Hobbies - Poetry - Anonn
back to Poems...


 

blank

corner
Winter Butterflies

    You’re chasing butterflies,
    all winter long.

    Then you complain about blisters
    and frost bitten ears
    and pains in your muscles, forgetting to specify which.

    I wonder,
    is it just to attract my attention
    or you’re really hoping to find butterflies?

    There are butterflies in the winter,
    the other side of Earth,
    you state
    and I refrain from pointing the obvious.

    You’re back again from your travails
    and you ask me to kiss your toes
    and I agree on condition that you remove your shoes.
    Oh, my shoes... you giggle embarrassed and offer me the privilege.

    Then you’re off again.
    Once you returned with a stray cat that scratched me and yelped away.
    Once a dog bit you when you tried to take its bone.
    Once you found a broken butterfly, plastic.
    You never found a butterfly.

    I will find a butterfly, you insist, before falling asleep.
    Your head on a pillow in my lap
    your knees gathered to your chest
    your thumb not far from your mouth, scratching your nose from time to time
    your hair a haven for Earth’s other side butterflies
    that fill it with those thousands of fluttering hues
    that I alone see.

    You twitch slightly,
    probably flying in your dream
    and I wonder if it is with butterflies or cranes or wild geese.

    I knot butterflies to the ends of your curls
    and while the wondrous canopy hovers over your head
    I fall asleep as well.

    Tomorrow you will chase winter butterflies
    and I will dream of you,
    anew.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Half This, Half That...

    You wore your high-heeled shoes,
    well, half-high heels.

    You wore your knee-length skirt,
    well, down to half-thigh,
    or is it up to half-thigh or whatever

    as if it mattered.

    The skirt was half-transparent
    though you claimed it was half-opaque
    and the blouse was half-opaque
    though you claimed half-transparent
    with half a smile dangling beneath half-closed eyelids
    and a look to kill a gladiator,
    so guess what it did to me.

    I waited patiently
    watching half of those rugs that seem a natural extension to a woman’s body
    swoosh to the floor
    before I took control over the other half
    (if tearing chunks of textile off chunks of flesh can be called control)
    and dragged you to the bed
    waiting for that HDHDHD (half daze half death half drool half damnation etc.)
    to invade the second half of my mind
    the first half already invaded by half dreams and half nothingness
    all of which, not half of which, you took care of
    in that half of night
    that shot up - or maybe down - numerous suns and probably half-moons as well.

    The other half of the night found me on your half of bed
    to which I clung with a fierceness typical of only half-crazed human units
    at least that’s what you told me
    when morning found you on my half of bed
    and I watched uncomprehending the steam rising from your eyes
    and half of my limbs tied to half of the bedposts your half of bed side
    “so that you wouldn’t follow me to whichever half of bed I wandered to...”
    as you claimed, half joking.

    I gave you half an hour
    and was about to break down the bathroom door
    when you emerged in the splendor of your half nakedness
    making the unforgivable mistake to wander next to my (legally speaking) half of bed
    where I grabbed a fistful of panties
    and you made the second unforgivable mistake for the day and pulled away
    leaving half of the filigree between my fingers
    with the other half slowly sliding to the floor
    and then, with a determination worthy of a Roman emp-eror/ress
    you slid into my embrace
    following which there was an additional amount of various sliding motions
    ending in half of the world (all the others) calmly living
    and we agitatedly dying.

    “Can I undress now?” you asked
    with that charming Freudian slip that reminded me of how lucky I was
    and planned to go on being.
    Yes, I answered
    and, somehow, I never regretted the paradox.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Logicality

    Birds sing.
    Women dance, men make war,
    she said.

    Men also write poetry, I said.
    Women write poetry too.
    Men dance too.
    And we?

    It was one of those moments that could sink an oil tanker, or move a moon.
    We...
    the pause was not there for hesitation but rather for dramatic effect
    ...love.

    I saw the bell.
    If it was the buzzer I would have heard.

    She took my hand
    and we walked into life gesticulating in a language no one could understand.

    *

    You have a logical flaw in your poem, she said,
    it should have been ‘no one else’. No, I said, and she understood.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Bidirectional

    I’m not a volcano anymore,
    a tea-kettle
    maybe.

    Neither a dragon... alley cat?

    I did, once, bend iron bars with my bare hands,
    now I barely break matches,

    ok, with my fingers, ok, two at a time, so what?

    No, I never ran 100 meters in less than 10 seconds
    but I ran quite fast, I jumped quite long,
    my waist was narrower, my skin smoother, my eye sharper.
    I never smoked.
    I’m not the Rock of Gibraltar.
    I like pizza.
    Ha, see, I lose focus, sorry.

    And yet...
    just undress in front to of me
    slowly,
    slower,
    leave only that one stocking on, the left one,
    also the smile... don’t worry, Marilyn can learn a thing or two from you,
    no,
    no need for panties for what I have in mind
    but don’t rush, I’m not that old,

    ok,
    lie down,
    stretch... choose... table, bed, floor, roof, bark...

    no, this is no earthquake coming, don’t you smell?
    the volcano
    the dragon
    the iron bars turning into a double bagel...
    hey, you’ll stop laughing in a moment...

    hey, still alive?

    I always knew you could float the worst in me, if you wanted,

    never knew you could turn my years
    back,
    want it or not.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Skipping the Superlative

    So, I make you feel younger, she said,
    her smile reaping a phalanx of Roman legionaries.

    No, I said,
    her sadness decimating a Roman legion.

    You make me feel young, I said,
    her smile felling the Roman empire.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Wondering

    All the way to the room I kept wondering

    are they white or are they pink
    are they cotton or are they lace
    do they hug you one centimeter lower or one centimeter higher than usual
    or tighter than usual
    or more penetrating than usual
    or more curved than usual
    or mini or midi or maxi or bloomers or string or boxers or...
    and I directed my gaze down, right, beneath your waist line
    for a short maybe curious maybe jealous regard
    toward the relevant region

    maybe, maybe I could penetrate the curse of the external layer of skirt textile
    and satisfy my need to know... ok, also my need to see, see?...

    ...in vain. I could as well try to look through five layers of corrugated iron.

    Well, and then the door clicked shut behind us
    and any wondering deserted my mind
    completely.

    *

    We walked, your left hand in my right hand
    your left thigh brushing against my right thigh
    your left ear trying unsuccessfully to reach my right ear
    but unless you were one of those Thai (or is it Indian) dancers
    that could shift the top of their neck to align with the end of their shoulder
    there was no such chance.

    There was nothing to wonder about, you said, starting me wondering.

    Nothing, I said, was after the before that came before the after
    which is not the same as before the before that came before the after
    when something was there, haha.

    To me it made perfect sense
    so I wondered why I had to strain my fingers muscles
    to keep you from gesticulating to the patrol car.
    You relaxed.
    Then you even, suddenly, laughed and your ear made it to my ear
    in symbolic and absolute submission (guess your neck hurt like hell).

    Are you still wondering? you asked.

    Wondering about what? I played hard of hearing.

    About the something that is there after the after that came after the before
    and will stay until the next before but not between the before and the after
    or anytime after the after... at least for some time, haha?

    It was your turn to strain your fingers muscles
    to keep me from gesticulating to the patrol car.
    Then I relaxed.
    I even, suddenly, laughed
    and tore back through the door
    and kicked it shut
    and this time I took all the time necessary to stop wondering
    before I stopped wondering and caring at all.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Poetess

    Your fingers plow a winding rut across a page’s glade,
    The white of mother paper’s heart agape beneath the blade,
    A curling mix of blue and none begets a perfumed rant
    That fills the gaping wound with trails of sunshine’s morning chant.

    Don’t let this sagging bag of bones
    Who swims through seas of ponder
    Besiege you with his witty stones
    While you be smiling yonder...


    You stroll through nouns, through coltish verbs aligning to your hest,
    You commandeer exotic words to carry out your quest,
    From time to time your fingers bolt through calligraphic dyes
    And splash a flabbergasted world with glints of butterflies.

    I let my mind roam endless miles
    And follow your small finger,
    You’ll never know my guiling wiles
    As in your breath I linger...


    The time has come to lean and rest against the plastic back,
    To cogitate through piling doubts conniving to attack,
    Then suddenly your fingers grab the dagger dripping blue
    And curling vines of flaming thoughts invade the glade anew.

    I sink upon your heaving breast,
    Unwished for a contender,
    Yet, then you touch the nagging pest
    And force him to surrender...


    It’s done. The masterpiece is through. The weary mistress sleeps.
    Three seasons battle for her dreams, a vanquished season weeps,
    I crawl beneath the flowers rug to cuddle at her feet
    And let her carry me away, through fields of rye and wheat.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Vignes et Vignettes, un

    I wait for your breath to stop,

    the sighs start then end
    then you breathe again
    and I mark another notch in my mental counter.
    You never wake up.

    Three this night.

    I tell you in the morning
    and you correct me... four!...
    and the fourth notch brands my mind like cattle

    and I do not mind.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Vignes et Vignettes, deux

    You skip the pothole

    and I am thankful for the rain that turned it puddle
    watching the white of the heaven under your skirt
    splash into the blue of the heavens above your head

    wishing I could freeze time
    motion
    sight.

    I squeeze my eyes tight.
    Grain of sand, love?
    Flare of sun, love.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Vignes et Vignettes, trois

    You peeled your clothes off
    After you jumped fully dressed in the water,

    I had to help,
    didn’t mind.

    I watched the textiles laid next to you
    observing the undulating shadow of steam rising from them.
    Why don’t you watch me? you asked.
    I watched you,
    observing the undulating shadow of steam rising from me.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Vignes et Vignettes, quatre

    I don’t like wine, I told you.
    Close your eyes and try this one, you proposed
    dripping a few drops from your mouth into mine.

    Hey, I like it, it tastes of cherries mixed with apples, I said.
    It was yoghurt, and you laughed your head off.

    I don’t like wine, I told you.
    Close your eyes and try this one, you proposed
    dripping a few drops from your mouth into mine.

    Hey, I like it, it tastes of cherries mixed with apples, I said.
    It was coffee, and you laughed your head off.

    It upset me, something was definitely wrong.

    I don’t like wine either, you told me.
    Close your eyes and try this one, I proposed.

    Hey, I like it, it tastes of sex, you said,
    and you laughed your head off.

    Damn!

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Vignes et Vignettes, cinq

    I took your right hand in my left,
    you tore it away and rushed to my other side,
    your left hand in my right.

    Then again. Then you did it again.

    Third time I was ready,
    you tried to tear your hand away but I held on to it tightly
    so you walked backwards, at my right,
    your right hand still in my left
    none of us minding
    you even bent rightwards to kiss me
    and your head banged against something... we almost broke our teeth.

    Hey, we’le soldeled, you lisped, not really caring,
    the blood having dried between our lips and teeth.
    I plefel to call it welded, I lisped back, not really caling... oops, caring,
    the taste of your blood an adequate response to my nectar addiction.

    We looked like a beached octopus
    combining our imagination into the moves that danced us to the room
    and bared us of the clothes
    and joined us into ecstasy,

    the dry blood cracking into clumps of pansy shaped
    tuffets.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
One hundred years... from now

    One hundred summers graze above,
    My headstone slumbers, chipped by love,
    By fists that turned my body wrack
    And nails that once ransacked my back
              like velvet’s glove.

    The flowers dried, oh, long ago,
    With autumn’s rain and winter’s snow,
    The petals that you wrote my way
    Retained a mix of lure and clay
              and ebbing glow.

    I wish I heard the grating caw
    Aside a raven’s scraping claw
    And felt the welkin’s crying cloud
    Embrace me like a lover’s shroud,
              like lover’s law.

    I wish I saw the rising sun
    Invade the mirth beneath the pun
    Then fade inside your sorrowed eye
    When reaper’s scythe my crimson dye
              sliced off to none.

    I wish... the pebbles go to dust,
    The nails surrender to the rust,
    The paper shreds around the words
    Yet... yes, my heart still craves the birds
              and, oh, your lust.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
The Word

    The white around your tousled hair is blinding me with wonder,
    I wait for day’s ascending god to tear the night asunder
    Before a pencil finds its way to cuddle with my fingers
    And I remember, with a gasp, the word therein that lingers.

    A virgin sheet crawls to my knee, inanimate volition
    Demands with obstinate ado the timid word’s rendition,
    The pencil sighs, then lays its nose upon the milky ocean
    To spill in calligraphic curls the blood of its emotion.

    You roll, your breast rolls, rolls your hip, your vision rhymes with awesome,
    You roll anew, the blanket slips, then rhymes again with blossom,
    So what’s the word? you stretch, then yawn, your fingers slender scions
    That sprout through reason’s tender fields and bloom to dandelions.

    I try to read it out, aloud, a juvenescent shiver
    Starts like a summer’s bashful spring then roars to mighty river,
    It’s... love... I hear a chime surcease before, with none of warning
    You break the pencil, tear the sheet, and flood me with your morning.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
I want, oh, I want...

    I want to sleep next to a naked
    you,

    I want to feel your tossing,
    I want to feel your turning and curling,
    I want to feel your touching me once with a bending knee
    and once with a flailing breast
    and once with an elbow, a cheek, a finger,

    to smell the woman once I cover my head with the blanket,
    to see the woman once I let the street-lamp light in,
    to accidentally (yeah, sure...) find my fingers riding
    up the broken ridge of your spine
    then down the dark valley of your softness
    then up again through that creek of memories
    flooded with the strange fragrance of life
    and momentary death
    and eternal fire.

    I want to wake up next to a naked
    you.

    When you fly from under the protection of covers
    and you paddle bathwards through the chilly air
    your ass grooming a sea of needles and a dance of quashing melons,
    when you fly from between the insurgence of showers
    and you paddle bedwards though the chilly air
    your breasts grooming needles and wiggles and temptations,
    when you slide between me and the bedding
    or is it between me and the memory
    or is it between me and the rest of the world and the rest of my life
    making it again the first day of everything that matters after
    and the last day of everything that mattered before
    and the only day that matters
    ever,
    until the next.

    I want to wake up to a naked you
    when dressing you is just a preamble
    to undressing you.

    I want to wake up to a naked you
    before light invades you
    before water adores you
    before I find you.

    I want to wake up to a naked you
    aching for a naked me
    aching for a naked you

    until we ache no more.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Macadam

    Macadam desolation.

    Snow
    did not come.
    The sparkling white of the absolute virgin
    refused for once winter’s birth offer
    and the ensuing, inevitable gang-raping by diesel fumes and oil drips and rubber scraps.
    Snow
    rested at home... somewhere.

    I miss her white.

    I miss your white
    and its inevitable gang-raping by hungry eyes and impertinent fingers and desperate flesh.
    Mine.

    The drive is easy, boring,
    no almost slips, almost crashes, almost getting catapulted in a roadside ditch,
    one truck puffing in front of me, registered in Poland,
    a semi-trailer carrying long profiles of iron, registration plate mudded,
    a Porsche following a BMW, competing for who dies first,
    and a suicidal crow playing chicken with cohorts
    while crisscrossing the highway under the thunderous caw-applause
    of its murder,
    I hear them even above the rumble of my radio’s Slade followed by Iron Maiden
    and I offer the crow my chapeau.
    Though probably a Flemish crow, I guess.

    You tremble next to me.
    Cold? I ask the vision
    and the vision dissipates without answering.
    I think it – she? you? – penetrated between my shirt and skin
    and cuddled there,
    I do not mind. I shiver.

    A bit of rouge à lèvres paints the horizon to my right
    moves behind me
    then again to my right,
    the road swerves, veers, the drunken macadam paying lip service to expectations
    and watching intently upwards... maybe, maybe she will descend,
    nevertheless?
    You tremble next to me, again,
    maybe you do not and it is I who tremble
    seeing you again,
    seeing you dissipate, again.

    A crazy honk.
    Someone cuts me off to the right
    then almost loses control and hits a lamp-post... he does not,
    thankfully,
    and I wave back my five fingered contentment to his uprised single fingered contempt.
    Uprised or uprisen? Or upraised? I wonder for a full five minutes
    trying to forget you
    and succeeding for a full thirteen seconds. Give or take a couple.

    I step upon the darkness of the macadam,
    the rouge à lèvres turns soleil,
    I look apprehensively around me, remembering where I am
    and reword my thoughts into lippenstift and zon
    thus barely escaping (again) the language police... oops... politie.
    I miss you.
    I pat the macadam with my open palm,
    we share something, after all,
    lock the car and turn to go.
    Doesn’t matter where.

    You are there, always.
    Waiting.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Aftermaths

    The light turns off

    in your eyes,

    the eyelids descend
    and you start battling merciless dragons
    and seeding violet pansies
    and running naked in the rain
    with hordes of tiny lilac flowers sticking to your wet skin
    while stray ones grapple wet strands of hair
    and a few stragglers kiss

    your mouth’s

    corners.

    And you speak alien languages
    and you visit singing stars
    and you make love to strangers
    and many other things I will never know
    of you.

    I sit cross-legged on the bedsheets’ battlefield,
    the crumpled, displaced, wet leftovers of last night’s struggle biting into my muscle
    and my regards caress your twitching finger ends
    resting for a moment between your breasts
    for another moment between your thighs
    and yet for another, much longer moment between your restless lips

    before wandering to the floor and finding the shoes
    and the stockings
    and the blouse that once, a long time ago, last evening
    contained you before I orphaned them of your presence
    and flesh.

    A moment’s inattention

    and a tiger awakes next to me
    and it took me ages to recognize you
    beneath all the dragon scales and violet pansies and raindrops.

    I will always wonder -
    who the hell was that stranger in your dream?

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
F

    Look at me, I’ve got five fingers, I said.

    Yes, you’ve also got one...
    her eyes moved bashfully downwards
    leaving me in a burning state of f’ing anticipation
    (f for fry, fret, foment and some unmentionables as well)
    for a full five minutes...
    ...navel,
    she concluded
    and you could hear ice forming on my f’ing
    (fry, fret... etc, you know already).

    Five additional minutes later...
    What’s this puddle forming at your feet?
    she asked.
    Ice, melting,
    I answered and she cocked her head first left
    then right
    then left again
    trying to penetrate the impenetrableness
    (I prefer this word, do you have a problem with it?)
    and looking more like a swan than like a cocker spaniel.
    You look more like a swan than like a cocker spaniel,
    I said and she barked happily. Yes, barked, strange – I know.
    She did not wag her tail, unfortunately she had none
    though previous research pointed to other interesting features in the area.
    There was no way to wag those.

    May I touch it?
    she asked, still looking downwards,
    not clear if at the navel or at the puddle or at Australia
    on the other side of the globe.
    You may,
    I conceded miserably yet magnanimously
    and she stretched her hand and missed.
    Not that I minded her exotropia or esotropia or whatever they call it
    as long as her fingers held fast to what she thought was my navel
    pulling towards her
    with me f’ing (you know...) into financial insolvability
    (if you allow me a meaningless metaphor)
    and flesh meltdown
    (don’t know, do you also have a feel that there are too many f’s in this poem?)

    Do you mind?
    With this state of mind
    I wouldn’t have minded
    if the entire Australian continent would have fallen on my big toe.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Bold

    I watched myself in the cracked mirror,
    trying to build a complete image from its two parts
    and the few crumbs missing along the crack.

    It cracked the first time I looked into it
    yet never again since.
    I guess that it died, cracking.
    I don’t dare replace it,
    don’t want another mirror on my conscience, you know,
    at least not until I resolve the issue.
    My issue. The mirrors’ as well, seemingly.

    I started by looking into professional journals.
    Sites as well. Also adds.
    The simplest would be a wig, of course,
    maybe of human hair? Would it be human alive or human dead, I wondered?
    Maybe horse hair, if good for a violin bow
    why not for my crane? Maybe I could even start playing music with it,
    on it,
    along it,
    whatever...
    Oh, sorry, didn’t tell yet?
    Sure, my mirror cracked. Because I’m bold. Mirrors hate bold people.
    OK, the purists may correct it to bald but I prefer bold,
    kind of more... positive, more daring, more dashing, more dazzling,
    more bold... oops, which bold do I mean now?
    And which horse hair, closer to his ass or the other end of the tail?
    I bet it’s not even horse but counterfeit, plastic. The hair, not the horse.
    So what about implant?

    I moved subject of course, missed moving the stanza, sorry.
    Saw an implant once, horrible.
    The mirror would not have just cracked but fulminated.
    Looked like a field of scientifically planted corn
    or like a child placing black dots at every intersection of squared paper
    or like a mini-map of mid-Manhattan
    or like an insult to every hot-blooded male this side of my street.
    Thus no, no implant please, not even of horse hair.
    Though, come to think of it,
    did anyone ever think to include scalps in the list of donated organs?
    Why do you say horrible?
    Heart, liver, kidney, scalp... what could be more natural?
    No, transplanting skin from my ass to my skull is not an option, ok?
    Rogaine, maybe?

    Sure, Rogaine.
    Three shark loans and two mortgages later
    and it’s still a billiard ball above my neck.
    Or a bowling ball, if the size disturbs you.
    Do you prefer a bawling ball?... yes, maybe,
    after all those millions of decorated paper cuts
    moving from my bank to theirs
    and tons of yellow metal bars
    also from my bank to theirs
    and thousands of sparkling pieces of not-glass
    guess what?... also from my bank to theirs,
    why should I not bawl?
    I guess even Pfizer did not make so much money
    from a dissimilar need similar target audience
    product.
    Egg yolk!

    First, why do people keep calling it egg yolk and not yolk?
    Yes, I know about yak and I know about yoke and even about joke.
    And I understand about egg white not being called just white
    because it could be snow white and coke white and eye white...
    But yolk? Did you even hear about a snow yolk?
    OK, egg yolk. Tried it. Smells horribly. Looks horribly.
    You beat it up
    then you smear on your head
    then you wait so and so long
    then you wash it away
    then again next day
    and you cannot even fry it after so it is just waste
    and still it won’t grow.

    Did I forget something?

    I guess, depending on custom and geography,
    you may find advice swearing by cow urine
    or marinated mushrooms
    or olive oil spiced with outdated mustard mixed with molded black pepper
    or, of course, crushed garlic, very efficient
    especially if you live in a vampire infested area.

    I gave up.
    Already after the cow urine
    though I had to mention the others, just for completeness sake.
    You’ll have to accept me as I am. Bold.
    Or bald if you prefer.
    There. But not there.
    Capisce?

    Shave?
    Ok, if you insist...

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Fourier

    For a few moments I forgot you were woman.

    For a few moments you forgot you were woman.

    For a few moments you forgot you were woman, human, flesh
    and you turned snake,
    or better still – squid,
    or better still – single silk threads floating on a morning breeze
    undulating like there was not a single bone in your body
    with waves crossing your stretched arms left and right
    and your gyrating waist round and round

    and not even an infinite Fourier transform (oh, poor math-brainwashed me)
    could contain
    the whole of you.

    Just a few moments.

    And I was afraid to touch you in case you will flow between my fingers
    and soak in the air
    and in the ground
    and be lost among all the rivers and rivulets of Earth
    like never existed.

    The motion stopped.
    The undulation stopped.
    Suddenly you remembered your aching articulations
    and suddenly I remembered both your aching articulations and mine

    and you came to sit on my knees
    first with suppressed sighs
    then with soft notes

    and finally with a smile
    that only your closed eyes
    could do justice to.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
lust, oh...

    slowly.
    get closer.
    slowly. slowly i said

    until you’re but an ant’s bite away,
    a curly hair’s flexing muscle,
    an ultra-violet light’s half-wavelength,

    a molecule of xenon... of argon... of helium...

    touch.
    then touch!!!
    then who gives a damn if there are three or three hundred exclamation marks
    in between those stratum corneum ridges ending the dermal papillae
    or between those caliculus gustatorius ovoids ending the lingual papillae
    or between skin and skin
    and tongue and lust
    and glans penins and glans clitoris
    when those corpora cavernosa fill up and swell to a disproportion
    proportional only to a shared lust
    and relief

    and ensuing desert
    of feeling.

    slowly.
    untouch.
    slide away from me like a carukia barnesi
    then cling on to me like a hirudo medicinalis
    and let’s listen to that shared dripping sound soaking into the bedding

    any thought of washing ourselves as alien
    as the thought of mushroom pizza would have been
    just a few moments
    ago.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
ai's

    “ai, ai,” I said,
    my hand trying to reach that horribly painful spot
    mid of my low back.

    “aaii, aaii,” she said,
    trying in her female competitive way
    to have more vowels in the pain onomatopoeia I established earlier on,
    holding her head in both hands
    while at the same time ramming said head
    against unsaid wall in front of it... female logic, you know.

    “aaaiii, aaaiii,” I rose up to the challenge,
    fulfilling a long dormant dream of male supremacy
    and still trying to reach that nagging spot and its splitting pain
    in my low back,
    and after failing with both hands and both feet
    joined my loved one in ramming my head as well against same unsaid wall
    letting her, always the thoughtful lover,
    place a pillow between my head and the wall.

    “aaaaiiii, aaaaiiii,” she responded,
    her competitiveness beating her pain and her pain beating her senseless,
    almost,
    and I let her win since I ran out of vowels and air and pain
    and anyway the neighbors started beating against their side of unsaid wall
    thinking of the great sex we must have been having
    but wishing we were more private about it.

    We fainted, finally,
    maybe together maybe not,
    the ai’s to their kinds dying on our lips
    and disappearing into the bliss of following nothingness.

    She awoke from it first, the pain partly gone.
    She spilled a glass of cold water on me
    pulling me back from the bosom of my limbo,
    my pain far from gone
    but I refused to start the ai, ai competition again.
    Instead I took her hand and we both stumbled out of the apartment,
    letting the plasterer in.
    “Another repair and the whole structure of this wall will crumble,” he said.
    Well, there were sufficient walls left, we thought.

    Our neighbors were probably waiting with their ear against the door
    since we barely made two steps that they stepped out,
    a big smile plastered on their radiant faces
    and she winked my way while he winked my lover’s way.
    “Another big night, ah?” they said in unison
    (probably repeated it all night).
    “Ai, ai,” we answered in unison as well,
    meaning every vowel of it, expressed or unexpressed.

    *

    I received this anonymous email, with a YouTube address as subject.
    Of course, what else?
    It was placed by someone calling himself or herself anoneighbor
    and named the biggest sex sounds in human history.
    Of course, it was a no-image recording
    of the aiai’ing and of the bangbanging
    and had garnered already fifteen thousand clicks.
    By the end of the month it passed the million clicks
    making it one of the biggest YouTube hits for the year.

    We’ll probably have to pad either our walls or the neighbors’ ears,
    I aiai’ed almost to myself, and she aiai’ed back, kissing me hotly.
    We waddled away, I holding her head and she holding my back.
    We may have been bigly competing in onomatopoeias
    but we shared some bigger convictions than those.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Kitsch

    Sometimes I feel like a schoolboy.

    Sometimes there is sun in your voice and I feel like a schoolboy.
    And I wish for the happy end of a kitsch movie
    or the one of a bed-time story
    or the line after line of one of those adolescent poems
    filled with you love mes and I love yous and forevers and syntax errors in between.

    Then I sit down and find myself dabbing in kitsch myself
    not minding it,
    probably mindlessly? Probably not.

    love... dove... above... in any combination possible,
    I hear the sun in your voice and I write love... dove... above...
    and any serious literary body kicks my ass out of its door
    as I feed doves and I paint loves
    and I do not know what I do with aboves
    but probably nothing more mature than smiling sillyly (sounds silly)
    and grinning shylyly (sounds even sillier).

    You feed me a piece of bread and I hear a wheat field in the wind
    you feed me grains of salt and I see crushed diamonds
    you feed me an apple and I hear larks picking at seeds
    and while your left hand keeps feeding me fragments of life
    your right hand pops your blouse’s buttons
    then my shirt’s buttons
    until finally both hands join in a song of ripping cloth
    and I end lying on my back mid of the wheat field
    gathering the diamonds in your eyes
    while larks dive into your hair and steal grains of sun for their nests.

    Do you dove me? you ask, meaning love me of course, knowing of course.
    Do you above me? I ask, meaning are you of course, knowing of course.

    Birds were singing with the voice of Judy Garland,
    fawns were dancing with the elegance of Ginger Rogers,
    fish were swimming with the grace of Esther Williams,
    we were parading with the airy attire of Hair final scene
    (well, other times other morals)
    and frogs kept leaping to your lips then running away
    metamorphosed into Laurel and Hardy and The Marx Brothers and Buster Keaton and...
    (what did you expect? Valentino? don’t forget that I write this poem huh?!)
    and we walked into the sunshine
    getting sunburn blisters the closer we got.

    Hey, I thought this was going to be sweet kitsch,
    you made a face and tried to pull away.

    I pulled you back,
    braiding your hair into blooming garlands
    and stuffing your pockets with fluttering fireflies
    and filling your mouth with ripe mulberries.
    Do you want some as well? you nuzzled me
    and what I answered was as far from kitsch as yes is from maybe
    and you refused my answer with a proposition as far from mine
    as yes is from no
    thus we ended on the opposite side of kitsch
    and on the perfect side of love.

    OK, fine, love... dove... above...
    forget this poem. Love me! OK?

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Almost as if it were

    You ran along the water, barefoot,
    shapeless footsteps chasing you
    and turning into momentary puddles
    as invading foam took over from your feet
    but failed to live up to expectations.

    I tried to keep up with you
    then let crawling crabs overtake me
    and finally sat on my behind
    the wet sand conquering the crenels
    between the merlons played by my toes.

    You tried to catch a gull
    then a crab tried to catch you
    then a dog tried to catch a Frisbee
    and jumped over my head
    knocking me down, face first.

    You laughed and laughed and laughed
    then laughed some more
    then as I sat up you covered my head with your skirt
    probably to hide my embarrassment, I guess,
    then waited for my embarrassment to wane, I guess.

    “You tickle,” you laughed from outside my hideout
    then let my blushing head into the sun
    and kneeled, starting to clean the sand from my mouth
    with yours. I spit some, you spit some,
    we both spit some, in opposite directions.

    We walked back to the hotel,
    my hand holding your skirt’s hem
    your thumb stuck in the back of my waistband,
    a crab following us
    a gull hopping behind the crab.

    We got rid of them, crab and gull, in the bed.
    We also got rid of our clothes from door to bed,
    we did not mind the sand, we’ll shower after.
    “Feels like a bed of nails,” you approved
    and I let you slice ribbons from my back, in appreciation.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Are you thirsty?...

    ...for words
    that will make blood rush through your veins like a screaming viper
    battering your heart’s walls into disintegrating flesh-bricks
    and your lungs into the torn cobwebs
    of a cellar invaded by man-eating bats?

    ...for innuendoes
    that will suck you into the pillow in the wake of boiling sweat
    and fill your mouth with bees fighting for their honey
    while your eyes hunt desperately for the key in the lock
    to break
    and trap the nugatory world out
    and you in?

    ...for whispers
    mine... the senescent child, the sweet abomination
    born of dreams you never told yourself you owned
    to ravage hidden mind pastures you refused to lay claim to
    and torture you into desires not even Penelope dared weave into the shroud?

    *

    Why should I always undress you?
    Undress me!
    Let your fingers sift between my shirt’s buttons
    then pop one open, then another, then another, break the next
    turn around!... you command
    and before I have time to completely obey you break the last two,

    your hand slides down to my belt while your teeth grapple my shoulder
    and I cannot move as your hand misses its stopping point
    and slides further down
    your teeth threatening to tear off a chunk of my muscle
    I cannot bend, I cannot escape, I cannot breathe...

    oops!... you hiss, your teeth still firmly lodged in
    and your hand releases its grope and returns upway to its original destination
    one yank, one tag
    and the serpentine leather deserts my waist
    together with the aberration called trousers and associated unnecessities
    and your hand slides down again
    turn around!... you command again remembering to release the bite
    and I face the red blister of your mouth
    turn around!... I command
    and you obey, releasing your prey
    and I skip the niceties of unbuttoning and unzipping and unclasping
    using Alexander the Great’s sword as inspiration to my hand
    and Albertus Magnus’ a tergo to my mind
    and with one movement you are bare and bent and bemoaning
    my fist mercilessly groping your breast
    and your waist painfully banging against the table rim
    and neighing horses the only approximation fit to describe
    the end of the war.

    *

    You light a cigarette.
    I stopped smoking. I’ll light a cigarette for you.
    I never smoked.

    We rest in the land that never was for hours, days, years.
    From time to time warring anew,
    from time to time cleaning each other,
    from time to time mixing our glasses
    and licking our wounds
    and biting so that we create a target to licking.
    You have one, without biting.
    You too.
    I bite. You bite. I lick. You lick. Bites and others.
    We war.
    We mix.
    We boil, broil, bandy, bloom. You bloom.
    Thank you.

    Your head in the nook between my ear and my shoulder.
    My head in the nook between your breast and your breast.
    Your head in the nook between my thigh and my belly.
    My head in the nook between you thigh and your tibia.
    We tried all positions, tasted all tastes,
    investigated every pore of every lea of skin, internal, external, imaginary...
    I have to leave.
    Must you?
    I have to leave.

    You leave.
    You left.
    From time to time I send you words
    before beating my head against the table top
    until I fall asleep.
    Until next time.

    Until next time.

    Until next time.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Merde!

    If ever I missed you
    it is now

    because...
    when...
    due to... merde!
    I always missed you like I miss you now

    it is just that at times I kind of forget the fact, probably.

    And I need this kind of mental reminder
    to... remind me.
    Not very poetic, I know.
    But so damn true...

    Te desidero.
    Utinam mihi ignoscas.


    No, not French, but true nevertheless.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Life

    It flows, life, around me.
    To my left, to my right, above, under, even through me
    transparent as I am
    to life.
    It flows
    and I wait eagerly
    for it to rub against me, drag me with it,
    impact me with the force of a wave
    a gale
    a tsunami
    even if it means death. It will also mean... life,
    for a moment.

    Moments,
    a mix of choice and no choice and hazard
    a mix of beauty positive or negative
    happiness positive or negative
    wishes positive or negative
    and I apologize for the mathematical traces in poetry,
    math is part of poetry, I think.
    Even the other way around as well.

    Hunger is also part of life.
    Same like autumn.
    Same like you
    mixing hunger and autumn and the impatience of a bud waiting to burst open.
    Same like me
    mixing hunger and autumn and the impatience of a hand waiting to reap the open bud.

    Tell me
    how does everything end with you, irrelevant where or what I start with?

    Wanted to talk about life.
    Got into math... seasons... you.
    Strange.
    Shall I try something less philosophical and more carnal?
    There, at least, is good reason to end with you.
    For the rest – philosophical, astrophysical, geological, etymological and similar –
    who needs reasons?
    Sure, I asked it myself a few lines higher up just to seem to pay attention to my writing,
    which I really do not.
    Why should I?
    The real pleasure is to let the words flow
    and see them channel again and again into you.
    Let the shrinks analyze it
    I only want to live it.

    Life. You.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Vine

    Crawl all around me,
    grow,
    shoot out tendrils and thorns and petioles
    until every square inch of body is covered
    and nothing is left of me to breathe
    except
    through you.

    Help me, breathe?

    Gulp mouthfuls of air from outside there
    and drag it inside here
    feed it to me
    by intubation
    or intravenous infusion
    or mouth-to-mouth tongue-to-tongue lung-to-lung
    smother me
    with life.

    Let roots
    twine with roots
    and rivulets join to a river
    and when your spasms cut me into flesh basic components
    let me soak around your ankles
    and bloom, later,
    into your morrow’s sighs.

    Night, falls.
    I shiver in my nakedness next to your limp figure
    and I lay myself gently all over you
    to hide you from the chill of the world
    with my growl
    and fire.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
That's Amore

    One click
    and next I know Dean Martin croons his way into the room with That’s Amore
    and you float out of your chair
    back-ache and shifted vertebrae and all
    and you drag me out of my chair
    back-ache and shifted vertebrae and all
    and while the moon hits our eye like a big pizza pie
    we caress the floor with our bare toes
    like seventeenagers
    impervious to lawn mowers rattle
    and hungry cats meow
    and those shifted vertebrae
    clicking against each other like castanets handled with a José de Udaeta expertise.

    The last of the melody fades away.
    We keep floating around the floor
    carried by occasional air currents and moth flutter
    maybe also by fear of vertebrae rearranging themselves,
    certainly also by denial of a reality and acceptance of a dream
    that is life.

    We finally sit down,
    you in my lap
    I in search of words
    you in search of consolation
    and those eyelashes grate my neck like grapples cutting through rending flesh.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
With a fist under my chin

    There is something between us,
    no, it is not love.
    Sure, it is also love but it is not love.
    Like a mountain is also rocks but is not rocks –
    it is rocks and trees and water springs and mountain goats
    and snow in the winter
    and colors at sunset
    and caves
    and bats
    and flowers and butterflies and bees coming and going, coming and going.
    Like a forest is also treetops but is not treetops –
    it is treetops and trunks and roots and mushrooms and deer
    and howling wolves
    and fallen leaves
    and clearings
    and shadows
    and snakes and paths and lost children and dreaming lovers returning again and again.
    Like a sea is also water
    like a story is also words
    like a sculpture is also marble.

    I read above and start laughing... oh, my God, so corny.

    I read above and start wondering... oh, my God, so true.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
With a fist under my chin, two

    Yes, I don’t look like Rodin’s guy,
    I did, once, a few years ago and a few kilos ago.
    No, I don’t look like Rodin’s guy
    clothed as I am and sitting on a plastic chair and elbow leaning on a desk.
    With a computer screen in front of me.
    A cell phone in my pocket.
    A watch around my wrist.
    Disappointed?

    And yet, I am Rodin’s guy.
    Thinking, like he does
    about the first time my palm sneaked inside your blouse
    and the second time I tried to undo your belt
    and the third time you bit my shoulder
    same like the fourth time, and the fifth time, and the sixth, and the seventh...
    Imagining, like he does
    the next time my palm will sneak inside your blouse
    and the next time I’ll undo your belt
    and the next time you’ll bite my shoulder
    and the next time, and the next time, and the next time...
    Waiting, like he does
    for your blouse to turn bronze to flesh
    and your belt to pull me from the abyss
    and your bite to pour blood into my solidified veins
    and start a fire pouring from inside out engulfing, consuming, devastating.

    You don’t believe me?
    Ask him, that Rodin guy.

    I read above and actually don’t laugh... not so corny after all.

    I read above and start wondering... oh, my God, so true.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
With a fist under my chin, three

    Okay, so let’s forget Rodin’s nameless guy
    that anonymous Poet watching the Gates of Hell,
    oh, such suitable namelessness
    and mystery.

    Let’s call him David,

    watching a languid Bathsheba disrobed by an army of scantily clad maidens
    with flames flowing his way from between oiled eyelashes
    just as a painted toe touches perfumed water
    and a last veil falls from around white hips
    and he knows he will betray blood
    country
    and God
    for just a fleeting touch
    of breast.

    Or
    let’s call him Samson,

    clad in dead lion’s mane with mountains cluttered by dead Philistines on palms
    suddenly falling prey to lusting a wanton Delilah
    charmed by move of hips
    followed by flutter of fingertips
    followed by a promise of inebriating lips
    and he knows he betrays progenitors
    oath
    and God
    for just a fleeting touch
    of breast.

    Or
    let’s just call him Paris,

    judging goddess beauty by pitting Europe and Asia and battle wisdom
    against Helen’s charms and choosing Helen
    subjugated by human beauty unlike other
    and body curves unlike others
    and a promise of lust unlike other
    knowing that he chooses to betray
    brother
    and country
    and Gods
    for just a fleeting touch
    of breast.

    I read above and actually don’t laugh... probably true after all.

    I read above and start wondering... oh, my God, a woman’s power, oh, so true.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Imagining

    I imagine you,

    leaning back on a wooden chair
    legs pulled up
    chin on knees
    fingers twined around ankles, eyes closed...

    did I mention you are naked?

    Peeking?
    I’m trying to, you don’t seem to mind.

    I imagine us,

    I on the wooden chair
    you saddling me
    face to face
    chest to chest mouth to mouth belly to belly...

    sorry, you seem to have a question.

    Naked?
    Certainly, how else would we fit so nicely to... into!... into each other.

    I imagine you,

    alone on that wooden chair
    legs pulled up
    chin on knees
    fingers twined around ankles, eyes closed...

    no, not naked, not anymore.

    And you?
    My heart breaking, just imagining you.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Unreality

    Two days ago you cut my toenails.
    Two days ago I combed your hair.
    Two days in my mind,
    maybe more when I check the newspapers,
    the calendar,
    the stars position middle of the night
    when we were searching, two days ago,
    the Ursa Minor and the Ursa Major.
    You found Mars,
    I didn’t find Polaris,
    we found a street lamp under which to kiss
    hug
    cuddle
    alone,
    well, together with thousands of mosquitoes
    and no moths.

    Where are the moths? I asked.
    You had no answer.
    No one had an answer.
    Where is your heart? I asked
    and you pointed to my left breast pocket
    not meaning the pocket.

    Two days ago we made love one time.
    Two days ago I ate pizza and you ate salad
    and we drank bier, I a bigger one,
    the half of yours which you left for me
    was tastier than mine, it carried traces of your lips on the glass rim.
    We sat in the garden and watched the pigeons,
    we sat in the garden and the pigeons watched us,
    we fed the pigeons.
    We made love, no, not in the garden,
    later, in the room.
    You drank my water
    I drank your coke
    we went for a walk trying again to find Mars, you found it,
    Polaris, I did not find it.
    The mosquitoes, it was easier to find than Polaris.
    They found us. They buzzed.

    When is your bus? I asked.
    When is your plane? you asked.

    The moment of reality gone
    and I found your body and forgot the bus
    and you found me finding your body and remembered the plane
    we found another moment of unreality
    sucking it dry of juice and marrow and life.

    When is your bus? I asked. The bus arrived.
    When is your plane? you asked. The plane will arrive.
    The hug.
    The horrible pain in the hug.
    The bus finished.
    The plane finished.
    And only the horrible pain in the hug goes on and on and on.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Wood

    I cannot write anymore,
    my ass feels like a piece of dry wood, she said,
    stretching languidly north and south
    then gyrating painfully west and east.

    I decided to put the wood on fire.
    I did.

    She forgot all about writing.
    I forgot all about writing too.

    Nice haiku, she said.
    Told you, she forgot all about writing.
    It’s a sonnet, I corrected her gently.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Train

    Two ugly women across from me, opposite row, one young.
    Another one to my left, eating a salad,
    blue water bottle, blue bra strap, blue bag,
    no doubt coincidence.
    A guy down the aisle obviously of Indian descent
    on the phone, agitated,
    no – I don’t think he is a terrorist,
    an old woman behind me,
    a flowery shirted woman just in front of me, stringy hair, pierced nose,
    an old couple close to the toilets
    the man looks a hundred years old
    the woman a hundred and one
    they hold hands, nice,
    or maybe afraid of tomorrow.
    The controller stamps my ticket.
    The woman in front of me descends.
    The old couple stay,
    maybe they want to spend the rest of their lives in the train
    next to the toilets.
    A guy runs in the aisle.
    No, no terrorist either. I hope.
    Neither are the new old couple that sit next to me,
    my new neighbors,
    the man wears a tie, maybe a lord,
    more likely a funeral parlor owner,
    the woman has swollen hands, she keeps talking. I don’t understand a word.
    Probably English, hehe.
    Her husband keeps nodding, looks like he does not understand either
    but he doesn’t care. I guess he worries about Brexit
    and the price of mahogany for coffins.
    Bridge. Tunnel. Cows. Rain.
    A kid drags a suitcase,
    his mama follows pushing a suitcase. No dog.
    Another potential terrorist I think.
    More cows. More fields. A tractor.
    The biscuits seller arrives, leaves,
    I don’t buy. Others do.
    Another bridge. A girl passes.
    The biscuit seller’s name is Felicia.
    Beautiful name. Ugly woman. Nice smile, looks real, a rarity.
    A wheat field passes by
    same as a murder of crows
    who seem to compete with the train but give up.
    You next to me.
    Not real but you next to me.
    Would you like to drink something? I ask
    but you don’t answer. Of course you don’t answer,
    you’re not real.
    Still, it is nice of you to be there.
    The train speeds up, probably 200,
    long stretch now.
    The terrorist ahead of me has fallen asleep.
    So did the old guy next to me, mouth open,
    his wife keeps talking.
    Do I also sleep with my mouth open?
    The train doesn’t stop at the following station, a few people there gesticulate.
    The biscuits seller passes back,
    a guy stumbles toward the toilets,
    I see a cow in the field then a road, cars waiting,
    is my suitcase still there?... it is,
    the guy stumbles back from the toilets
    he looks happy.
    The train slows down. We arrive.
    You disappear but I keep you in my breast pocket, close to the heart.
    I hope you do not mind.
    We descend. Also the terrorist,
    finishes his tea and descends.
    Terminus. For now.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Wishful Thinking

    You looked up at me,
    like a puppy asking for a pat on her head
    a scratch on her belly
    and a biscuit, preferably meat based.
    If you had a tail it would have wagged.

    I so wished you would have looked up at me like a woman.

    The door closed behind us. What... when... happened?

    You looked down at me
    like a bitch ready to strike
    her nails deep into my belly
    my flesh her meat and her fangs full of it.
    Your tail wagged.

    I so wished you would have looked down at me like a puppy.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Tails

    I was looking for your tail.
    I don’t have one.
    I didn’t trust you, so I kept looking
    under your skirt, inside your cottons, inside your...
    Stop it!
    Of course, none of us meant it, any of it,
    just excuses for the sake of...
    I stopped looking, reluctantly.
    You stopped complaining, reluctant at my reluctant stopping.

    We walked, hand in hand,
    your head on my right shoulder
    your hand in my trousers’ back pocket
    my hand in the elastic band of your underwear, from above the skirt
    of course from above the skirt.
    I gave up looking for your tail, as told above. At least temporarily.
    Shall I look for your tail?
    I didn’t answer the obvious, of course you should,
    just not in the street.
    You didn’t mind the street when you were looking!
    You had a point there.

    A gull kept screaming in frustration
    the sun lost half of its empire underneath the sea
    a girl ran past us chasing a colored ball
    a car honked with The 5th in its horn
    you bit my shoulder then leaned your head again.

    Ouch!
    Just testing reality.
    Yes, and tasting it too, I grumbled, strangely delighted though.

    We sat on a bench.
    The sun lost its war, its empire, its blood filling the horizon.
    You sat on my knees, disregarding passers by
    your nose in the nook of my neck
    your hair haloing around my head
    your hands clasped around my back.
    I almost gave in to a tempting thought to start looking for your tail again
    but the girl with the ball stopped in front of the bench, looking at us inquisitively.
    Love, I said. Seeing as she did not understand I said – Amore.
    She was still making faces so I continued in five languages
    until she suddenly screamed Mama! and ran away.
    I’ll never understand small girls. I prefer gulls.
    You’re an idiot, you said, and bit my neck.
    OK, now vampire, shall I start looking for bat wings?

    All the way to the hotel you giggled.
    You still have a lot to learn about girls.
    I agreed, I did not even know for sure if they had tails.

    Next morning it was morning.
    I mean the sun resurrected to my great relief,
    not that I had anything on my conscience.
    I was happy.
    I know.
    You know what?
    That you don’t have a tail. I checked while you were sleeping.
    You laughed and laughed and laughed. You laugh why?
    You laughed and laughed and laughed. You laugh why? I repeated, slightly frustrated.
    Are you sure you checked... everywhere?
    Suddenly I was not so sure anymore.
    Shall I... guide you?
    You guided me. Now I know a bit more about girls.
    And now I know for sure.

    You... OK, sorry, that may be anatomical but it’s too personal.
    Forgive me.
    Peace!?

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Aliens, ahmmm...

    You were born to dance.
    You were born to sing.
    To write?
    You were born to write.
    I was also born to be woman.
    This had to be investigated,
    I was supposed to know but things may have changed meanwhile.
    Quite some time later I returned to this world,
    puffing and panting,
    having ascertained what I feared most did not happen.
    Yes, you were also born to be woman.
    You are an idiot, and she kissed me.
    I had to tell her my secret, simply had to.
    I am an alien,
    my brain is pea-size but all of it in use,
    the rest of my skull is pure bone.
    She laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
    Speaking about bones...
    she laughed and laughed and laughed
    inspecting me from waist down,
    ...I can assure you that you are very very human.
    She took hold of it,
    my hand of course,
    and started pulling me towards the bedroom. Dragging, rather.
    Well, even an alien’s will power is limited, you know.

    *

    Secret report, number #$%, agent *+&...

    Commander, accept my resignation from this mission,
    either beam me back home or explode my left ventricular.
    Fell in love with my earthling,
    I represent a risk to our mission.


    Commander grinned, breaking a coconut on his skull.
    On the contrary, my dear researcher
    on the contrary,
    now we’re about to really start learning something about this life form.

    Researcher, request denied.
    Proceed, in your planet’s best interest.


    *

    I did not have to be prodded,
    I was well in the process of proceeding already,
    her swelling belly omening a great future for us three.
    The rest of the worlds?... who the hell cared.

    I decided to investigate again.
    Oh, yes, and what a great thing woman is!...

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Razor

    You handed me the razor,
    no, not Ockham’s,
    it was yours,
    pink.

    I watched it the way a horse watches a translation of Julius Cesar to Spanish.

    Ceteris paribus, you said,
    what do you think you should do today compared to yesterday?

    I watched the razor from close by
    then from far away, then weighed it with the kitchen scales,
    I even smelled it.

    Is this all? I asked, frustrated by misunderstanding.

    Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora, you continued the sudden Latin attack,
    but, nevertheless, produced also a tube of shaving cream.

    Aha, crema shavinga, I tried a personal version of enlightening Latin
    and all the cats inside a radius of three miles ran away.
    No cat returned when your zipper started unzipping
    but this was not reason enough for the hand holding the razor to start trembling.

    You smiled, the zipper finishing its unzipping trip
    and your fingers taking hold of my uncontrollable wrist...

    You mean...
    ...a capite ad calcem, you closed your eyes
    and I wonder how I survived the following minutes.
    Most important, you survived.
    Of course, I focused on the, ahm, focus of attention,
    limiting my attention to essentials.

    Finally I lowered my gaze, hoping the earth to open its mandibles beneath my feet
    and consume me, shoes and all.
    Actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea, you tried to assuage my bashfulness,
    and here you were wrong, oh, so wrong.

    You see, my mens was so rea, oh, so rea...

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Razor, two

    Still nothing to do with Ockham.

    Neither with straight, cartridge, removable, disposable and cohorts.

    A lot to do with pink, of course
    but I won’t say it,
    our secret, you know.

    If I didn’t spend so much time obsessed with sex
    I would have probably made one hell of a good poet.
    Which does not mean I am not one hell of a good sex poet,
    to all those wondering.
    I actually prefer calling it erotica poet.
    I actually prefer calling it intimacy poet.
    I actually prefer not calling it at all but writing it, rather.

    I clean the razor until it sparkles like your teeth,
    when you wish them to sparkle
    with that right illumination and that right lift of lips and that right touch of savagery.
    I clean the rest of you until all sparkle is gone
    when I wish the sparkle to die
    in between my teeth alongside with your touch of savagery.
    I pull your whites over your hips
    and pull your punishment over your whites
    and pull your zipper up, wishing to break it.

    I thought of... more to come, you whisper into my open palm. The Latin gone.

    There is no more you can give me, I whisper into your open palm
    then we roam the streets head on shoulder
    until all moths are re-born
    and all suns will never rise again.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Once

    I shake my mane, though I have lost it long ago.
    I roar, though I had lost my voice to the pains of laryngitis.
    My paw rises to strike... limp.

    A tiny hand shakes me softly,
    Wake up, wake up, lover,
    the nightmare, again,

    and she slides against the wall
    to create the lap inside which I crawl,
    crying.

    I was a lion, I sob,
    I was a lion, once.

    She shushes me with a lullaby,
    her hands softly pulling her nightie away
    softly pulling my pj’s away,
    then... touching...

    The nightmare awakes
    a mane shake, a roar, I strike...

    She shushes me with a lullaby again,
    I lie cuddled in her lap and fall asleep,
    the nightmare dead.

    I seem to hear words rhyming with dove,
    but I lose track as I descend into blessed nothingness.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
like's

    like Hell without Heaven,
    like Hydrogen without Oxygen
    like Shark without Teeth...

    like Starsky without Hutch...
    her face serious
    her eyes laughing.

    like Montague without Capulet.

    like Me without You?

    she stole my thunder and i loved her for that.

    Me. without You.
    Incomplete.

    her smile reached from my left ear to my right ear,
    my smile died in her mouth.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
My Poetry

    Metaphors. I love metaphors.
    I use, abuse, infuse, diffuse, confuse... oops... metaphors,
    I am queen of the metaphors. OK, king, if you prefer.
    I read my old poetry and at times I have no idea what it means
    what it meant
    what it was meant to mean.
    Sure, I exaggerate a bit with above statement, just a bit – OK?
    At least that’s what I think.
    You mean the exaggerate or the bit? Guess. Better still – read!

    I love butterflies too. And flowers. And rainbows. And stars.
    Like a little girl,
    OK, like a little boy if you prefer,
    OK, not always,
    OK, why don’t you let me flagellate myself, what’s the matter with you?
    You love me? Oh, I see, yes, I love love as well in my poems,
    not à la mode, tough luck. Tough me. Ha ha.

    Erotica, oh, yes, erotica. Erotica you said, no?
    Is there something I write which is not erotica?
    Queen of the bitches, mares, vixens... oh, you and your sexism,
    OK! King of the dogs, stallions, foxes...
    King (happy?) of the sleek truths
    and soft hards
    and melodic groans that would otherwise qualify for pure porn
    though what could qualify as pure about porn is beyond my erotic comprehension.
    Erotica,
    telling it the way it is the way it should be told,
    telling it the adult way the way a child will smile at it,
    telling it the adult way the way an adult will burn at it
    provided he had the relevant brains, and imagination.

    From time to time abstract, there is so much one can say via abstract...
    From time to time rhyme, there is so much melody in rhyme...
    From time to time laughter, there is so much... laughter in laughter.
    All the time poetry.
    There is so much poetry in poetry that no poetry can describe it.
    I didn’t, don’t. Just lining up some words that woke me up this morning
    in between sin and lust.
    Yes, I found some place there and rushed it.
    No, I will not make it a habit.

    Yes – king, queen!

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Of once

    I read my poems, old and dry
    Yet some bring tears into my eye,

    I wonder why, I wonder why.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
With You

    To glean the pollen from your hair,
    with petals cut to ribbons
    and stems squashed to thin tendrils reaching for the scorch of sun’s skin,

    To seed the sand in the hollow of your navel,
    with shells pummeled to glass dust
    and drops of salt surviving the water and turning tiny sculptures,

    To hear you coughing middle of my love declaration
    with mist rising from watery eyes
    and lips carrying the poison of last night’s lovemaking in their cracks.

    To wait for you.
    Where winter has no name
    and summer is the rest of your body.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Love Declaration

    I pour my ink down the crevices of your body,
    even if there are craggy rocks
    and hanging thistles
    and mountain goats
    abounding.
    After all, this is a love declaration.

    You let the ink soak into the crevices of your body,
    blood is for blood-banks
    and tears follow the trail of onions
    and whatever you collected inside your mouth
    I drank long ago.
    After all, this is a love declaration accepted.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Pornography

    I drip life
    inside you.
    White pornography
    with a God director and a couple human stars
    and no public. No sales. Zero revenue
    unless one calls bliss revenue.

    You’re barren, not by choice,
    my life dies inside your flesh
    yet sprouts inside your eyes, soul, words unspoken. Beautiful.
    You curse me, you dig trenches into my back
    and trenches into my lips
    and try to seed mixed drops of blood and sweat,
    sorry, I’m barren, not by choice, you curse again
    yet scars flower where seeds have been
    and your eyes pour sunlight upon my fields pointing to each petal
    making sure it survives the flesh
    into words. Unspoken.

    Until you touch your quill.
    Until I touch my quill.
    Spoken.

    White
    of textiles envelopes us
    of paper burns for us
    of flesh, ours, childs of the God director, creates the greatest art of all.
    They still call it pornography. We still call it love.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Maja, Venus, etc.

    You recline
    naked,
    like la Maja desnuda,
    or like Aphroditi tis Milou so called Venus
    had she but arms and uncovered legs and a sofa to recline on.

    Yet you, somehow better
    in your tri-di presentation
    and all I have to do is let go of imagination
    and just step over and start inspecting the rest of you in reality
    unlike with bi-di Maja and rigid-di Venus,

    your chest heaving
    your hair fluttering
    your thighs but waiting for a sign to start parting
    and sharing what Maja can never do,
    nor Venus.

    What a blessing
    even if blessing is to do with lame superstition anchored in lame dogma of lame religion
    and not with woman’s flesh... no offence intended
    if one’s a feminist at heart but forgot the rest of one.

    I will even add a lame rhyme like

    you recline,
    oh, divine
    and your thighs
    soak my sighs
    in the fountain
    down the mountain
    (some call mound)
    perfumes crowned...


    You smile.
    You try to recline Maja way, then you try to stand Venus way
    (trying but failing to hide your arms)
    then you try some other and I wonder how you ever knew of
    Klimt’s Danae then Modigliani’s Reclining then Wesselmann’s Great then Courbet’s Sleeping
    and probably you would have gone abstract as well
    if I didn’t drag you back into the tri-di I shared with you

    and you reclined

    chest heaving
    hair fluttering
    thighs parting at a sign from me
    and sharing what Maja can never do,
    nor Venus.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Cappella Sistina

    Your body,
    that lust-ridden masterpiece of breathing marble
    should lend its magnificence to join all that naked gentry
    adorning the Cappella Sistina.
    God’s finger
    reaching for your nipple.

    Shame on you
    for walking the streets
    dressed.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
About old and things

    I stopped getting old.
    Any older than this and I move state into the other state of being
    that also ends with d.
    But also starts with it.
    So I stopped getting old,
    stuck
    there where I wish to stay,

    where my lust is still red
    and my jealousy still green
    and my fear to lose you still yellow,

    where Paul Anka still drives me insane with slows
    and Elvis still drives me insane with rocks
    and the Stones still drive me insane with the ageless energy of satisfaction.

    The anteroom of hell?
    The backroom of heaven?
    Vice versa?

    No, my knees don’t get any older,
    any older than this and they die.
    No, my shoulders don’t get any older,
    any older than this and they die.
    No, my chest, elbows, eyes, bowels, ears and the rest of the riffraff don’t get any older,
    any older than this and they die.
    No, you don’t get any older,
    any older than this and I die,
    you stop right there where the red the green the yellow
    are still red,
    still green,
    still yellow. Still you.

    I write, sure, I write
    and look around me expecting to see that it made a difference.
    Like pissing in the sea and expecting to see its level rise.
    It doesn’t.
    Look better! a voice reminding of yours admonishes drilling into my brain
    and I look better
    and I see a Cheshire Cat smile floating around me
    and then I know that the sea level did rise
    and that I did make a difference
    and that the difference I made is all that matters, actually.
    You love me. Even if you deny it. Which you don’t.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
ditty

    when the sea forgets to clamber
    over shoreline’s crystal soul
    and the nimbleness of amber
    paints a heart in somber coal,

    when the nightingale goes silent
    with a night’s turning to day
    and the butterfly goes violent
    slaying poppies ‘cross the ley,

    when the smoke rolls into phrases
    telling stories to the child
    and a drove of donkeys grazes
    with the lions in the wild,

    when... and more of what or who
    I’ll forget you, yes I’ll do.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Doubleups

    I miss your writing, she said.
    She rather wrote, not said, but it sounded the same.
    Sounded I miss you.
    With the writing a superfluous reminder
    that she missed also how I saw her...
    beautiful, hot, make love to me, and similar.

    I miss your writing, she said.
    I miss it too.
    With a temporary OUT OF ORDER hanging outside the shop
    return date unknown.
    If one of the hanging clips collapses and falls
    you’ll know it hung there too long
    and thus may hang there... longer.
    Yeah, strange creatures writers,
    all or nothing and none betwixt the twain shalt come, lol.

    *

    Sit on my lap, please, anywhere, you choose.
    On my head? Fine as well as long as there is no intervening skirt.
    Aha, I am the impertinent one. And who started this dialogue?
    OK, given that factually I started it, my first offer was decent,
    at most half indecent, the decent half larger...
    don’t you go mathematical on me...
    it was you who came with the head idea
    and I just responded to the challenge, summons, defiance, provocation, etc.

    Sit on my lap, please.
    Then I will sit on yours.
    Then we’ll each sit on each other’s at the same time,
    don’t worry, we’ll find a way (Escher did)
    and later on, after we disentangle the leftovers of the experiment
    we‘ll drink wine (white)
    and we’ll write poetry (indecent)
    and after we will be kicked out from the various writers’ associations
    we will have time for each other.
    Each other’s body, wasn’t this what you had in mind?

    *

    No, men don’t wear panties.
    Men wear shorts, or boxers or longjohns or whatevers.
    Women wear panties or bloomers or strings or whatevers.
    No, it is not semantics and no, it is not sexism, it is morphologism.
    It is the definition of the species as... species,
    different (thankgodly)
    very different (thankmoregodly)
    extremely different (thankevenmoregodly).

    No, men don’t wear panties, though they wouldn’t mind.
    I wouldn’t mind.
    Conditional on the hands pulling them up (important)
    and the hands pulling them down (very important)
    and the hands laundering them (irrelevant).

    *

    Do you think my poetry has lost its flame?
    I think so too.
    I don’t think, though, that it has lost its fire,
    you... well... you just have to find it. It is not even hidden.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Magic Garden

    I took your hand and dragged you in.

    What is this? you asked, looking at the gigantic trees
    with their transparent trunks and perfectly round leaves.
    This is the magic garden I told you about.
    I pulled you to a pillow shaped bench
    where I sat down and pulled you to sit on my knees.
    I am heavy.
    True, but this is not the subject.
    Here all the wishes can be fulfilled.
    What would you like, would you like to be twenty again?
    No, because then I would not have known you.
    Would you like to be twenty and know me?
    No, because then other important events would not have happened in my life.
    Would you like to be rich?
    No, because then someone else would be poor.
    Would you like to be perfectly healthy?...
    Well, probably yes...
    ...which means transferring all your pains to someone else, of course,
    you know, the law of preservation of energy, entropy, the uncertainty principle...
    all these and many others apply also to magic.
    Oh, I know, I have one request.
    Yes!!!???
    Can we get out of here?

    We were out. The garden disappeared as if it never was. Maybe it never was.

    This time you took my hand and dragged me to a normal garden,
    where you sat down on a normal bench and dragged me to sit on your knees.
    I am heavy.
    True, but this is not the subject.
    Do you love me?

    Yes.
    Then this is all I need. You are heavy.
    We swapped places and you fell asleep with your hands hugging my neck.
    A couple of leaves fell on your hair.
    A ladybug crawled on your shoulder.
    A squirrel ran away with your shoe’s buckle.
    Magic all around you.
    What would I have wished, I asked myself,
    if you would have invited me to the magic garden?
    To get out of there. After all I had already all the magic I could have hoped for.
    OK, so magic is a bit overweight, so what?
    It’s probably because of the ladybug.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Nonsense!

    You like hearing me talk nonsense.
    The way I like to hear you talk nonsense
    but my nonsense seems to be a bit more... nonsensical.
    After all, men had always more nonsense than women.
    (Do you think this will get me in trouble with Women’s Lib?
    If it does, please tell them it is due to insanity, immaturity and insolvency
    whatever this last one would mean, just sounds good.)

    Like I love you. Nonsense!

    The right words are not there
    and even if they were they would be in a language I do not know
    and if they would be in a language I do know
    they would be in a language you do not know
    and if they would be in a language you do know
    they would be in a language I do not know
    and if x;khnegfrjrgmjx$m,dfkl’fjfj.dd,;;r;rjdjuuu...
    (here’s where my mind’s tongue got all knotty,
    no, k-n-o-t-t-y not n-a-u-g-h-t-y you naughty minded gerontophile
    and I really do not know what the $ is doing there,
    probably I didn’t find the euro symbol in my mind’s keyboard)

    ...ok, so let me try it in synonyms, antonyms, homonyms and nympho... oops... sorry...
    I adore you (ok, could be amore as well, no, not amok, this is something else),
    I miiiiiiiiss you (more i’s than s’s, important),
    I delight in you (no, deelight is wrong spelling)
    I hate not being with you (not hate like hate but hate like pain in the heart, I said heart, huh?)
    I crave for you (now, this one may carry carnal, lascivious, lecherous undertones, correct!)

    ...ok, so let me try it in poenyms, lyrinyms, melonyms... none exists, you’ve been warned...
    I see in you the autumn that leads into spring with no intervening winter
    I cannot see the aura of the sun around your hair because you blind me
    I fear the tip of your finger will pass right through me and I will not feel its touch
    When the nightingale cut the today from the morrow
    I ventured in vain for more autumns to borrow
    Until you dressed balm to my body’s desire
    And last of my autumns turned nightingale’s choir.


    ...ok, so let me stop trying,
    I love you. Beyond any sense!

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Steps, one-way

    When was the last time I wrote you a poem?

    No, it wasn’t.
    No, I mean it wasn’t a poem.
    No, I mean it wasn’t the last time.
    No, I mean I don’t know what I mean.
    No. I love you. Who needs a poem when one loves one,
    no, I don’t mean one loves one self I mean one loves a poem?
    Yes, I am an idiot, so what?
    I feel silly, I feel in love, I feel drunk, high, inebriated, pickled, zonked, etc.

    If I was fifty and you fifty three
    I would be a flower and you’d be a tree
    If I was a worm and you’d be a sun
    I’d be sixty and you fifty one.

    This is a best example of a worst poem I can write
    when in the mood for bad poetry. Sure, I can even worse. Sure, I can even better.
    Sure, today is national bathroom day. What the hell was in that pickle I ate earlier?
    Three pickles is more than two pickles, you know?
    Too many question marks in this poem, you know?
    When was the last time I wrote you a poem? Yes, you know.

    We walk hand in hand through those cobbled desires
    That once reigned in fury my bone and your skin,
    We point in amazement to smoldering fires
    Forgotten beneath ebbing life’s dying din.

    We shuffle, uncertain, a few broken pebbles
    Scrap pain with impressions enchased on the mind,
    We thrash our thoughts, and yet lingering rebels
    Smear stains on the canvas with whispers unkind.

    To hell and damnation! We turn to each other,
    My hand to your breast and your teeth to my lip
    What was is a blip on the universe pother
    What is and will be is the universe sweep.

    Your skin be the chalice to passions forbidden
    My bone be the whip to the dragon’s rebirth
    And once we lay word to those memories hidden
    We burn paths of glory round Earth’s heaving girth.


CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Sandwich

    I wanted you to take a small sandwich for the way,
    you said it will only be about four hours, no need, that you ate.
    I did not try further.

    The hours passed. Four were over.
    Five? Six?
    The small sandwich started becoming bigger,
    then bigger still,
    then gigantic and you did not take it when it was small
    and you were probably dying of hunger and thirst and sweat and the need for a pee
    and here I was looking at the small sandwich that you did not take
    and looking for a place on the wall I did not bang yet my head on
    in order to bang it again
    for why did I not force you to take the sandwich when it was still small.
    Seven? Eight?

    Nothing improved with next day, with morning, with light.
    The sandwich you did not take was still gigantically on my mind
    and nothing helped with the gnocchi too mushy and too salty
    and the salad too big and too unsalty
    and the cola flat
    and the hrenovka cold
    and the boiled eggs exploded
    and my underwear split
    and the laptop hyperventilating
    and just when I thought the sandwich could not get any bigger
    you told me that your wash-machine died a glorious (?) death
    and I had to open the door to the apartment
    (to let the sandwich grow outside rather than break down my walls).

    Airport.
    I had to do something for you, even if you were not here,
    even if I had no access to any sandwich
    the sliced salami in the sliced kukuruzni kruh discounted.
    So I visited the most expensive shop on Earth (Travel Value they call it)
    and I stopped at the most expensive display range (Chanel they call it)
    and I bought the most expensive perfume there (Five they call it)
    and will guard it with my life
    until I meet you again
    and offer it to you
    to reduce the size of the sandwich to... well, sliced salami in sliced kukuruzni kruh.
    I hope I can. Ever?

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Song

    Every time I hear this song
    I close my eyes
    and fall again into that yawning abyss hiding among the greying ridges of my brain
    where we are in this dark restaurant
    and I slurp my steaming soup
    while you watch me slurping
    and your hunger for me grows fangs and claws in your eyes
    and if the floor would not have been so many miles away
    you would have torn me to shreds
    on the altar of your yearning.

    You open the car door for me
    you sit yourself behind the wheel
    your silence pleads the monster of time
    for clemency,
    I’ve never before seen a steering wheel so close to the grueling death of torn metal
    as inside the hold of those delicate
    howling fingers.

    The song ends.

    I open my eyes.

    The path finds its place anew into its infinity
    and yet, I know
    and I start shivering into my knowledge that this is one finite infinity
    which soon will once again bend to the unwritten laws of screaming life
    when short stolen moments will sprout into infinite stolen eons
    that will end
    yet again
    another
    Road to Hell.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Like

    My poetry
    gets worse.
    Probably with age.
    Probably with pollution.
    Probably with fuel prices, with the increased count of mosquitoes in the world, with...
    ...what the f--- (f--- for funk) does it matter?

    It gets worse.
    And I better get some more poems to you
    before it is gone altogether.
    Yes, the number of mosquitoes in the world is on the rise
    so I better hurry.

    I love you.

    No, this is not the poem,
    this is part of the poem.
    Like “I want to hear you singing Italian”
    like “I want to dance with you in your underwear, you not I”
    like “I want to drag you to the shore
    and let broken shells rip the dress off your back
    while my broken fingernails rip the dress off your front
    and all that’s left is your naked flesh between trailing tatters and bleeding scratches
    giving in to my receding humanity”.

    No, none of these are the poem,
    they are all part of the poem.
    Or better said – there is no poem.
    There is hunger, thirst, savagery
    like of a thorn for its rose
    like of a she-bear for its he-cub
    like of an old desert for its one day of rains and floods and flowers.

    I love you.

    No, it’s not the poem.
    It’s not the gospel.
    It’s the truth.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Event

    You sang to me.

    Not La Callas
    not La Madonna
    just La Youu,

    and suddenly I was in perfect equilibrium
    at the absolute center of life
    with everything rotating around me
    even the sun,
    even all the suns.

    I could have asked for anything I ever wished for
    even youth.

    I could have asked for answers to any question that ever bothered me
    even why did the dinosaurs disappear
    even what is the two lines solution to Fermat’s theorem
    even where did Amelia’s plane fall?

    I could have asked for the creation of new words
    even tens of new rhymes to love.

    I chose to ask for the one thing I could not have –
    that you sing to me forever.

    I could offer you next best,
    that I love you forever.


    You mean your greying hair
    your softening flesh
    your deepening wrinkles?

    Yes.

    I kissed the soles of your feet.
    I did not make love to you, this offer called for special celebration.
    I wrote you a poem
    and I ended it with a declaration never used before.

    You love me.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Summer

    I did not know I was a world
    until summer deserted your breath and came to live inside my lungs.

    I did not know I was a sculptor
    until I sculpted in the marble of your flesh
    summer.

    I knew I was bound to die,
    I just did not know I was going to die so many times
    so many summers.

    I helped you translate summer in all known languages
    and this included all dead ones
    then I confessed to cheating.
    There is one I am still learning, I said,
    I will translate summer into it once I have mastered it completely.
    Never? you asked.
    Never, I assented
    and reverted to studying your heart.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Vignettes

    ...one

    We were wrong
    oh, so wrong,

    the sunflower does not follow the sun
    it is the sun that follows the sunflower.


    ...two

    Evolution
    split them somewhere along the way into flowers and butterflies, she said.

    Wrong, I replied,
    evolution, split them somewhere along the way into flowers and butterflies and women.


    ...three

    A year has some well undefined seasons, depending on where you happen to dwell,
    for some four, for some one, for some one every day.

    Life has some well undefined seasons as well,
    people call them names, people play definition games with them,
    people follow them with calendars, with markings on the wall, with the color of hair.

    Love, has two seasons. Well defined.
    Yes.
    And No.


    ...four

    When I was a man of twenty, I was a man of twenty
    in love.

    When I’ll be a man of eighty, I’ll be a man of eighty
    in love.


    ...five

    Wolves, don’t know peace,
    they know hunger.

    Crows, don’t know peace,
    they know hunger.

    I, don’t know peace,
    don’t know their hunger.
    I know mine.


    ...six

    If I die tomorrow
    What a pleasure to know that I loved you one more day.


    ...seven

    Eons ago, when we made love for the last time...
    You mean... this morning.

    As I was saying, eons ago, when we made love for the last time...


    ...eight

    No one loves you the way I do -
    not the milkman
    not the hairdresser
    not the dentist.

    Not the summer
    not the moon
    not the rain.

    Not God.

    Not you.


    ...nine

    Define love
    Undefinable.
    Define undefinable.
    Love.

    We were at it for years now, no chance to break the loop.
    Define loop.
    Endless.
    Define endless.
    Love.

    Maybe a chance there?
    Define chance.
    Certainly not love.
    Define not love.
    Everything definable.

    The loop was broken.


    ...ten

    I wish I could tell you how more beautiful you are than a butterfly
    but I cannot
    because you are not.

    I wish I could tell you how much more blazing you are than the sun
    but I cannot
    because you are not.

    I wish I could tell you how more beautiful you are than a butterfly
    for me
    I think I can
    because you are.

    I wish I could tell you how much more blazing you are than the sun
    for me
    I think I can
    because you are.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Lust awakens. Again.

    Don’t hesitate.
    Don’t wait for me the way woman impregnated indoctrinated infused
    with so called morals so called etiquette
    waits for man,
    don’t let bashful cloud your mind.
    Don’t.

    Take my hand and guide it there where sky meets earth
    and sun meets moon
    and flesh meets its destiny,

    where life meets death.

    Mutate
    from I to Y then on to almost T, almost will do
    as your beast leaves the flat dimensionality of bed
    and emerges into the shapeless three dimensionality above it
    where bedware constituents metabolize into incandescent embers
    and sodden rags
    and somewhere inside all of it I hang on to you
    with my hand there, where you guided it,
    where you left it
    where I followed with the rest of my sentience
    into the four dimensionality of extinction.

    Gather me.
    Pieces of me scattered all over the room crawl together mindlessly upon your naked navel
    and I feed myself into sanity again
    licking grains of salt and drops of womanly essence first from my finger tips
    then from your abused crossroads
    and finally from the tip of that red tentacle sneaking out from behind your ivory
    telling me that there are many more letters to the alphabet
    and maybe we should try some other. Maybe all of them. Not at the same time.
    Not now.

    What about... now?

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
O-H-H

    I don’t miss you.
    I miss yours.

    For some unclear reason she got vexed.
    And who is this Iource?
    I never prided myself on my speaking accent but neither she on her hearing one
    so I expected her to have cut me some slack and try to spell it correctly,
    in her mind at least.
    I mean Y... I started spelling it.
    Why what?
    Clearly we were not going anywhere with this dialogue.
    I took a piece of paper and wrote the word down.
    Aha, she finally smiled, you mean Iource?!
    I let it pass, she clearly got it this time, even if her accent was worse than mine.
    Yes, Iource, I tried to mimic slash mock her but failed.

    I miss yours.
    Your fire,
    the one that roasted your inside and roasted my outsides
    the one that woke up at midnight and went to sleep at midnight
    the one that put to shame Shakespeare’s sonnets and King Solomon’s Song of Songs,
    you hid it. Where? Why?
    How do you expect me to write you poetry when all I get is
    ohh, my back... ohh, my head... ohh, my neighbor... ohh, my cat
    and other variations on the O-H-H theme?

    I guess I sounded vexed too.
    Her eyes clouded, then a watery veil built upon them, then... she started laughing.
    With tears, of course with tears.
    Ohh, you eedeeoth... at least this is what it sounded to me
    but you know already by now about the dissonance
    between our speaking and hearing accents, hers and mine respectively this time.
    I did not mind this specific O-H-H though. Even calling me names sounded promising.

    And what do you think are my back and my head and my neighbor and my cat
    if not hell’s fires
    and where do you think I would have ended
    without the protecting fires roasting my insides and aching to roast your outsides
    if not in hell?
    And where are your brains...
    she certainly knew how to make six letters sound like four...
    when you know that between midnight and midnight I burn for you
    and between Solomon and William I chose you to burn with
    and my fire’s hiding is nowhere but here...

    and she clenched her fist and hit me in the phone.
    I was pondering while she was busy removing splinters of plastic from my flesh
    that I better keep next time my phone in the shirt’s right pocket.
    And that instead of asking her a rhetorical question
    first ask myself the same. Ohh, sorry, I felt like saying
    and feeling that the O-H-H did not sound as mocking as I wanted it to sound
    said it aloud as well.
    Ohh, you eedeeoth, she quoted herself
    and fragile, tender fingers started exploring my flesh for the fire she hid inside there
    and all I could hope for was that she would never find it,
    just keep looking.
    I would not have minded.
    Ohhhhh...

    (...have no idea how many h’s should presently have been in this last onomatopoeia,
    Webster’s is conveniently vague on the subject.)

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Words, intentional

    I wish the pain
    that you retain
    for eons after my refrain
    has stained your eye
    and claimed your sigh
    and fogged your reason yet again,
    I wish this pain
    you never shun
    seeds in your heart
    a morning sun.

    I wish the burn
    you crave and yearn
    like kindling dry and taciturn
    like evenings long
    enmeshed in song
    then gone to shores of no return,
    I wish this burn
    slumbers a while
    until it births
    a blinding smile.

    I wish the grime
    deployed by time
    that carries knells inside the chime
    that fosters fear
    and festers jeer
    and mangles my unwritten rhyme,
    I wish this grime
    your path disrupts
    just as your chest
    in love irrupts.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Of Reds And Wets

    You had a cold,
    your nose was red and dripping, wet.

    “I know other parts of your body,
    different red, different wet...” I ventured.

    You blushed, watching me with accusing yet passionate eyes
    and looked warily around, we were alone in the park.

    “You are not supposed to say it loudly,” you complained,
    but smiled nevertheless.

    “Why? Isn’t your mouth something I am supposed to comment about loudly?
    I wonder what you had in mind?” I did not wink.

    There were some red blush leftovers and they joined the first onslaught.
    Your nose got a deeper shade of carrot and your cheeks started steaming.

    You gathered a handful of snow, packed it tightly, spit on it
    and shoved it into my face. You did not even bother to throw it.

    “I do not mind tasting your mouth this indirectly,” I said spluttering icicles,
    “but do you realize how many dogs peed on that morsel of snow?”

    You neared me, sucked my mouth dry with your mouth
    and fed me all the microbes, viruses and amoebae that found temporary residence in it.

    “Care to find out what I had in mind?” It was loud enough for others to hear as well.
    It was my turn to deep shades of carrot and steaming cheeks.

    When I found out we were alone, thank God.
    Only that loud knocking on the wall... I guess our neighbor was not overly appreciative.

    “Luckily I do not smoke,” I concluded the episode, later.
    “Because my breath would have ignited and singed your eyebrows and your hair.”

    She pondered for a couple minutes. “Considering where your breath was directed,
    I wonder which of my hair patches would have been burnt.”

    She was right. I went through the same rigmarole again,
    paying better attention to the areas visited. I found it very instructive.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Box

    You shoot a salvo
    I shoot a salvo
    I shoot a salvo
    you shoot a salvo...

    The perpetuum mobile of mind cogs and heart hinges,
    poems but oil continually flowing through the contraption to keep it alive
    letters but coded keys falling into place with final clicks
    silences but plans for inexistent miracles
    and the shrapnel of short encounters the only tool for cutting slices of life
    and feeding them into our bodies.

    Strange world.
    Late world.
    Never world.

    And yet, the world of pink ribbons
    and silk hand glides
    and red shoes jumping into mud puddles with the brainless joy of brainless children,
    the magic of an ugly world
    with a beautiful box,
    and we
    inside of it.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Percentages

    I know,
    ninety percent of life are already behind me,
    part of the dust I mop daily
    off furniture pieces.

    And yet
    I refuse to die the other ten percent.
    I intend to live them
    at a miraculous one hundred percent efficiency.
    Not even dust
    left behind.

    As if, this is all I have left.
    Because, this is all I have left.
    Yeap, one hundred percent of what I have left is what I have left,
    and not one
    percent
    less.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Query

    I cannot pretend that my surge in desire
    Is just a conventional seasonal fire,
    With three seasons over, the fourth just beginning
    I doubt that the winter’s the season of sinning.

    I shouldn’t assume that the godmother fairy
    Decided to place on my frosting her cherry
    Thus paving my way with some final intention
    As far from the “good” as I dare not to mention.

    I thoroughly scrutinized life’s crowding glitches
    My eyes a collection of tormenting twitches
    Yet didn’t find reasons to feel some compunction
    For boasting the obvious lack of dysfunction.

    I guess I will hang it in life’s hall of queries
    Alongside with world’s most ridiculous theories
    But let me, this once, voice my asinine reason
    It is, after all, my penultimate season.

    It’s woman. A woman. Or maybe a lady
    If soft and if tough, and if saintly or shady
    I don’t sing her praise quite enough but, oh, sire,
    She’s every bit fire and, oh, the desire...

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Play

    I wish that I was, yet I fear I cannot
    Pretend I’m okay with the limited plot
    That impudent time has reserved in its books,
    Inclement its ways and impassive its looks.

    Way past the prologue, rather nearing the end,
    I wonder what lies past the following bend,
    Another vainglorious fragment of day
    Or rather a sensuous roll in the hay?

    I’ll tell you the truth, and if God was to be
    Then witness he’d bear to my mind’s apogee,
    If I was to choose my penultimate scene
    My hand at your breast is what this should have been.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
The Dream

    I dreamt of me.

    You were there too.

    I was seated on a sofa and you were crawling all over me
    somehow thinner
    somehow smoother
    somehow more beautiful than ever,
    so tempting
    so nice
    so sexy.

    There was someone else in my dream,
    also me,
    the narrator.
    So the seated me got into an argument with the narrator me
    and said
    “it is nice
    but I prefer the bit of thicker she
    the bit of more wrinkled she
    the bit of less beautiful than ever she,”
    and to make my threat real
    I woke up.

    Oh, God, what a nightmare.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Tired

    Like a mountain that knows it’s about time to crumble
    after one last rumble...

    but oh, I wish it was after one last tumble
    with you in between the white sheets of like it was the first time
    turning them soggy with the sweat of laboring breath
    and with the liquidity of the end of labor
    at the beginning of that coupled eternity
    shorter than the encompassing kiss
    yet longer than any poem anyone ever wrote on evolution
    and copulation
    and resurrection.

    Tired.

    Like a wolf pack crawling its shaggy form out of interminable winter
    creaking legs splinter following splinter...

    but oh, how I wish our flopping dregs would sinter
    alongside with a deforming and reforming and unforming matrass
    into whose folds we lose our long lost virginity of carnal knowledge
    and find our long found proclivity for sin
    peregrinating in and out of each other using roads visited
    and roads discovered
    and roads conceived to perpetrate that recurring goal
    of digging the essence of existence
    and that momentary lack of it.

    Tired.

    Like a rotting tree.
    Like a dry riverbed.
    Like a meteorite hissing its passage into depths of water to becoming dead-weight
    to an utterly execrable fate...

    but oh, how I wouldn’t care if I was to disintegrate
    the moment after we remembered the tree before
    and the riverbed before
    and the meteorite before
    and for one instant tired juxtaposed with Paphian and dragon invaded woman
    with toes and claws and fangs and tongues whipping fires out of darkly recessed memories
    allowing for reality to die in favor of mirage
    and for palingenesis of a flesh that stopped believing
    as it finds morbidity crushed to cosmic dust
    by the insurmountable weight of re-ignited
    lust.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Images

    I think of you

    alone mid of that gigantic bed
    surrounded by patches of fog which carry whiffs of once me
    and rotten fruits hanging from the ceiling carrying images of me entangled with you
    and indentations in the matrass that will carry the contours of you
    tomorrow.

    I do not close my eyes

    I refuse to let the images fade into a meaningless mirage
    and prefer to follow you surreptitiously as you wade through the dust laden air
    from the bedroom all the way to the bathroom
    from the bathroom all the way back to the bedroom
    naked.

    I talk to you

    though you do not hear but you do listen
    intent of finding leftovers of the words hanging in the air I once whispered in your ear
    and the rumble resting in the walls when you sighed and I bellowed
    and the crackling of bones rubbing against each other to ignite
    fire.

    I miss you

    lost seconds and minutes and hours that I’ll never be allowed to recuperate
    lost smiles and sighs and snores gone into the oblivion of eradicated time
    lost pitter-patter of running feet and of munching teeth and of scratching fingernails
    alongside the sputtering sparks in the endless battle between comb and hair
    life.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Life

    Life
    is like an empty vase
    without a flower.

    Life is like a nightingale without trill
    a hammer without nail
    a morning without good-morning.

    Life
    is boring.

    Life is about to end.

    And suddenly you placed the flower
    and you sowed the trill
    and you brought the nail and said good-morning.
    So what if life is about to end?...
    happiness, don’t even remember it ever was boring.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Sexy

    You are not attractive.
    You are attractive if so you choose.
    You are not beautiful.
    You are beautiful if so you choose.
    You are not sexy.
    I have no opinion.
    You can be sexier than the Nereids, than Maja Desnuda, than Marilyn Monroe.
    If so you choose.
    No, this is not an opinion. This is fact.

    You are attractive.
    So I choose.
    You are beautiful.
    So I choose.
    You are not sexy.
    You are sexier than the Nereids, than Maja Desnuda, than Marilyn Monroe.
    Hmm, I guess there is nothing sexier.
    Hmm, I guess you are sexy.
    No, this is not an opinion. This is fact. Eliminate the guess verbalism.

    You speak strange languages, lover, even if they are all called English.
    Are you seriously including me in a comparative narrative with Marilyn Monroe?

    Would you prefer with James Dean? Or Groucho Marx? Or Beethoven?
    The dog?
    He too.
    No, I will stay with Marilyn.
    Great, now can we make love, please?
    So all this was just an infernal machination to get me out of my panties and into yours?
    You are already out of your panties and into mine. Yes.
    OK.
    But she jumped out of bed, selected the right pair of panties to pull up,
    the right skirt though there was not much choice,
    the right shoes (mine were 5 sizes larger)
    and disappeared.
    When she reappeared three breakfasts later she huffed and puffed through the door
    dragging behind her at least five hundred roses
    and the extra volunteer butterfly, or bee, or grasshopper... no, no bear.
    What is this? I asked, afraid she had gone mental.
    I’m hungry, she said, finishing the leftovers of my three breakfasts
    plus a fresh one just for herself.
    I was sure she had gone mental.

    She undressed, sat mid of the flowers
    and used her pinky to summon my presence next to her. I obeyed, of course I obeyed.
    Nobody before you placed me in the same league with Groucho Marx.
    When I tried to explain and or protest and or delineate and or etcetera
    she threatened me with dressing so I shut up.
    Nobody before you chose me to be attractive.
    When I tried to explain and or protest and or delineate and or etcetera
    she threatened me with dressing so I shut up.
    Nobody before you chose me to be beautiful.
    When I tried to explain and or protest and or delineate and or etcetera
    she threatened me with dressing so I shut up.
    Nobody before you chose me to be sexier than the Nereids and Maja and Marilyn,
    and I did not try to explain and or protest and or delineate and or etcetera
    because truths do not need explanations and or protests and or delineations
    and she did not have to threaten me with dressing.
    Etcetera (I do not know what is the plural of etcetera).
    Something nevertheless kept bothering me
    and risking the ever greatest sex event in my life I ventured the question.
    Why all the roses?

    She smiled then she laughed then she smiled again
    then she cuddled in my lap, real cuddle not sexy cuddle.
    To tell you that you love me.

    Years later, I was still trying to understand the statement.
    She chose attractive, she chose beautiful, she chose sexy
    and then she suddenly chose mysterious and
    I had no idea who to compare her to and in what order of preference.
    And I guessed she preferred it this way, seen that every day she threw out an old rose
    and replaced it with a fresh one.

    One day I tried to solve the riddle and break the loop and took a wild guess...
    maybe I should have tried to compare you to... woman?
    You mean more mysterious than woman?
    and she smiled then she laughed then she smiled again
    then she cuddled in my lap, real cuddle not sexy cuddle.
    But she stopped bringing in new roses and when she finished throwing out the old ones
    she brought me a poster of Beethoven. The dog.

    It was the beginning of the continuation of a beautiful relationship,
    with me doing the guessing of what she was more than others
    and she changing the subject each time I would guess.
    Funnier than, hungrier than, narrow mindeder than...
    From time to time re-iterating the sexier than topic
    for no other reason than that I was intellectually very interested in this trait of hers
    and she knew it. And we even studied it, practically.

    Hey, I love you, she told me one day
    followed by my first heart attack.
    Trust me, it was worth it
    seen that it was immediately compensated by a renewed sexier than conundrum.

    Since then I started faking it, I mean heart attacks.
    And somehow sexier than became the only game we ever played.
    Love, sexier than?...
    Oh, yeah! Hallelujah!

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Sexy, two

    You are amazing, I told her.
    She wasn’t but she was.
    To me.

    You are gorgeous, I told her.
    She wasn’t but she was.
    To me.

    You are the sexiest thing alive, I told her.
    She wasn’t, not even to me,
    but then she said I love you
    and suddenly all blemishes and all wrinkles and all stains disappeared
    and her skin was baby smooth
    and her hold was alligator strong
    and her breath was dragon hot.
    You are the sexiest thing alive, I told her.

    I knew I was dreaming, so I woke up.
    Were you dreaming? she asked
    and dragon hot breath enveloped me.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Once, two

    Once there was fire.
    And beneath the fire there was fire and around the fire there was fire
    and inside the fire there was fire.
    Once, there was you.

    Once I missed you.
    And beneath the miss there was miss and around the miss there was miss
    and inside the miss there was miss.
    Once, there was I.

    You did not pull your hand from mine.
    We were walking on the deserted beach,
    hand in one hand shoes in the other hand waves washing our toes again and again
    your hair storming into my face and tickling me into sneezing
    your skirt fluttering above waist, yours,
    challenging underneath waist, mine.
    You speak oddly, you remarked
    letting a gull challenge you into a duel beak against shoe
    and ending inconclusively with both of you exhausted.
    He decided to challenge a fish
    you decided to challenge my shoulder with the weight of your head.
    And when I speak oddly what is it I say? I asked, having forgotten already.
    A mix of nonsensicals, minatorials, animalians, idioticals...
    Now who’s speaking oddly?

    I did not pull my hand from yours.
    Where there once was fire there still was fire
    and once you ensnared me into a sudden copulatory challenge
    I ended all blisters and charred remnants,
    on the beach,
    waves hissing into steam,
    your skirt ribbons and pennons around us,
    the gull laughing its guts (and fish) out flying away with your shoes in his beak.
    I found you, I said.

    Where there once was miss there still is miss. Carloads of it.
    I found you, you wrote.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Echo

    I opened your poem
    took a few butterflies from your stanzas
    and transferred to mine

    some from between the stanzas

    some even bit me but it didn’t hurt,
    it was more like a snowflake kiss on my hand mid of summer,
    kiss and die...

    did they die?

    no, they are waiting for you to bring them back home.
    I do not mind sharing.
    I do not mind sharing either,
    here, take some of mine
    I succeeded
    some flowers, some butterflies
    some mine, some yours,

    all ours

    all ours.

    My poem ended.
    Yours started.
    Your poem ended.
    Mine started.
    We kept at it for hours, maybe centuries.
    Maybe poems?
    Maybe poems.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Sexy, three

    No, I do not think sex,
    sex has to do with copulation, coitus, venery, fuck and other synonyms
    medical or artistical or streetical,
    but nothing to do with sexy, no no, sorry, you are reading the wrong poem
    if this be your area of interest.

    (and please accept my eventual poetical demolitical usage of English, OK?
    my additional wrinkles do not extend from my face to my brain
    )

    No, I do not think sexuality,
    sexuality has to do with plants, animals, insects, age and other corollaries
    social or scientifial or encyclopedial
    but nothing to do with sexy, no no, sorry, you are reading the wrong poem
    if this be your area of interest.

    (and please accept my eventual poetial derelictial usage of English, OK?
    the extra creasing of my face draws from the extra smoothing of my brain
    )

    No, none of the above or their corollaries (ah, I love this word).
    I do mean sexy, as said, as intended, as written
    with its definition currents and its cultural currents and its spelling currents,
    sexy. Like s-e-x-y nothing more and nothing less.
    Like you.
    Like y-o-u nothing more and nothing less,

    sexier than Gina, guess!
    with her once upon perfect skin and sculpted profile and shiny hair
    versus your present speckled skin and yielding profile and haywire hair,
    sexier than Liz, guess!
    with her once upon lilac-purple eyes and blood-red lips and baby-pink cheeks
    versus your present faded purple eyes and faded red lips and faded pink cheeks
    sexier than Marilyn, guess!
    with her once upon cut-low blouse and back-seamed stockings and billowing-up skirt
    versus your present to-neck blouse and all-round pantyhose and sex-less jeans,

    and I stopped wondering why ageless males and agefull males
    screw their necks around after you
    and choke on their whistling once you pass
    and forget blinking when you hit them with a smile that would melt the Aletsch
    if the Swiss would unfortunately host you in the area.
    Not to mention females of undefinable ages shifting into the green spectrum.

    Hey there, sexy!
    Just wanted to tell you so that you know
    that you are.
    And I think it would be healthier I stop writing these intimate impressions
    because the earlier mentioned and unmentioned incomplete family
    of inflected forms and derived forms and synonyms and homonyms and deforminyms
    that this poem has nothing to do with
    (and I do not mean plants, animals, insects, age and other corollaries)
    start raising a pretty animalistic reaction inside me,

    and not only inside.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Distances

    You’re there, behind the distance veil,
    The crumbs I left upon the trail
    Lie scattered with the seasons’ winds
    While passing time stiffly rescinds
              my dying gale.

    I feel your mind ransack the ore
    Ensconced within forgotten lore
    To find if it portends the one
    Who did impale a piece of sun
              upon your door.

    I see your heart beseech the stars
    That glide between those prison bars
    (You built around your spirit’s shell)
    To guide you to a healing well
              and nurse your scars.

    I see your fingers reaching out
    While in your eyes blue lilacs sprout
    And tarry in that land nonesuch
    Where you will wed the rousing touch
              to end your drought.

    We meet. We burn. We die.
    We sigh.
    Oh, damn you cruel and sad good bye.

    You’re back behind the spotted pane
    The glitters in your pupils wane
    The swallows fly beneath your sill
    And wonder if the teardrops’ mill
              will bring the rain.

    The world enwraps your little isle
    Then suddenly you spot the miles
    I seeded with my crumbs anew
    And fixed with nails and chains and glue
              you smile.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Once, three

    Once, we were sleeping under one blanket
    it was easy for you to find me when you felt like it, middle of the night
    which you did, more than once.

    Once you could not keep your hands off me
    in the bus, in the airplane, in the car,
    even in the bathroom.

    Once you did not mind walking around half naked,
    in the house of course in the house
    sometimes top half
    sometimes bottom half
    sometimes all the halves and you had so many of them...

    Once... we had a child,
    a virtual child, okay, a virtual child who still needed pampering and caring and loving
    and we pampered and cared for and loved
    until we stopped pampering and caring and loving and it died.
    Even virtual children die, you know
    and even for a virtual child a parent mourns, you know.

    Once first we kissed then we talked, maybe.
    Now first we talk then we kiss, maybe.

    Once we were seeing stars
    on the beach side walking in the garden sitting even on the bedroom ceiling
    lying down, not sleeping,
    they disappeared.
    There are no stars anymore
    I guess it is true what they say about the universe expanding, they are beyond reach.
    This is a scientific statement, of course.

    Once you hated the long in-betweens and the short durings
    now you’re patiently patient during the in-betweens
    and patiently impatient during the durings,
    not really minding the longer of the one
    the shorter of the other,
    once you were counting in seconds.
    It’s closer to years now.

    *

    Once I loved Rudyard’s “If”
    I still love it even though he stole the word thus I am left with “Once”
    so I do my best but I cannot say I love it at all.
    You see, “If” is conditional, optional, discretionary, elective,
    “Once” is factual.
    Fact.

    *

    Once ’neath the one blanket enwrapping us under
    Morpheus was aching to tear us asunder
    And you thumbed your nose at his finicky squealings
    and drowned us in thunder,

    Once none of old morals was sacred cow’s dealings
    Your hands fondling flesh under sauntering ceilings
    On wheels or on arrows that rumble and slither
    obeying your feelings,

    Once half of you naked paraded way hither
    The other half boiling in envious dither
    Was rolling its ass and my mind in bravado
    through gutters way thither,

    Once rolling in hay in our blessed Eldorado
    A virtual child we conceived ser amado
    It wrapped us in smiles then it died crowned in glory
    forever cerrado,

    Once kissing was fire while talking’s outlawry
    Proscribed it to premature death in the story
    Now talking returned with a vengeance unsightly
    and wouldn’t say sorry,

    Once stars merged with seasons and fireflies sprightly
    And we soaked the bliss of a radiance nightly
    That rhymed with our skin and yet now’s hardly rhyming
    with vainly and tritely,

    Once seconds weighed years in your mind’s thirsty timing
    Your thoughts thousand times our soft bedding priming
    What’s left is the brain re-enacting the wonder
    and happiness miming.

    *

    Once I was God, yours.
    Once you were God. And Goddess, and their sons and their daughters
    and their rest of family from heaven to hell to heaven
    seven times seven
    and again, and anew, mine.
    Now, contrary to once, we have to concede that God is dead.
    And the rest of the family, whichever member you may wish to name.
    Strange, it’s not supposed to happen to unmarried people.

CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank

corner
Poesis Horribilis

    So I stop writing it, my poetry,
    you don’t love it anymore, my poetry.

    Once you loved it
    and you wrote long accolades in long books adorned with smileys and ellipses,

    Until loved it turned liked it
    and you wrote short accolades in long books devoid of smileys and ellipses,

    The short accolades metamorphosed into long sentences
    and like metamorphosed into appreciate

    Followed by habit
    when long sentences became short sentences

    And then... duty
    short sentence turned variably sized single word shifting into smiley shifting into ellipsis

    I better stop before ellipsis evanesces into period,
    the final station known to man.

    So I stop writing it, my poetry,
    you don’t love it anymore, my poetry, anyway.

    See, I was used to writing to a public of one,
    I am not used to writing to a public of zero.

    Let’s finish with a ditty, just for fun,
    for whenever if ever you read this horrible poem.

    The boat lies broken on the shore,
    The car has joined the junkyard pile,
    My body grinds messages vile
              and I shall write no more.


CuCuRuCuCurvesText
blank