantic turtle and we but human bugs infesting the belly of the universe biting life again then biting life again then biting life again... who gives a damn about Alzheimer’s?

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Weather October. How’s the weather? I asked, the line cackling with static. Oh, the sky is blue. My heels sink in melting asphalt. Cherries hang ripe and apples hang heavy and cafés teem with old people sipping cold beer, and ladybugs fill my palms - one black, and butterflies fill my eyesight - counted seventeen, maybe sixteen counted one twice while barefoot children war trees and dogs and traffic wardens with wooden swords dipped in ice cream and the wheat undulates, golden, and the sun burns my eyelashes, gently. Hey, don’t you mix it with summer? I asked. No. Though, probably, I mix it with my heart, she said. I hesitated. Define insanity. Then I pulled out the sweaters and threw in a few t-shirts, sunglasses. At second thought I added also a tube of sun-screen. One never knows. Insanity might be contagious.

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Symmetries You whispered about sunsets, sunsets clothed red velvet and dreaming of sweet dew crawling to bed inside yawning daisies, You painted butterflies, butterflies in phosphorescent hues flying on thin columns of air and getting lost in the sunsets, You invented colors, colors shimmering between oak roots and up gnarled trunks lining squirrel nests and tails... ...while I talked breasts, and thighs, and lust. We undressed, we neared, we touched. ...and I whispered sunsets, and butterflies, and colors. You talked about breasts, breasts with rebelling nipples demanding to be quashed by fists and extinguished by lips, You painted thighs, thighs opening to encircle the waist then closing to crush the spine and suck the boiling essence of nectar, You invented lust, raging moans invading my ears clawing hands ripping my flesh biting teeth tasting my blood... After. I back to breasts, you back to sunsets. Etc. Are we sometimes animals? you asked. We are always poets, I answered.

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Bat Blindness She was blind. Like a bat. Where are you? she asked, looking above the spectacles, then underneath, even through. She squinted, tried the spectacles upside down, then left right... one never knows, she even tried wearing them on the nape of her neck, turning around, ridiculous, as you may well imagine. Are you here she asked? Bat blind. She found me. Easily. Like a bat. Under the endless whiteness of the bed-sheets’ desert she found me, easily. Whatever sight it was she used - infra? ultra? the bat in her fingertips located me as easily as an Everest in a Sahara homing in on each of nipples and each of hair ends and each of reality parts your imagination cells lets you define. Shamefully or shamelessly. I didn’t care even if you do. Hey, I thought you are as blind as a bat, I said. I am, when I wish to be, the way I wish to be, she answered. I tested her again next day, hiding her spectacles. She fooled me. She closed her eyes. There was nowhere I could run so I didn’t, one doesn’t argue superiority of senses, sight included. You cheat, I complained for the protocol. Do you mind? she asked with her fingertips. I didn’t.

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Knees And Sunsets She didn’t sit on my knees. If I sit on your knees I will never get up, she said. She sat next to my knees feeding the birds and telling me of sunsets. Better sunsets, they are the end before the beginning, she went on with irrefutable lover logic, before she started feeding the cats. Tell me when you move on the jackals, and bears, and lions, I laughed and she laughed back moving on to jackals and bears and lions. It is humans I am scared of, she said, humans leave with sunset. They return with sunrise, I complemented her earlier logic. No, they bring the sunshine, she said squeezing hard into me, with the rest of the animals squeezing into her. She fell asleep on my shoulder, crumbs trickling from between her relaxing fingers for those fearless gulls who disregarded the jackals and bears and lions and squawked angrily at the occasional invading sparrow. You greedy beasts, I stamped my foot at them, which they disregarded. I woke up with a start and caught her jumping up and away, flush chasing her cheeks the way she chased the sparrows. I touched my knees, they felt unusually warm.

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crabs and things barefoot, your skirt tied high, mid-way between decency and indecency, your shirt opened wide mid-way between indecency and decency with tiny crabs biting your toes and huge oysters shooting pearls your way not always round, sometimes in pairs, sometimes in salvos, sometimes straight into sea-weed garlands hanging down from your ears. I tried to draw you on the wet sand but waves kept stealing you away then I tried to rush after you but the tiny crabs called upon their big brothers finally I settled down to collecting the pearls that missed you and building coffins for my poems.

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Dialogue You hairy beast, she said. I watched myself in the mirror - a billiard ball was hairy, I was not. You hairy beast, she repeated making it slightly clearer and much more painful. I guess I deserved it. Fools deserve anything coming their way, pleasure seemed to be part of the deal as well. Intense pleasure. Screaming. Hers. Ours. You funny guy, she said. I descended from the bed put on her panties over my head hooked on her bra behind my neck. That’s funny, I said. That’s sexy, she said pulling the panties down until my head popped out where her leg should have been then pulling the rest of me down unless if I wanted to end up with a third leg then dressing that same part with her body until I did not care anymore who screamed. Even if it was the neighbor one floor lower down. You lover guy, she said. I did not react. She planted linden trees, waited for them to grow and bloom then bathed me in linden-flower essence. You lover guy, she said. I did not react. She chewed cherries’ pits with apples’ seed with grapefruits’ peel waited two seasons for the wine to ripen in her mouth and abused my drunken body. You lover guy, she said. I did not react. She collected shells and listened to them humming each odd one’s note and filling each even one’s cavity with beads. She did not say anything. You lover woman, I said. She spread her wings to fly and I hung on the her belly making love to her flesh while she showed me the mountains as they should have been and the seas as they wished to be and the sun as it has never been and shall always wish to be.

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Various CAPITALizations I think that my poetry changes not. With time? Sorry, you make no sense. Spelling? Punctuation maybe? I know. Probably because I don’t know. Or because I rush everyday less more. Define. She sounded like HAL but she was my lover. I wish I was as articulated. As HAL. Part of the rush. Was supposed to say every day less rush more. Trying to re-invent the language. Pretentious for a non-native English speaker, no? Took her some time to digest, I wondered which part of it was tougher. No. Poets allowed. She diverted from HAL to GPS. At least GPS allowed choice of sex. I mean woman sex. I mean sex of choice, sex of voice. Yeah, reminds me, reminds me it’s long since I wrote a rhyming poem. I said the last sentence aloud. I think I did. She moved my hand from her left breast to her right. Breast, of course breast, what did you think - liver? Do you know that livre means book in French? I didn’t want to sound pompous, just literate. And anyway, I did not always control the links and associations in my brain especially when she moved my hand elsewhere. To me you sound like Romeo, choosing a rose’s petal every morning to drink its dew before writing on it his love poem to Juliet. Huh? Looked like my hand’s last position had a different influence on each of us. She stopped sounding HAL or GPS and was on her way to MARYLIN, through BILL of course. I always dreamt of wine’s demise When vineyards cradled in your eyes Declined the right to bottled tomb And asked for sanctum in your womb... Mmm... sanctum sanctorum? Maybe. Your imagination is... different, you know? I know. Of course I knew, after all I was the one writing these lines. Like... JOHN? I volunteered, meaning the Cleese fellow, of the Python thing Like SOLOMON, of the Canticum Canticorum thing. You mean the one that cut children?... My envy was showing above my smug satisfaction, and the fact that I was still writing these lines had nothing to do with either (yeah, sure...) ...and had one thousand women (you bastard...) ...split between seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines (you are going to pay for it...) ...and... OUCH! Ouch was a sound, not somebody and was capitalized and exclamation-marked for pain emphasis reasons. If I had choice of own demise I’d choose the kingdom of your eyes And for the petals on my tomb Defile the flower of your womb... She had no more use for my hands, It was her turn, and the turn of her hands to make themselves useful. And they did, OH! heavens, they did. Oh was a sound... etc... etc...

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Editor I edited your body. Not much, didn’t find many typos, though I tried desperately to find some... you know, and you told me I took too long on some paragraphs and that they should be re-written as pornographs. I emphasized several times the i’s. Not the capital ones, those don’t have a dot on top, the others, I kept pretending they all missed the dot, my finger poking and poking... I wonder if you guessed my mind. Maybe you did, Otherwise how could any of us explain that short, sharp cry? It wasn’t pain. I’d rather have my finger cut than causing you pain. After finishing with the i’s I went after the o’s, one of them your belly button. Some even more interesting, some even having yielded already to my earlier i invasion and I blamed the mix-up on dyslexia... yes, dyslustxia, you reflected loudly turning this way and that to allow me access to ever more o’s, some quite big. That’s two letters, you said there are still lots to go, also words. I preferred to leave words out of my scope, that would have been too obvious and you would have guessed what my real goal was. I preferred to keep playing the sly. Shall we go Hebrew? I asked, there are a lot of dots there. What about Arabic? you answered, even more dots. You know what? I will settle for Morse, I countered, fifty percent dots. You know what? you counter countered, I will allow you to cheat, you can skip some lines, keep mostly to the dots. You did not have to say it twice. Thinking back to that time, I think you were pulling my leg, but I have no proof to it. And I don’t think I will ever try to get any. Because tonight we are going Braille. Dots. Dots only.

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an autumn's vista raining leaves, yellow, ripe beautiful dead. I step into the soft death, my shoes sinking as death turns to dust dust to long, thin tentacles covered villous powder wishing the rest of me to follow my clothes magically disintegrating upon my skin as I wait for other shoes to sink into me turning me to dust... atrabiliousness... atrawhat? it was her nature to kill the mood, and I watched her chasing first a squirrel then a Rottweiler chasing her then a Zwergpinscher chasing the Rottweiler then a crow chasing the Zwergpinscher... mayhem... until she fell into me literally, trying to get in between my coat and flannel shirt steaming like a dragon just after eating the daily virgin... you and your sick imagination... not that she minded my imagination once I started parting her hair in strands and braiding into it dry twigs with thin, broken, petal-less poppies and yellow leaves. ripe. beautiful. dead. even the squirrel and the Rottweiler and the Zwergpinscher and the crow stopped sitting side by side all heads cocked left except for the rebellious Zwergpinscher, of course, watching me sing and her sleep. where are you Themistokles von Eckenbrecher? sinking sun started painting red inside a strange scenery. a human couple asleep, under a tree. a random mix of tails and furs and feathers asleep just across from them. and raining leaves, yellow, ripe beautiful dead.

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sound it doesn’t matter if sound born along harmonica’s brass reeds or up wind chime’s wooden rods or between broken lips against concrete wall as lover invades lover with little regard to civility or civism or civilizedness the huffing music tearing at bricks before letting drops of pearl litter bare toes and rolling all the way to sea and greedy oysters, it doesn’t matter if sound drives through needle ears riding torn threads or bounces off alligator’s tooth before sinking in the heart of dead wood or finds its way from lover’s fingertip through shirt’s buttonhole rounding up flocks of breasts and bevies of nipples upon the slopes of ribs and down the slopes of pelvis milking wine from the insides of awaiting, burning vineyards, it doesn’t matter King David’s harp or King Solomon’s harp or Marx Harpo’s harp when fingers stretch from palms to eternity rolling along the way around bedpost knobs and tabletops and fallen tree’s rotting roots with pairing fingers playing havoc through chromatic and diatonic and orchestral harmonics and through guttural exhalations fit for broken violins and disintegrating heavens... if there were more than one.

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Peeping Tom Pulling the blanket, gently, away further away, slowly... no, don’t!... you didn’t, Morpheus’ mysterious arms your cradle while the lubricious appendages ending mine kept pulling the blanket lower beyond your spine beyond your waist beyond... beyond... is it gulp or stutter or... beyond... I just sat, watching. Just. Probably more if I had eyeglasses to measure the steam leaving my body by the number of wipes I would have needed or condensing drops dropping, what else? Skin. It is probably illegal to possess such smoothness at such age and don’t tell me you are not twenty years younger than me or thirty or whateverty, your foetal position leaving no secrets undisclosed no mysteries undiscovered no curl concealed if I only cared to look closer, I did look closer. Suddenly I was five years old playing doctor with the neighbor’s five year old girl awed at discovering the reason why girls wear earrings, only girls... she told me, I believed. I was discovering the same reason again, with the additional knowledge of desire, abstention, lust, torture... skin... smooth, beautiful... beauty. You moaned, moved slightly. I didn’t see more, there was no more to see if not hidden eyes rushing side to side wildly under eyelids, which godly lover were you chasing at that moment, lover - Adonis, Apollo, Angus, Groucho (Marx, the only G, he had to be different, what else?), Ammon, Anshar, Aegir, Agayu, Groucho... (sly this Groucho character)? Or were they chasing you fighting each other to death (all except Groucho) with sword, mace, axe while you fed yourself grapes offering the winner your breast?... whisper... whose name did you whisper your skin suddenly coming to life like coarse sand, like grains of salt, like a rasp’s teeth? “Lover...” Caught. Flagrant délit. Red-handed, red-cheeked, red. “...what are you doing?...” It wasn’t a question, merely an incoherent moan translated by my obvious guilt into manifest mea culpa and lashing. “...what lashing?...” You turned the other way, the foetus now facing me. What moron said there was no more to see? One limp breast falling on top of another limp breast one inflamed areola kicking out one inflamed nipple above another inflamed areola kicking... “Lover...” a tuft of curls asking for independence barely visible under the belly, thighs sleek, freshly shaved muscular shaped threateningly powerful toes... twitching? “...please... scratch my toes...” My cue. Maybe not, but who was there to question my interpretation? “What was that?” You knew what was that, I did not have to respond. We ended on the balcony tiles, I dragged the blanket underneath you once we finished exchanging corporeal comments about my interpretation and as you gratefully curled foetal again I started cleaning the glint away from your body with wet cloth and long motions... “...I remember...” giggle, present... “...my inner thighs were so clean...” following which I dragged the blanket next to the bed and with a big heave (you had put on some weight, you know?) I lay you on the bed again. You were asleep before I could cover you. I did not cover you. Did not want to wake you up... “...yeah, sure...” instead I started inspecting very closely for possible damages to your skin probable birthmarks I may have missed on previous occasions and the improbability of shadows... please, open your thighs, slightly... yes, sorry, I am terribly near-sighted as well as forgetful have to count these curls again, may I? There was no answer. I started at one and with every few of them there was a sigh from somewhere around your head, I could not keep from wondering - who else was in the room?

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family talk to the flowers, talk to them red, talk to them yellow with blue stripes and black eyes, talk to them freshness of early dew aromas of lilacs and perfumes of jasmines and somnolent bees thorns opening petals sticky pollen on puppy noses, talk to the flowers, you know their language you are family. what about me? oh, yes, I talk to flowers as well. plastic. we are family.

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Mountain I am on the mountain, still. I know it was just a hill, still, I’m on the mountain, still. There where you gave me your shame your four leaves clover your yellow butterfly. The school in shamelessness for our hands the broken roof to the blue and the missing windows to chirrups to running dogs to bees Had it been celluloid it would have melted. Had it been cotton it would have torn. It tore. Had it been rain we would have soaked into the grass with beetles and hail and mud, most of it ours. We sat in the tram your shame melting between sticky fingers holding sticky fingers your four leaves clover in my wallet your yellow butterfly in your camera’s solid state heart your head on my shoulder my hand in your pocket sucking in the fire the fire the fire...

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Once She finished a full scan of my body six consecutive times. At present, she was well into the first ten percent of the seventh time. She did it with such minute attention to detail that if I was the blushing kind I would have finished all the reds in the world, with their surrogates. And started borrowing from the yellows by now. She poked a flabby portion, I care not to mention which. Flabby, she said, wrinkling the nose, then kissing. Once, when I was weightlifting this was hard muscle, I said. There it is, still, under the flabby. She pushed deeper, feeling for the hard. She didn’t look utterly convinced. She started poking another flabby portion, let’s keep the anonymity, okay? Flabby, she said, kissing. Once, when I was wrestling this was steel, I said. She seemed to find some of it under the flab layers since she didn’t make a face. Not immediately, at least. You’re losing your hair, she said. Goodness, I was losing my hair for the last twenty five years, no one was balder than me except maybe a billiard ball. And that one was a it not a he. High time for her to pay attention. Once, I had as much hair as Rapunzel, I said. She kept investigating my skull for a full hour, probably ascertaining that Rapunzel remark. What’s this blonde hair? she asked. Aha, so she wasn’t just ascertaining my past Rapunzelity. You have a pimple here, she said, too embarrassing to be specific. Once I had more, I was the king of pimples and hormones, I said. And you’re king of what now? she laughed loudly. Now, this was a direct insult to my kingness... or whichever the hell was the word, if my pimples and my hormones were so dissatisfactory why did she keep investigating? She reached a spot that I did not mind letting the question go unanswered as long as she kept investigating with the same thoroughness as until then. You have some lipstick marks here. Of course. She added some more. I guess there was an idiotic grin on my face. Once... Shut up! and I knew exactly what she meant. So I shut up. As punishment she went back into flab investigation pulling, poking, stretching. You have two ankles. Most people have. You have two knees. Most people have. You have two... I certainly hope so. You have one... It wasn’t really the moment to discuss flabbiness, once so much less evident. Once... Shut up! And she started removing the previous lipstick leftovers, carefully, attentively, then started the usual pulling, poking, stretching applying new layers of lipstick just to remove them moments later and pull, poke, stretch... Once... Shut up! Her once’s were part of an history I preferred to disregard feeling my once muscles and once steel and once hormones gathering under my skin turning flaccidity to desert storm and flabs of flesh to flesh ripping fangs and her discourse turned inane gurgle. Scan eight was under way. She poked my belly making sounds of tsk-tsk tsk with her tongue she poked my tit making sounds of tsk-tsk-tsk with her tongue she poked my ass making sounds of tsk-tsk-tsk with her tongue, I did not tell her. Once I craved for someone to poke my flabs. To search for the muscle, steel, hormones, do unleash my storm and die willingly under my fangs, once I probably craved for her.

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once, again once you told me you were young. you lied, you were younger. even three days later. once you were afraid of my hand touching your breast. is this the reason you guided my mouth instead? once i believed in poetry. i stopped. after knowing you i started worshipping it. once i made love to you for the first time. afterwards i always made love to you for a first time.

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La Vie par Procuration Lie next to me, stop breathing. No, don’t worry, stop breathing, let me take care of it. Stop thinking, yes, you can, same as breathing, stop thinking, dreaming, feeling... stop! All! All your bodily functions - chewing, itching, digesting... peeing? Yes, I will take care of that as well, don’t ask, just... stop. Are you alive? Told you so, now let me breathe for you. With my fingertips. Soaking the carbon dioxide from the tips of your skin’s tiny hairs and feeding you back oxygen through same channels, through the corners of your lips and the areolas of your nipples, feed you the smell of blossoming orange orchards and crumbling autumn leaves, the salt of sea breeze and the smoke of burned toast and whiffs of crushed nuts and lilac, oh, forests of lilac... Are you alive? Told you so. Now you want to see how I do your thinking... and your dreaming too?... Feeling as well? Aren’t you making a mish-mash of it all? Close your eyes. Are you alive? Told you so, now let me think for you. Now let me dream for you. Now let me feel for you as well... too late... no changes allowed, it’s already pouring, do you drown? I let words by-pass your ears straight into your memory paths weaving carpets of poetry in worlds of shifting sands before descending along the insides of your lashes to sculpt thoughts straight into your irises alongside with colors seen only by baby bats and contours sensed only by inquisitive octopuses and warmth suckled by blind pups beneath a fierce bitch’s belly before the first squeal and after the last lick, I tie dreams in garlands and hang them from pine tree tops watching through your eyes sparrows swinging on them and storks swooping underneath them and hawks tearing them to shreds to drop the shreds on your squirming nakedness as you fight my body into you and your fingernails into my spine and drops of sun into your closed eyes alongside comets and black holes, I steal sensations from dead dinosaurs had they lived from wilted snowbells had they not wilted and goddesses making love to gods had they existed, I steal knowledge of sensations from you had you not allowed me to feel for you and hope for sensations had I allowed you to hope and crave for sensations had I allowed myself to crave while you were your own and had I not feared to be ripped into same size shreds as the garlands of dreams by the fierce bitch’s fangs and the inquisitive octopuses’ beaks once you would have known it and owned it. Are you alive? Told you so. What’s next? Chewing? Itching? Digesting? I knew it... peeing. Close your eyes. And as you drag me behind you the way a lioness would drag a dead zebra’s carcass my teeth hooked un-zebra like in your flesh I make love to your unbreathing, unthinking, undreaming body stealing your sensations your chewing, your itching, your digesting and for the love of hell I care not if you pee all the way to nowhere while I join you there. And after some time, you didn’t care either.

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English Is Such An Imperfect Language Pull up your panties, well, if you find enough evidence of them to sew back into the once lingerie pride. Your bra... now, where is the other half?... tataaa... here it is. Funny, I distinctly remember the clasp an S shape, this one looks more like an inscription in Arabic dots included. Here - one dot, and another, bigger one. NO, this hole in the middle is not MY finger, it was YOUR nipple, look, the split edges are from inside out not from outside in, see? see?... Your shoes ARE intact. Almost. There’s nothing a little fast glue cannot solve. I have a better idea, let’s remove the other heel too, this way you will be... ahm... closer next time. What do you mean to what? You’ll never make it even close to Miss Marple. So what if she wasn’t a Mrs, you think she wouldn’t know, do you know her first novel was called The Murder at the Viagra? Vicarage?! So what’s the difference, she WOULD know. She always saw further beyond, I guess she saw further below too. Why do you giggle? Here’s something you will not giggle about. Here are all the buttons to your silk shirt, ALL of them. And here is the shirt. ALL of it. We just have to bring them together, somehow. That I do it? And how would I know which was to which hole? Who’s an idiot? Okay, I will find it, I read all of HER stories, I know how to solve a mystery. Your skirt is longer. Better, no one else will see you knees, hehe. All we have to do is pull out the thread, like that, see?... now iron out the hem line... hmm... we need an iron. NO, my ass is NOT an iron, you should now better than that, here, see, soft like a baby’s ass. Maybe yours... ouch! What about the pantyhose? You forgot already, huh, sex does funny things to you. We used them last night to drain the water from the pasta, aha, now you remember, remember where I pulled the last noodle out from? aha... you do, and remember where YOU unwrapped your last noodle from? aha, you do... and remember how insulted I was when you called IT a noodle? aha... you do. Your glasses? I stepped on them, they were the wrong number anyway, ha, calling IT a noodle. Hey, what are you doing, what do you mean you want to check it again, what do you mean you... want to... test it again, what do... you... to... taste...?... Ewk56fj^kge?gh+@cF... missing onomatopoeia... English is such an imperfect language...

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Follower I followed to her side of bed. She followed to the floor. I followed to the floor. She followed to the bathroom. I followed to the bathroom. She sat. I sat on her. This is ridiculous. Maybe even sick. No, not sick, sick is dirty. Now I have to wash my mouth. I’ll give you better reason to wash your mouth. I gave her reason. Several reasons. She did not. Wash her mouth. She followed to my side of bed. Human bodies are not built as accurately as plastic injection molding pieces, she pushed, squeezed, wheezed, rumbled, cursed, forced... finally we molded to each other, even more accurately than plastic. Kind of restrictive, kind of repressive, kind of... give me another word that ends with ‘ive’. The world started with Eve. No, word, woman, and i-v-e, woman. You don’t have to shout. I don’t shout, I shouted, her ear buried deep somewhere in my anatomy. Addictive. Addictive is a bad word. Addictive is a bad word in a good way, she said, licking her lips. Licking me on the same occasion. She kept molding. I stopped moaning and groaning and started enjoying. Not that I did not enjoy until then. She took some more reason to wash her mouth. I gave her. Then I took similar reason myself, moderately quantified. You can take more, she said. By the way she reacted, I decided next incarnation I will be a woman, even if I had to bear children. But until then I’ll suffer heroically in my manly shape. Stop complaining. I wasn’t aware I was complaining loudly, she gave me good reason to complain further by giving herself good reason to wash her mouth further. I wasn’t anymore sure about next incarnation. Next incarnation I want to be a dildo. A dildo is an inanimate, soulless item. Inanimate? did you see them shiver? Next incarnation I want to be a woman. Well, one of us had to have brains. She molded further, making sure we both had our dreams start coming true. I had no choice but to follow her. ‘No choice’ is probably an oxymoron to something.

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The Word What is the word if we take out the metaphor of a galloping sun chasing a sea of evasive sunshine always a few miles ahead to never meet in that dark room hosting the gallows wherefrom both will thresh wildly as death slides through skin inside skin under skin ending with a shared heart leaping out of body to wail its own departure from the moment? Is it f? What is the word gutters linguists intelligentsia whores sailors bored housewives use when short of words temper mind to tell of nymphaea buds exploding inside lungs into fire edged petals before climbing the endless tunnels to enkindled mouth caves fomenting the rebellion of teeth cutting their way into alien flesh and tongues wiping the nectar of alien flesh and alien flesh sizzling then reaving then rotting into roses dying impaled on their own thorns. Is it f? What is the word hiding inside Romeo’s she hangs upon the cheek of night like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear... inside Juliet’s bid me lurk where serpents are... to live an unstain'd wife to my sweet love... inside Petrarca’s to Laura era il giorno ch'al sol si scoloraro... chè i bè vostr'occhi, donna, mi legaro... inside silver sweat beads we share under unshared blankets when mountains the color of starless worlds split our tensing fingertips and silences as loud as roaring waterfalls cut our lips and while a universe is born somewhere another dies inside clenched fists waiting for imminent re-birth inside clenched tangled howling thighs. Is it... f?

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The Lilac In Winter Your palms smell like lilac, I said. Your hair-ends grow lilac flowers, I said. You look like a living wreath, I said and you shook your mane the way of unbroken mares disseminating blue petals into the world. I never drank lilac wine before, I said, refusing to wipe my lips, why do people call lotus what should be called lilac, I said drinking again, getting drunk. You laid your lilac white body on the sun yellow canvas of wet sand and gnome lilac bushes started sprouting alongside your forms skipping the budding stage straight into blossom. How does lilac grow in the sand, I asked watching a swarm of tiny mermaids flipping their way from the sea pouring mouthfuls of sea water in the bushes then flipping to the sea again in an endless cycle until a giant sea lion dragged its bulk nearby and all the mermaids squirmed upon its back, tiny tails flittering, tiny breasts bouncing, looking more like a football stadium packed to refuse with miniature cheerleaders chirping lilac stories and lilac colors and lilac you. I gleaned a fistful of lilac flowers and rained lilac over them. Have you ever made autumn lilac love, I asked watching the sea lion and its priceless load sink back into the sea and send waves crested purple lilac to wash your body. Your nipples bloom, I said. I have made spring lilac love, many years ago, I skipped summer, I fear winter, you said. Your nipples bloom, I repeated, your lips a garden, your thighs an orchard. I invaded the beauty and autumn rose raising its fist to crush lilac flowers into the potion oozing down from your breasts spilling down from your lips flooding down from your thighs. You rushed into the sea and the sea turned blue. Autumn lilac blue.

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Mushrooms It was the last question, the ultimate, the question of the last chance before empires tumble and crumble and lizards take ownership of gold and ruins. And if rockets carrying seeds of gigantic mushrooms that don’t need rain and don’t need rot and expect no culling start flying, what will you do? There was no way I failed this question. I will hide inside your robes digging my way through endless coats of cotton and peels of silk to one layer of female and I will call it skin before robbing it of innocence into knowledge to ask its forgiveness for pleasures previously unknown and soon to come and soon to end and complex epodes I will never write again except inside that texture you call flesh. I passed with flying colors then flying garbs then flying splinters of wood and shards of pebble and geysers of breath and one would not have guessed it was not that gigantic mushroom paying an unexpected, unwelcome visit.

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knitting stand still, I said, knitting the woolen cloth directly on your naked skin, starting from heels upwards as I kneeled in front of you eyes fixed horizontally not on the horizon knitting needles missing the wool more than once and piercing my fingers more than twice yet refusing to watch anything else but the horizontality offered to me until finally the knitting reached the end of your thighs obscuring my view my dream my trance... did I lose the thread or the count or the step when I decided that I had to start all over unthreading all the work down to your ankles and starting upwards again, my horizon filled with interest again? will you ever finish? you asked, cold shivers running parallel to my thread enriching both design and horizon. I am tiring, you added. I let you lie down, lifting your feet on pillows for support and feeling like a Rodin sculpting in wool I started at the ankles again. it wasn’t easy, my position as uncomfortable as you can imagine with me astride your chest my hands trying to reach down to the ankles the cat starting to play with the wool ball and you suddenly interested in the proceeds as well as your hands suddenly started doing things that had nothing to do with knitting and everything to do with disturbing me deeply and with pendulums. I gave up wool sculpting, forever. I cut the leftovers from knee to ankle pulled your thighs apart and invested myself fully in another domain of the art of knitting - that of short curls. it was a supreme effort, worth every curl and every single drop of sweat.

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too late, later I leave a trail of fire hidden inside the covers of my books to be found later too late, later. I build suns with dots of i and hells with crosses of t and if I’m still cold with heart’s winter I open my mind and let it sink between your breasts. I seed dreams shedding behind me in a sea of wandering dunes to sprout into sunsets later too late, later. I build seasons with open mouthed o’s and orchards with a sweep of my comma and if in my inebriation I demand even more I call for a blossom between blossoms and let it sink between your thighs. I paint butterflies their names strange their colors inexistent their lives unwritten to open their wings later too late, later. I build pleasure with elongated lines and touches with endless stanzas and if my hunger opens gaping wounds at the ends of my fingertips I burn my books to cauterize the pain and let the ash sink around our dying throes.

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I Really Try Romance, Really I must be sick, no other explanation. I want to build chimes with rhymes I crawl through fields strewn with daisies culling petals with batting eyelids and pulling roots with groping fists my teeth green with the sap of truncated stems and my nose yellow with stamen’s fluff chewing with a hungry mind all beauty into the mush of ink for my calligraphic dream to drown in and my index fingernail to dip in and smear on paper celestial words and heavenly thoughts and yet, again... I end between your thighs. Sick, no? I want to hang from the wings of birds words I mingle my aquarelle with dew and sneak upon treetop nests to strew drops of magic on tips of wings then sneak upon mountaintop eyries to strew drops of sunset on deadly beaks after which I drop all the way to Earth through craggy rocks and pointed stumps the colorful potion waiting in my mouth to splash upon a sunburned meadow where I will paint my last of green on the last of blades of grass and my last of red on the last of petals of roses and yet, again... I end between your thighs. If this is not sickness, what is? Remember, you bit me? Remember, you bit pieces off my shoulder and your stiletto ends of fingers marked scraggy trails between my ribs and I asked about your being inoculated against all transmissible diseases animal mental sexual cosmical and you said “no”, remember? Now I am sick, see? I want to pray for flowers dead in May Please, make sure next time you come don’t you dare get inoculated. Against anything. If to die I want to die... between your thighs.

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Fairytale You see the world in pinks and blues, In clumps of whispered I-love-you’s, I sink inside the creaking bed A sight of lips in autumn red           invades my head           and paves my mews. Your feet drag dreams across the floor, You tango between sink and door, I follow you through worlds of light One tile to left, one tile to right           of raw delight           and craves galore. You hum a long forgotten note, It might have been a sigh I wrote Upon the whiteness of your breast With lover’s skill and lover’s zest           to pad your nest           with verse and quote. You let me tear your human shield And rape you in a pastels’ field Then sew you back, with ribbon bow, With spider thread and midnight glow,           with melting snow           and flames unsealed. I watch your lips, as butterflies Forgo your smile to fill the skies Your thirst allayed, your spirit fades Inside a world of pink charades           till morning’s blades           cut through my eyes.

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equality one two three, one two three... that’s a waltz, I specified unnecessarily following with one, one two, one, one two... and that’s a tango, unnecessarily again, just hiding my embarrassment moving around in my underwear with her undulating in a bit less than that her breasts at a distance measured in negative terms away from my chest and her hair crackling with static, I guess in absolute darkness I would have seen blue sparks at hair ends and auras around areolas if these would not have been on their way to exit my back by now. let’s make love she begged. this there is the Ursa Minor, I whispered in her ear, and this there is Mars, I added, and the big one is the moon... and the blinking one is an airplane, she complemented the lesson with knowledge of her own whispering all the way from my ear to my mouth and all the way back making sure the moisture left one way is dried the other way around lest mould starts growing on that cheek, and she wiggled tighter into me with me crackling underneath her with the chair crackling underneath me with the floor crackling underneath the chair and I don’t think it was related to my sitting in my underwear and she sitting in a bit less than that on me. let’s make love she begged. the bad guy shot the good guy, the good guy shot the bad guy back and almost shot another good guy but there were a lot of other bad guys jumping around and the good guys kept helping the beautiful girls and the old ladies to cross the road under fire and then there was a bomb threat and the president got involved while playing golf and she started snoring softly alongside me dressed in a little bit less than me and I got a stiff neck dressed in underwear, hey, I tried to wake her up towards the end when only the bad good guys were dead with the good bad guys helping the good good guys get rid of the bad bad guys and it was too late nevertheless to make love. let’s make love I begged. I hoped she would be more considerate than I had been. she insisted on equality, though. I had to get rid of my underwear.

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probably not calculus, methinks you are dance. or maybe the other way around. does it matter? equality is bi-directional... or is it maybe non-directional? I and you... hmm... you and I. same bi-directionality idea, I guess though completely different context, the result as well. actually there was no result higher up, just a statement, there is a result here. something like storm something like hurricane something like cataclysm... no, cataclysm is negative and the sum of two positives cannot result in negative... something like sun. better? I times you. now, this is a conundrum worthy of my worthless talent. let’s try you times I. bi-directionality ok. result problematic. meaninglessness meaningful, I mean - meaningless, I mean meaningfully meaningless... I mean... what do I mean? I wish it would have been a programmable world where if time is love and times is loves then I times you is I loves you. hmm... strange, who the hell is I? and if you loves I... you? who is this you? maybe I miss else if. I think I’ll give up on times. I’ll give up also on root, log, power of and the variety of brackets. no trigonometry, that’s for geeks. not poets. especially hungry poets. all. divide. what about divide? you divided by I. meaning? not easy. close to impossible from the other side, the impossible plus side. if you get my drift. I divided by you? now, this makes slightly more sense. like when teeth illiterate in the rudiments of mathematics divide me into squirming pieces of flesh, like when primitive fingernails counting barely from one to ten find twice as many vertebrae to exercise such primordial abacus skills as pulling apart the whole disorganization of frame and beads and wires and body, like when I explode into perfectly uncountable shards liquids and solids and plastics inosculated into perfectly endless tails of comets to form underneath you a perfectly consciousless mess of humanity and its smoldering desire. science fiction? no, dear stranger, none such. life. raw, rapacious, rapturous life.

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Contrasts You are beautiful. Just like a high class whore but, contrary to her, you are beautiful. You enjoy it. Just like a high class whore, the gasp, the shriek, the heavy breath, the nails, the quiet. But, contrary to her, you enjoy it. You lick me clean, just like a high class whore. But, contrary to her, you lick me clean. So? What’s the difference? she asked, pulling the nipple from my mouth and her hand from all over my body. Though she knew. For her, it is a profession, I answered. For you, it is an art. I woke up with the nipple in my mouth and the rest of her around the rest of my body. I guess it was a good answer.

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Leaving You Leaving you. Dying, so much easier. Nothing. Soundless, colorless, senseless. Even bodiless... well, takes some time. Leaving you. Not like dying. Not like nothing. Like... leaving you. The hoofbeats in the skull the sun glare in the mirror the boiling oil on the skin, I try to make myself laugh and ask - is it olive oil? The skin doesn’t think it a joke sending cataclysm after cataclysm to irrigate my veins and tell me of collateral damage. Sanity collateral. Damage. I know, thank you. Leaving you, barefoot, with all your ten toes and the pair of ankles and knees sliding outside my palm or, the other way around, Leaving you tussled with hair rolling like worms around my fingers and bat legs upon my face and rests of it in my mouth that I keep spitting and cursing for not strangling me, Leaving you, naked, leaving you, naked, leaving you naked like a newborn butterfly like a newborn shark like the newborn scream I leave behind with you naked. Why does it scream if it has you naked? Leaving with you my teeth marks - will you keep, leaving with you my splits in your stockings if they can still be called stockings - will you keep, leaving with you my your fusion, yes, my your fusion - will you keep inside your mouth beneath your breast between your thighs will you keep? The moon has gone to lands beyond the everlasting glow To tell of seeds inside the ruts of fate’s impassive plough, Of sprouting buds beneath the sheet you lay upon your bed When I return to pluck your life and feed you love instead.

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Opus: The Physicality Of The Impossibility Of Expression I wish I had less self-confidence and more talent, not that I have much of any. I wish I had less money and more success, not that I have much of the first or any of the second or any chance to have any of either. I wish I lived on a deserted island with one woman, no soap and seventeen dogs hyena-fanged and mongoose-spirited and puppy-hearted humanity excluded, cruelty excluded, atom bombs excluded. I wish... I wish... I wish... sounds like a boy scout poem I wish nothing. I live. Absurd thing, life. Three hundred sixteen miles. Twelve dollars. Five degrees, Celsius. Nine sins, nine wonders, nine millimeters, not seven, nine one less than fingers one more than byte two sins beyond mortality, you, two wonders beyond mortality, you nine more than death and eternity less than eternity and I wonder if it is the ozone in the air or the mushrooms at dinner or the pollen count way above the threshold where people sneeze and people choke and people die. Writing fluent nonsense, is it something like madness or like autism or like a running nose with no handkerchief in sight, in city, in country, no handkerchief ever invented? Pause. Block. Not mental, doesn’t exist. Logical. Reasonal. Conscientiousal. Dictionarial. I have the idea I don’t have the words. Just the feel. The mood. The physicality of the impossibility of expression. Not emptiness. Abundance or its synonym glut or its synonym opulence. Of desire, of no words, of the desire to explode because of the no words. Like a Beethoven cursed with hearing cured, like a Cicero cursed with stutter striking, like Joshua the Warrior without Rahab the Whore. I roll on my side scooping a palmful of breast and seeing the mound refuse to come to mouth I guide mouth to the mound. You incohere, she mumbles, acknowledging the shortcomings of English when addressing this particular lover, and moves slightly to allow mouth to better cohere with the mound. A concise history of humanity’s benefactors, Eve the shy, the lustful, the expelled from Jesus the Jew, the teacher, the nailed to Martin the black, the courageous, the murdered by and none died in their bed, then I try to run a concise history of humanity’s ugly and have to give up on concise and even on short and give up. I never give up. I give up. Someone drew a yellow heart on the pavement. Cars move left and right in front of my window, excuse me Mr. Car would the alien say. Shakespeare, did he really write his masterpieces, I wish I had a time machine. Everyone wishes he had a time machine. Or she. Or it. Yes, it, dogs trees tables. There is a crumb on the table. Incohere, sure, easy for you, you sleep with your breast in my mouth, I am the one with my mouth around your breast trying to make sense of the world, of his world, of dogs and trees and tables. There is a crumb on the table. I don’t think I had any infected mushrooms at dinner. Last time it was a year ago. And it was not mushrooms, it was asparagus. And it was not infected, just over-boiled. A dog barks. You pull your breast away from my mouth, it is stained red and blue you put the other breast in my mouth, you don’t even have the decency to wake up for the transfer just pop out pop in of its own volition like a glass roving over an Ouija table singing songs a dead Elvis never sang but would have wished to. Or da Vinci. If he was a singing performer the way he was a painting performer no one would have remembered him, arts and their built in cruelty some residued (yeah, trying to say leaving residues), some ignored, forgotten, puff, snubbed, like never was, like me. I moan pitifully and pitilessly and full of self pity. Self pitying again? she asks. She still doesn’t wake up. It is like she had an automated answerer in her mouth triggering on certain cues without waking up its mistress. Hey, wake up, I want to shout, I want to make love, but I cannot shout with a mouth full of delicious meat, or flesh, or nipple or whatever... I scold at a dead moth hanging upside down from an invisible thread on a long deserted spider web. Maybe the spider is dead by now too. Maybe if I bite your nipple. No reaction, spider or woman human. Damn Morpheus and his panacea to all human’s ills. I try to take leave but the breast follows me... hey, it’s alive! it’s alive! Where are you going? she asks, still sleeping. Miracles of women lovers. There are no miracles of male lovers. Smaller breasts. True, there is compensation, and she grabs the compensation. Women lovers, ha. Even asleep. She snores. Incomprehensible. Better said she incomprehenses, yes, new word, what the hell, I’m poet... or shall I say I poet? being poetical and shit. I sit up. I refuse to have my life dictated by a breast in my mouth. I sit up. She faces me. Lying on her side, asleep. Breast falling on breast. I try to push the top one up but it falls again. I wonder if it is gravitation. What else, I wonder. Stop wondering, I stop wondering. The skyline of her body far from shaped after my rib. Rather shaped after my dream, my incoherence, my desire, my mushroom slash asparagus induced hallucinations. I touch her ankle with my finger. She shivers. Even the dead moth seems to shiver, even the room, the building. I don’t know about the continent, I don’t care. Why do you shiver? I let my finger trail up towards the side of her knee is it the same shiver, maybe there is a continent wide earthquake? along the side of her thigh, her thighs squeeze together trying to take control, I wish they would part trying to take control, I reach the place where I wish she would turn on her back with my finger keeping position, wishes, wishes... wishes again? She doesn’t turn on her back and my finger descends towards her waist parting upwards again along her rib cage. I’m fat, the dinosaur mumbles and all I can feel are bones and skin and muscles and tendons and fangs biting small pieces off the tip of my finger and I don’t remember when it was I found my way into the lair and my finger between its jaws when she shakes her mane... she? her?... and turns on her back... her?... before she... she?... starts doing something with her thighs, with my spine, with our bodies, her... love, I whisper, looking upwards at the dangling moth, this poem is still classified general public. Love, she whispers back, her actions moving into indescribable though if I wanted I could probably fit description to fiction, love, then it is probably high time for you to stop writing right here.

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Cherry Under the cherry tree a low branch a green cherry my mouth closed around it waiting. Waiting for what? I cannot talk, my mouth busy, she gives me a pen. Waiting for it to ripe red. You’re crazy. She has a point. Three days later. Under the cherry tree the low branch the green cherry and my mouth around it. How will you know it is ripe? I will feel it is red. Red is a taste? She doesn’t know, she was never a cherry, she was never my mouth around a cherry. Yes. I just want to get rid of her. Did you pee? Not a question I would expect from her. I scribble a skull’n’bones then a Superman then a moon, she doesn’t understand and she takes off her bra then her panties then makes a head stand and falls among the nettle. She is allergic to nettle I don’t care. You’re crazy. She scratches madly. She has a point. A week later. Of course I peed, during the night. Under the cherry tree same branch same cherry, same mouth around it, mine, waiting. She gave up. She shaved me, she washed me, she brought me clean underwear and helped me step out of the old and into the new. She even cut my toenails. You look like a werewolf. It was a compliment. Usually I was a mouse. She claimed mice make best pets. So I wasn’t a pet anymore. It became clear once she brought a wooden spike and a mallet. That’s for vampires, I scribbled. You need a silver bullet. She wasn’t convinced, though she dropped the spike and mallet. But she kept chewing garlic. You’re crazy, I scribbled. One of us is. Probably both. Certainly both. She peed in defiance next to me and left for the house. Next morning she was still stinking of garlic. I was asleep. Under the cherry tree under the branch under the cherry, my mouth no longer around it. The garlic stank woke me up. She was mesmerized, looking at that proud, round, shiny, fire-red cherry hanging right above my mouth. And now, are you going to eat it? I scrambled to my feet plucked the cherry with fatherly gentleness from its stem pulled her chin down with other kind of gentleness and dropped the cherry in, pushing her chin upwards, closing the gap. It was that garlic. For you. I had to catch her before she hit the dirt. She woke up chewing. You a-r-e crazy. She spelled it, not I. The garlic didn’t bother me in her about to follow.

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cherry, two our fingers twined Romeo and Juliet nail and plank Sodom and Gomorrah not very positive very suggestive the industrial swish of sliding zippers the romantic rustle of sliding silks we shared death rust ashes our fingers untwined do you want me to run naked in the streets holding an olive branch in my hand? what about a flower laden lilac branch? she giggled. it’s winter. you offered running naked. I mean the lilac. same for the olive. quiet a cherry. it’s winter. a cherry - perfectly round, deeply red, exquisitely juicy, with a long green stem and a shapely green leaf attached to the stem. it’s winter. you asked. one wish, the tiny fairy had said... when was it now?... long ago, after I gently talked her life out of the spider’s embrace and before she flew out through the window pane, funny, she could not fly from a spider’s embrace but she could fly through a window pane. one wish, only. you can be the richest man in the world, you can be perfectly healthy, you can even be immortal. can I end all wars? I asked. it has to be personal, said the fairy. can I end all, hunger, disease, pain in the world? I asked. it has to be personal, said the fairy and flew out through the window pane. your biggest wish? my biggest wish. I closed my palm I opened my palm a cherry - perfectly round, deeply red, exquisitely juicy, with a long green stem and a shapely green leaf attached to the stem she closed her eyes, tight she opened her eyes, big how did you do it? magic, I answered enigmatically watching her chew slowly and she laughed cherry blood oozing from the corner of her mouth kiss me I tasted her lips cherry

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Smooth smooth like a flame’s smoke like a flame undulating in random perfection descending from hips to toes only to rise again through thighs ribs arms all the way to ends of fingers guiding wafts of air on their way to drunken perdition Santana Rob Thomas Smooth... and your body is a whip about to lash turning snake about to lash strike turning wave about to lash strike foam curves wiggling their way through an ungodly obstacles’ range starting with ring 10 through nut M10 ending with beading needle... 10... sure, what else and as Smooth reduces you to smoke I am reduced to whimpering human watching you sneak through fingers on the way to Olympic glory and Zeusian lust. it stopped. thank God. the music. you land on me, laughing, and I break the record. taking no chances. some smoke still collecting in your eyes from wherever you did go... hey, was I there or?... ok, lie to me. I don’t mind being called Zeus.

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kingdom games at the middle of the center of the heart of the flower a country at the middle of the center of the heart of the country a castle I hereby decree you queen of the castle your first decree, m’am? I hereby decree you king of my country minstrel of my castle slave of my passion and your second decree, m’am? my second decree? yes, your second decree about mice and rabbits and hedgehogs and brontosaurs. I hereby decree mice and rabbits and hedgehogs and brontosaurs herbivorous. pardon me, m’am queen, if I may say so, but they are already herbivorous. oh, is that so? then I decree them free and I decree you herbivorous. I looked at her her nipples piercing the darkness around them like stiletto blades the air around them shivering like around a candle flame. there will soon be moths, I said. moths? impossible. what impossible? herbivorous, me. why? how will I eat your toes and bite your breasts and take with me chunks of lips as breakfast and lunch and dinner. is that all? I didn’t want to mention the obvious. it is, well, obvious. there were moths gathering. this was for the night. I guessed there will be butterflies with morning, around her mouth. I still miss the second. decree? decree. regarding mice and rabbits and hedgehogs and brontosaurs? I didn’t deem it necessary to answer the obvious. even if she was queen and I was slave. I was slave only to her passion. I hereby decree mice and rabbits and hedgehogs and brontosaurs king’s knights and queen’s pets that made sense do I have to use a sword? for the knighthood? surely not for the pethood. yes. I don’t have a sword. use your nipple. it’s too short. maybe you do it? don’t be rude. I have a plastic sword, it is deformed. that will do. what about T-rex? she did not mind the moths, they were butterflies too. for knighthood? for herbivorhood. we should ask lady T-rex, I snickered. she’s plastic too. then none of them would mind. I love you, we said, and we didn’t know who said it first, it would have needed a photo-finish kind of equipment. morning the moths went where moths go mornings the butterflies fluttering above her mouth I knew it. you knew what? I preferred to keep it mysterious so I didn’t answer. in the castle at the middle of the center of the heart of the country at the middle at the center at the heart of the flower a queen sleeps surrounded by sleeping mice and rabbits and hedgehogs and brontosaurs and T-rex’s and moths and butterflies and words from a sleepless king minstrel slave sleeping words? the sleeping queen asked the sleepless king minstrel slave. another one I did not intend to answer even if it meant getting my head cut. anyway, she was asleep. I took a pencil and balanced it on the tip of her nipple. I spent the rest of my royal life watching it. the nipple.

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Feudal Justice Just turn on your side and consider denied Your plea to preserve a last vestige of pride, My jury and fury decree this young houri Will carry the wrath of my cravings applied. From dawning of night into morning’s first light To drown in a sea of dementing delight, To soak in my stroke and your gods to invoke When vanquishing shivers your hunger ignite. From pine between sighs driving drought between eyes Through blistering nipples imploring reprise Remiss in my kiss as you tread the abyss With pennons ablaze between smoldering thighs, To build trepidation with cruel privation And once you will curse me to hell and damnation Your need and your greed with inferno to heed... Then crawl to your feet in distressed adulation.

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resonance I resonate with the sounds, my brain resonates with the sounds... I guess each to his harmonics and resonance frequencies where brain cells of reason disintegrate and inner bridges tumble the endless void towards annihilation, never reaching, endless voids are endless before they are voids and the rest of me collapses cells of bone cells of flesh cells of skin along with that perversely pervasive chemical plaster holding it all together until I start undulating. watching you undulate ribbons ribbons of your own bone and flesh and skin struggling to keep upright as they fight gravity and wind and buoyancy your random body kept together by the inhumanity of clothes and leather belts and silk straps with Yellow Moon enveloping and penetrating and melting clothes and belts and straps until all that is left is ribbons of your skin and mine. we undulate into tangles then we undulate into knots and after the knots finish exploding we know that Yellow Moon is over and the radio dies and cars flash left and right of our immobilized tin box while you pull down your skirts and help me pull up my textile inhumanity and your head leans on my shoulder with your fingers fumbling around the radio buttons looking for other harmonies and my hand shakes on the steering wheel.

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Poetrinsically I feel so sad and all alone Like a child without a bone... Child? You mean dog. Huh? Oh, ok... I feel so sad and all alone Like a dog without a bone, I feel so sad without your bliss Like a pod without its peas... ...Hmm... What hmm? Careful with peas, some people might hear piss, you know, p-i-s-s... . Aha... then maybe cheese? Cheese doesn’t rhyme with bliss, it rhymes with, say, wheeze. . I see... listen... I feel so sad and all alone Like a dog without a bone, I feel so sad without your cheese Like a pod without a wheeze... Pods don’t wheeze. . I started losing my patience. I feel so sad without your wheeze Like a pod without its cheese...? Sounded a bit strange even to me. I wheeze? . That’s not what I meant. This poem was going nowhere, it was getting me nowhere too. I tied her to a tree with her pantyhose and stuffed her mouth with a tomato. That should have provided me with a sufficiently supporting greatly enhancing creative environment. It was without counting on her ingenuity (she ate the tomato) and her ingenuity bis (she squiggled her skirt above her waist). I feel so sad and all a bone Like a dog without a loan I feel so sad, I need your piss... ahh, peas... ahh... bliss And the pod needs a... kiss!... Ok, it was a lost case, not so much over the sound or over the skirt fluttering around her waist as rather over what the skirt was not fluttering around. I untied her, licked away the tomato sauce and tried another kind of poetry. I was better at this one. Proof? No vocal interruption, not as much as a cluck... wait a moment, screamed the poet in me, cluck rhymes with... Shut up! she said. No, no voice was necessary, the mouth has a wonderful ability to express itself even without vocal chords.

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Sour Cherries She was picking cherries. Since when do you climb trees in a skirt, to pick cherries? These are sour cherries, she answered, as if it had anything to do with it, dropping the deep red marbles in a hanging basket, and I never climb trees in a skirt, she added. I never contradict a woman, certainly not one picking sour cherries. Even if she is wrong. A lesson I learned long ago. I moved underneath her, looking carefully upwards, just ensuring she was safe one never knows she might as well forget where to place her foot and someone should be there just in case she slipped or something. I kept looking upwards I kept looking upwards I kept looking upwards the pain in my neck unbearable but her safety counting above all. She moved left, then left again, then she bent, then she stretched her left foot to reach a remote branch and stayed like that for a whole five minutes, mighty dangerous, I couldn’t lower my eyes even for one second, not even when the neighbor’s dog peed on my shoe. Safety, you know, above all. She climbed higher, then lower, I followed obstinately her moving shape my eyes fused to her... aaa... safety trying to shake the neighbor’s dog off my leg, he had other ideas. I guess three topmost vertebrae in my neck fused to each other too but I was a natural, dedication to the mission to the end, come rain or thunder or...”Get off dog, get off dog!...” What are you looking up at? she asked, picking the basket in one hand and slowly climbing down with the other. I couldn’t tell her the truth, she hated when I worried about her well being, a white lie was appropriate, I guess. Peeking at your panties, I lied, worrying about my nose. She laughed, taking out from the skirt’s pocket a ball of white cotton which unfurled from her holding fingers very much into the shape of the subject under discussion. The dog grabbed it and ran away, yapping happily at his trophy. Liar! She waited, watching my nose-end, then when it didn’t grow she repeated Liar! I wondered if it was confrontation time. After all she was the mistaken one earlier on, if she still remembered. Women do have a tendency to memory blank spots. She filled her cupped palm with sour cherries and stuffed her mouth full, then let me have some as well, half chewed. I mean I got just the pits and she threw her head back, laughing wildly. The dog ran back to investigate if there was something in it for him and finding no interest started chasing the cat. It was the neighbor’s cat as well. You are crazy, I said. My nose did not start growing but a man is not made nose only. You are a liar, she said, feeding me some more chewed cherries, not only pits, her tongue was there as well. I found quite fast that there was an advantage to the dog having run away with his trophy. She did not mind my investigation into the truthfulness of the claim. It was a sold up-front game, of course, no investigation was necessary. But she did not know. Ahmm...

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put on that dress put on that dress with a cut along and a neckline deep from your knee to your thong from your chin to your hip letting loose on the world your lean muscle of thigh and a cleavage debate gleaning sigh after sigh... put on that dress with a texture thin and a clinging hold leaving glimpses of skin and of nipples gone bold the indecent collusion of dreams with a sun conceiving forbidden incursions in fun... put on that dress with a button torn and a missing thread lost in pastures of corn or through splinters of bed mixing wantonness rumors with whispers of lust when the ribs in the heart-cage are turning to dust. you know what?... take off that dress with the neckline and cut and the texture and cling with the oops and the what and the wow and the zing with the button, the thread lost or torn yesterwhen and the craving unshed starting now ending then take off... let your flesh grab my life in its rummaging hands let it offer the gift which is mine and no man’s you can put on that dress once the moment is done and then leave me with memories known but to none.

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continuity I can easily imagine thirty years ago... more? less?... whatever might be enough to place us on a dance floor with damning rock’n’roll blaring from loudspeakers big enough to work a second shift as coffins and a skirt to your legs shorter than what would take to make a bow-tie barely hiding a rolling ass bound to drive me insane along with onlookers not lucky enough to roll your curves through drops of sweat hanging in the air and meet you at the end of the move with just sufficient sanity to feel the crush of breasts and the steel of thighs promising continuity I can easily forget thirty years passing... more? less?... whatever the count might be when we step on that dance floor with a rock’n’roll that never ended neither rocking nor rolling and loudspeakers who gives a damn and your spine still the whip lashing that poor dress slightly longer now and your thighs still the steel slightly the less offensive nothing the less sharp keeping the promise never made to wrap me in ribbons and cut me in slices as we descend the dance floor to the world to define normalcy for the books and live insanity for the life proving continuity I can easily find thirty years lost... more? less?... whatever who cares counts on a dance floor between the first beat of a rock and the last beat of a roll your hair slapping ruts across my face and your teeth promising ruts across my neck and your hips cutting ruts between bodies and tables and loudspeakers the discarded dress a trophy the piling thighs a pile of trophies once steel turns flesh turns madness turns flesh never turns memory between legs of overturned chairs and tatters of once garments once bedding never patience ends of fingers ending in ends of fingernails finding the roots of life to strangle rip caress never begging mercy granting mercy living continuity

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pearls of wisdom... ha! pearls of wisdom... ha! what I have are not pearls of wisdom. what I have are beads of desire. my flesh opens mouths in a clamorous quire divining the parting of thighs and of clouds when lightning dissects me away from the crowds and turns me to pyre. notions of greatness... ha! what I have are not notions of greatness. what I have are lumps of hunger. a vanity lost between older and younger now thrashes its life at the point of my heel and craving the lust in your body I kneel salacity monger. reason for living... ha! what I have is not reason for living. what I have is design for burning. my body for body in body is yearning my nipple for nipple on nipple implores to wallow in salt excavated from pores delirium churning. wish for knowledge... ha! what I have is not wish for knowledge. what I have is thirst for shivers. to forage your raiment in search for the rivers that promise to sate my privation and want with perfumes indecent and lewd as the jaunt from furor delivers. hope for survival... ha! what I have is not hope for survival. what I have is impatience for later. impatience to humble the Chronos chap traitor as layers of autumn I hull from your skin before we start gilding with wafers of sin eternity’s crater.

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Heat! You turn on your bed. Then you turn again. Then again, pulling your thin nightie up to your knee, then to your mid thigh, then higher. Your nakedness underneath does not help, just a psychological relief no match for the physiological oppressing heat that envelopes you like an unwelcome lover and sucks out all the salt from your body into blobs of sweat too sticky and too lazy to fall even to the mattress. Your breasts flat, even your nipples flat, your armpits smart, all your nooks and crevices smart... suddenly you guffaw, lucky men, you think, one less crevice for them to worry about and the guffaw turns to laughter as you crawl down from the bed into the shower. Not bothering even to turn on the light. Or to take off the nightie. Water, cold, oh, blessed blissful pouring water. How long have you been there, five minutes? One hour? You turn off the tap the thin textile sticking to your body like a second skin molding itself to islands of smoothness between spots of wrinkles dragging out from your body all of human heat your skin turning needles as you approach the open window and a barely existent breeze caresses the watery armor persuading it to desert that exclusive real estate of your flesh. Your nipples shoot out. Your fingers shoot between your thighs a moment of wild passion clouding your brain and you wish him there then with you inside you... damn simulation you laugh again peeling away the wet nightie and letting it splash to the floor as your elbows meet the window sill together with your dropping breasts and you close your eyes. Soon I will need a shower again. A dog barks. A mosquito buzzes. A moth flaps. How long did it take? A few minutes and the hair stopped dripping on your back and the tiny rivulet connecting spine to buttocks sizzles dry and your nipples sink anew into the earlier lethargy and indifference. How many hours to morning, you wonder. How many hours to him, you don’t wonder, you know. This is a count no one will take away from you, patience baby, you smile as your fingers touch the sleeping nipple carefully, as if afraid to cheat them into renewed wakefulness. Soon, baby, and you change the bedding lying on the temporarily cool bed sheet and counting the stars from the left to the right of the window frame. You fall asleep somewhere through the count back, from right to left. The dog barks again. The same dog. You don’t hear. With morning you’ll count further, another hot night waiting for you but, hey, one night less to the end of the count.

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reality, rewriting lean against the window, naked. your lips flattened your breasts, belly, thighs flattened. the rest of you tri-dimensional in the other dimension behind the glass where I cannot hear your call where I cannot reach without magic. I am no magician. push against the window squirm against the window I want to see your nipples writing with memory of milk and your depths writhing with memory of virginity ripped and motherhood ripening and thirst unquenched ranting, raging, raving the smolder of parched insides calling for that which never came until I until us. lean against the window, naked, your palms cupping, holding, your soles cupping, holding, your thighs sucking against the glass knowing it to melt knowing me to penetrate the pit of molten sand and conquering that memory of thirst between your thighs feeding it sudden serenity and knowledge of what stays lost. and of what stays fed. and of what stays conquered. I am still no magician. I don’t know how I got your side of the window and I hear your call and I conquer your flesh alongside with your memories the window melting around us to freeze our unificated bodies in a volume of words and withering glass flowers.

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Chart A smells chart? She laughed. I guess all places from ten to one are taken by lilac. You’d be surprised. You mean there are... other smells for you counting in the top ten. She sounded incredulous, intrigued. After all... After all what? she outguessed me. After all I never told you everything. You told me lilac. True. But not everything. But every time. Walnuts. What walnuts? Young, locked in their green husk, the shell broken, the nut removed the thin bitter inner peel removed and the soft white nut revealed... ohhh... heavenly. You must be sick. Ohhh, heavenly, I repeated. Number ten. We walked hand in pocket, her left hand in my pants’ rear left pocket my right hand in her pants’ rear right pocket, it forced us to squeeze against each other slightly more then absolutely more. And then nine to one lilac. Rain. She stumbled, almost tearing my pocket. Good quality Levi’s, didn’t tear. She squeezed my buttock until I almost screamed in pain, probably her way to ascertain she was not dreaming. Then she released it. No, she was not dreaming. Rain? Sounded almost like a four lettered word. Hey, it is a four lettered word. Rain, torrential rain cutting through treetops, through wild wheat and thin blouses revealing round breasts and small nipples... ...whose nipples? ...and desires no longer intimate. I refused to be dragged into a nipple argument, it would kill the romance Eight... and before she could interject nipple or lilac I rushed on... jasmine and wild rose and white lily. All of them? Yeap. Cannot decide and wish not to insult, so all of them. Eight. She giggled. Wish not to insult... squeezing my buttock again, gently this time. Then she kissed the corner of my mouth and tore away jumping in a dirty puddle enthusiastically spraying mud all over herself. I kept my distance, waiting for the enthusiasm to diminish, then neared her and pulled up the hem of her skirt... Hey, you stained your panties, they are full of mud now. Are you sure it is mud stains? She lifted her skirt unceremoniously and pulled her panties down, stepping out of them foot after foot then smelled them. Yes, mud stains, and she stepped into them again, pulling them up and letting the skirt down. You are insane, I said, minding not. Is insane number seven? Insane is not a smell, I muttered, not entirely convinced. Two dogs suddenly jumped from behind a fence, chasing each other. A mouse peeked from a hole in the ground then skittered back in. A crow landed to our right pecking on a piece of dry bread. Freshly baked bread. Mmmmm... I knew I hit a chord there with my number seven, no explanation no justification necessary. I waited patiently for her m’ing to reach an end (several minutes long) before I ventured into my number six. Orange blossom... Mmmmm... Yes, I expected this one as well, after all I knew some things of you by now. Linden tree flower... Mmmmm... ...and while she was m’ing I revisited in my mind all those trees lining the street next to home none of which I did not visit tearing my clothes and climbing to their tops gathering pocketsful and shirtsfull and armsful of the yellow miracle flowers and undying memories. Hey, you are crying, she surprised me, looking up at me in almost childish wonder then tiptoeing to kiss away my two accumulating blobs and guiding my head to her small bosom. Memories? I couldn’t answer, afraid I would start crying for real. She waited, patiently, until the tension in my body subsided and only then she allowed my head away from the safety of her warm flesh. She moved her hand from my pocket to my waist, leaning her head on my shoulder. One of the dogs stopped in front of us, his tongue dangling, his tail waving frantically until the second dog stormed him and they disappeared barking their happiness. Four. Robinia. The one white. The one with thorns The one I was scooping palmfuls of and filling my mouth with and choking in that infinite childish happiness only... children know. Do you think you could... now, as well? Yes, I think so. We kept walking in silence, slowly. Evening started descending. A first star appeared. Then three more stars. She waited for the lilac, slightly worried by now. Lilac? There were three places left, maybe lilac was eleventh, or one hundred and eleventh? I stopped, closed my eyes gathering her at my chest, my fingers sinking in her hair, the closing fists certainly ripping a few delicate fibers, she did not moan. She was quiet. The old, ruined, forgotten synagogue and the eternal smell of crumbling, sacred books and so many thumbnails leafing though the yellowed pages, the lingering vapors of burning wax, of my father’s sweat under the praying shawl and my mother’s freshly smeared lipstick for the festivities coming, going, gone. My number three. My number two. She looked up at me, almost imploring. Lilac. And she danced and she pirouetted and she let out a yell like a hundred thousand throats shouting their Copa Mundial de Fútbol winning goal happiness... Then she stopped dancing and pirouetting and yelling suddenly aware of the impossible, inadmissible, unexpected. Lilac. Number two. The question implied in the statement, unvoiced, terrible in its insistence. Lilac. Number two, she repeated. I faced her. My hand moved under her skirt, hooking into the elastic band, pulling, snapping. I brought the flimsy garment to my face, closing my eyes. No. Insufficient. I kneeled in front of her, letting the skirt fall over my shoulder my face approaching touching sinking sinking sinking at that node of thigh and thigh and belly the perfume irresistible monstrous enveloping enkindling encarnalizing my scream turning gurgle as her fingers gently and firmly started pushing the back of my head deeper and deeper and deeper... I reached the top of my chart, no words were necessary anymore. * One day, I will ask you your number eleven and up, she said. One day, I will tell you, I answered.

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timessly I define time around us, a bubble not even round, unnatural, no penetration possible in or out either as long as we are the key holders. the only key holders. open. enter. close. you kick the shoes under the bed you let your hair cascade loose over your shoulders and zero time starts ending... when?... whenever, who cares?... find the key, you challenge hopping on my shoulders your thighs closing around my neck your ankles locking at my back and I drowning, thinking of anything but to find the key... hey, you will bang your head against the ceiling, I scream, my scream muffled by you around it. you descend let’s dance and you start singing and we dance and I want to rock’n’roll and all you want is to roll’n’roll and we dance until I kick my shoes under the bed too. do we have time to collect dry leaves? barefoot? barefoot. you collect dry leaves and I collect ladybugs to watch them fly and land again on your hair from time to time I lift the hem of your skirt to ascertain you are still there and as I find you there you collect dry leaves and I collect ladybugs. I step into a thorn. I step into a nail. I step into a bear-trap. there’s no pain just ladybugs visiting your hair and fingers visiting the underneath of your skirt mine and dry leaves crush between toes exploding into clouds of past life and you ask me if I want to make love and I say never. we make love though we make nothing of the kind but just a holocaust of dust and fire and racket and never is meaningless in zero time. I find the key, I knew where it was at all times. you pull your shoes from underneath the bed I pull my shoes from underneath the bed I put yours to your feet you put mine to my feet we don’t care to wash our feet or our mouths or our bodies in or out or anywhere open. exit. close. time starts anew, bubble shrinks to zero dimensions or maybe explodes. you carry the key and a few ladybugs I carry the key and a few leaves we carry dance love zero time until next. time.

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Life Seasons How old are you? I asked her. Many springs, she answered, smiling, the smile hiding any wrinkles she might have had at mouth corners. And you? she asked. I was still busy looking for wrinkles, insisting on finding. She insisted on smiling. Many winters, I answered. And now, one spring, I added, expecting buds to burst at her hair ends. Buds commenced bursting at her hair ends. How old are you, now? I asked her. Many springs and one winter? I added in self deprecation. She rolled a hair around my finger, until it ended with the flower above, made a knot. I skip one winter right into eternal summer, she smiled, and I felt something strange happening to the ends of my hairs, something like... bursting buds?

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variations you come in from the rain, or are you the rain?... shaking your mane like a dog like a lion like a lioness... hey nature’s mistake the maned one should have been the lion-she not the lion-he and you shake your mane like a dog like a lion like a lioness wearing a lion’s wig and you flood me with the sparkles of drops and the sparkles of eyes and you cut me with fangs and claws only to lick later the bleeding ruts and seed there traces of infinite love like a dog like a lion like a lioness for her cubs. you run out into the rain only to run in back from the rain and shake your mane anew waiting for me to chase you snare you trepan you and peel from you layer after layer of dripping water and oozing sweat and pleasures locked in between by ages of neglect for your canine majesty leonine majesty feminine majesty you, divine, unconquerable, Helen, I, Leonteus, loser, warrior, abductor of Helen against myth and against memory founding a new story love story love and lust and lilac story. what are you thinking? you ask and instead of providing you with oral proof of my madness I provide you with physical proof liberating you from the wetness of cloth prison to dry you with breath and soak you with breath anew and with sweat and sigh and scream and lust and love and lilac the rain beating its own gravitational madness against the pane watching us lock unlock lock until lilac fades into wither. withes... limbs?... clutch my thighs into a rigidity of death while my fingers winnow your hair setting free stardust.

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The Event How do you cram lifetime into days? Worse still how do you cram one lifetime into that one last day of the few when you were busy living the other days as... days, one at a time? Like life. Like real life, like reality. Maybe you could try the next best - describe it, write a poem about it. Maybe several poems, maybe many yet you know that one or many it will take you the entirety of the leftover of lifetime to achieve a small fraction of the description, with the rest lost forever, for no one to know except for you. And her. And that small hotel room that hosted the fire the softness the sharing. The days. How do you cram emptiness into lifetime? When it is bigger than life.

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Ecstasy I saw an apple on the floor, bitten, half chewed. You sat on the balcony, knees dragged under chin hands knotted in front of knees the white underwear tight around the top of your thighs blinding in sun’s unforgiving glare, your eyes closed. How long have you been there, hours years? No, couldn’t be years, you’d be dead by now just bones, no flesh left even for flies... and yet... I pushed a stiff finger into your shoulder. No reaction. Steam rose in barely visible clouds from hair impregnated with water the top of a left breast clearly visible through the missing sleeve no nipple in sight, I wondered, is the nipple at least alive or as sleeping, dead as the rest of your flesh? Tooth ache? I asked, assuming life and seeing the swollen left cheek. A hand stirred (alive! alive!) sliding slowly from the front of the knees and stretched languidly backwards fingers fluttering lazily, like ribbons, inviting, I offered my fingers as support and a few bones followed by a few claws found lair in my flesh as you pulled me towards you closer closer the right hand grabbing the nape of neck, dragging. It was like a hydraulic piston, mindless, irresistible. Mouths clashed. War. An invasion of ivory and muscle and poison... hey, freshly fermented apple wine... took over my senses, my body, I writhed in inebriation’s throes whining my appreciation to dawning apocalypse as whatever was cloth turned cinder and whatever was flesh turned minced meat and we fell my mouth hanging in desperation to one awakened nipple, the lone life-raft in a sea boiling with delirium and ecstasy.

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Masterpiece. The Other One. Impulse. I know what I’m looking for. I slide the CD in the player shift gears into the sixth skip the first tracks and bite my lips for the duration of the silence in-between... the first loudspeaker vibrations the first notes the first trumpet blares, trombones, drums, clarinet, Swing, Swing, Swing and Mr. Goodman decides to share his good mood by driving shivers down my spine with his masterpiece as I close my eyes... ok, as much as I can while avoiding the rest of mad drivers around me and we are there, the big dancing hall and the big hanging chandelier and the big orchestra and you at the other end of my flailing arms high heels, wide skirts slightly above knees, the hairdo à-la époque and the deep red lipstick to your mouth à-la époque too and then some and we swing, devil’s fire in our feet and devil’s rhythm infesting our ears and your legs tanned and muscular and the skirts flip and flop and flutter around your hips and around your thighs and I roll you and I turn you and I crush you against me and you roll and you turn and you crush against me the pride of your womanhood flashing blindingly driving me insane driving everybody insane as you fly through the air and fly above my shoulders and skid upon the floor between my feet to rise on the other side, skirts high, laughter divine, spine lithe, woman, dancer, goddess... masterpiece. The other one. I open eyes. Somehow, I am alive, my car parked on a highway parking spot, motor still running, the leftover sounds pounding the windows into near shatter and picnickers hastily packing their stuff to put a safe distance between them and me, spreading the tablecloth anew on another table, two tables away. The thunder is over. My ears still reverberating, my heart still hammering with the ecstasy and travail of the madness and the dance. You fade away. Last I see of you are fingers lingering behind with a kiss they carry my way and suddenly my vision blurs. There are tears in my eyes.

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Body? What about your body? The daily bustle back and forth Drives ankles east and paces north, The creaking sound inside your knees With morning’s yawn and evening’s wheeze Compete with Ludwig’s timeless Fourth           and summer’s breeze. The walls of glass around the church Ignore the gloom beneath its lurch, And then a sudden rush of blood And tears turn cheeks to rainbow’s mud, You spot upon the dying birch           a sprouting bud. The stifling heat among the trees Spreads yellow spots of sun disease, A sprinkler calls - hey, be my wife! For you the sun I’ll war and strife, Then soaks your transparent chemise           with blobs of life. The dust astride the crawling air Reflects the void inside the stare, Your nipples through the cotton seep Preparing for the mighty leap Into my fingers’ deathly snare           my life to reap. The night is dawning on the room, The eyelids cut away the gloom, Your body wakes to life and shine The dream... or is it love divine Your thighs aflame, your breasts in bloom           oh, mine, oh, mine.

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Canine Intelligence I dreamt that you took my dog for a walk in the woods. There he went on a wild goose chase chasing a wild goose and you told me that you see treetops around my head then you told me that you see your eyes inside my eyes then you saw stars since you closed your eyes. By the time the dog returned carrying a log three times his size you were already dressed, your make-up immaculate and you were reading to me poetry in a strange language hoping the dog will not know. This was with disregard to canine intelligence. “Hey”, you blushed in alarm watching him pick-up something pink from the grass, it looked grotesque in a funny kind of way hanging there from his muzzle before he rushed off to bury it somewhere. I peeked underneath your skirt... yes, yours I admitted to failure blushing in my turn as the dog returned sat in front of me and watched me with huge, black, questioning eyes. Never knew inquisition before, it was a first. We returned, hand in hand, leaving the dog pull himself by the leash, he preferred to drag the leash and carry the log. I kept peeking underneath you skirt, guffawing, yeah, canine intelligence. “And after the dream?” What dream? I kept peeking underneath you skirt, guffawing, yeah, canine intelligence.

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dreamer you hang your days with clothes pegs yesterday leftovers drip into cups sorted by degrees of happiness ranging from torture to exultation you sort them by color, size with hints of tomorrow leaving preliminaries like bird poop or garlands of butterflies or frozen drops of rain mid of a sultry summer... you gather fallen branches to bury ceremoniously with flowers and poems instead of prayers, safer with a poem being listened to than with a prayer then you wait for the first green signs of a sprouting promise making sure no truck will step on it and no goat will chew it and when the promise turns tree you fall asleep under its shadow, safe in its embrace... you translate hopscotch hops to words like ribbon, like after we met, like pocketful of desire and when you finish the assignment you sell it for a cupful of sunflower seeds or a jar of black olives one to count years and one to count days and one unmentioned to light match-heads tired of life and stars tired of waiting... your realities, who cares about anything else?

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limits stretch your body thin long until you’re as thin as paper, as cigarette foil, until you reach the moon and fall back to Earth after wrapping around the other side to collect dust and shadows we will never see, are there butterflies there? let your fingernails grow long can you reach the topmost apple? can you reach through the clouds up to the sun and pierce through its swollen heart to find the truth about hell and heaven? can you find the truth about love? knead the dough soft thin bake it on sputtering candle fire bake it on my heart after you cut it open then feed the crumbs to me and to whales and to words to find if poetry heals, is poetry a religion of as many gods as poets?

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The Call A voice. First. A smile. Follows. The bud opens and swarms of butterflies invade you and you dare not close your mouth lest you touch a wing and bring death to one of a trillion, yes, maybe one of a trillion to us yet one of one to one butterfly that will not die because you smile persistently, restlessly, even when I try to kiss you. Will it end? I ask knowing you cannot answer and hoping it will not even if I cannot kiss you until it does, ever, if at all. There are some bees as well, I laugh, knowing you wouldn’t mind. Neither the bees nor my laughter. It gives me time. You cannot complain so I lift your skirt and blame the wind. You cannot run away so I paint your fingernails and blame the rain. You cannot eat so I finish the cherries and blame the goat. I mean a goat. I mean whichever goat happens to pass by. Scapegoat, you know. You cannot say I love you so I say I love you you cannot make love so I do not make love and blame you. What is red? Like the inside of the bud, like the inside of your mouth like the outside of your wound. Like bitten cherry. Like crushed watermelon like torn poppy petal like early sunset like late sunset like glowing coal, under ashes, like lily beetle. Like scarlet ibis. I blame your mouth for having me think bud, think red. The swarm never ends. Will it end? I ask. Hi, I hear you say from another planet and I guess you are not aware of wind or rain or goats and God knows if trillions of butterflies mean anything to you as you start chatting about weather, and internet and... what’s that? I ask as your voice dies into swishes and swishes and swishes... I have no choice, it would have cost me a fortune so I close the line. I had a strange dream, you phone me days later, it was not really fantastic, it was not really erotic, it was not really zoologic. Let me guess, I answer, it had to do with wind and with rain and with goats but it was not wind and rain and goats. Silence. And with trillions of butterflies, I add. The line dies. The phone rings. Is it a dream? The line dies. The doorbell rings. Is it a dream? The door closes. You flap your hair, you unbutton your shirt, you drop your shoes and trillion of butterflies invade the room and I feel like swimming in fluttering butter as I retreat further inside and you follow dragging the goat. It was my turn to ask but I didn’t. I open the window to let everyone fly out except for the goat, yes, you too. Do not fly. Instead I help you drop other things next to the shoes then lay you on the bed and as you bite the ends of my fingers I feed the goat my stamps collection then comb your hair until autumn before making love to you. * Shall I return? you ask, hand on the handle. Call first, I answer, letting the pen drop on the paper next to the word “goat”. The pick it up again, strike out “Call first” and write “Yes”.

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Words Here, I send you a few words, sow them! Doesn’t matter - sand, earth, swamp... all that matters is your expectations. They will grow, oh, they will grow, bloom. Maybe flowers, maybe trees, maybe forests maybe mountains maybe mountains covered with forests. Not castles, castles don’t grow, smiles grow storms grow passions grow passion grows, castles are built with smiles, with storms, with passions, with passion. With words. Roll down upon the mountain slope, upon words, don’t worry about thistles hanging to your clothes and thorns piercing your earlobes and words scratching your knees and cutting your hearts... yes, you have more than one, one with you. I’ll hang words to the holes in your earlobes together with camomile and I will remove thistles from your clothes together with clothes, starting with all. Then I’ll swathe your knees with my palms and I will fail on the impenetrable fortress of your breast before reaching your heart, I will settle for your nipple your tongue my poem. And then I will depart looking for Atlantis knowing their science to be the only that can strip poems from pages and thicken the essence until it becomes reality and deform reality until it becomes sweating skin and breath, smelling of dried flowers in blossom.

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naked visions lying next to naked you, naked naked naked the only layer separating us skin leftovers barely hanging to your flesh around blister domes, whatever was left after visiting the paths to hell and ripping all the roses along the way together with thorns and roots and chimera’s welding fire wedding us tip of finger trying to find a virginal, unmolested spot, to touch you, to not hurt you, you can touch, anywhere, you allow and I touch anywhere and you moan approval taking me fully in there, where I molested most and the blister domes explode around your left areola as my canines fulfill their feral job and join the tip of finger in further demolition of your womanity do you think me beautiful? you ask mouthfuls of me filling the cavity of your mouth to its lung depths immediately after leaving me no choice but to find you the ugliest of goddesses how many there are? one the ugliest of wild flowers how many there are? one the ugliest of morning stars how many there are? one spitting me out and taking me in for each question until I find myself spread all over the nearest galaxy and the one after before I collect myself once again to pieces of slave embroidering your body, naked skinless snakes petalless tulips titleless poems we swap fingernails twine bones your aortic valve pumping into my aorta my cava pumping into your atrium while an asexual mixture of clitoris and testicles and nipples reaches nova and asks God for permission to recreate the world... Granted!... * silence. would have been absolute if not for an insistent cricket. would have thrown a shoe if I knew where to. where are we? it took her longer to return. she did not yet hear the cricket. is this a cricket? she heard it, finally. I dreamt of God’s finger, I whispered in her ear. I dreamt of another finger, she whispered back and the explosion followed. laughter. I mean it, I insister, after. smiling. I mean it too, she insisted, after. shining. we joined the cricket’s chirping, she by moving fingernail tips up my stubble, I by moving fingernail tips up her goosebumps. didn’t take long before we tried using incisors against incisors. didn’t take long before we started looking for fingers, whichever kind.

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anew, after a time waiting impatiently, the steps slightly stumbling the bag... what do you carry in that bag that it hangs all the way into the asphalt, your gold, your lead? an atomic bomb and its how to use for dummies? sour cherries? you slam the door after you sit down after you pull your dress beneath your knee after you pull your dress above your knee and guide my hand underneath it with your lips sucking my gums down your tonsils and your fingers pinching my nipple into red then blue then scream, missed you, you say so why do you wish to kill me? I say not remembering at all the way to the room or the code to the door or the way to remove the right shoe the left shoe lost on the stairs yet remembering the way to tear stockings into inexistence and underwear into insignificance and even your name, what was your name before I forgot it? I turn my back to you and you scoop me into your spoon falling asleep, most of you ivy except for your mouth, which is poppy.

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Philosophylessly One devil, so many, countless angels. Is it a measure for the power of evil and impotence of good? Or of our human need to subduct fear and aggrandize hope, proof to our pettiness and imbecility and ignorance. My annual, five cents worth of philosophy. Worthless. I compare it to your peaks and troughs finding no correlation except in perfect irrelevancy, my mind echoing with the rustle of goosebumps grating against my fingernail as it follows the perfection of curves upwards downwards deepwards deeperwards, pulling out afraid to perforate your spine. I try to find another trail of philosophy finding the contrast to reality appalling knowing I overstate finding none angry that I find none and yet relieved that I did not perforate your spine. I detect the curl of a butterfly’s antenna. I detect the redolence of a broken lilac branch struggling to breathe. I detect the pinpoint of sun’s hellish omphalos. Where? My lust an exploding cyst covering the outer crust of your flesh with tincts stolen from all over the Cappella Sistina ceiling there, where the paint did not yet dry and is about to drip anew in tiny glasses I sowed all over the floor to be collected by the many, countless angels and one devil. The circle is ripe. I break the circle. We suckle each at another breaking point and when the jagged edges cut our lips we suckle each at each other and think of stupid star clichés like falling stars or exploding stars or the stars in your eyes.

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Keys I own almost all the keys. To you. The simple one to your skin ripples, the complex one to your flesh breaking up into tiny islets of ecstatic agony and re-converging into a mass of limp, sweaty temporary nothing, all those in between the brass one to your haywire hair the steel one to winding up your muscles the ivory to steal your breath and the glass to persuade your ankles to part their separate ways for moments magic... ...almost? Waiting for an answer. Almost. I don’t own the key to your past. The one that uncovered your body and opened your body and created life with your body. Silence. Not absolute. The tap drips. Not like Chinese torture, like clockwork. Bones rattle like chopsticks in a grocery bag suddenly too big, too loose to contain them, joints creak. Each drop another tact, another note to the endful symphony... probably turning cacophony. Celestial music to my ears as the flesh enveloping them merges with the flesh enveloping them and the mass of limp, sweaty temporary nothing turns into everything, envelops me. Glad so. You are the composite result of your past. I would not have had all the keys, otherwise. The tap stopped dripping. A cricket took over. I did not pay attention to the moment of transition, not that time cares what counts it. If counts it. If it exists as all except in the minds of ignorants and on the boards of professors explaining the unexplainable. With words. Symbols. Equations. Failing. You join the cricket, unaware. Your breath irregular, as timekeeper you would be worthless. I prefer, though, to count my time in your breaths. Makes time personal, tangible, almost as tangible as the tips of your sleeping nipples. I pull the covers slowly away, drag a chair next to the bed to sit and watch. The cricket has shut down for the night. Time freezes. I think I found one more key. To simplicity. To happiness.

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Airports Airports. Strange places. People. Mainly coming. Or is it mainly going? Thousands. Some permanent. Some temporary, some multi temporary. Some uni temporary. Some fixtures, like the lamps. Like ground personnel. Cleaners. Police. Pickpockets. I. Which category I? Missing you category, I guess. Probably a few more possible. Writing you a poem. For each one I write you there are five I write me. Or three. Or one. Or seven. Or one. Yes, I said it already. One. Or as much as I have electrical power and mental power and not falling asleep power. Food smells. Nothing to do with poetry but with consumetry. Don’t look it up in Webster’s, no such word. Like distantry. Like misstry. Like lustry. Like cravetry. Like pleasantry. Oops, you can look this one up. Somewhere between plea and zulu. Somewhere between here and my destination. I wish I knew my destination. Hopefully the pilot does. Hopefully I remember my name the way I remember your body. Yes, even that spot no one else remembers, not even you. Big deal, you never saw it, you never could see it, just touch it. I saw it. Someone cleans the tables, makes noise like before world war three, and during, and after, all phases together multiplied by two. I’m scared for my stereo hearing, imagine I lose one ear. No, not on the floor, not this losing, I mean my hearing. Imagine spending all my life with one ear hearing music and the other the continuous, ingrained clatter of dishes. Did I tell you about the egg? Yes, I know, another subject. What egg? My watch blinks. Maybe battery. Maybe winks, tries making a pass at me. Someone mumbles something on the public system, sounds Chinese. Why should one make announcements just in Chinese? Maybe China conquered the airport? Won’t be a big deal, anyway everything is made in China - Sony, Dior, Chivas... I am one of the few exceptions, I was not made in China. I think. Even dildos are made in China. Even American flags. I hope you are not made in China. I have to check carefully, next time. Very carefully, everywhere. You can check me too. Of course, you can use even a magnifying glass... hey, I hope you are joking. She calls me. I am not sure, these Chinese messages are a mess. Not even a sexy voice. I will try going to the gate, past the security line squatters crawling at one mile per millennium, past the security line queers happily massaging my body past the security line peepers watching my passing skeleton from every disgusting angle no one called me. But everybody is boarding. I have no choice. I send you a fast thought, no time for sms (turn off your phone or we shoot you). I sit down and send you another fast thought. We take off and between praying sessions I send you many thoughts, long ones, gliding along your body inside your body along around inside outside your body. Told you, praying, my style. Have to close the paper. Arrived. Have to face a customer, a machine, a hotel clerk. I like it. With you alongside me it is very easy. It has nothing to do with missing you, I miss you also when you are alongside me. Don’t forget to dress, when I left you a few minutes ago you were naked, we wouldn’t want you to catch a cold, no? Or be jailed for indecent exposure. Or kidnapped for a poor sheikh (a rich one would be less horrible). Okay, also horrible, if you insist. Someone closes the light. sdhbf wrkljir rerikQAjfk ?gg... oops, lighted a match, blind typing. Another day, another customer. Another poem. Same you. Thank God.

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Full Cycle Nothing decayed into spring. Spring decays into summer that decays into autumn that decays into winter, winter decays into nothing. Full cycle. I’m somewhere along this abscissa, or rather taking a break inside one of the 6-tuple’s positions knowing of the math of unidirectional vectors and of the direction of flesh vectors. Of this vector. Mine. I stop. Somewhere. You join me, my abscissa allows two marking systems or, if you wish, my 6-tuple allows bi-dimensional entities into each position and while knowing that the nothing position is absolutely singular I extend my stay on those along the way allowing the duality of sharing and tie you, to me, with chains with ropes with necklaces hoping the dual gravity will break the vector’s advance... maybe a little?... maybe a little little?... sure, none at all. Will that last nothing contain anything... of us? It will, we know, and we turn dragons once again scorching shared insides with shared breaths while our wounds drip blobs of molten words marking our passage, punching holes the size of mountains into the approaching nothing.

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Suddenly... Turns your breath into a river and your breasts begin to quiver as the tongues resolve to tangle           in the wrangle           growls the shiver. Was it Logi’s rabid burning, was it Vulcan’s dire yearning pouring volleys laden fire into wallowing desire           with a lyre           timbres churning? Or a passion long forsaken letting memories awaken, pulling hell’s corroded latches and as light the darkness scratches           madness hatches           unmistaken? Samson dies between your lilies, at your fountain dies Achilles, all of heroes proud and gaudy turn to squirming low and shoddy           from my body           trot the fillies. From the fields of ashes prowling I retreat, my manner scowling, in the sack of flesh and bowels cling my lungs with bony dowels           spitting vowels,           poems howling. Whence you come? demands a fairy crushing clumps of fleshen cherry to my mouth... from devil’s dwelling, dragon’s lair with gods rebelling,           ocean’s swelling,           eagle’s eyrie. From before the birth from nether into blooming fields of heather, from beyond the none of never through the glimmer of forever           whatsoever           human’s tether. From... and crumbs of shattered reason squirm inside my bony prison trying to retrieve a meaning in the gentle wake of sinning           keenly gleaning           summer’s season.

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