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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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...

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!?

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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!...

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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...

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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Of once I read my poems, old and dry Yet some bring tears into my eye, I wonder why, I wonder why.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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...

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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