Shell The shell hiding the fire, Never able to smother it the more it tries the angrier the flames inside the shell, primeval, thunderous, invincible... You open your eyes, I offered you sight. You look and what do you see but the shell? Smile wrinkles around the eyes, white strands... It is though the same as when your eyes were closed, when sightlessly you listened to the roaring inferno as sun’s claw was dragging you into its cataclysmic heart and your insides were burning into ecstasy. No, don’t close your eyes again, You cannot hear it anymore, You cannot feel it anymore, It died with your opening of eyes and sight. All you see now is the shell. You lost the inferno, You lost that terrible claw, And though my bare fingers can still unbend an iron nail and stab a dragon’s heart I lost you.

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When I Get Old? when I get old? ha, you mean when I stop enjoying Elvis at windows shattering volume, when all I look for from morning to evening is for quiet and food and the pill it is the right time to take? when all I can look forward to is my yesterdays, those that I might still remember? when a woman’s naked body does not yield any response beyond an endless cough not dissimilar to the one when watching the morning bus beneath my window, when a woman’s naked leg makes me shiver with cold and her naked breast does not drive me into the raping state of mind of a cougar in heat? that’s when the last memory I will ever carry is the hiding nest of that Smith & Wesson and its unborn 9mm child I will father.

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Before Death Your words riding me into a coma. Your youth vibrant like surgical steel stretched atop a violin body, the only tool allowed to play its music the sharp ends of a lover’s teeth plucking tiny pieces of skin attached to living ends of nerves and pleasure. Your heels never touching the ground as you dance through life on tips of toes forever pirouetting around love’s center of gravity, forever gyrating around a sun held in your outstretched hand its lazy flames lambent upon your skin flickering around those tiny blue flowers kissing your elbows. wait a moment, in this universe this is a physical impossibility. So they say. Yet look inside my universe where truths are spoken only by unborn infants by heretics burnt on the stake and by suicidal poets. The melting marble in your breast The hidden smile in your protest, That stain of sky Inside your eye, My dawn... wherever lies your nest. Allow one day to paint your year One word to swim inside your tear If love’s the word Then lark’s the bird To seed its tunes inside your ear. Don’t close your eyes when suns invade The path you plowed across the glade And sunset glows Between your toes Asleep inside the green brocade. Just hang your clothes upon a branch Let fading grief your shoulders blanch Then like a swan Your beauty don While rhymes sublime your bleeding stanch. Watch sizzling dew upon your skin Entranced with dreams of scalding sin Inhale your sighs And kiss your thighs Along a trail of blister sheen. Then flare your nostrils... scent the breeze Regard those shapes among the trees The pale of white The soft of light The promise of dementing tease. You slide beneath the hugging leaves A crumbling star in silence grieves A glimmer marks Its dying sparks As burning dust through eyelids sieves. The soft of down the hard of steel They near your lair... they touch your heel They pull your hip They crush your lip A lover’s hands your candor steal. lover? who? lover... you?... caress... you whisper, I sink the chalice in the wind to pick a sleepy waft And let it curl around your toes, between, and fore, and aft, Then as my fingers follow suit like clumsy sunset thieves Your skin ignites and tiny sparks roll summers into leaves. skin? why? skin... my?... sweetness... you whisper, I sink my head inside the hive to pick a mouthful gold And pour the glow between your lips with ecstasy untold, And when your tongue lashes for more I call upon the swarm Unleashing in your gaping mouth a raging pollen storm. storm? how? storm... now?... love... you whisper, I sink my hands beneath the earth to grab its hot entrails The molten ore inside my fist drags seven flailing tails, You arch your back and shove your breast till nipples rape my palm, The fire which consumes your skin... your body’s only balm. fire? when? fire... who why how... again?... ecstasy... you whisper, I sink my body in that mine you lined with glowing coal Your nails the master’s scribing tool, my skin your bleeding scroll, We roll into the dragon’s mouth and thrash inside the gore Till splitting skies fall willing prey to passion’s sudden roar. passion? whence? passion... hence?... gentleness... you whisper, I sink your body in the milk decanted from a doe Then dress your wounds with fragrant moss asleep beneath the snow And as you rub into my cuts your mouth’s embalming sap My magic runes will curl your shape to sleep inside my lap. * You slept on your back, The tiny flame escaping your half open lips playing havoc on my mind, this cannot be human. I kept waving away the golden moths whose only ambition seemed to be to burn inside this flame, funny looking moths, indestructible, changing shape and color each time they buzzed through the tiny pyre, now they were gold, before they were yellow with green spots, before that blue and shaped like winged lizards... I neared my eyes, the air crisp and dry the more I approached, sudden pain... no... pleasure shooting through my eyelids as lashes caught fire and turned into thin bodied minuscule butterflies swimming inside my eyes, I swatted the moths away, they battled me as I approached my open mouth inhaling the flame into my lungs and my lungs turning ashes and my ashes turning poppy fields and the poppy fields turning liquor pouring into your flame sizzling, inebriating the moths and me defining the colors of my insanity and the threshing of my heart... I pulled back, panting. Waited a few moments then resumed my examination of your body, not yet further down than your nipples on my way to monumental discoveries and palpitating adventure... nipples asleep, smiling the way sleeping nipples do, cozily sunk in the unripe-apple sized mounds of flesh called breasts on humans... they should have been called love’s cornucopia of grapes on you. I touched the right nipple with the tip of my tongue, my mind set on tasting not on touching, it woke up, yawned, stretched rubbing teasingly against my lips as the left one started showing signs of life as well, they always seemed to act as a pair... then suddenly both pierced the air with a shriek stretching against the surrounding sunsets begging loudly to be cuddled inside my mouth or my palm dark red blood pumping and gurgling through them the smell of freshly baked bread and hot pouring chocolate and cinnamon and wild roses invading my nostrils, the room, the window panes fogging alongside with my eyes as they tasted in my mouth like strawberries then like cherries then like lumps of honey melting inside my throat into the sting of bees... Yes, I knew it was time to move on, much as I feared and more as I desired. I moved a moment’s distance away watching the wreckage caused by my aspiring want – the moths still stumbling drunkenly around the room’s corners, the thickly flavored fog rising and rolling around those mounds on your chest, your breathing undisturbed, serene, quiet... I moved on, past your white belly, lower, I stopped. I got up, froze time, and crashed through walls and cars and trees and mountains till I found that meadow and in the middle of the meadow the wild raspberries bunches of which I cupped in both hands rushing back through the mountains and the trees and the cars and the walls repairing all damage done in my wild surge, unfreezing time, your breathing undisturbed, serene, quiet... I moved on, past your white belly, lower, I stopped. Where have you been? you asked, breaking the magic. How do you know? I froze time, I answered, trying to restore the magic. You left that hole in the wall, my butt froze too, you answered, caring not for the magic. I pressed my open palm against your lower abdomen, the tips of my fingers just beneath your navel, the hollow of my palm crushing its life-line against the raspberry bunches and squashing them on your tense flesh till a sweet-sour smelling mush started oozing between the roots of my fingers, while the heel of my hand slowly started pushing against that mound of feminine delicate intricacies now about to break through the chain of modesty straight into the fabric of momentary timelessness... Your pelvis shot upwards, trying to reach my mouth, I gently pushed it back down fighting against tenacious resistance every inch of the way a hot throb enchasing cinders under my skin and working its way to the back of my hand through tendons and muscles and tiny bones, while hand, then fingers started moving downwards massaging the sticky sap into your need, and moans, and insides... I could not hold back your gale any longer, you broke through my defenses defeating the steel of my muscle and your fulminating intimacy crashed against my face offering my mouth your raspberries, your chalice, your forest wine. I don’t remember the scream or the song, mine or yours? as orbits changed and planets stuttered and a drunken perihelion dropped me into the sun to burn to never return. * I dressed, quietly. You watched me without interrupting me even once, your eyes clicking frames into your memory for later rummage and ransack and pain. I finished tying my shoes, zipped my suitcase shut, refusing to look at you afraid the shine in my eyes might blind you... It probably would not, it was reflecting only a single sixty watt light bulb. Then why did I see everything so blurred? “Is it the end of Elysium or the beginning of Hades?” you asked. “There is Lethe in between,” I answered, remembering mythology and refusing logic. “I prefer Hades. At least I know where I am. And I know it too well.” Pride, obstinacy, defiance. And that endless agony of getting a glimpse of that elusive Elysium. “Is it the end of... poetry?” you asked further, hesitating for the first time, and for the first time I could hear the knot in your throat. I kissed you with a passion I did not know I possessed, even at the preceding moments of abysmal mind and body abandon. “Never,” I answered, licking the blood from my lip and clicking the door shut on my life. * Before death, I fall asleep beneath a bench inside a fog of humid stench, the bats, the cats, the drunken rats, the buzzing clouds of flying gnats, one tender, sweet, enchanting wench, and stinking rye in broken vats. I puke, then roll away the rags and weakly hug my plastic bags, dead rhymes, lost chimes, forgotten times, confessions to a lover’s crimes, her beauty... suns eleven drags, my hazy mind a poet’s mimes. The dragon’s lair infests the worm, in blazing eyes decays the storm, the well a shell, the fearsome knell dons guileful guise of tinkling bell, adoring stars embrace her form, and welcomes me to sprawling hell.

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Musings If I be the reason For your cloud of season Then pull down the curtain No longer uncertain There’s skies to your eyes and no walls to my prison. Of passions decaying And memories slaying And bottoms of rivers Strewn hungering shivers I raved when I craved, at my yesterdays baying. Now moments forgotten And dreams misbegotten My mattress are lining Tomorrows confining To one single sheet of embracing white cotton.

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Sex Under the same cover one inch of desire in between empty, hungry, demanding, is it between our toes, hips? Your hair tickles my face no inches there. I can smell your skin you smell like apricots brandy, what will they invent next... blueberry fudge shampoo? I cannot smell your tooth paste though I try as almost imperceptible whiffs of another kind of smell test my nostrils, timidly still, gliding upwards from underneath the covers... I sense your thighs squeezing against each other... You turn on your side and your right breast falls on my upper arm the one inch dying a sudden zero death, I shiver. You want me. Pain. I hesitate moments before oblivion what do I prefer the miles long fall to the floor on the left side of my bed voraciously inviting me to a cold hard hell or the steel-hard nipple protesting my ignorance and cutting one long furrow into my right bicep? My mind is set. I start rolling leftwards towards the abyss when your hand shoots down beneath my navel catching the disoriented piece of straining flesh unable to hide its modest presence anymore and with one mighty shove you pull us both on top of you opening your thighs wide and guiding us to perdition inside that bubbling fountain of lust demanding me to release the Cerberus from its ageless chains... I let go, and the roaring howl of uncounted heads reverberate between the small room’s walls as our teeth clash and our fingers break and our bellies’ muscles tie seven Gordian knots around seventeen collapsing suns... * You fall asleep, finally sated, the one inch between us jealously guarding the persistent pungent odors slowly solidifying into a smothering cast of honey ribbons and yawning stars and crushed lilacs in bloom.

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One And now just up, and leave behind Those broken cogs inside your mind And kick to hell the frightened mice Beyond your green of pretty eyes You’re one of kind. You want a mane? I’ll lend you one To growl till cracks besiege the sun And with a claw finding its grip The hug of haze from brain to rip And roar like none. You want to find the bliss in sin? I’ll turn your hide to liquid skin Until the pain turns pleasure raw And passion paints your flesh aglow Your moans to glean. You want my pen? I’ll grant you two To dip inside your blend of hue, That secret mix of word and clay, Your song, your bark, your magic way, There’s none like you.

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Pearl I hid a pearl, in my hair. Find it! It should not have been that hard, it was. I tried first with my fingers separating your hair in strands, then in single hairs, then I tried to comb through it with your comb, large toothed, then with mine, not that I had much use for it but I carried nevertheless around, vanity, you know, then struck by sudden inspiration picked the one horribly dense toothed that I used on my poorly departed doggy to extract the fleas from his fur those despised creatures that alongside mosquitoes and rapists are the only creatures one wonders at God’s sanity when creating them... no way. No pearl. I looked at you cocking my head left, you cocked it right then I right and you left several times... Hey! (another inspiration) and I lifted your arms skywards expecting to scream in delight only to end crestfallen – your armpits were shaven as smooth as windowpanes. Giving up?! There was more than mockery in your lopsided smile, there was challenge there, invitation... was there rage? Hey! (plagiarist, that’s me) you don’t mean... I hewed you down to the bed with a soft push of my opened palm tore away from your waist the skirt ripped away from your hips the silk... it sparkled there, blindingly, like a lighthouse on a stormy sea like a match-head just struck alight like a, well, like a pearl just emerging from its mother oyster... your laughter hewed me down to the bed with the force of a gale striking my shoulder blades... Well, you’ll have to dive in for it... I dived in for it alright, with the demented determination of a Nadir in love with a Leila ready to face the pyre for the sin of forbidden love, the hard pearl between my teeth smashing to pieces and cutting my palate the soft pearl between my fingers stiffening into flint and cutting my senses... your senses?... ...the ruthless ferocity of your body’s roused ocean taking over and dragging us both to fathomless, indomitable perdition. Eons later. Next time it will not be as easy. You pushed your nipple into my mouth forcing me into a silent, secondary death. I needed not to talk. You said it all. Next time.

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Words Words lurk in the nefarious recesses of my mind expressing desires I once had, still do, embattled in a world where neurons are soldiers and synapses chieftains and I but the slave carrying their sword and shield and watering their horses, or maybe it is the other way around and I am the king and you are the queen and the rest of molecules and chemistry and processes follow my guidance and kneel down to your presence? I don’t care for wars of words, I don’t care for wars of sexes, I don’t care for wars of ages, geographies, life habits and social creeds, your trail of beauty drags behind you like a dragon’s tail your song of voice sleeps inside you like a dragon’s roar if I am to die by them what better way there is to die?

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Witch ...you see there was this witch, ugly, like a summer day mid of the deepest winter like a blue flower in a black and white world like a drop of dew at high noon in the heart of a desert... Huh? was all she said looking strangely at me. ...you see there was this witch, clothed most horribly, wearing a dress woven from rainbow and cotton and spring water wearing a necklace of glowing coal shards strung together on a ray of sun wearing sandals of palm leaves ground to the thickness of their green... Huh? was all she said looking even stranger at me. ...you see there was this witch, ruggedly cawing, when all you heard was the silvery tinkle of spiderweb thin crystal chimes when all you heard was butterfly wings spreading pollen globulets when all you heard was dolphin poetry translated to human ear... Huh? was all she said. Huh? she repeated later, uncertain if to disengage her hand from mine or not. OK, so – assuming I get to your meaning – where do I fit in your world? She emphasized the I, the muscles in her fingers tense ready to tear ready to flee. I did not answer right away, I was struggling for the right answer for the only answer. ...you see, there is this woman, ugly, like a summer day mid of the deepest winter... She tore my clothes she tore my flesh she drank me for seven days and seven nights. I see, was all she said.

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Millennium Mathematics When you were born I was born. Some years earlier. The difference X years in numbers and close to infinity in percents, making love was not even a question. Many years later the numerical difference still X but the percential (inexistent word, sorry) difference diminished considerably, maybe still outrageously big for you to consider love making but not outrageously big for me to consider same so I outrageously considered. Outrageous! Now let’s assume a world where you and I live a thousand years and the rest of humanity should care for the rest of humanity, several centuries in the future we’re still X years apart but the difference in percents keeps dwindling year after year into insignificance so towards the millennium none of us harbors whatever reticence anymore and we let go wildly into the artistic world of love making and copulation and fucking and mating and intercourse and venery and all other synonyms of same or more or different like rabbits like snails like fish like spiders and I do not mind you eating me, after, until we reach the millennium sated and lie down embracing, thankful for millennium mathematics and its indulgent consideration.

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Coronation I wonder, what would be the correct way of saying it – doom and gloom or gloom and doom? Both make sense yet none does, if doom and gloom then it is an impossibility since after the dooming there’s no one left to do the glooming and if gloom and doom then why on earth should there be gloom without doom? See, this is my present conundrum, I walk the streets among all these Martians each with a pseudo helmet adorning their head if white if blue if black if up to the eyes if down to the neck each carrying that mandatory imaginary yardstick to measure the mandatory distance from their peers each carrying that mandatory doubt in the sanity of the mandatory measure, such ambiguous word such ambiguous meaning such immeasurable and disputable rationality of measure. I remember a great ‘take me to your leader’ cartoon where an astronaut looks at a stone through a microscope and a voice comes through from the stone ‘take me to your leader!’. Well, by now the aliens are here and they don’t ask for our leader they ask for our heads. The power of the meek, of the brainless, of the many, of the invisible. Thousands died, dying, will die, when will it end, will it end? My heart is breaking for them and, strangely, I believe it is the first time in my life that I am going to win the lottery as well and statistics is going to point its bony finger my way and someone’s heart will break for me. Shall I count the days, how many? Shall I suffer all of the days, all of the many, or maybe all of the few? Then, suddenly the proverbial bulb turns on in my brain. I go to the stereo system plug in one of my old cassettes all of it Italian love music max the volume and sit on my chair eyes closed, body swaying left and right in my mind’s eye dancing with you to the softest sounds of the softest music ever recorded and listened to by me, chest to chest thigh to thigh mouth to mouth. Our bodies married, twined, coupled, fused. Sorry to forcing myself upon you but maybe my last dance. Ever. Indecent you say, all this death and I dance? Decent I say, I may join tomorrow so why waste life?

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Darkness Wear your whitest lingerie, whiter than cocaine whiter than dandelion seeds than an egret’s feather than fresh snow wear it, not under your clothes because you’ll wear no clothes but inside the encompassing darkness so that I will be able to find you and trace those invisible parts of body connecting the white patches exceeding the white patches composing the you of you and snapping at those parts of my rationality I never knew I possessed while pulling the mental strings attached to my fingers turning them into harpoons, grapnels, claws penetrating between the phosphorescent white and the invisible warm and tearing with the wail of disintegrating fabric filling the air until the moan of disintegrating flesh takes over as they further penetrate between flesh and flesh under flesh and flesh inside flesh and flesh with the rest of me following. Darkness, why darkness? So that all you will ever know of me is the touch, and nothing else. And if I turn on the light? I make a face. Magic, why shatter magic?

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Strange, this love story Strange this love story between us, I mean – I call it love story, I have no idea what you call it – love story, story, random cosmic event, nothing...? Or you don’t even call it just take it in stride in your walks to from the kitchen to from the bathroom to from the park and the rest of the to from’s. Actually maybe I should call it love stories, my prerogative as the one holding the pen slash keyboard at the end of his fingertips, told at plural since none of the events held for long enough to be called a novel, at most a few weeks, a few poems? OK, I will not embarrass your eyes let’s agree to call it/them just stories, OK? none held for long, on this we can agree without the need to compromise. We can agree as well on the fact that they kept recurring, irregularly, contributing to the accumulating evidence favoring the strangeness of the occurrence and maybe, to a certain extent, of its unconditional inevitability like the equinox like the love of a dog like mortgage payments. And now it’s here again. Which number is it, three, four, five? Short as well? Maybe, but then there is the next one then the next and when there is no next then there is no I. Kind of unconditional too. Strange, this relationship, makes me wonder doesn’t it make you wonder? There must be a reason and if not there must be a no reason and if none then pure anarchy like pedesis like the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution like the rules governing irregular verbs. And if not any above mentioned sparkles of genius then, nevertheless or nevertheless maybe... love? Ha! I keep it at singleton syllable instead of the customary doubleton ha-ha just to emphasize my state of complete bewilderment at mentioning the one word afore the ‘ha’ word. I knew it was coming and yet it slapped my face like a tribord sail in a gale 12. Thus ha! Thus love! Could it be an endless love story just about to end again and start again?

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Confessions Listen, I must confess, I am boring. I don’t smoke, I don’t drug, I don’t tattoo don’t pierce don’t gamble don’t cut don’t goth don’t punk don’t call cops pigs don’t think Nirvana was the ultimate do like poetry do like Elvis (Presley) do like Dolly (Parton) do like The Brothers (Four) am a bit age over am a bit waist over am a bit bald over (my personal boring pet peeve for “they” split U235 for bombs “they” splintered DNA for yellow tomatoes but “they” did not splice DHT into an androgenetic alopecia resolving nostrum) love all animals love all sexes love all races don’t love religion but love Harold Lloyd love Don Quixote love Dr. Strangelove love Opera love Cartoons and, oh, cry at sad ends of sad movies. Told you. Boring. Listen, I must confess, I am not as completely boring as I claimed above and if I didn’t confess to it here this would have been an incomplete confession, right? I do joke, do dance, do sing along loud and out of tune do drive fast do let dogs chase me do climb a tree to redress a nest do climb a roof to rescue a cat do sink my hands in dung to save a bee do think The Rolling Stones are super do love ACDC do love Slade do love Three Dog Night do love Italians/Irish/Mexicans et cetera do have an iron grip do have a sharp brain do cheat at taxes will feed a month’s income inside a Juke Box slot will curse other drivers will put my hand in fire for a good friend can talk can listen all day long sci-fi or sci-no-fi or no-sci-no-fi if woman is the right woman do hug like I’m a vise do kiss like it’s the end of the world do think woman’s pleasure comes first and do have professed intent to finish all resting 73% of the Kama Sutra before I die. Told you. Not completely boring. You choose.

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Dear Alien Dear Alien, By the time you receive this message several billions of my years from now I will be dead several billions years already my love will be dead my planet will be dead my sun will be dead. You will not even know which sun it was. I hope that by the time you receive it you would have deciphered already lots of such messages and possess basic knowledge of English language as well as an understanding of the figures of speech used the numerals used and the measurement units used. I will skip trying to explain these to you. My whole intent in adding my message to the millions other is to make sure that some part of me will still be alive in one of your museums thus perpetuating my virtual existence billions of years in the future. For you it will be one of your todays and I will be alive and tell you my life stories and tell you my love stories and hope that when your race nears similar extinction this message will be forwarded to another race another billion light-years away and this ball will keep bouncing until the end of the universe. If you exist, of course. I exist, of course. My stories exist, of course. This is the first in a series of messages, just establishing contact, I will not make it too long. Just as an introduction I will tell you that, whatever others may say, here it is a primitive society it is a savage society we hardly made it to our planet’s moon we hardly sent a few exploratory engines into space we invent the most exquisite ways to kill each other we don’t know sufficiently to heal ourselves and to fight off invaders called viruses And yet it is a gorgeous planet and there are some gorgeous people in body and spirit inhabiting it and those billions of years in my future which are your today, my alien one-way pen pal, is the right time to tell her I love her and I want to make love to her and a billion plus/minus X is negligible therefore there is no ridicule in our body differences and mental differences and desire similarities. By the way, I call this message a poem whatever my co-earthlings may think of it a love declaration whatever my co-earthlings may think of it and wishful thinking whatever earthling I may think of it. And by the way (repetition is allowed in earthlingly poetry) I used the same X in a previous poem. already. It is called plagiarism, but only when one copies from others. PS. I hurry to send this message today, a day more or a day less will not make any difference on the universe scale of things but it will make all the difference in my personal binomial relationship of existence versus inexistence. You see, tomorrow I may, well... inexist.

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Math, various Life, and I’ve sloshed miles through it rhymes with strife and rhymes with shit, Still, I didn’t learn to tell is there heaven? is there hell? Yet I found what life’s about – as my wick is burning out I may wail and curse and pray still I end as fucking clay. Math is a kind of science with sub-sciences. Arithmetic is the sub-science of one plus one equals always two. Statistics is the sub-science of one plus one equals sometimes two. Probability is the sub-science of one plus one equals maybe two. And if you think that I stretch it all a bit too much, scientifically, then please allow me the self-serving poetical license since, after all, this is a poem of sorts. Of math sorts, Of life sorts. Of life and death sorts. Yes, shit too. The probability of life we all know it, that is, all who were born be they tree, human, star, once they were born the probability is 1 in 1 yet once they were not yet born (if you allow me this tiny language deviation slash slaughter slash license anew) the probability was 1 in... how many?... many trillions? And yet (I abuse my yet’s and my welcome, I know, yet...) they, the born ones, all won the toughest lottery of all and are here to tell their story, not always a nice story but a story still that can be told to whoever or whatever might be interested to listen to it. And, statistically speaking, none of them will or did ever win the National Lottery the one with dollars in it, ask them (forget the trees and the stars, they will not answer). Ask me. Ask my neighbor. Ask the supermarket cashier. And now, suddenly, there is this InterNational Lottery and the big prize is a Corona and all of a sudden we are all candidates to win it forget all you have learned about probability and forget 1 in a million, or 1 in a billion or 1 in a trillion, the game seems to be fixed somehow and we are all candidates to win the big prize. Yippee! Doesn’t it seem kind of shady, my friends? None of us ever won anything and all of a sudden all of us may win? I tell you, there is some kind of new math involved here and damned if I understand it. Damned if anyone understands it. Forget scientists, damn if even philosophers understand it and who better than a philosopher to understand the ununderstandable. And so I reach the final point of this my statement slash poem, I present to you the only, the uncontested, the mathematically proven 1in 1 probability with as many zeroes after the decimal point as you may be able to imagine under ALL circumstances, in ALL frames of reference, at ALL times mysterious equalizing mindless absolute Death. Irrelevant the inequality of the probability of anyone’s or anything’s birth – tree or human or star – the probability of death equalizes us all, even the philosophers among the humans, ha! 1 in 1. My petty peeve, and finally I’m there, is just one: who the hell decided to rush the timing and give us a Corona Lottery? I was OK with the original timing, hell, wasn’t everybody else too?

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Interpretations The butterfly of my tongue caresses the chalice of your flesh robbing it empty of pollen and nectar and heavenly perfumes... You mean the chalice of my... mouth?! I mean the chalice of your... flesh. My body’s fleshdom invades the depths of your body’s fleshdom robbing it of forbidden secrets while blending life with life and fire with fire and magic with magic. You mean your body’s... tongue?! I mean my body’s... fleshdom. My hungry incisors bite off ends of short tufts of hair dressing your body robbing them of dead matter and spitting it upon the smoldering logs as we watch tiny, microscopic novae explode to life. You mean my... nape’s short tufts of hair?! I mean your... body’s short tufts of hair.

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Lilac I cut a couple of lilac flowers, more than a couple, some white, some violet I do not have blue in my garden like the long blue fence I had in my childhood when I was breathing, dreaming, absorbing the heavenly smell of the small four petal’ed corolla wonders and searching for days and nights for the three petal’ed or the much scarcer five petal’ed on which I would spit and throw inside my shirt for luck. I cut a couple of lilac flowers, more than a couple, some white, some violet the abounding panicles engulfing my head as I smell the wonders of your femininity and your opening thighs shred the encumbering cottons with my face sinking into the delicate lust that burns my lungs from the inside and from the outside and from the millions strong alveoli army which I had no idea I possessed until I inhaled you. I inhale you again. And again, your thighs intelligently almost smashing my crane, almost, allowing me just a bit of leeway sufficient to add taste to perfume and convulsion to contraction to commotion when you erupt into that miniature apocalypse which many desire and few achieve you achieve... the spasm over, you gather me into your skirts and start lulling me to heaven with something between lullaby and roar and woman. We walk hand in hand, we hear nothing. An airplane passes overhead, we don’t hear it. A train passes to our left, we don’t hear it. A million novae demolish a billion galaxies, we don’t hear them. Tell me, what are your smells, in order of preference? You mean after yours? I mean after mine. I don’t have an order of preference, I have a bucket list of to smell again before I die with no order, no preference, all of them number two, after you, or rather number one and a half, after you. You giggle. I face tough competition, I see. You face no competition, I say, continuing convallaria majalis, rosa rubiginosa, lilium candidum, jasminum officinale, citrus sinensis... ... in Sindarin? Hmm, maybe Quenya? What about in Eliza Doolittle’s almost English? We smile, together, you more like the sunrise to a blind man who just got his first sight of the world I more like the mouth of a cave from inside covered by the shadow of a hungry bear. Lily of the valley, eglantine, madonna lily, jasmine, orange blossom. And syringa vulgaris? You forgot syringa vulgaris, you add, more than half seriously. I watch you, that hungry bear might have been the personification of your mocking grin, maybe expectant grin. How could I ever forget syringa vulgaris? I retort, afraid to be ripped apart. Your only real competition. Lilac. Whatever the color. You have to decide, the mockery still there, joined by challenge, mine or the lilac’s and... careful with your answer. I went all the way to the end of the world, metaphorically speaking. I returned all the way from the end of the world and continued past you to the other end of the world, still metaphorically speaking. Then back to you, no metaphor and no metonymy. I stopped. Okay, now I know all the syringa vulgaris there is, all of it. Now I have to know yours, again. You want an honest answer, don’t you? I want an honest answer, don’t I? You lie on your back, among ears of wheat. Among bees and hedgehogs and peonies and nettles and bears soon to come. You offer me the cottons again and the perfumes again and as my lungs keep burning and your convulsions start dying you gather me into your skirts and start lulling me to heaven with something between lullaby and roar and woman. Did you decide? I hear a muffled bellow straight into my mouth and for a moment I hesitate. There is no way to hide the truth, it is the safest way be it heaven or hell to follow. I will face it. You win, I whisper. It is heaven to follow, so I guess you accept my verdict offering me your lilac again and again and again. I cut a couple of lilac flowers, more than a couple, some white, some violet, some blue collected from the gardens of my once upon a time, I leave my head sunk among yesterdays and todays and everything in between and my lungs long for tomorrow. For lilac. Yours.

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Science Do you want to learn butterfly, flower, romance? No, not about butterfly etcetera but rather butterfly etcetera. Because butterfly etcetera is a science same like physics, chemistry, math, astronomy etcetera (other etcetera) and you study physics other etcetera and not about physics or other etcetera. Each science with its symbolisms and relationships like letters and arithmetic relationships between them like elements and chemical connections between them like mixed numbers and letters and squiggles and combinations between them like other etcetera’s conceited conjunctions and contumacious conjectures. And why butterfly, flower, romance? Because they are all synonyms. And the relevant symbolisms and relationships? Words and rhyming between them. You mean poetry? I did not answer. And the etcetera? Other synonyms of the same meaning made of single words like sunset like smile like love or made of expressions like hand in hand like head on shoulder like touching foreheads touching lips touching chests touching knees... Hey, you skipped a synonym there. I did not want you to think me too forward. Oh... For days, for months, years we were busy teaching each other butterfly. And flower, and romance... or is it or flower or romance? And sunset and smile and love and hand in hand and head on shoulder... And touching foreheads and touching lips and touching chests and touching knees... Hey, what about the synonym you skipped? We took care of the synonym I skipped, more than once, more than once a day. I like this science, you told me, many years later after experimenting various aspects and linking various words in various rhymes, is there a chance to get a Nobel prize nomination for it? I answered you after we finished the Himalaya, the Amazon, the Sahara, the Antarctica and filling books after books with notes, impressions, recommendations, memories. I don’t know about you, but I don’t need it. I have you, who needs any other prize, tell me?

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Apropos Big C Not C for Conspiracy. Neither C for Complot or C for Corona, for santa Claus or for Carnal Cnowledge and this last one would go well with my creation and with my respectful disrespect for this language which adopted me as a son. Almost. Well, maybe foster son. Well, maybe stepson. Well, maybe son in law. Whatever. Diverging, sorry. But rather the C, the Big C which occurs naturally once the telomeres get shorter and the hairs in the ears get longer and which one day knocks humbly on the door (metaphorically) and we end up hosting (figuratively) and feeding (literally) and after we give it a finger (proverbially) unfortunately not THE finger (rudely) it ends up gobbling up our entire body (physically). I’m waiting for it, any day now. It will come. C for Cancer. C for Cardiovascular. Sometimes C for sClerosis, for Cataract, for CaCophony and someothertimes an unwelcome C placebo which skips the door and get in through the window, could be an A (guess for what) a P (guess for what) a D (guess for what) a bigger, biggest D (no need to guess, you know for what). All of them end, finally, in this Big D the wait for which gets shorter and shorter with each passing day fully in line with pruning the telomeres and fertilizing the ears’ hair and the rest of anomalies which are anything but anomalies to the anomals. Not that I mind, mind you, smelling the flowers from underneath rather than from above and there are even some convenients like peeking under the skirts of so many women with none knowing it with closed eyes, ha, strange oxymoron this one. Typical me. Typical nonsense. No, not that I mind. Becoming part of the BIO landscape positively contributing to the global overpopulation problem thumbing my nose to the tax bloodsuckers (after they rob my family one last time, sorry kids and grandkids). No, not that I mind, above and some more. What I do mind is that whatever alphabetical execration befalls me and contributes finally to the Big D robs me, per definition, of my dream of you. You, succumbing to my words, you, succumbing to my charm, you succumbing to my body. Hey, calm down! I said my dream. I know that all the rest is just, also, dream. Wait, just a moment, someone knocks on the door, let me open to see if it is... it is. It. * Tell me, you always extort, distort, contort your poems to include a grain of intimacy, or more, aren’t you afraid your readership will concentrate more on your perversity than on your artistry? I laughed until my sides hurt. Then I laughed some more until my other sides hurt. Then I laughed even more than some more until all my sides hurt. You mean my readership, zero, will concentrate on my perversity, zero, more than on my artistry, zero? You joined my laughter until our sides hurt, mainly the shared ones. Compensation enough.

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Sadly, happily, humanly I found you on my way to nowhere, you took my hand. I know the way, I said. It will feel less lonely, you said. We walked. Look, lilac, you said and it was as if I smelled it first time. Look, butterfly, you said and it was as if I saw it first time. Look, my body, you said and it was as if I made love first time. You know it is ‘only’ like first time, don’t you? you said smiling sadly, happily, humanly, but it is only the first time and the last time that count the rest are ‘also’ times, fillers between the first and the last. You are mistaken, I said. You are right, I said. This is the first time of as if I first time, I said, cryptically and you understood. You held my hand to the end. This is my first end, I said, and my last time as well, I said and you smiled sadly, happily, humanly. This ends my pabulum, I added and you slapped me. You want to make love to me, you said. We are terribly mistaken, I said, sadly. We are terribly right, I said, happily. This is all terribly philosophical, I said hanging by my claws to the last vestiges of humanly logic, desperately.

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Station Triptych. You had lovers, before me. You had lovers, after me. You never had me. Dictionary. Strange the way there is a before and an after surrounding the imposing impossibility of an impertinent never the way not even the finest dictionary ever conceded to conceive. Never, a singularity reduced to that infinitesimal smallest particle of time that composes the big river alongside which universes are born and die and are forgotten again and again. Station. You sat on a bench, waiting for me. You knew I would come, yesterday, tomorrow, an eon away from today but I would come. You hesitated what to dress for the occasion, knowing the irrelevance of choice but you hesitated nevertheless among a choice including the dark punk outfits you wore while jumping to an ear-splitting metallic bedlam only to crumble later in a side street in a geyser of thrown up alcohol and dementing drug fumes and long forgotten virginity, or the roseate fluffy multi-layered dress you wore at that prom feast when you tried your first waltz and your first disgustingly sweet punch and where you did not lose your virginity to that insisting young male in a first rush of rebellion, or the... you decided on a faded pair of jeans a short sleeved cotton shirt and a pair of sandals nothing between them and your body except for the warmth of your flesh. Oblivious. You sat on a bench, waiting for me. Your fists crushing the stems of a few peonies collected hastily along the way knowing it wouldn’t matter, it doesn’t matter while pressing desperately between your thighs to smother those fires of hell carried by devils with lighted torches clasped by ends of whipping tails and wings of nightingales ignited by a merciless sun’s blaze. Living butterflies hanging down your ears. Bees trying to settle on your parted lips wondering about the promise of sweetness. Violetears hovering against the visible stains of your nipples, pecking, singing. You, oblivious even to the tornado that tore the roof away, waiting. Moving. Many trains passed, moving on to mysterious destinations. Many trains arrived, moving in from mysterious destinations. Passengers, thousands, from mysterious destinations to mysterious destinations invisible to you like a moving picture in black and white stripes and nothing else, you invisible to them like a motionless picture in rainbow and fire and nothing else, I cannot but wonder how no one kneeled against you gleaned you built a pedestal underneath you, the sudden rain was probably a dead Michelangelo wringing his eyes dry at his missed opportunity and century. Train. My train arrived. I arrived. I descended the rickety stairs upon the rickety platform and looked around, trying to find you. I found you, the birds, the fire, it was easy. You found me, you stood up. You looked at me for several minutes, several hours then you turned around and you walked away. I can still hear the clicking o sandal soles against the station tiles. The station was empty. I went to the bench picked up the crushed peonies left behind and sat there where you have sat minutes before, hours before, eons before. The wood still smoldering, glowing embers dropping to the floor amid a mighty hiss, no other sound. No other motion. I waited for you to return, maybe some more eons from now? I did not mind the smell of woman you left behind enveloping me like a wish of poetry, like a crushing lover’s embrace.

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The Nipple of Life Wanted to call it The Nipple of God then woke up to the reality of billions that would be knocking on my door and knocking down my door armed with everything from stones to atomic bombs ready to tear my head off or any of other retail accessible annihilation forms for the blasphemy of voicing obvious reality, human misogyny ingrained even in that constituent of humanity which misogyny traditionally targets though tradition they may not call it yet tradition it is for them, oh, such insult to tradition as traditionally it should be. Creator of life, God. Creator of life, Woman. Nipple, woman’s most enslaving, glorious, bestowing, magnificent, devastatingly sublime reality of life proof to existence of God even to me, more so than any of any prophet’s words. * Your nipple casts a shadow over my mouth. I try to bite savagely into it but all I bite into is my bottom lip, bleeding upon the whiteness of the bedsheet. You a virgin or something? you laugh jumping up and stepping over me to provide me with the shadow of the other nipple. Can you please jump up and step over me again? I plead my eyes filled with as many secrets as stars in the universe, and that includes dead stars. You refuse, waiting for me to bite my bottom lip again which I do, as savagely as first time. Maybe more. Shall I clean you? you ask and you bend toward me without waiting for an answer dipping the nipple in my wound bathing the nipple in my blood feeding the nipple in between my lips and the red on red between red a picture painted by divine hand and nipple. I do not bite. I howl. You hang over me... do you float? You float over me... do you sail? You sail over me... do you plow?... two ruts plow from my shoulders to my ribs, to my belly, my thighs the steel tips of feminine wonder seeding a trail of poppies in their wake until they reach my knees your mouth does something unprintable then you jump back up gravitation pulls you savagely back down and as fire extinguishes fire one nipple falls into a limp sleep inside my mouth feeding me the leftovers of divinity. * Do you love women? you ask. I love God, I answer.

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I Want I want to write my first romance with bleeding willow’s ink before the lake lapping its roots entices me to sink I want to scrawl my closing ode with pencil’s final breath and then accept my winter’s call, its glory and its death, I want to sculpt on paper’s rib the words that will be lost upon my climb into the crib which my remains will host, I want to etch with boiling tears one thousand sighs and rhymes forgetting that I’ll be bypast, forgotten for all times. And yet I want to crawl into your lap and soak your warmth and love your palms invoking endless seas of butterflies above, and once you show me beauty’s breast and feed me nectar’s taste to flow into your memory, and lay my flesh to waste.

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Measures Tie three measures of feather to your breast. Tie three measures of pebble to your nipple. Tie three measures of cherry to your lip and seventeen measures of leather to your soles and walk all the way to me. You tied. You walked. You arrived. We didn’t make love Your soles are bleeding, I said, removing the tattered leather and swathing them in fresh leaves and ointments and honey. Undress! you said, and seeing me hesitate you turned off the sun. Now you can blush if you have to. I want to paint you. Without light? You struck a match. This will be light enough. And my fingertips. You started painting, matches going on and off in flowing sequence as fingertips touched, prompted, insisted, pushed... You turned on the sun and I rushed underneath the heap of discarded garb. The image was everything like me, the colors were all wrong. You made me look so more beautiful, I wondered. We didn’t make love. You are. Now undress me. Paint me. I looked questioningly up at the sun. If you insist... You handed me the matches. I stared painting inspecting every square inch of you, every square thou of you... you engineers!... matches going on and off in flowing sequence my fingertips touching, prompting, insisting, pushing... You turned on the sun and I rushed to throw the heap of discarded garb atop of you, the image was nothing like you, the colors were all wrong, I was ashamed, scared. No one ever saw me so beautiful, you wondered. We didn’t make love. I did not quite comprehend the following events as you tore yourself from underneath your garbs and tore me from underneath my garbs throwing the thousands of leftover matches into the pile and lighting it all ash and sparks and minute embers flowing upwards into a glimmering canopy ...so that no gods and stars and cohorts will dare interfere, make love to me! We made love You gave me all three measures of feather and added another seventeen you gave me all three measures of pebble and added another seventeen you gave me all three measures of cherry and added another seventeen and then added uncountable measures of whisper, of sigh, of shiver, of endless body lengths and body heights and body depths... We lay under the canopy, its glimmer turned into glitter flittering inside blobs of sweat exploding upon my eyes, you wanted to keep the stars out, I laughed, the stars found you. You squeezed into me, welded to me, merged with me, man found me, this is stars enough. We bought new garbs. You left with me all your measures of feather, of pebble, of cherry, with your painting of me – to remember how beautiful you are, you took my painting of you – to remember how beautiful you see me. Who will remove the tattered leather and swath your soles in fresh leaves and ointments and honey? I asked. You laughed and laughed and laughed, there will be no need, you said, I will float. When will we make love again? You laughed and laughed and laughed. Again?

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Virtuality Prologue Virtuality. We can be whatever we want. Virtuality. We can be whatever we want. Virtuality. We can be whatever whenever wherever we want wanted will want to be or not. Magic. I dog you bitch, or the other way around. I mountain you forest, or the other way around. I wine you goblet, or the other way around. Settings, one I teenage nerd just past a major zit onslaught dating you the teenage beauty to be elected queen of the prom and I swore to not bid for your virginity at the end of the night only to find that the king of the prom bid for it and got it and all I’m left with is a memory of zits and the meaning of loss until many cold beds later we meet again virgins for each other again I successful plumber you successful writer and we share our shared virginity’s loss and we share household and we share 1.2 cats and 2.5 dogs and 3.4 children the 0.4 a girl with hair the red of a volcano’s mouth and eyes the blue of a sky turned bare by a terrifying tempest and IQ to make her a chemistry Noble prize winner aged sixteen, I older man looking for his past in fortune cookies and his future in dusty memories you the younger woman looking for the older man looking for his past in fortune cookies and his future in dusty memories and we never meet until I am much older and you never aged when I send you the crumbs of all fortune cookies ever cracked and you painstakingly paste them together and I send you my dusty memories and you carelessly dust them and we both choke in the dust managing to save our lives by sharing cleaning tongues and cleaning lips and palms cleaning our bodies from the toxicity of textiles and clasps and zippers in the majestic presence of a bed that marries us without asking for license or age or blood tests and never asks why we leave its majestic presence so many years later when I finally die before you and you finally never age, You older woman not looking for the older man I the even older man still looking for the just older woman and I find you on your knees pulling flowers out of overdated bulbs first petals then leaves then bees and further on still on your knees plowing the soft earth with your fingernails and spreading manure with your palms and the smile on your face that of Da Vinci’s or D’Annunzio’s or Ponchielli’s Gioconda and the muscle in your arms that of Michelangelo’s or Benini’s or Donatello’s David and the beauty in your face that of Giorgione’s or Botticelli’s or Titian’s Venus your dragging skirts an injustice to your white flesh which I uncover against no protest when you turn over on your back to find the older man you were not looking for first kneeling between your thighs then hovering between your breasts and finally crying his love between your lips as our bodies ravage the petals and the leaves and the bees and we promise each other that in the afterward we will mend all damage done and all disrespect expressed and we’ll wash our bodies with morning’s dew and with night’s chill and with each other’s words. Settings, two I bull bulling around with a herd of apathetic cows thrown in the enclosure with me our shared interest just flat patches of green where we ruminate side by side until you are brought into my life my cow my dream my ear a number 1 nailed to it your ear a number 153 nailed to it your hide the white of milk your tail the muscle of snake your horns the shape of moon before it dies to wake up anew and I fall in love with you and you fall in love with me and we bellow into the barbed wire that tears our flesh and we tear into the blue sparks wire that spasms our muscle and we run away into the mountains where they will hunt us like the animals we are and slaughter us like the animals we are but not before we share the endlessness of space and the beauty of veal and the passion of love found and lost and the freedom of death, I buck bucking around with a trip of apathetic nannies thrown in the enclosure with me our shared interest just rocky patches of shrubs where we chew side by side until you are brought into my life my nanny my dream my ear a number 153 nailed to it your ear a number 1 nailed to it your hide the black of night your beard the beauty of toppled mountain top your horns a lyre between which strings be strung and notes be intoned and I fall in love with you and you fall in love with me and we jump over the barbed wire that tears our flesh and we leap over the blue sparks wire that spasms our muscle and we run away into the mountains where they will hunt us like the animals we are and slaughter us like the animals we are but not before we share the endlessness of space and the beauty of kid and the passion of love found and lost and the freedom of death, I fox foxing around with a skulk of apathetic vixens thrown in the forest with me our shared interest just dense patches of chickenwire where we steal chickens from until you nuzzle into my life my vixen my dream my ear carries no number your ear carries no number your fur a sun setting behind the hill your tail a human’s drooling dream your ears the sharpness of a rose’s thorn left to dry under merciless torridity and I fall in love with you and you fall in love with me and we rush between traps that tear our flesh and we sneak between burning pellets that scorch our muscle and we run away into the mountains where they will hunt us like the animals we are and slaughter us like the animals we are but not before we share the endlessness of space and the beauty of cub and the passion of love found and lost and the freedom of death. Settings, three I clump of earth and you a seed then a seedling then a flower and I bask at your roots as butterflies courtship you and bees make love to you and autumn mood lays your breast to sleep ending always in my ever welcoming embrace, I crack in rock and you a spring exploding above me into me away from me and I follow your life as you turn river then turn sea then turn cloud to finally gather your skirts again ending always in my ever welcoming embrace, I anvil and you a lump of red hot iron shaping its fiery life upon me and I enjoy your battering under sledgehammer weight molding you slender molding you razor sharp then steel cold ending always in my ever welcoming embrace. Epilogue Virtuality. I was not whatever I wanted. Virtuality. You were not whatever you wanted. Virtuality. I want whatever whenever wherever you want wanted will want to be or not. Let there be magic. I nothing you everything, never the other way around. I yesterday you always, never the other way around. I lover you lover, or the other way around.

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Body, more or less 1. I Want Your Body I want your body, I clamored. I will post it to you, she quipped. Are you crazy? I asked, taking her seriously partly because I’m like that partly because it didn’t quite sound like quipping. Can you imagine the size of envelope you’ll need? And the weight it will have to carry and for safety it should be sent registered and think about postage costs and all the shoes you could buy with this money (I warmed up to my own argument) they’ll need so many stamps that they’ll have to empty three post offices since it will not fit under the stamping machine (but anyway I collect stamps) and a mule will be needed to carry the postal sack and what about the poor postman that will have to deliver the envelope and lift it to my mailbox and stuff it into my mailbox and the mailbox will fall on his foot and I’ll have to buy a new mailbox in addition to covering his shoe costs and medical costs and paying the damage to property and given that my neighbor’s lawyer wears a toupee... I kept raving and ranting this way for several hours unaware that meanwhile she took a nap, saw three chapters of a local soap opera, went twice to the grocery walked the dog around the block and peed three times one of which times she fell asleep on the john and almost dropped the phone inside... Finished? she asked for the fifth time. I guess I did since it was the first time I heard the question. I love you. With all my 202 IQ and 3 doctorates (one in maritime zoology, one in cuneiform literature and one in overhanging bridges) I still do not understand the female species. She claims it’s my luck. And hers. 2. Zanity Aha, she tricked me. I knew women were not to be trusted, especially women in love especially a woman in love with me and I was right. Not that I minded, as I found out later. Later, I mean after I found that the envelope was hardly an A4 size weighed barely 198 grams and fitted perfectly (thank goodness) in my mailbox, thus solving my postman problem. My various mental question marks resolved themselves once I opened it, aha, this is what she meant!!! and I started floating (literally, luckily there was a ceiling to the room) as I turned over picture after picture some went back for a second look some went back for a tenth look some I didn’t look until ten days later. Well, I asked for it, loud mouth me. So this one, you see (you don’t, poor you) I measured the smile against that of the Mona Lisa and decided that she beats her by about a tenth of a millisecond, so to say, and this one, she certainly was nicer than Lautrec’s stuff, and more revealing and more colorful and more in focus, hey, look here, Gaugin at his best and his half-nakedest and certainly more nakedest naked, oh, and this one, it certainly explains the unexplainable in Picasso’s second Naked Woman with a Cat, especially the cat part but also other aspects less clear and much more interesting, intellectually of course... OMG... Goya?... La Maja desnuda?... and she (not Maja) so more revealing, so more delighting the senses, so more beautiful! No, I cannot talk about THIS one. Too damn ripping me apart mentally spiritually bodily, damn you, oh, bodily! Woman, I told her, you are the most exquisite creation since God created Eve and Homer created Penelope and Shakespeare created Juliet. And mentally deficient I created bodily perfect you in every which form possible and butterfly color and flower leaf and raindrop taste. My sanity at its bottom low my zanity at it topmost high my insanity confirmed my inzanity shot into inexistence. and if you this fucking once do not really get it... be for this fucking once a poet, get into my shoes, translate it to cuneiform if necessary and imagine! 3. Big Bang You have a package at the entrance, said a voice on the intercom. I did not faint straight away, only when I saw the gigantic envelope and all those stamps decorating it around. When I woke up, presumably several hours later, a pair of hawk eyes was watching over me and a pair of hands was making me feel like a piece of meat in a mixer. Don’t you dare faint again, she said, showing me a few teeth and the lash of tongue between them. Where am I? I asked, looking around and recognizing nothing. Home. This is not home. Home. I got up and started shuffling my legs along the walls, the walls were the same. But the furniture was re-arranged, the books shuffled, the sink empty, the bathroom clean the fridge full the dog... a dog?... waving its tail and she presiding over it all like a goddess, like a queen, like a... woman. She? You? I asked. Arrived in that horrible envelope with the wonderful stamps? I. Did not arrive in that horrible envelopes with all the wonderful stamps which by now are in your albums, it was supposed to be a joke, not a scare. Thankfully it gave me time to save your house. Save it from whom? From youm, and she laughed, or maybe sang? or maybe recited poetry? or maybe dropped crystal blobs upon silver bells? or maybe was dubbed by an angelic choir in three voices and one violin? or maybe?... It was time to wake up from the nightmare. I woke up. It was no nightmare. Would have been if there was no dog etcetera, it was dream, mirage, phantasm, chimera, painting, Elvis alive, WWII never existed my books in shops my head full of hair... You’re delirious... You’re here. I am. Are you? I live. Big Bang? BIG BANG! I made it sound like all capitals, like ending with an exclamation mark. My short hairs shot straight, my curls shot straight, my longer hairs tried to shoot straight. Bang! It finally was Pop! Or rather Pip! Like a peashooter under water in a bathtub and with no peas. Pip! Maybe Peap? I was inconsolable. All these years all these promises all these expectations and all I could bestow upon her was Pip?! I think you should go, I said. I wasn’t crying, I think I wasn’t. You can leave the dog behind. I think I should stay, she said. She wasn’t crying, I think she wasn’t. I cannot leave the dog behind. And when we both finished rolling on the floor laughing hysterically (did I mention she also vacuumed the carpets?) it was clearly time to try again. And maybe this time we will create the universe, I added. She didn’t add anything. She just dressed, got me dressed, picked the dog’s leash and took me by the hand showing me my city, my parks, my flowers, my restaurant, my bed, and now we’ll sleep until tomorrow. In the same bed? No. Tomorrow. 4. Big bang, bis Tomorrow. She floated with the morning whiffs astride a glinting ray of light While colors void of butterflies embrace departing dregs of night From end of room to side of bed in minutes turning endless years Enraptured by those lurid psalms contusing hearts with fears and tears, She neared my side and dropped the silk to burn a way unto the floor Conjoining lust through rock and coal to carve its heart in polar hoar Her breasts alight with nipple’s flame demanding mouth’s adoring bite As thighs bewitched with dulcet dew obey delightful runes of rite. We joined, like rapier in scabbard like claw in gash like quill in inkwell. Bang! She let the sun inside her stare descend into a sea of larks And stole a few unyielding rays to seed my sweat with dying sparks Then let her lips demand of mine to tell them stories yet untold Her little fists dragging my hands to realms where battered dreams unfold, She fell asleep upon my chest with fingers piercing through my ribs The pyre quieted from roar to an uncanny mound of squibs I let her dream of all that was and all that never more shall be Of worlds in which she rules and queens and at her feet, a minstrel, me.

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Asymmetries Once you had a dog, now you have a cat. Once you were young, now you’re still young. Once you were virgin. No comment. Now you love your tomatoes and your radishes and your scallions and your hot chili peppers with their bite of fire, like mine which you’ll never know. Now you like me. You’ll never love me which is why I have the courage to write you poetry, even love poetry, the courage of the one who knows he’ll never be asked to prove his courage. Ha-ha. Or ha, strange world. The number of rings in the trees I planted like the number of years you lived. More or less. The number of millimeters between me and you like the number of kilometers to the sun. More or less. The number of poems I wrote you minus the number of poems I wrote you like the number of poems you wrote me. More or less. I dream of you, I think. You don’t dream of me. I think. I know. Asymmetries of life. Like love you. Love me? Like like me. Love you? Like male female, long live the blessed gender asymmetry the rest irrelevant Blessed. Even between us, mindless of the rings in the trees and the millimeters. After all in order to count the rings one has to kill the tree and to count the millimeters one has to fall into the sun and die. No option, either. Thank God for poetry. And imagination. Probably Siamese twins inseparable lest death follows. Sure, death follows anyway, whether separable or not but what delectable the path to lead me to that encounter with the scythe your left arms all around me, all of them, your right arms all around me, all of them, your breasts whatever their number squeezing my palms in their savage embrace while the rest of your body, the one before and the one now and the one tomorrow collects the rest of my body all the way to the sewers and teaches me of hidden beauties I never knew existed underneath and above Earth. I din’t know sewers before, I say. I didn’t know clouds before, I say. I didn’t know life before, I say. Love? And the ravaging fire ravages us, but who cares as long as we share it. No, we do not share the scythe, on this I insist, there is this bit of selfishness in me that at times is as pig-headed as a nail with a severed head. This is mine, screw you... oh, the dream. But I promise to leave you with the fire. All I need is... the match.

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The only first time Watch me! you yelled, your huffing and puffing form reaching the gentle top of the gentle hill suckling life the way you did the day you decided to join the world opening your mouth for the only first time, now suckling the oven of the sun and the chant of the birds and the roar of the bear as you started disrobing your robes and disshoeing your shoes and discottoning your cottons letting your dispetaled flower fill my eyes and fill my heart and fill the day with beauty’s birth the only first time. Watch me! you screamed laying your body flat upon the gentle slope of the gentle hill and starting to roll among the bushes and the thistles and the nettle and the flowers and the indignant ladybugs and the vociferous ants laughing your way downhill the way you did the day you decided to enjoy the world dragging your cheeks upwards for the only first time, now laughing with the bushes and the thistles and the nettle and ladybugs and ants and sharp pebbles and hedgehogs failing to rush out of the way until you landed at my feet and looked up imploring me with no words to lick your skin and soothe your wounds and let the ladybugs fly and fill the day with summer’s birth the only first time. Watch me! you murmured lying naked there at the gentle hem of the gentle hill and I watched and couldn’t refrain from watching more and then again even more than previously as you kept rolling gently on the grass humming the way you did the day you decided to sing into the world the only first tune the only first time now humming me into adoration and into submission and into admiration of those heavenly contours among the red scratches and among the variegated stains and the bluish contusions I could neither lick nor soothe away nor wanted to absorbed as I was in inhaling your flowing and ebbing and forming and deforming and reforming like the insides of a kaleidoscope and the outsides of a spring gurgling its way among flint stones while you filled the day with happiness’ birth the only first time. Love me! you whispered curling around my ankles with a gentle touch and a gentle tug and I barely heard you my knees finding way to join an eagerly expectant Earth my clothes finding way to tear among eagerly expectant wolves my body finding way to slide alongside an eagerly expectant creature of dreams with thighs opening and inviting like the eagerly awaiting jaws of an alligator and lips parting and inviting like the eagerly awaiting fangs of a sabre tiger and breasts heaving red daggers and inviting like the eagerly awaiting Symplegades bestowing your virginity upon me the way you did the day you decided to donate to the world your first blood the only first time now bestowing passion and lust and love alongside body and muscle and fingernail no mitigation allowed to my body and muscle and fingernail as you totally abused total me in total collusion with the totality of me when unyielding circles one calls arms encapsulate my chest and ribs and spine and ivory traps one calls teeth encapsulate my mouth and lips and tongue and a steel trap one does not call encapsulates my one does not call prey to perdition and we consummate burrowing that abstractly convoluted inosculated shape under the gentle hill’s gentle depths whilst the day ravenously fills itself with the death of fire’s birth the only first time.

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Moment in Time Walking, I north-north-east and you south-south-west diametrically opposite directions on the same arc on the same gigantic planar circle surrounding Earth thousands of kilometers long and only parts of a meter wide not yet past the convergence point where inevitably you’ll step aside to the right and I’ll step aside to the right, my right and we’ll pass next to each other never knowing a we existed the center of gravity between our paths erratically shifting one way or another depending on our momentary variation of speed but never leaving that thin arc which kept us prisoners to a statistical incidence about to happen the wonders of statistics, coincidence, serendipity when we were only about one meter away from each other still stepping vigorously each our own way and you were supposed to take that pre-destined fatal right step and I was about to take that pre-destined fatal right step, my right a small tremor, maybe 2 on the Richter scale or on the Ravage scale or on the Rumble scale or on any other R named scale and we stumbled forward and the surrounding crowds pressed around us and just for the fleeting flutter of flitter of one immeasurable moment in time, lost immediately thereafter to the large cemetery of monumental moments never to return, your breasts pushed against my chest the left corner of your mouth touched the left corner of my mouth our regards crossed like the glitter of sword-steel that unintended tryst and we apologized hastily, embarrassed and you took your right step aside and I took my right step aside and we continued I slightly off my perfect north-north-west and you slightly off your perfect south-south-west never to meet again and I spent my rest of life crying myself to death over that statistical incidence and that loss which kept ripping me apart, maybe you too. I shall never know.

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Point of view I look at you the way the first creature that crawled from sea to land looked at its first sunrise. A fish with legs? Even without legs. They did not have much intelligence, you know? Or even brains, for that matter. They had much better, though they might not have been aware of it. Knowledge. I look at you the way the first creature that hatched out of an egg looked at the mouth feeding it. Even if it was a crocodile? Even if it was a dinosaur. They did not have much intelligence, you know? Maybe some brains but no intelligence. They had much better, though they might not have been aware of it. Instinct. I look at you the way the first human who ever was ejected from a womb looked at the one who thousands of years later will call mother. The way of a monkey simile bundle you mean? A human predecessor. They did not have much intelligence, you know? Even today, their brain is the mess of before creation. They had much better, though they might not have been aware of it. Future. OK, so let me get this straight, lover. You see me the way a fish with or without legs or a crocodile slash dinosaur or a pre-brain pre-intelligence pre-human does. Correct? It was not so clear to me if she was mocking and/or criticizing and/or ready to bolt away. It was correct but I had to correct the correctness of it. Correct, I said and I believe the bolting away was taking precedence over the other verbs mentioned. Forget it, I said and her left foot started lifting off ground in preparation of the bolting mentioned. I see you the way anything and anyone ever saw the most important thing in their life for the first time. Remember (her left foot came back down, hesitatingly) there is only one time the first time and you are it. I am not sure she got it. I am not sure I got it. I am not sure anyone got it though it is so simple to get. I love you, I said, and this probably summed it all in one single four lettered word and one short three worded sentence. What the hell, let’s make love, I added. This she understood with no extraneous comment necessary.

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Attacks A butterfly attacked me. “A butterfly attacked you. Competition?” She sat on the blanket next to me, handed me my ice cream cone and started licking hers voraciously, eyes closed, skirt higher up than convention allowed, hair fluttering in reds and browns and fires... I didn’t attack my ice cream until it started dripping along my arm and said butterfly plus hordes of its mates landed all around the sliding goo delectating in vanilla flavors. I wondered at butterflyian vaticinating powers while all the time delectating in her legs’ shape and vaticinated flavors surrounding. She opened her eyes. “I see it brought lots of girlfriends. Competition?” She liked repeating herself especially when she wanted to tickle me into smiles followed by laughter followed by love making. She leaned toward me and started licking the leftovers glistening on my skin, the army of butterflies angrily attacking her face, lips, hair... “You look like Medusa,” I threw in my impression, “snakes replaced by butterflies turning-stone replaced by turning-mush imminent death replaced by imminent dalliance followed by imminent venery...” “You seem confident in your metaphorical mythological metamorphosical claim,” she laughed making sure the skirt slides further up, way beyond convention. The butterflies owed me. I attacked her then and there the roving butterflies creating an impenetrable twister of flutter and color with passersby watching the deceptive wonder outside ignorant of the thundering wonder taking us hostage and killing us inside. “Attack!” I commanded and they attacked the moon bar a few thousands covering our glinting nakedness and our smiles. I wondered what the newspapers made of the event. I did not buy any, wasn’t really interested. “Do you love me?” she asked, making sure she did not squash any butterfly as we walked butterfly-dressed side by side hand in hand heels barely touching the ground. “Do I worship you?” I answered. The butterflies owed her. She attacked me then and there the butterflies between us joining those around us and those descending from the moon and passersby watched the deceptive wonder outside ignorant of the thundering wonder taking us hostage and killing us inside. “Attack!” she commanded and they refused to attack the moon content on covering our glinting nakedness and our smiles.

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Discoveries The frolicking alley The blossoming valley The spring lending willows its glistening dew The woodpecking drummer The girl dressing summer Those marvels espied studding patterns I knew, Your smile condescending Your word vilipending Your manner converging in irony’s gait Yet one single flower That sneaks in your shower Will puncture your eye and your heart will ablate. With innocence raging And spirit rampaging With lust cleaving millstones to morsels of joy A craving that borrows Its ilk from tomorrows And paves scores of pathways through life’s cumbrous ploy You seed rosy petals Midst vapid decretals And rip old conventions to precepts of rhyme While I try to harness From staggering farness Your marrow and gist in the eons of time.

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Piccolo rantism on ism (horrible rhymism, horrible flowism, I know, don’t write me about this antipoetism...) I never knew a witticism to stave a running plague or well-intentioned criticism to be but pertly vague, the heavy hand of communism supposed to solve all pains turned just totalitarianism to washout will and brains while sleek and smooth capitalism that promised freedom’s choice is just the new feudalism where money owns the voice, the humanism and its post that’s named posthumanism materialism and its post named postmaterialism then anthropomorphism’s pot named anthropopathism and anthropocentrism’s pot named humanocentrism, socialism, nepotism, much reviled imperialism brothering colonialism all in bed with nihilism, mysticism, aphorism, solipsism, mysoginism, aphorism, absurdism, dash of salt and anarchism, feminism, pacifism, mighty cruel warmongerism, naturism, syndicalism, with cubism and futurism... (my mouth deforms already in various ism shapes) don’t pay attention to this rant it’s just some senseless blather which turned my word into a chant, primitivism rather. (how many points did I lose?... all of them?... well, this is pure negativism.)

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Sciences galore From the heights of my soaring winter I watch the chasms of your deepening summer and I envy and I envy the thousands of humans and millions of mosquitoes and billions of bacteria sharing in it and I say – let us apply the mathematics of averages and build and sum all of ours into one and split all of one into two and live. You smile. You accept. And suddenly all humans and mosquitoes and bacteria dissolve in the moment and we build and we sum and we solidify and we liquefy and we... “...gasify?” ...split, the parts unequal, the mathematics of averages inapplicable the mathematics of inequalities taking over... “...unequal?... equal to before?” Almost, entities slightly different, slightly contaminated... “...so a new kind of mathematics, the mathematics of reality as a newly founded science shall we call it matherealitics, or mathereality or?...” and you blink and you wink and you slink all under and all over and all around me “...and shall we try this blessed mathereality again, see if it keeps consistency of rules?” I smile. I accept. And all humans and mosquitoes and bacteria dissolve again... “...and we share our momentary big-bang, a dim memory of the original big-bang that was and a dimmer premonition of the final big-bang that will be.” Your fingers curl and curl and curl the hair on my chest your tongue rolling around the words and then rolling around my body and then retreating home. With such observations you just joined a line of illustrious men, I say, Copernicus... Newton... Einstein... “...now men and women.” Now men and women. Humans, mosquitoes, bacteria, all dissolve again, in third. You smile. I smile. We accept. You get swallowed in that gateway between realities pulling upon you the under-clotting and the other-clothing and the over-clothing and then disappearing inside a textilian cloud and I rest behind, counting the thousands of humans and millions of mosquitoes and billions of bacteria, having nothing better to do than to admire your newly founded science and observations. Mathereality. Damn you, mathereality! I want to scream but sciences have that ignoble, aloof way of disregarding human wishes. Damn you mathereality!

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The Lion The lion is tired. Piling years, piling boredom, piling memories drag behind him like tin cans after a “just married” car barren of the cheerfulness, lethal. His claws abraded his fangs cracked his once prideful mane studded with burrs and the bald patches surrounding scars from as many skirmishes battles victories defeats shame pride. He opens his jaws to yawn, not to roar, his retinas pierced by the sights of a lifetime and all he wants is to cover the blinding holes with a descending eyelid that refuses to rise again.

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I Wonder I wonder what you wear under what you wear. I wonder at those wonders, classified with the classics of cottons low or lower or lowest imprinted with edible reds or edible strawberries or edible ribaldries type “the buck stops here” or type “you got so far why do you stop here” or type “you coward if you stop here then there is no there for you”, or maybe different wonders branded with the punks or the goths or the about to be invented nihilistics of linens loose or looser or loosest imbued with night blacks or white crossbones or symbols type knives about to be sharpened or type roses about to be sliced by knives about to be sharpened or type blood drops ...leftovers of my virginity... nothing to do with knives or roses, or maybe even different than different wonders identified with sex and sexism of silks transparent or transparenter or transparentest built upon lines of Brazilian beach strings or holed with a variety of luscious Eros dream patterns or transmutable into a variety of Sade torture tools destined to velveted cellars or velveted beds or velveted expectations. I wonder about the nothing that you wear under what you wear under what you wear. I wonder at those wonders, de-classified or re-classified or un-classified same with branded same with identified so... you like none other can should will be your perfume-ful oasis at the crossing point of your various body symmetry and asymmetry axes aromas drifting to my nostrils like from a neighborhood bakery and enticing me to penetrate that universe of nigella sativa and dill and parsley alongside black cherry jam and quince jam and green plum jam under clouds of white acacia and white lily and white lilac and stuff myself till I burst under a spell of self-inflicted contumacy and imbibed marvel, your shape-ful mountain tops mid of a desert of skin fluttering like butterflies attached with invisible strings to ribs fathoms beneath and enticing me to cap that universe of radish red and mulberry ruby and beet crimson homely burning mid of snowy peaks and stuttering meadows and feathery poetry and let my palms burn until there is no saying what is sun and what my disintegrating flesh, your wonder-ful symplegades beneath a stormy breath of hell itself beneath a pair of encompassing tears of heaven ready to chop ready to hack ready to sunder in choleric mood ready to soothe ready to brush ready to drip drops of dew in serene mood and enticing me to churn a passage into infamous liquid cherry with a rebellious mouth battling towards total submission rendition annihilation... mine, all of them. I wonder when if I ever stop. To wonder.

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10 x 10 Let’s rob some light from fallen stars today Grab pocketfuls of sparks then run away And in the wilderness of life let’s settle down In that forgotten place of no renown. I’ll weave some sparks into your auburn hair With some abet your body’s fallow flare Before you turn your gaze upon my face And let me sink with lust into your grace. A morning follows witchcraft’s frenzied night You feed me lips with strawberry delight.

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Again... Let’s build the magic, again. Like that fist time when you shied away from nearing me, remember? like that first time when I was desperately looking for your nipple, remember? like that first time when I wasn’t sure, then I was sure, remember? When you posed for me, dressed, when you posed for me, naked, when we walked hand in hand on one beach then another beach then every beach hand in hand even when you collected shells and I collected glimpses of your legs. My hands full of you your hands full of me our minds empty of anything but us in cars in shops in eating palaces or parlors or dumps. Before a digital world conquered our attention before various literati and illiterati stole our time and enslaved our mind before you sat left of the table and I sat right of the table and between us the Berlin Wall and the Wailing Wall and the China Wall all of them one behind the other and one of top of the other. Remember, waking you up mid of a dream to make love to your liquefying body, remember, pulling up your skirts to make love to your stiffening body, remember, fire joining flame mid of the day mid of green pillars mid of a green canopy opening hungry mouths to patches of sky your hand holding a four leaf clover my hand holding the leftovers of your silks and the entirety of your heart? All it takes is a moment, an eyeblink, a thought in which we undress the allied curse of life impersonators and death promoters type wrinkles and menopause and prostatitis and osteoporosis and hypertension and we dress our nicest wishes and we dance to the music we both love and we glide down the path leading to that inseparable border coalescing hell and heaven where we bite each other’s lips off and we crush each other’s leftover ribs and we constrict each other’s floodgates in that vice that reminds us of our ever present youth. Let’s build the magic, again.

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Of Course Of course, I want to make love to you. Or, if you want to skip the euphemistic pretense and move straight into its non-euphemistic direct reflection you can use c-words such as copulation, coitus, consummation, coupling, congress or i-words such as intercourse or m-words such as mating or f-words such as fornication all of them carrying the implied softness of silk before being woven and down before turning feather and pussy willow catkins before they dry up in a forgotten cruse in a room corner and puppy squeal before turning dog bark... no, no f-words as the one jumping directly to the modern mind with all its indecency and incivility and indecorum intimated. Of course. I want to make love to you. With uncovering before discovering respecting before inspecting alluding before denuding all of which lead to the chaos of burning bedsheets and burning walls and burning roofs, cacoethes for the insanities of passion not unlike pyromania or nymphomania or eleutheromania or love before the making of it. Astride my glinting realm of skin You slide your tongue upon my chin Then shove your lip between my teeth The burning breath you me bequeath Ignites the burrs inside my lung And kills all songs that weren’t sung, Incisors deep between your thighs Don’t heed my moot beseeching cries You milk my life with giant fists And leave me roam inside the mists That rise from heavens’s crushing hell And tell me tales I’ll never tell. Upon a mound of flaring hay Your finger tips my crave allay Your slinging breasts demand acclaim Your nipple darkness hangs aflame I let my palms encase the glow Whilst in my veins wild horses flow.

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10 x 10, two The nettle lays your naked heels aflame And dandelions bend their heads in shame While ears of wheat caressing knees and thighs Rekindle lust and storm inside your eyes, You drag my hand into a sea of burrs Your flailing skirt my failing mind bestirs Before I find which way the sunrise lies You leave me naked under morning’s skies. I wait, the years have turned my hair to snow Between my toes lost dandelions grow.

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10 x 10, three Tell me oh maiden of talents galore What is that sadness alighting your shore Be it a stone or a stab or a stain Stave now this smoldering river of pain Grab here my finger my shoulder my arm I to be tower and you to be charm I to be mouths pouring wind through your mill Whispering words to churn flesh into steel And when tomorrow you open your smile Know that you’ve been my enchanting last mile.

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10 x 10, four Beneath the glare of summer’s dying sun A poet sifts through phrases for the one That will ascribe the end of the before And may define the dawn of evermore, As daylight fizzles in the throbbing sea The poet crawls upon a foreign lea There waits his phrase, his love, there waits his dawn Alas, my poet, now your time is gone. Upon the shelves where volumes seven wait The last of volumes holds two words: too late.

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10 x 10, five You crushed my heart that many years ago Bereft of song I sank in murky glow And sold my soul for Satan’s copper dimes To praise your eyes in waves of timeless rhymes To whisper whiffs of mellow morning runes And let the nightingales provide the tunes To write on air my lasting hidden wish Then wipe the slate with sleeve’s impassive swish Before I pay my overreaching due My headstone saying: “he who hadn’t you”.

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10 x 10, six For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo. ~Bill S. If you Verona’s graceful Capulet The blossomed flower whom I never met And I your quarter’s lonesome Montague Who never knew a maiden’s heart but you Then let us rob this city of its strife Mercutio is fallen to the knife As did Tybalt, his blood bestains my hand And drags this love into a sea of sand. Oh, Juliet, so few your years of life, Oh, Romeo, so blessed to die your wife.

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10 x 10, seven Hood my unmann'd blood bating in my cheeks With thy black mantle, till strange love grown bold Think true love acted simple modesty. ~Bill S. Inside a shrine with flowing wax festooned Your flesh demanding my inflicting wound I steal your body’s purity and years Upon a bed of roses twined with tears. The candle glow reflects from glassy fronts Amazed at lovers’ petulant affronts, Yet you don’t ask, and yet I lean and bow To whisper in your ear my deathless vow. You lie amidst the holy stain of blood Your eyes aglow with passion’s thinning flood.

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inbetweener Oh, maiden raw, your flesh the white of milk Your manumitted skin enmeshed in silk Hordes devastating smiles burning the red One devastating stain burning the bed Slain ribbons from your once protective garb Impaled upon your little finger’s barb With rags that my attire once adorned Forever in my poems to be mourned, Oh, maiden soft, you gave me your one day, I thank the god who made me fall your prey.

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10 x 10, eight A ray deserts a melting drift of ice To coalesce into a golden spice Then yet again it changes shape and hue To drill my temple with bewails of you. I see you in the heart of fallen trees I hear you in laments of dying bees I smell you in a lilac’s broken stem I feel you in a bridal dragging hem, I taste you, long before you were my bride I taste you, long after my flesh has died.

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10 x 10, nine To what to compare my ohpoetry And lack of appeal of its wowetry, Say call it some form of skullduggery Refining the old style of thuggery? Say stains of some renaissance masteries Asleep in forgotten monasteries Or needles injecting to artery The poison proceedings of bartery? Don’t worry this sudden insurgency I need now and then my... divergency.

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10 x 10, ten Listen, oh, ye creature from yonder gulfing space Thy words bespot with summer, thy verse bespread with grace... ~Yos F. Between the pines grow roads to nowhere far, Beneath the feet lie slops of bubbling tar, Above the clouds roam nightingales in tune With our hearts and with the spilling rune, I rip your clothes when you decide it’s time You rip my clothes when I forget to rhyme We clutch, we rave delirious with lust The tar, the tune, the rune, the time turn dust Then wrapped inside each other’s arms, asleep We hear the rhyme one final time, and weep.

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Futuristics PS. (i.e. Pre Script) Composer’s (sounds better than author’s) note: whatever follows is not poem nor story nor essay nor pamphlet nor anything else known under a variety of popular names. Thus I will store it in this collection since anyway it licitly and literarily belongs nowhere. Personal News Ha-Ha separated. Ha became a missionary to the jungles of South America and rumor has it that he was eaten by cannibals when he refused to eat. Ha opened a high-tech company and bought Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Madagascar and is eyeing Australia... for now. Madagascar became member of the European Union when promised to keep their ariary currency numbers and change just the denomination to euros. Makes it easy programming and easy billionaires as long as shops find buyers. For now the streets are empty. Ha-Ha-Ha separated as well with leftmost Ha becoming LPOA (Leftmost Party Of America) and rightmost Ha becoming RPOA (Rightmost Party Of America) and Middlemost Ha becoming, what else, MPOA (bla bla bla). They lost the last presidential election even when trying an across America coalition; you cannot get far on 14 voters, after all. Previous president Trump called it reliable fake news, speaking to our network from his castle under the dome on the moon. Asked about the fact that it looks like an ugly black blot from Earth, he promised to build a second one symmetrical to it further away so the moon will look like a big smiley with eyes. I promise also to develop an area that will look like a mouth, tractors are right now being imported from China, he added. The housing developed there will be freely auctioned, anyone with sufficient oxygen supply can apply. Legislators on Earth are still debating the legality of the actions, but have a problem getting there for inspection. Brangelina renewed their legal contestation regarding the intellectual ownership of the first a: does it belong to him as his second from right letter or to her as her first from left letter? A solution is not foreseen soon and the social media rages over the issue. Technological News Remote Hand released Remote Hand which allows frustrated internet lovers make love remotely. It can be adapted to a variety of sexes and sexual orientations and habits and for the moment it allows only movement, audio and visuals. The company plans to release in the near future a version with touch sensorials as well. Smell is already on the drawing board, informed us VP R&D and as for taste functionality, implementation is not yet clear. Smartphone applications are being developed in parallel as well by several sub-contracted companies. Investors wait impatiently for the company to be made public and Ha voiced interest in buying a controlling portion. Remote Foot is a new start-up which plans to capitalize on the growing interest in Remote devices and will develop a Remote Foot love making device. Remote Hand lost its legal case against the new company, due to the anti-trust and anti-monopole laws in place, however threatens to pursue any patent infringement related to the Foot device. Remote Corpse (originally called Remote Body but changed its name following an extended market research) decided to open its own venture into these grounds and capitalizing on Remote Foot’s legal success, promises to come in 10 years time (ouf, who can wait so long?) with a full body solution. Our specialist in Remote love technology expects that somewhere in the future all three companies will consolidate under one roof. There is no competition expected from European companies but there might be some warning signs arriving from China and... Turkmenistan. We’ll keep our devoted readers informed on any meaningful developments. Three-Dee TeeVee all-round-view is now reality! The prototype sized presently at 1 centimeter cube (0.06 cubic inch) was presented in a private show organized by Three-Dee and plans are to have a 1 meter cube (31.3 cubic foot) commercially available by the end of the year. Price is expected to be around 25 thousand dollars and this includes installation of a small atomic power station to feed the unit. Cheaper versions proposed for the power stations are aeolians (for wind rich countries), sun (for sun rich countries) and coal (for coal rich countries). Usage of any kind of human or animal motoring forces is out of the question, specified Three-Dee’s CeeEeOh. Deep drilling for water in Sahara was stopped when an unimaginably large oil deposit was found. The involved authorities and companies are presently debating the change of purpose for the drilling efforts. We can always buy water with petrol, joked an official who asked not to be identified. Artistical News The artistically endowed mentally handicapped literarily creative physically challenged sexually frustrated socially admired accomplished writing genius Yossi Faybish, owner of three PhD titles from the on-line University of Moonlighting Shadows (one in gardening petunias, one in reading text in mirrors and one in listening to magpie love calls) and recognized authority in rhyming sequences that start and end with the letters d, k and p, was fined today a symbolic 1$ for driving under the influence, love influence as both the much esteemed genius and the much respected officer of law agreed. Our correspondent penetrated only partially the secrecy surrounding the event, and it seems to be related to genY (as he is lovingly called) stopping in the middle of the highway to allow a family of ducklings and their mama to cross the road safely. We, here, applaud genY’s intelligence, diligence and handsomeness.... well done, genY! The latest poetry festival ended in partial disgrace and scandal when none of the hundred thousand visitors understood the winning poem. The judges offered later a watered down apology and full refund of ticket entry price to the public, mentioning that the unfortunate event happened while they were away for lunch break and an escaped convict (haha!) broke into the system and selected the winning poem. They then declared the real winning poem of the competition. No one understood it either. GenY did not participate in the event, neither as poet nor as judge, as he was busy preparing his 112th collection. GenY’s latest poetry book “A view from my garage to a tailless world” achieved platinum numbers in sales, reaching #2 on Amazon (behind the revised edition of Kama Sutra with videos attached) and elicited glowing praise from critics and academics alike. A literature professor preferring anonymity to fame was heard saying – if I die today it is preferable to dying tomorrow – whatever he might have meant by it. A few poetry lines from the book: Whenever I whichever whatever / The ever is never forever whomsoever clever / Fever server sever lever. Sublime. Kudos genY! (Yes, to those paying attention, we have a weakness for this outstanding poet and his poetry, and we do not apologize for it). Old Quotes (surpass New Quotes) on knowledge... Mark (the Twain): Never let your schooling interfere with your education. Oscar (the Wilde): Remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. Bill (the Shakespeare): A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool. Plutarch (the Greek): I did not so much gain the knowledge of things by the words, as words by the experience I had of things. Lao (the Tse): To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day. ...and Old Quotes (surpass New Quotes) on stupidity Euripides (the Greek): Talk sense to a fool and he calls you a fool. Albert (the Einstein): Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe. George (the Carlin): Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. Fyodor (the Dostoyevsky): Intelligence is unprincipled, but stupidity is honest and straightforward. Bertrand (the Russell): A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he translates what he hears into something he understands. The Apology No News Chapter (thank God! you say) I do get lost sometimes in nonsense. Not “unconnected” nonsense but still nonsense, intending harm to no one but to my own intellect and perception. Everyone needs an outlet – if a puppy eating shoes, if a volcano spitting fire, if an over-worked mother that slaps her child and then carries the pain for an entire lifetime. So do I as well, and my preferred outlet tool is a mish-mash of brainless/thoughtless/talentless/regardless mockery, mainly self-addressed. Rarely something else, though it may happen; after all I believe I am human too, though debatable. Thus above. Flowing until flow turned trickle and trickle turned drops. Then desert. Life, isn’t it? And I apologize for it. My life.

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A multitude of nevers NOTE: the poem graded 10/10 is of course the version I prefer, the one I wrote first. The others (please don't read) are subjectively graded “experiments” to see if my original cadence feel was correct. It was. 5/10 ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta (10) You’ll never see the sun behind my head As you lie crushed in sweat upon the bed Your panting body reaps the pleasure’s skin And mills invading flesh and dripping sin. You’ll never know departing life oh short When screaming senses make your lungs abort And herds galloping through your veins go lose Within one single sigh of wild abuse. Your velvet glove will never touch my lust While carving ruts between my ribs with rust Inside your skin’s cocoon your craves unclear While morning’s seeping rays the texture shear. You’ll never hear the caw on Edgar’s sill You’ll never taste the poison from Bill’s quill You’ll never cradle Sappho’s bliss through sand We’ll never walk in rain, or hand in hand. * 7/10 ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta (12) You’ll never see the sun ascend behind my head As you lie crushed inside your sweat upon the bed Your panting body reaping waves of pleasure’s skin And milling my invading flesh with drops of sin. You’ll never know departing life for moments short When screaming senses force your lungs to scream abort And herds galloping through your veins beg ways to lose Their way inside one single sigh of wild abuse. You’ll never hang your velvet glove upon my lust While carving ruts between my ribs with dangling rust Asleep inside your skin’s cocoon your craves unclear While morning’s seeping rays of light the texture shear. You’ll never hear the raven caw on Edgar’s sill You’ll never taste the poison drop from Bill’s stern quill You’ll never cradle Sappho’s bliss beneath the sand We’ll never walk in pouring rain, or hand in hand. * 10/10 ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta (14) You’ll never see the sun ascend behind my floating head As you lie crushed inside your sweat upon the flowers bed Your panting body reaping waves of pleasure’s parting skin And milling my invading flesh with drops of burning sin. You’ll never know departing life for moments way too short When screaming senses force your lungs the venture to abort And herds galloping through your veins beg nothing but to lose Their way inside one single sigh of riotous abuse. You’ll never hang your velvet glove upon my steel of lust While carving ruts between my ribs with pennants dipped in rust Asleep inside your skin’s cocoon you wade through craves unclear While morning’s seeping rays of light the fragile texture shear. You’ll never hear the raven caw on Edgar’s window sill You’ll never taste the poison drop from Bill’s unflagging quill You’ll never cradle Sappho’s bliss forlorn beneath the sand We’ll never walk in pouring rain, entangled, hand in hand. * 9/10 ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta (16) You’ll never see sun’s gloating wheel ascend behind my floating head As you lie crushed inside your sweat upon the ashen flowers bed Your panting body reaping waves of pleasure’s softly parting skin And milling my invading flesh with praying drops of burning sin. You’ll never know departing life for mortal moments way too short When screaming senses force your lungs the raging venture to abort And herds galloping through your veins beg nothing more than just to lose Their way inside one single sigh and waves of riotous abuse. You’ll never hang your velvet glove upon my grappling steel of lust While carving ruts between my ribs with hanging pennants dipped in rust Asleep inside your skin’s cocoon you cloth the night with craves unclear While morning’s seeping rays of light the fragile texture rudely shear. You’ll never hear the raven caw perched low on Edgar’s window sill You’ll never taste the poison drop from Bill’s unflagging trace of quill You’ll never cradle Sappho’s bliss forever lost beneath the sand We’ll never walk in pouring rain, just us, entangled, hand in hand.

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Smile(y) I wish to tell you that the latest chore Of which I hope you have as such no more Dug holes into my dwindling intellect Now titled Sonnet’s President Elect. Though no complains, the pleasure was all mine The challenge staved my intellect’s decline I only hope that Bill et acolytes Will not decide to haunt my resting nights. Farewell thee lady of the Sonnethood And now I’ll clam, which obviously I should.

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rattle is this the magic she is capable of, once unhinged and she turns leaves of sky canopies one after the other and binds them to a book, her book? and then she settles on her toes’ dust until rattled again into storm blown willow?

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Conquest Slide your hand between the buttons of my shirt, I will not scream, I promise. At most I will scream pop! commanding the stubborn contraptions to pop which they refuse, then, when they know I need them most or rather need them to obey, most. Pop! I command, again. Slide your hand underneath the rim of my trousers, top rim, stop joking, I will not scream, I promise. At most I will scream rip! commanding the stubborn contraption to rip which it refuses, then, when it knows I need it most or rather need it to obey, most. Rip! I command, again. Don’t slide your hand out. Don’t slide your hand out, also the second time. Hear the rattle of my teeth make rattlesnakes sound tame sense the flutter of my heart paint butterfly wings look frozen mid-air know the rolling of my breath tumble eighteen-wheelers like dry leaves until you slide your hand out. Don’t slide your hand out, whatever time. Let it find home. Feel me, like you would a virgin. How can this century old feel virgin?... feel me and then you know a virgin, for your touch for you. Take liberties. Pop the buttons if they don’t rip the rim if it doesn’t invade! conquer! plunder! and after the rattlesnakes hide shamed and the butterflies disperse embarrassed and the eighteen-wheelers go to war with the insurance companies make love to me like a rattlesnake baking in the sun like a butterfly bathing in a sea of stamens like an eighteen-wheeler fitted with white sails that soundlessly rolls on a road covered with seeds of mint and promises of sunflower. Slide your hand out. There is nothing left to slide it out of except the ash of contraptions the defiant leftovers of virginity and a skin imploringly hanging to every pore of your hand as if the fate of all of living present or past or future depended on that hold. And probably correctly so.

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in the rough Give me your nipple... both?... ok, both. Let me touch it... both?... ok, both. Now watch me take this slab of glass and pull it across it... both... see the two traces? Red diamonds, in the rough. Careful! She was right, I had to be careful lest they grazed my teeth.

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lover lover lover lover lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me ~Leonard Cohen I carry you toward the room Wherein the sharp, exclusive death Will light my winter into bloom Beneath your summer’s scorching breath, lover lover lover lover is my silk your bidding call will you carry me for eons till my petals dry and fall?... Your fingers clasped around my neck Your arms like garlands hanging soft Your lips my growing stubble peck Your gentle hum unfurls aloft, lover lover lover lover will my body’s tempting skills calm the tempest’s raving madness rolling your deserted mills?... The mattress waiting on the floor Absorbs your body’s feather weight I hear your heel kicking the door While clothes like magic dissipate, lover lover lover lover lay caress upon my flesh and allow my seeping flavors our frailty to enmesh... Enlaced like weeds on killing spree We rend the mattress ribbons thin And Shakespeare’s thou and Shakespeare’s thee Get lost in gutter’s avid din, lover lover lover lover words and runes burning my guts chase my innocence through valleys plowed with carnal tempting ruts... I lose my way inside of you My guidance feeble panting sighs Awaiting mistrals to ensue And veil my mind’s demented cries. lover lover lover lover I gaze nightingales alight with the sparkling drops of sunshine gleaned beneath dissolving night... Upon the bitter prick of hay You lie, the icon of your face Enkindles corners of my life With after lust, and rising grace. lover lover lover lover though your soul may beg to rest don’t desert my heartbeat’s flurry, never leave my shape of breast...

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The kiss The kiss did not yet happen. Everything else did already, our bodies pushing against each other like two trains on a collision course after collision like the asteroid that hit Earth exterminating all life except cockroaches and pre-humans like dead bark hugging live bark hugging cambium hugging sapwood which was I? which was you? clothes just a formality waiting for informality the kiss did not yet happen. The kiss happened. I could see only your ear, the left one, my cheek the thickness of one paper sheet from yours at its closest point other parts of my face at various sheet thicknesses from other parts of yours couldn’t know exactly as I closed my eyes since you were out of focus letting my other senses take over, maybe a few of my three days old stubble hairs touching, maybe not, maybe the smell of your perfume, did you use any, maybe your shampoo, maybe your skin smelling like forest after rain like snow after melting, the tiny whiff of air caressing that strait between our cheeks maybe it was the tiny flute drilling its music into my ears, mainly my left ear, I moved my head, slightly, just slightly, backwards, leftwards, you moved your head slightly, just slightly, backwards, leftwards, we froze moved again froze moved again froze moved again and this time we did not freeze neck muscles the way of an unstoppable rowdy Earth gyrating around its sun swiveling with ever increasing eagerness until corner of mouth encountered corner of mouth mingling drops of fresh saliva and smearing it on lips that turned from dry to smooth from smooth to viscid sliding upon between inside each other and suddenly incisors opened dragging canines to open dragging molars to open and two cavernous tar pits yawning rage upon each other sallied into battle like demented hyenas joined by toothless Herculean snakes striving to pull each other off roots and dripping thick poison down each other’s digestive highway while hearts forgetting indigenous cages imposed upon them by a godly designing mistake drummed lungs into the frenzied assault that died in an all-consuming maelstrom of rogue waves and bellows and squalls, informality followed formality and the else beyond everything else followed as well. The kiss ended.

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Poem in three chapters, short I wish to feed on you the way I feed on Turkish delight until I am nauseated with the pink of your nipples and I crave for more until I am nauseated with the softness of your flesh and I crave for more until I am nauseated with the perfume of your femininity and I crave for more until I am nauseated with the idea that I will never nauseate again and I crave for more and more and more and when my stomach cannot take any longer I spill my insides on the altar of your pink and your softness and your perfume. * I can never compete with Neruda, I can never compete with Bukowski, I can never compete with Angelou and etcetera but they cannot compete with me since they have not known you since you did not fill every corner of them every cleft and cranny and crack and chink and cut mind and body the way you fill mine. I cannot compete with them and their fame, they cannot compete with me and my fame with you. * Morning is not morning because you think of me, morning is morning because I think of you mornings. Evening is not evening because Earth rotates and the sun falls into the mountains and wolves lie down to rest and owls wake up to hunt. Evening is evening because it comes in between I thinking of you mornings and I craving for you nights. Night is not night because my body is not next to yours, night is night because your body is not next to mine nights.

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Melancholy Melancholy oh sweet folly burning like a lover’s holy reaving ire sweet desire and obliterating fire, Slowly sinters spirit’s splinters through the howl of passing winters, thoughts embracing fears debasing hope’s departing chariot chasing, Mornings’ wishes figments’ swishes while the bloody river squishes through my heartland and my quicksand drowning my emotions’ grandstand.

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Scarface or How I almost lost my nose but I didn’t or How I almost did not lose my virginity but I hope I did (an almost true story) I got up middle of the night for my nightly pee. After an eventful life, my prostate deserted the honorable basketball league for the not less honorable but less voluminous baseball league and the rest of me devotedly followed. And I have no problems with it – bats use ultra-sound to move about in between trees’ darkness, I use extended arms and fingers to move about in between walls’ darkness and it never failed me before. So what happened, really? There aren’t many obstacles to encounter in an apartment even for a sleepy, groggy human on his well-beaten well-rehearsed path, even if accounting for the less defined surroundings; what could there be? OK, maybe a phantom that decided to haunt a non-haunted house, maybe the neighbors’ cat that sneaked its way inside, an opportune window that changed places on own initiative due to climate change and/or Corona virus and/or witchcraft from the witch two houses away? Surely not the wall that was there a century now, older than even me and carrying the memories of so many dogs and so many basketball days. Well, yes, the wall. And not just the wall but the corner of it. And not just any wall but a supporting wall made of good old armed-concrete, luckily so since otherwise I would have had one hell of a repair to do in the morning, in case I survived. I do not know what was on my mind this last night but a fair guess would be that I had you on my mind and the sudden desire to lose my virginity in your soft, tender, embracing body made me imagine you were there in front of me and leaving my arms at my sides (thus trusting the welcoming obstructing effect of some items embedded in your flesh) I advanced drunkenly and heedlessly towards the probable you. Only that the wall corner I just finished mentioning was on the way and refused to budge. Thus bang!... and I am sure the neighbors’ cat woke up with a frightened miaouw! One inch to the right and I would have lost my nose, one inch to the left and I would have lost my ear. As it happened I just got a two inch long vertical bulge above mid of my right eye, some insignificant bleeding and a concussion to remember or forget (I counted from 1 to 100 to check the integrity on my brain, seemed OK on condition that the checking mechanism in place was OK as well, of course). And now I sit down to write about it, letting the objectivity of the spell checker check the integrity of my brain. Of course, looking like Scarface will help me through life and in traversing certain neighborhoods. I used the opportunity to do also some physical investigations, since if my estimated speed of approximately 3kmh (kilometers per hour) resulted in the awakening of previously mentioned cat, now I understand much better why falling on one’s ass and hitting the ground at approximately 7kmh can break one’s spine and why the 50kmh allowed for cars inside the city is a killing speed. As for my second secondary title, it has to do with the linearity of time and the unshakable hope that somewhere in the future that soft, tender, embracing body of yours will encompass those similar yet complementary aspects of mine. Would have been worth losing a nose to. Hallelujah!

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Feminininus Rithimus You see, my contusion It led to confusion The root to my poem’s abysmal profusion, When I conked my forehead Which led to my sorehead Eliciting gripping eidolons of your head I sank in a mire Of pagan desire That could even morons like this one inspire, My reason befooling And mind overruling, My senses with visions of you started drooling, Your exquisite nipple Your blood’s crescing ripple The red in your cheeks turning roseate stipple, The final invasion The constant corrasion The terminal rush of dementing pervasion, Then silence descending Abatement impending My sweat with your sweat into elixir blending.

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Speed How do you measure the speed of time, against what, what standard units to use? Seconds per meter? Too subjective, my units and Usain Bolt’s units are different standards. Earth rotations per sun rotation? Surely objective, only I doubt if I can think about it intuitively. And is it constant at all, and how do you measure its fluctuations and how do you know if there are fluctuations? And can we call it speed at all? I wish I was a philosopher, not a poet, with the patience to write thousands of pages and tens of volumes on the subject with minds infinitely superior to mine to debate value against and minds infinitely inferior to mine to test coherence against... is time movement linear? is there a parallax in time measures? is there negative time, complex time, is time continuous or divisible to time-atoms?... but I am a poet impatient to see the end of this poem and unable to squeeze those thousands of pages between here and the end. And no one reads me anyway so against whom could I debate and test? Maybe in seconds per wrinkle or seconds per depth of wrinkle or seconds per unit of hearing lost? Unit of eyesight lost? Unit of libido lost? Or maybe revolutionize the physics of time and measure it in seconds per seconds of life lost? or left? And let’s not forget that we invented the thing called second. I am eager to end this poem it leads nowhere I wish to go and where I wish to go is in your arms and against your breasts and between your thighs. But I do not have much time left. And I do not know the speed with which I will get there, to the end, which is why I wrote this poem. Not to this poem’s end, to THE end.

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Shadow Was it long in the shadow... without my words to burn your skin and growing weeds of sin unseen electing to ascend your wall through crumbs of my decaying scrawl? Was the silence in the shadow... the bliss beneath tumultous sea the aftermath of banshee glee or that abysmal depth of dream that follows that illusive scream? Was the wait in the shadow... alike the tryst we have with time not worthy of a rotten dime or like a morning’s sprouting yawn birthing the glow before the dawn?

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Swan-Song you should never fear my swan-song to hear, Dear, maybe, though, the wail of a nightingale with a broken leg stranded on a peg waiting for the one to ignite its sun, Hon, better still, you know, a dyspeptic crow, raven, if you will on my window sill welcoming the dread of my empty bed its lambasting style bordering on vile croaking runes above a dismembered glove, Love, eagle, if you want pecking at my vaunt maybe even dead rotting in my shed as I melt and fade and my songs abrade, Maid, yet my words were true though I never knew, You.

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Check I met her at a singles bar. She was the most beautiful woman in the world. It seemed like the beginning of a beautiful relationship. We danced a lot. We drank a lot. We talked a lot. She laughed a lot. My place or your place, I asked? Your place, she said. We took a cab, responsible adults that we were. We reached my place. We undressed. I fell asleep, don’t even remember when what or how. I woke up. She was still there. The TV was still there. The TV is a lump of plastic, I said. I know, I checked, she said. My wallet is a lump of empty plastic, I said. I know, I checked, she said. You are still here, I said. You are not a lump of plastic. I know, I checked, she said. It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Five years, two kids and a dog later I kneeled in front of her offering her my rock. She accepted. You don’t check it? I said. You love me, she said. How do you know? I said. I checked, she said. That night I bought an even bigger rock. She didn’t even notice. It was a beautiful relationship to the end. I lay there, dying, she next to me, holding my hand. No need to be sad, I said, heaven exists, I said. Are you sure? she said. I know, I checked, I said. Then I died. A happy man. * Are you sure? it asked. Sure of what? I asked. Man? Dead? Happy? it said. I know. I checked, I said.

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Encounter We met in a bar. No, another bar. Another story. I was 102, give or take a few decenniums and she was 72, give or take a few different decenniums as well and this is as good a way to keep our anonymity as any. Also as good as any other way to keep you, my readers, from making faces and spit over your shoulders in misunderstanding. We were looking for comfort and consolation and, yes, consumption of as many as possible liters of liquids labeled 40 degrees and up, denominations irrelevant, reasons irrelevant. Of course we were both young body and heart body mainly she and heart mainly I, looking at us you would have mistaken us for Bogie and Ingrid or Gregory and Audrey or Burt and Gina or Rock and Liz, Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, Archie and Edith, Lady and the Tramp... We made an unbreakable pact that I would pay whatever she was able to ingest and she would pay whatever taxi we were able to hail to wherever I chose, open ended invitations both and we sealed the pact with hooked pinkies, the most unbreakable of pacts. There was not much talking at first. The number of words between the many emptied glasses very scarce then eventually words and glasses balanced and finally the number of emptied glasses between words became very scarce, down to zero (under the despairing regards and muffled mumbling of the inappreciative bar tender). She told me about her tattoos she told me about her piercings she told me about deceptions and rainbows and dogs and the sunflowers she worshipped and the sunflowers that worshipped her and snails in the grass and flowers on the meadows and of words, her words, so many so beautiful. I told her about my happy childhood, happens you know, about my searches for undefined somethings, about illusions and disillusions and betrayals and recoveries about rainbows and dogs and sunflowers and of words, my words, so many yet not so beautiful. When the time came for hailing that taxi we decided to first puke our guts in the gutter and only then follow with a directing decision. Give him your address, she said, her breath sour yet her beauty unassailable. I gave him my address. We are drunk, let’s not abuse of us, I proposed once arrived and finding the keyhole, and she looked at me strangely, a tired smile distorting her lips. A most decent proposition, she said falling to the floor and snoring lightly before even hitting the tiles. I fell to the bed, didn’t even take off my shoes. I was gone within seconds. * At 72 you are certainly not a virgin anymore, I said. Of course, the number I used was not 72 but I have to keep certain consistency. And I guess that at one-oh-two you are neither. This was the way she worded it, digit by digit, but the number was different of course. I was already showered coffee was ready breakfast was ready she yawned and for a moment I feared my TV set would disappear inside then she started walking towards to bathroom dropping a piece of garment every step the last one swirling on her index finger just as she was closing the door. I think Hansel and Gretel could have learned a thing or two. She emerged a while later, wrapped in a towel, hair still dripping all make-up gone, I was in for a shock. Last night in the bar I thought of you as beautiful, I said, watching her advance. And now? She watched me the way a cat watches a mouse or a T-Rex watches a cat. Now I am disappointed. I should have looked better, you are gorgeous... is there any other, better word? Enthralling? Alluring? Ravishing? She winked at me, the cat slash T-rex tamed for now. Is this for me? She sat on the chair opposite to mine and started swallowing everything in sight. This included my plate’s offering and the decorating leaves. Now, about that virginity test... One of us said it, I don’t know who. I didn’t think I was that good in bed. This is what I thought. After. I didn’t think I was that good in bed. This is what I said. After. What else did you think, asked the cat slash T-Rex, watching me intently once again. Well, I thought also that if T-Rex’s made love the way they ate this is the way they would have done it. And they would still be roaming the Earth, asteroid or no asteroid. She looked through me and then did something amazing. She kissed me on the cheek. I’ve never done this before, ever. Even with my parents. She hurried the sentences as if wishing them to end prematurely and... blushed. I was stunned. One moment T-Rex the next pussycat, what did I drag home, I asked myself. Strange this admixed eras zoo. I dared. Would you like to meet next weekend? Next weekend I have exams, but the weekend after. And your virginity? I dared further. Don’t worry, you claimed it. There’s no repeat. Ever. My God, I called on the one I did not believe in, a one night stand and... this is it? He did not answer of course, I didn’t think He would. We started meeting, regularly. We mined the other for knowledge, we delivered knowledge freely, intimacy, there was no other word for it. We T-Rexed here and there but mostly we talked, and we talked, and we talked. Hey God (here I go again), is it my doom, finally? Hey Human (it was me mimicking Him) it is your blessing. Finally. Listen, I guess one-oh-two is not so bad after all. But seven-two... if I think about it too much I will die of heart failure and everyone will know my real age. No way!

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The other sunflower She was sobbing earlier on, this much I could tell. Her eyes slightly reddish around the green her make-up showing signs of gravitational intrigue her mouth puckered, slightly. She died, she said. Of course people are attached to their children. People are also attached their pets and I’ve seen people attached to their homes. But to a sunflower? She opened her purse and handed me a photo. I don’t see anything dead here, I countered, looking at the beautiful yellow ray florets. This is her brother, she sniffed, gently, as if not to invoke the bad eye. Love, I took her hand gently as well, sunflowers are not she’s or he’s, even metaphorically, they are basically hermaphrodites. She pulled her hand away, not angrily, just upset. This is her brother, she insisted, and I want him to live. It was not a game to her, it was a matter of life and death. And how can I help? I asked. I was not playing along, I accepted. She raised that eternal green crowned by that temporary red to look at me in what I translated as a supplicating regard. Write him a poem. And? I was curious as hell. I will read him the poem twice a day, after wake up and before sleeping. I am sure this will save him. I did not argue. I wrote a poem and gave it to her. Two months later I received a small brown package, stamped three times the eventual shipping costs and covered on the backside with a variety of pleas and requests and appeals to “...please, Mr. Postman, please make sure this package does not get lost, please...” as if Mr. Postman ever read anything beyond the barcode. I dragged down the strings, cut the tape, opened the flaps... there was a plastic bag inside filled to refuse with the fattest blackest gorgeousest sunflower seeds I ever saw in my life. There was also a picture inside and a small note: “You made it. We both thank you, especially he. Kiss.” And the picture showed the beautifuliest girl in the world crowned with the goldenest sunflower crown in the world. I do not usually talk this strangely but the double present simply choked reason out of my personal bony box. And if that kiss would have translated from write to life I am afraid it would have sucked in my lips, teeth, tongue and lungs in one single gigantic slurp.

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Strange poem, why not? ...you see, I met this old guy, so old that he should have forgotten already how old he was but he didn’t. I couldn’t escape, he was damn strong and tied me to a chair and promised to release me once he finished telling me his adventure. He even placed a folding knife under my ass “in case I die mid of the story, hahaha...” he said. Then he let go of his mouth. At begin I thought I was going to vomit, towards the end I thought I wanted it to never end the way I wanted The Little Prince to never end, the way I wanted The Raven to never end, the way I wanted Romeo & Juliet to never end. You see (now it’s his narrative), I met this young maiden, so young that she was probably half my age, at best and twice my beauty and thrice my talent and four times I fell in love with her though she skipped the first three straight into the fourth. Mmm... you smell so like garlic, she whispered in my ear the first we met on the fourth and my eyes started roving automatically around looking for the tallest tree to jump down from to my death but all I found was a bush sized less than the great Dane who just finished his business at the bottom of it... Mmm... you smell so like onions, she whispered in my ear pulling me back by the collar and almost choking me and my eyes started roving automatically around looking for the tallest building to jump down from to my death but all I found was a midget cactus with thorns all the way down from harpoon size to knitting needle size so I gave up on the idea of climbing to its top... Mmm... and I so love garlic and I so love onions... and I mollified and naturally enough I expected the continuation ‘and I so love xyz’ as well which unnaturally enough did not follow but that smile with her left corner of mouth higher than the right corner à la Gioconda (before Leonardo corrected it) however so void of a Gioconda’s guile and so full of her own radiance... it floored me. Of course, part of the flooring was my cunningly devised device to get on my knees in front of her and pull her skirt over my head and inhale... Mmm... you smell so like woman, I told her once she pulled me up by one ear and smeared a few kilograms of lipstick on my face with her mouth to help me hide my embarrassment (liar!) and did nothing to hide my other source of embarrassment (bitch!) ...and what else do I smell like? she asked and I knew I was forgiven both for the recent past simple and continuous and perfect and perfect continuous and for the soon to come future simple and continuous and etc. She laid her head on my shoulder and let my index finger explore the inside of her closed fist and it wasn’t unlike the first time Eve’s tongue explored the inside of Adam’s mouth and it wasn’t unlike the last time Queen of Sheba’s nipple explored the vise between King Solomon’s thumb and his forefinger and it wasn’t unlike the feel of a puppy’s ear rolled inside his brother’s probing tongue or a puppy’s tail lost among his sister’s gnawing gums or a puppy mother’s tit mercilessly chewed by her grunting, toothless litter. Heaven. I know of no other name than heaven. And what else do I smell like? she repeated for the sixth time leaving me no choice but to investigate heaven’s other propensities. OK, so if we leave aside garlic... mmm... and onions... mmm... and radish and dill and parsley and paprika... mmm mmm mmm mmm... I sank my face inside her hair all the way down to her roots and up to my teeth and thousands of corollas ranged like so many blue bats hanging on countless panicles suddenly assailed my senses with that fragrance which grew under my eyelashes and under my fingernails and under my skin since day one I was born until day X when I will be unborn consuming me eroding me vexing me ceaselessly indomitably gallingly like the most beautiful of illnesses I was ever endowed with cursed with blessed with... ...hey, I am melting here, dying here, withering here, the fragrance, what fragrance?... I never knew girlish fingers could so be like saber-toothed fangs... ...ok, woman, ok, don’t rip-off my arm... lilac, woman, lilac of course! I yelped fearing the anti-climax the way others fear the anti-Christ. I should have known better, Fast, before I change my mind, she whispered lifting her skirt and before I had time to kneel at the gate she let it drop again, pulled me up and laid again her head on my shoulder. You changed your mind, I complained, the bitterness of having bitten a bouquet of dandelion stems painting my voice. No, you silly, you’ll see later. I did not change my mind. Tell me more! I told her more. I told her of the white lily I slept in the room with knowing I will not wake up next morning. I told her of the yellowish acacia flowers I filled my belly with knowing I will roll in pain the day after. I told her of the giant black mulberries I dirtied black all my white shirts knowing the spanking I’ll get would be worth the taste, I told her of the young pecan fruit that blackened my finger tips but sweetened my stomach with its offer underneath the thin bitter peel, I told her of the hay I was rolling in almost getting eaten by the horse, I told her of horse manure I was making bricks from of black cherries my mom was making jam from of Jaffa oranges we got once a year of fresh bread plaited out of three rolls of my dog’s head asleep on my pillow of the smell of the first rain of the smell of the first snow, I told her of... ...and each time I ended a story she invariably would lift her skirt invitingly and each time before I discovered discoveries she would let the skirt drop pulling me up laying her head on my shoulder and promising me that she did not change her mind on condition that I told her more about all those wonderful fragrances I seemed to know so much about as well as where to find them on her body, around her body, inside her body. Heaven. I know of no other name than heaven. We are here. We are where? I did not know, I did not care, I did not care how we got ‘here’. We are here. I did not change my mind. And she lifted the hem of her skirt. She did not let if fall, this time. You too, and I wished, oh I wished I had a skirt as well, but she had a solution to the problem. And I will not tell you that I minded the solution. We rolled on the grass. We rolled on the pebbles we rolled on the thistles we rolled on the mud we rolled among the ants and the fleas and the baby brontosauri each kiss tearing a piece of flesh each kiss tearing a piece of cloth each kiss tearing a piece of sky with pieces of stars falling all around us boiling the pieces of flesh igniting the pieces of cloth weaving a bed of glowing embers that collapsed underneath our joined weight when we tangled innocence with innocence and intrepidity with intrepidity and ingression with ingression and just before she screamed now! treacherous Earth split underneath us spitting us out on the other side of its bloated belly and turning off gravitation to let us float into those other clouds other swarms other memories just born with us joined into the one flesh-flesh continuum that was never before, nor will be after. I did not scream ‘now’! she murmured in my ear, the rest of us refusing to unjoin. I did not scream yesterday, now, tomorrow, I murmured in her ear, the rest of us refusing to unjoin. I did not get to hear the rest of his adventure. The old guy fell asleep, or maybe died – it was impossible to tell. I shook him and then I waited and then I left, maybe I did not want the story to have an end, an end is not always a bliss, not even in disguise. But the smell following me haunts me to this day. And I will never be entirely certain which smell it is, it was... was it garlic or was it lilac? Or, maybe, and here I try from time to time to penetrate the old guy’s mind and understand, or maybe it was simply the smell of...woman? Quote: ‘Heaven. I know of no other name than heaven.’ Unquote.

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Curls Those curly songs you carry Around your belly’s aerie Where wars that raged in days of yore Have sown both life and death galore, Will you allow them, faerie My roving dreams to marry While fingers mine for female sighs inside the pulsing ore? The curls that hide the quarry My guilt’s repository Impiety’s immoral halls The paths where sin my reason mauls When perfumes predatory Enthrall me into glory That’s chiseled with creation’s hand on your imploding walls. Like fishing hooks’ blind ire That words of wrath inspire And seed a poem’s rhyming scheme With hell’s lament and heaven’s gleam And forge undying fire Upon a lover’s lyre They are the creed where angels drown and devils blithely teem. Lend me your curls for pillow That softest pussy willow, And while I wonder through the scrub Like a forlorn and dainty cub Of sudden you will billow Then like an ocotillo You’ll bloom into the deepest red and feed my poem’s nub.

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Telos and Meros I discovered the mistake in the design early enough, but He refused to admit it. And I also did not want to insist too much, after all He was three billion years old and acted as both the boss and the manager of the project, and I was just the DNA variability designer; and having done quite a good job of it I was given a whiter cloud as main residence with a much better view to sunsets. It certainly was not bribery, after all it was just a residence upgrade and not a promotion. It took Him several thousands of years to admit and yet not really admit the fact that telomeres (we used a different word, Greek was not yet a language), the way He designed them, deteriorate with time and lead finally to premature death. But define “premature” he challenged me. Also, He added, this is more of what they call a natural solution. It will save me some stone throwing and water spilling and fire pouring and first-born-eliminating and similar divine intervention shit; this way let population deal with overpopulation and leave us out of it. We had some earlier clashes of opinion, for example when I preferred the dinosaurs and He preferred the hominids, and one thing I learned was that it was better to let Him be right if He insisted. So I let Him be right. There was also some logic in what He was saying (and even if there wouldn’t be I wouldn’t have told Him, after all I liked my new cloud). So there was no change proposed or re-designed in the telomeres aspects of life, and nothing is planned for several thousands of years from now. But, boss, can we not make some exception? I asked Him once, after I drank too much fermented grapes and while there was some talk about downgrading my cloud because of ozone level constraints. Look at these two – thousands of miles apart, tens of years apart and yet they act as if they are neighbors and lovers, as if they are same generation and lovers, as if they would love to be neighbors and same generation and lovers. If we do not intervene they will never be what they want to be. It was the first time He did not pull out a drawer-answer and actually seemed to be thinking rather than knowing-it-all. My underling without a wing (He was also a poet sometimes), strange that you’ve seen them too, I follow them myself for quite some time now and debate with other members of our team the correct course of action to be taken, sorry for not involving you but you were too busy with the latest virus DNA, I did not want you to slip there. You are right, if I don’t do something then they will never be anything. And yet I decided to keep out of it. The beauty, oh the beauty of their natural nothing is so much warmer than any kind of enforced something, that it will hang for several billions of additional years in my mind. And may drive me to be more accommodating to any of your comments in our next project, whenever I decide to start it. Hmm, this was not the way He usually reacted to my suggestions. I looked at the two hominids again, trying to get deeper into their yearnings and emotions and understand why both I and my boss were touched in such singular way by their predicament. And I had to admit (I didn’t tell Him) to a flaw in my DNA design for each of them. You see, it was the first time I allowed a dimension of depth of love be part of my design. What I did not foresee (how could I, I was not any kind of god, after all) was that this depth could go down to infinity. I will remove this dimension immediately. But for the time being, oh, let me enjoy it, just oh let me enjoy it. Hominids can be such shit and yet they can be such a source of wonder at times. Not as much as dinosaurs but a close second. I peeked in His cloud’s direction, a bit higher up than mine, and I caught Him looking my way. Then He kind of sighed a terrible sigh and pulled back the curtains. I felt like crying. Somehow, I was sure He felt like crying as well, even though he had nothing like DNA in Him to speak of.

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Mystery You were a mystery to me. Were? You are a mystery to me, I corrected myself promising myself to do one hundred push-ups in hope of absolution and forgiveness. OK, you are absolved. And forgiven. She saved me from the push-ups. You are a mystery to me, I repeated, just ensuring she remembered the correct version and when she guided my hand back to her nipple I knew I was absolved. And forgiven. I had checked the various mythologies – the Greek, the Roman, the Nordic, their equivalents from China, India, Samaria, ancient Egypt, Wikipedia, did not find a suitable explanation, elucidation, exegesis... Wow, big words... No, just words starting with e. She smiled. You know, looking for the mystery of you between... ...orgasm and orgasm? ...woman and woman, I disregarded her mockery finishing my sentence obstinately and losing myself in a sea of blinking green creasing both sides in horizontal wrinkles. She roared in laughter the way only a beautiful woman or a dragon can roar in laughter. Then she propped herself on one elbow and neared her mouth to my ear, any nearer than that and her first inhalation would end with my eardrum in her lungs. I am a whisperer, she whispered, exhaling (thank God). A poet whisperer? A poem whisperer. First it was ‘Hmm’. Then it was ‘My God, it makes sense, suddenly it makes even more sense than Wikipedia’. I sat up abruptly never letting go of her nipple and stretched my body (and her nipple) until I reached a pencil and started scribbling frantically on the table, on her underwear, on a few dollar bills. Ouch! I heard and remembering that I was still pulling her nipple I released the tension. Better? but she was asleep even before I reached the question mark intonation. I kept writing. I keep writing. I will keep writing for as long as I live and hold that nipple. Or as short. Whatever. Actually she was the one writing with my hand, oh, such beautiful unravelling to such beautiful mystery. From time to time I bend down and kiss her. From time to time I even show her the whispers she whispers. And from time to time I release that nipple only to hear the Ouch! and to ecstatically take possession of it again. For both of us. Life is beautiful. Would have made a nice Frank Capra movie, I think and I didn’t even plagiarize the title, just its idea.

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Eden We sat on a bench in your garden, my head in your lap your fingertips playing havoc with the nerves at the roots of my hair single hair by single hair... Did you find any fleas? Not yet, still trying... and we both sighed with satisfaction. This is Eden, I ventured, I Adam, you Eve. There were no benches in Eden, you commented. There were surely fallen trees, big rocks, maybe even a hammer forgotten by God when he chiseled you from my rib. Shut up and enjoy! you laughed. I shut up and enjoyed. Suddenly I jumped down rushed over to a flower and cupped my palms above it then rushed back to you. I brought you a butterfly! Your face could have reprobated a hungry grizzly into submission. You killed it! I opened my palms and the butterfly flew away, slightly shaken but happy to be alive. I could never kill a living thing, I said. Even a mosquito? Mosquitoes are vampires, so per definition not alive. I lay down again, letting your fingertips continue the magic. Suddenly I jumped down rushed over to the first flower pulled it out root and all then rushed back to offer it to you. You smiled, a bit of reproval still there. Not a bouquet? I ran back, pulled out about a hundred more and ran back to you, my invisible tail windmilling all over the place. This is better. I lay down again, letting your fingertips continue the magic. Suddenly I jumped down rushed a few steps away mid of the cobbled walk and started scribbling furiously in the dust the poem writing itself as if my hand was guided by the god of poetry itself. Didn’t even see the herd of goats trotting my way and demolishing all my work into settling clouds. I rushed back to you crying burying my head in your lap and my thumb in my mouth, I wished it was your nipple. I read the first words, it was beautiful, you said, and I stopped crying, letting your fingertips continue the magic. I knew the nipple would come, later. You know, for your physical whatever age, you are mentally of whatever divided by ten age. I laughed and laughed and laughed. Then you could get charged with pedophilia, and I laughed and laughed and laughed some more. You laughed and laughed and laughed. Or I could get charged with necrophilia, and you laughed and laughed and laughed some more. Shall we go now? Shall we go now. We went. The evening ended with your nipple in my mouth. There were also other things in other things but seen the infantine nature of this poem they will be left unmentioned. Suffice to say that you were the most beautiful repository of things since Eve. Included. Nice chiseling, master.

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Studying I see you, seated on the sofa your legs pulled tight under you your glasses hanging on the end of your nose one arm on the sofa back the other holding a book in front of your face just out of focus since you do not want to read what is written but rather understand what was thought before being written, writing being such a ridiculous effort in expressing inexpressibles, the way I too, try, to express and fail. A poem. So much better at times so much worse at other. You change position, it was left arm – right arm now it is right arm – left arm and I still see you trying to make sense of the writer’s convoluted thought processes leading to those over simplified expressions humans being so heavily limited in the translation of thought to text. You may also see me somewhere there in the out-of-focus region or you may not until the moment of inattention passes and your eyes are focused again on the page in front of you and you live with the limitation, never accepting it. The chill of the evening penetrates your thin clothes, you shiver and pull a blanket over your knees nothing to do with decency everything to do with chilliness... you smile, you imagine someone may have been thinking differently if he was there reflecting rather his thoughts not yours. Morning finds you crumpled under the blanket, your neck stiff your nose frozen... where are the eyeglasses? oh, here are the eyeglasses, you walk stiffly to the bathroom then walk stiffly to the bed and in the few moments spent in the nowhere zone before falling asleep again horses trot before your eyes tails whip left right garlands hang tied to their manes arms stretch down from shiny saddles to gather you inside them and words soon lose meaning, you sleep, and you forget the beauty of your dream. It’s not a pity. It could never come true, anyway. Roses are red my love, Violets are blue, You are asleep my love And I am there, with you.

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The crude beauty of after love-making in the early hours of following morning Morning, we wake up, drenched in each other’s sweat and start mopping each other’s skin with each other’s underwear, leftovers of love-making carpeting our mouths and sliding unctuously on our fingers imbibing with fragrances of hundreds of flowers from hundreds of meadows those celestial neurons populating our olfactory system while the reverberations of a fading coda of an abstract grunts-sonata is still beating soft air fingers on our eardrums, does after love-making ever end? We carry each other to the shower, the possible impossibility dissolving under sharp water needles and you soak and soap and wash each nook and cranny and crease of my flesh and I soak and soap and wash each nook and cranny and crease of your flesh yours so much more interesting than mine I think and you think probably the other way around and then we towel each nook and cranny and crease of each other’s flesh and pull up or down or around the flimsy patches of textile created by modern age to protect us from cold and gravitation and evil eye and to fill up the pockets of said textiles manufacturers and unsaid fashion designers while filling our mind eyes with the wonders real or imaginary hidden underneath, we carry each other to the bed (by now you know it is possible) and lie in each other’s lap (by now you know it is possible) and take refuge in each other’s dream (by now you know it is possible). Evening. You shiver, you moan, you shift your rigid flesh and lift eyelashes above an entire forest looking up at me with an impish look that raised and fell empires... do you think you could write a poem about the crude beauty of after love-making in the early hours of following evening? I think I could. I did. We did. A collaboration of sorts.

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The sci-fi story I will never write and no one will. So I chose to write a small “essay” instead, may God (for the creationists) or Nature (for the evolutionists) be with me. Amen (for both)! Our brain is used to think in certain, simple ways and it cannot always (ever?) be able to think differently – sizes, colors, words... And for the things our brain cannot think of or even imagine some bright individuals invented tools that allow us to visit the unimaginable using a mix of mathematical/physical/graphical/descriptional formulae and/or theories and/or analogies and/or technologies that aid, a bit, the understanding. Nobody can visualize how two photons hurl toward each other at the speed of light C yet they see each other approaching not at 2xC but at 1xC. So relativity was invented and it explains it in crisp formulae. Nobody can visualize how a particle can be now here and then there without physically passing between here and there. So quantum theory was invented to explain it. What about some simpler things? One cannot imagine what a cube of four spacial dimensions looks like but we have mathematical/graphical tools that can project it in our three dimensional or even two dimensional media. Or what it would sound like a world in which we can hear into ultra sound. But we have tools that can register it and we can make analogies to the bat world. Sci-fi worlds, aliens and non-reality events? Use words, computer graphics and some talented artists. All above is simple, isn’t it? We have access to “almost” anything. Once I thought about writing a story about a world in which Pi (of the circle) and/or e (the base of the natural logarithm) and/or i (the square root of minus 1) et co. exist and are all (or at least some) rational numbers, i.e. the result of dividing two integers: 22/3, 7/5... Bah, I thought later on, this is rather a subject for a doctorate in mathematics, impractical as it may be. And any kind of related story would be rather a mystery story (who stole the doctorate from whom) than a sci-fi story. So I dropped the idea. And then, only THEN, after years of turmoilfull nights (mostly because of mosquitoes) and sleepless nights (more because of my back pain), and confinement nights (Corona related incompetences of various organizations “up there”) an idea downed on me under the corona (the other corona, the non-capitalized one) of an incredible woman in my life while, hmm, trying to impress her. THIS was and THIS is the perfect sci-fi subject, the ultimate idea to put on paper or whatever media and to get all the available literary prizes in the world plus a free citizenship option in Monaco plus a lifetime of free bus travel all over Belgium. Mind billowing, mind blowing, mind boggling (the idea not the bus travel) – this kind of extended my poetic abilities to maximum. Yet it is also the story that neither I nor anyone else will ever write simply because our brain cannot visualize, conceptualize, abstractualize (another failed attempt at poetry) with any of the tools in our arsenal, be they mathematical, graphical, descriptional. Maybe philosophical, but you’ll see that even this is a dead end. The idea. Imagine the moment of creation. God (for the creationists) in his great wisdom or Nature (for the evolutionists) in its great randomness create a world in which time and space keep their present meaning but SWAP PLACES. This new universe has only one space dimension, let’s call it d for distance. Which is a uni-directional vector (the way time t is in the present universe) and time will be a three dimensional vector, and using the analogy of xyz we’ll call it tx and ty and tz. Can you imagine such a universe? Don’t tell me you can because you cannot, no one can, our brain is not built to imagine it. I tried, gave up. Try, you’ll give up. I could share, just for the fun of it, just some understanding flickers found in the lost-thought alleys I visited before I decided it was the best impractical idea anyone ever had. And before I decided it had to be dumped and such damn big pity to do it. Let’s start with some fairly simple statements beyond which... I get immediately stuck. Remember my dimension notations: d for distance and tx ty tz for the three orthogonal time dimensions. In this universe the only vector that advances from the moment of its creation is d, one direction only and measured from the point of creation onwards. Thus the age of the universe is measured in miles (or kilometers) passed and its present age would be 14 billion miles, or 6000 miles for those who insist. The entities populating this universe would measure their lives in miles as well, from creation to death, so if we assume something similar to humans their lifespan would be, say, 80 miles. Now, and here it starts getting really complicated, ALL and EVERYTHING that is present in this universe populate the SAME single coordinate on the d vector-axis (the way our universe populates the same t moment in time) and again analogous to our present universe, the way everything fits in ONE physical undefined size dot is by dispersing through the three axes of time; each rock, atom, quark owning and moving through its individual three TIME coordinates independent of any other objects in this universe. They interact, they evolve, they move through time in all directions constantly. They are time-dimension creatures the way we are space-dimension creatures. We can try to understand what it may mean, but we’ll soon reach a dead end of understanding. We may probably understand how such a creature (without trying to understand how a time-creature actually “looks” like) moves forward in their tx direction, this is the way we move in our t direction. We may even try to understand how they move backwards on the tx axis, it would be like a time machine was invented for us that gets us back into the past (not by jumps but by continuous movement, mind you). But can someone please explain to me what it would mean existing and moving in the tz direction, i.e. upwards in time? And how does one moves laterally, ty, in time? And how do the human-like time-creatures have sex? I guess for them it is simple and natural, for me it is difficult even in our universe, how could I explain it for their universe? By the way, don’t despair, for them “there” it would be as difficult to explain a three dimensional space and one dimensional time universe such as ours, as it is for us to explain theirs. Not just to explain it, to imagine it.

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Swoon, take one You lie middle of a wide bed middle of a white bedsheet middle of a crumbling world memories blooming around you in colors beautiful ones in green horrible ones in brown and all the rest in all the rest of colors and you imagine yourself at the bottom of a boat carried by the unseen hand of a breeze above you thousands upon thousands of willow fingers reaching down to you to steal a glimpse to steal a caress to say goodbye. You wish to never wake up to find you lie middle of a wide bed middle of a white bedsheet middle of a crumbling world surrounded by memories. Your bed absorbs the passing night the bedsheet blinds you with its white a crumbling world forgets to roll and soaks your plight among the memories you glean some pretty ones blooming in green some ugly ones setting in brown the rest unseen you dream yourself beneath the skies away from world’s ferine demise the breeze carries your oarless boat above you willow fingers float prey to a whim to touch and skim upon your skin your heart to win then with a sigh to wave goodbye. You wish to never wake up to find your bed with passing night the soggy bedsheet oozing white upon a world that idly rolls and soaks the plight from memories.

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The Hobby This story started as a 100 words story. Then, while writing it, I saw that 100 words will not have the “power” to say all I wanted to say so I let it flow freely. However, since this is a 100 words book, there is a 100 words version after the “free words” one. So no one can blame me for criminal inconsistency, yey... * in whatever She, my wife, being IQ 190 and jobless and restless, needed a complex hobby; so I found one for her: “What about all the legalistics surrounding stealing, honey?” Her eyes lit with a strange light and she kissed me passionately. I lived to regret my proposition. I died too. Our small apartment got soon so cluttered with the various paper publications and CDs and DVDs and newspaper cuts on the subject (and this was only regarding our state, she was going to get started on the 49 others) that it was difficult to find free tiles to step on anymore. “We need a bigger apartment,” she ventured but did not pursue the subject because I was jobless as well. Three blissful social security years and a delightful daughter later, I finally found a job and returned home in a singing mood, proudly showing her the signed contract. And then she paled. And then her eyes clouded. And then I could almost hear that unexpected yet fatal (and final) snap in her mind. “The paper clip?!” “What about the paper clip?” “Did they put it there?” “No, I picked it up from the HR director’s desk.” Paleness turned lividity and lividity turned faint before she recovered and was able to articulate a meaningful combination of words again. “Unclip it and tomorrow take it back, I hope they will forgive you. This is theft of company property.” She started biting her fingernails and I was afraid she would lose them so I promised to do as she asked. “On second thought, just take it back and don’t tell anyone, just make sure you wipe it clean of fingerprints.” “Love, you cannot pick fingerprints from a paper clip.” “They can – Police, FBI...” “CIA...” I attempted good humored mockery but I was wrong to attempt it. “The I is for International, they are not involved.” “FBI has an I as well.” “This is for Internal, moron.” There was no good humored mockery in her answer. “And the I in your IQ is for Imagination,” I didn’t say, just thought. Too viciously, maybe? I wiped it clean. I also sandpapered it, burned it over a candle, boiled it in milk... making sure she witnessed each stage, nodding approval. Then I took it back, hidden in my sock. But events started multiplying. I tried to disregard, accommodate, argue softly... did you ever hear of a snapped twig unsnapping. Probably you didn’t. Probably you never will because it can’t. She couldn't. And the constantly hanging third degree “menace” got me fragilized to a point that if you hit me with a soap bubble I would keel over. We had to soundproof the apartment (stealing sound waves from the neighbors), I had to stop using the elevator (my weight being slightly over the calculated average allowed, thus stealing capacity), kiddy had to show us the soles of her shoes every time we left the supermarket (thus ensuring she did not get a fallen candy stuck to them, stealing property)... absence of intent, according to a penal code book from 1871 that she shoved under my nose, did not reduce by much the gravity of a perpetrated crime. OMG! Yet, somehow, I survived. Until that fatidic day when we had this really big, really bad fight that there was no return from. I took our daughter to work, she was three years old by then, and when we returned she kept babbling and babbling about the wonderfulness of dad’s playground and about all the aunties and uncles that were smiling at her and about all the drawings that she was drawing there (on paper sheets I brought from home, didn’t take any chances, you know; or so I thought)... My wife paled (again), her eyes watching me accusingly (again). “Did you bring the drawings home?” “Papa would not allow me,” answered the little one, looked at me accusingly (kaì sú, téknon?) then rushed away to her room. My wife seemed temporarily relieved. “Thank God, so the company ink stayed with the papers in the office, I guess it cannot be called stealing as long as the ink remained on the premises.” “Yes, and I guess that the air I breathe there is also not stolen since it stays on the premises as well.” “Hey, Joe, I hope you exhale each time, before exiting the company door to come home. This way you don’t take with you any air part that is company property.” I was getting red in the face. “Hey you back. And you, do you do it each time you leave a shop?” “But of course, it’s self-understood, I thought you understood this point as well.” Questions were forming in her eyes. “I did exhale before leaving papa’s office,” tweeted the little one and rushed back to her room. Well, clearly someone understood and clearly someone was getting one hell of an education on the subject of honesty. I started steaming, on top of the red in the face. “And what about the dust on the soles of my shoes?” I bellowed (sounded more like a choking rooster). She laughed. “Nothing to worry there, love, the street is considered a public space and we all share the dust.” “I mean the dust on the soles of my shoes when I leave the office,” I countered sarcastically, and was immediately sorry at my outburst. She paled (again again) and left me there, her eyes filling with tears as she started tearing through all the publications, and the CDs, and the DVDs, finally after several hours of intense internet search she returned triumphantly to tell me that “since there is no way to differentiate the office dust from the home dust, any dust picked up on the soles of the shoes cannot be considered incriminating stolen property evidence.” “Yes,” I countered, sarcasm returning and now boosted by increasing hunger pangs, “but what if I put new shoes on when leaving the office, what about the dust on the soles of the shoes then?” She paled (again again again), then crumbled to the floor. “Now I will end up like Madoff’s wife,” she mumbled. And I was at the end of my tether as well. “You can stop worrying, all your worries end tomorrow when I jump from the office building roof,” I screamed. My scream did not change her posture but seemed to return some color to her cheeks. “Did you check who owns the air rights?” It was my snapping moment, everyone has one. “Do not worry. Instead, I will hang myself there.” Suddenly she smiled, oh, she was so beautiful when she smiled. A rose’s pink returned to her face as she leapt up from the floor, descended to the cave and returned with a rope and a piece of paper in her hand. “Here, and this is the receipt saying that I bought this rope and that it was not stolen,” she said, tears of happiness streaming down her cheeks. I hanged myself, then and there. Did not even stop to wonder how the police were going to react when seeing that receipt with her name on it. Well, at least she would not end up like Madoff’s wife. * in 100 My wife was honesty obsessed. To extremes. “The paper clip...” she paled, looking at my new job contract, “did they clip it?” “No, I picked it from the HR desk.” Her paleness deepened. “Return it immediately, it’s corporate property, the FBI...” Followed discussions about ownership of air breathed on company grounds, ink ownership on my daughter’s drawings in my office, dust ownership on my soles... I decided to commit suicide in the office. She paled (again). “Wait!” She brought me a rope and a piece of paper. “Here, the rope receipt, proving you own it.” I hanged myself, of course.

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Eve, Adam, whatever “First... I, she said and bit the apple to the seed a symbol for the human greed thus leaving me with just leftovers to nibble on, some chapters lost forever like the chapter about hate being evil about war being evil about abuse being evil it took rumors and dreamers and whispers in the darkness of bed and self-sacrificing arrogance to learn about them second hand something always missing and it took millennia and pain and philosophy to drive the missing knowledge into my brain, insufficiently so.” You grew pensive. I hated it when you grew pensive. “So you blame the Eve in every woman for the ignorance of the Adam in every man, is it so?” You pulled away from me slightly, never letting go of my hand. If you let go of my hand I would know it was over, I had to be careful, very careful with what I was going to say next but I was in full poetic effervescence which did not go well with careful. It did go well with suicidal rather “Rahab was my harlot and Judith my deceiver and Bathsheba my seductress...” “...all beautiful, powerful women who found their way into biblical history...” you were back on your battling horse, finally, brandishing a sword and even inching closer to me, it was working “...and Joshua did not kneel at water’s bed but knelt at woman’s bed and Holofernes was mighty of muscle yet feeble of mind and David became a dirty old man before they even knew of Alzheimer...” you the Eve not sparing any arrows and I the Adam keeping the momentum going “...and Rahab was handed refuge for her family and Judith salvation for Israel and Bathsheba motherhood for Solomon...” you not only kept inching my way, your thigh started digging into my thigh until it started hurting and emboldening me further after “...so you start shifting opinion my way?...” “...and who says I was ever of other opinion? First... I, she said and picked the apple from the tree defying God’s divine decree thus ingesting everything there was about cunning and love and freedom of choice and courage and change and leaving me with just leftovers to nibble on, chapters about hate chapters about war chapters about abuse it took rumors and dreamers and whispers in the darkness of bed and self-sacrificing arrogance to forget some of the chapters with second hand efforts many times failing and it took millennia and pain and philosophy to drive the knowledge of evil out of my brain, insufficiently so.” After making love. No more Eve no more Adam just lovers. I think I sensed tears on my lips, yours. “There probably is no solution. There probably was no solution. Bad and good in Eve and Adam and choose your vice versa. No godliness, irrelevant of God’s existence or inexistence. Chaos. Randomness. Adam could have taken the first bite all would have been the same.” So you were shifting opinion my way or most probably we were meeting mid-way. But I found the fighter in you, and the logic thinker in you, and I rejoiced.

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and then you disappeared. One of those m words (I could have chosen i words but there were too many of these so I opted for m) no, not metaphorically but mysteriously magically mystifyingly mythically masterfully... maybe momentarily? Hopefully momentarily. Like a fallen star rising back from the seas to the skies like rain falling back into the clouds like dew turning back to mist and hiding among the branches of burnt, dead pines. Like yesterday. Like childhood. Like a first kiss. I’ll wait a bit more, there, at the crossroads of my email address and your email address maybe the emailman was mistaken in the delivery process. Certainly not but maybe. Before throwing the bolt raising the bridge and filling the moat with water and alligators. Don’t feel like new visitors. Don’t feel like new acquaintances. Don’t feel like new loves. Don’t feel like new anything, I thought I’d give it one last try with you, I gave. Don’t feel. Period. I never wondered if I always wondered when I guess it’s time to stop wondering and remember the wonder of yes it happened. It ended is no wonder, it is fact.

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let’s define moments in time, one we woke up inside that hut in the mountains, high enough to be away from civilization and low enough to have a sufficient supply of oxygen for whatever experimental debauchery we were carrying out there sometimes mornings sometimes evenings sometimes both and also other undefined alongside these... all depended on me not on you, as far as you were concerned an ‘OK, let’s do it’ would suffice as a moment in time definition. I woke up inside that hut in the mountains and checked for no raccoons and no bears before pulling the covers off your body and, as always, resting open mouthed and eyes transfixed as I followed the lines of your skin covered flesh and your cloth uncovered flesh (helping the view a little by pulling here and there) and feeling repentful (not really) for the wounds inflicted and hurting (really) from the wounds absorbed and waiting in idolizing delight for your first yawn. you woke up inside that hut in the mountains and descended barefoot from the bed waddling towards me on gosling feet eyes glued to their sockets and mouth threatening several times to gulp me entire on your way to the satisfaction of your first pee until you collided softly with the obstacle (me) your hanging breasts squashing flat against my chest my hands moving to your lower back to fondle your soft offering and your tongue suddenly offered itself to me in all the gory glory of its mephitic awakening and its anaconda muscle and a promise of hell that was too good to postpone for any after. we did not postpone it.

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of tails You girl are like a puppy, and as much as I wish at times to have had possessed a tail to show the world my happiness as much and more I wish that you had one and I be the happy Guinness records representative sent over to register and confirm its ceaseless, uncontrolled, mighty wag of happiness. I would probably have needed a stroboscope to measure the beat as it would practically reside in the invisible ultra sound range. Why, even when asleep it would suddenly lash out in such incoherent laughter that the blanket above you would look like a tent fallen prey to the mightiest of hurricanes. And, if from time to time, I like to ‘baby girl’ endear you I should probably have to change it to... ‘puppy girl’. Hey, there, puppy girl.

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let’s define moments in time, two You climbed the steps, the stairway steep your face a mix of pink and red and crimson your short skirt fluttering its beneficial glimpses around your thighs and my eyes hesitating between the view underneath it and the treetops view round it and the foaming river deep down underneath it and underneath us... I stumbled. I see you decided. Decided what? Which view to look at... and your laughter glittered like light and pierced like a porcupine quill from one eardrum to the other inebriating me. Of course you know I decided, I stumbled, didn’t I? You kept climbing I kept stumbling ...you miss the view. Do I? We reached the topmost platform heavenly landscapes stretching all around us and, high as we were, even above us. Wow, I coughed, having forgotten to breathe for the better part of a minute, a moment in time, unforgettable. The view? Both of them and you knew what I meant, squeezing into me and letting me feel the side of your breast and the side of your hip, thigh, knee hinting at what lay midway this side of body parts and the other side of same with your hand insinuating itself into my pocket and doing unimaginable things. Do you want to descend before me? you snickered and I decided the way downwards was way too dangerous for the eventual... ha... certain stumbling to follow so I let you descend first. OK, so let others dream that which, soon enough, I will taste. Oh, the sweetness of revenge to shortly come. Hey, wait a second, I called after your rushing form and as your face lifted its Promised Land to me and your lips parted their Red Sea to me I showed the entire gazing gentry passing us upwards and downwards the might and the beauty of my God. Oh, my, could we maybe slide down the handrail to get “there” faster? I asked and your laughter glittered like light again and pierced like a porcupine quill from one eardrum to the other, again. Oh, my, I love you, I blustered letting you pull the quill out from the other ear and plant it in my heart.

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Words When you are ready to drown, I will drown you in word of minstrel and word of poet that will leave you aspiring and raving to know it and against your vain protests in betwixt your eyes and breasts I will start a descant battle thoughts will clash and dreams will rattle rhymes will carve your bones to splinters summers will ally with winters till I’ll cloth your body with love seed nests. When you are ready to breathe again, I will pull you out by tip of finger and tip of nipple that will leave me ostracized and drooling and cripple I will leave your brain ingrained with my words yet unconstrained free to roam through ruts of vision free from form and from derision whiffs of incense born in fire will deploy into desire till you’ll blossom like a wild love unchained.

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Shortie Truths Lover dear      have no fear language is      hit and miss I respect      dialect if you score      with your roar if no fool      at your school wasted time      teaching rhyme and your mind      sharp or blind finds its way      to my May. There beyond      the big pond you may try      hue and cry do not heed      there’s no need too much gore      metaphor if your words      same as birds tweet my ear      sweet and clear then my breast      and the rest drag you may      through the hay.

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Afterlife Is there afterlife? I glanced your way, you were serious about it so I killed my snappy answer in the womb. Not that you expected me to know but you did expect me to comment at least. Well, let’s put it this way – if there is we’ll know, and if there isn’t we’ll know as well. You mean we’ll not know as well, you corrected my logic and I wasn’t sure which version was logically correct, if at all. OK, let’s re-phrase my answer (I didn’t like your pouting lip) I will get there much before you, on this we agree. If there is I will make sure you know and if there isn’t I will not make sure you know. This seemed closer to what you wanted to hear, but not yet there. And how will you make sure I know? Didn’t millions of other lovers promise the same? You watched me attentively, more like a hawk watching a rabbit than like a cat watching a mouse, none of which was really complimentary. But you brought me onto safe ground and the rabbit slash mouse in me thanked you silently. Yes, millions promised but there is one slight difference here, I never broke a promise. This seemed to be the answer you wanted to hear. Your head never left my shoulder for the following three days, even in the sanctity of the bathroom. A penalty I carry willingly.

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Swoon, duo or Disjointed Thinking tell a story      of such glory that asunder      rips with wonder I ask for forgiveness then drive through your straits To depths of confusion where summer awaits Beyond thunders’ rumble and mountaintops’ clash And muscles collapsing from steel into mash. as I swoon      with the moon grab your chance      to romance The lungs pump the poison of sputtering mud Through riverbeds foaming with pebbles and blood While eyes shot with sunsets emblaze cloud and world With snake-tongues of fire where heartbeats unfurled. make me swirl      I’m your girl right or wrong      I’m your song Emollient pastels excrete from your skin And soften the passage through landscapes of sin When rib pierces rib and when hip crushes hip And hungry lips mouthfuls of elixir sip. turn my soul      tainted goal and my eyes      butterflies The chisel is sculpting the intimate path With memories raging and flashes of wrath Sharp fingernails grapple the destitute flesh While tongues laced with dolor in misery thresh. be duet      minuet be my verse      soft and terse My palm heel’s asleep on the cushioning curls Your field of creation sprouts glittering pearls A picture which God in his workshop has honed And clay vessel I, with my pencil, have cloned. forge me rhyme      rich, sublime cleave my heart      with your art

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Simpler I wish I could rest a bit in the sweeping black & white of Fred and Ginger, in the fast-forward of Charlie the contagious laughter of Laurel and Hardy the stone face of Buster the humanity of Norman the misleading naivety of Bourvil, not many know his name was André, and some other heroes of my past. And of my present until I lose my future. Soon. Yes, heroes, why should you lift an eyebrow, heroes of imagination, of simplicity, of carrying me through difficult moments and making life so more bearable that at times I thought it, life, was worth living. My life, of course, whose life would I talk about here? Archimedes’? This is what comes out of a nostalgia attack, sorry. There is probably a Latin name to it ending with a is or with a ity. There were tall fences that I would jump tickets that I would steal wooden chairs that would inhale me happiness tears washing my irises, not always with happiness mind you, silence at times close-up at times floors flowing under tapped heels and long dresses and languid moves at times. Life through the eyes of childhood. The child turns adult the adult turns more adult the child skips adult the adult skips more adult the child stays child. I lost you a couple sentences back, I know, one doesn’t always understand children, children don’t always know to express themselves. Even when adults. Even when more adults. If they skip. I wish all was so much simpler. Than is.

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Story You are Beauty I am the Beast I know you love the story but this is no story, this is reality and in reality I don’t turn prince charming if you kiss me but rather stay the Beast and you stay Beauty and romancing you my duty. So don’t. Kiss. Do. Dance. Dance me through the dark halls of my castle and through the dark alley paths of my castle and through the dark staircases of my castle choose tango or rock’n’roll or minuet or breakdance or ballet don’t worry, you won’t have to do a pirouette à la La Fontaine and I won’t have to do a tour en l’air à la Nureyev and I will leave behind us bread crumbs for the swans and crows following us and pots of honey for the bears and bees following us and carrots for the rabbits and crocodiles following us in this story crocodiles do eat carrots, please don’t interrupt. We’ll visit every bedroom and we’ll dress every bed silk or cotton or thorns or pebbles or feathers and we’ll try every bed and we’ll try every position on every bed those known those unknown those impossible to know and when your raw insides will demand a break and when my raw outsides will demand a break we’ll take a break until later we’ll tour the castle again and again and then you will not kiss me because of the futility of it and then you will kiss me because of the futility of it and you stay Beauty and I stay the Beast until I die at least. Then we will write a bestseller about all those positions that will never be written because we keep creating love and keep creating life and keep creating the impossible unimaginable inconceivable ever story. I’m still worried about those crocodiles. I’m still worried about that impossibility unimaginability inconceivability of this story.

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Artsily, probably I rain for you. There is still a poem in me and I don’t find it and until then I will rain for you. The red peels from your fingernails lying like carbonized flakes in your wake and if you turn it will flutter in recognition and if you continue it will keep peeling and marking the cobblestones with your passage and your shadow. Drip like winter shedding scales Leaves bewed the gurgling gutters While my drifting reason sputters Seven nights and thousand tales, Watch the moon bestride horizons Paint your toes ten matching dreams Through the woods a saber screams Clogged with rags my body wizens, Come to morrows promise barren Lay your heart across your ribs I will overcrowd it nibs As I drop my coin to Charon. I still look I still rain senseless like a Picasso painting not as expensive as valuable. Probably more.

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Wishfulness I wish I could encrust your body gold the way Klimt gilded his paintings and the sun paints mountain peaks before deserting yesterday’s lost shadows and a nightingale trills autumn leaves to flakes of dust beware of my word in a ripening orchard above seasons failing and metaphors tortured like absconding cranes from despairing plains... I wish I could suffuse your body calligraphic ink learning my trade from Chinese scribes contouring their brushes on bamboo slates and Talmudic scholars paining over parchments with esoteric quills and inks and toddlers just discovering the art of deflowering parental home’s virginal walls I found runes forgotten in death riddled moments enwrought with a menace that wretchedness foments behind the letters clan cowers a dazzled man... I wish I could draw you in color with charcoal I wish I understood the scientific reason behind it being impossible to make it possible all I can is inhale black dust purer than pure oxygen blocking my alveoli inebriating me with unsketched color images of you I do and I don’t run with rioting pages that scurry and rove through my darkest of ages joining crabs and ants and subversive rants... I don’t wish to emulate Bukowski or Anaïs Nin or Dope Lemon I wish to surpass them which I succeed at times with single words not complete sentences it will come once I stop wishing my rhyming defines me a secular heathen my books under ashes with ridicule smitten Prometheus my guide no school shall I abide... I wish I could make an impolite introduction of my skin to yours and vice versa and wed fingertips to nippletips understanding all the while the ways of bears abrading their backs against bark and of rain tweeting many small rivulets into one mighty thundering riverflood don’t read me with eyes having read Shakespeare’s sonnets I ain’t there from duets way up to rich nonets through singleness I wade crude solo is my trade... I wish colors would be named in circumlocutory manner to avoid confusion white the flesh beyond your nipple’s corona red the cut crossing your lip after my bite green whatever reflects from a mirror when it starts worshiping your eye I duel with time’s cohort birthdays astorming and crave to enjoin like a miracle forming my life’s disjointed halves wild dogs snap at my calves.

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Imagination It was raining. You started hopping on and off the side walk à la Gene umbrella in your hand hat on your head smile on your lips... one difference though, you were bare foot. You mean no shoes? No shoes, no stockings, nothing rien niente. It was windy. You chose your billowiest skirt and the windiest angle and let the wind blow the skirt skywards à la Marilyn your hands pseudo trying to hold it your body pseudo trying to change direction your smile real on your lips... one difference though, you were bare ass. You mean no panties? No panties, no knickers, nothing rien niente. Oh... It was sunny. You started walking down the yellow brick road à la Judy arms hooked one side itchy scarecrow the other side chilly tin woodman with cowardly lion snapping at one heel and Toto at the other until he got tired and fell asleep on cowardly lions’ mane your eyes shining green your lips shining red your smile shining white... one difference though, you were bare skin. ou mean naked? I mean naked. Not even symbolic frillies? Not even red shoes, nothing rien niente. And my friends allowed it? They even enjoyed it, they just had no tools to demonstrate it. Oh... And then Oooh!... You walked silently by my side, from time to time chasing a flying leaf then returning to give it to me, one of my pockets full already, the other filling. Can you add more details? About? About what follows after naked. I can. Your breasts wriggling your behind wiggling your hips jiggling your hair diggling... There is no such word. Now there is. And it cannot apply to hair. It can apply to this hair. Oooh... and you blushed, probably intentionally so. Can you add more details? You were becoming a blissful pest. I cannot, I want this sonnet to be accessible to kids of all ages, I said looking at you in a meaningful manner and wallowing in the wallop that followed. Otherwise it will be rated R and I prefer everybody to enjoy it. This is not a sonnet, you contended. Everything about you is a sonnet I contended back. The sound that can be spelled cursorily ‘Oh’ and which followed my contention has no suitable onomatopoeia in the English language. I started singing: ‘Sonnet was my first love and it will be my last...’ You’re misquoting. I know, I do not want to be slapped with litigation from Miles for copyright infringement. You walked on, your hand in my pocket. I walked on, enjoying your hand in my pocket. You have a sick imagination. You did not contend this time. Sick like contagious virus? I did not contend the contention because there wasn’t any. Sick like contagious imagination. Which didn’t make it clearer. Based on which symptoms, Doctor Welby Quinn House McCoy Bones Phil and others? Well, you had me already barefoot you had me already bearass you had me already bareskin, not much left to bare. Much left to apply bare to, though. Like? Like use your imagination, stick to a sick version of it, and you danced to the next flying leaf. I used my imagination. Luckily my heart was in good shape at the time. Not sure when it lost its good shape, probably soon after.

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Pure Nonsensical Disconnects I wish I knew to play guitar so that I could start not playing it. Right now I wish playing it, life’s small cruelties beaded on a string could easily reach the moon. I mean one of the moons of one of the planets of Alpha Pegasi if Alpha Pegasi has a planet and if this planet has a moon. And this is just my life’s small cruelties. Imagine billions such... Bats hear the world the way we see it, with a bit of extra thrown in, just another dimension. Dogs smell the world the way we see it, with bit of extra thrown in, just another dimension. Poets write the world the way we see it, with a bit of extra thrown in, just another dimension. Thus poets have higher affinity to bats and dogs than to humans they all share the knowledge of the other dimension and live in it, partly. Other humans live in none, wholly. I found a way to convert lead into gold, quite simple actually. I wish I found a way to do it the other way around, also plastic bags to fish food and greed to grace and dreams of Anne Frank and Malala Yousafzai and Martin Luther to true though I guess I would have lost my entrance to Eden if I believed in it. Nonsense is defined by Yesense which makes sure that nonsense makes no sense even in a senseless world where it should not matter. Paradox. The least we can give nonsense a voice, be it even misunderstood.

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About sliding, and other motions I wish to slide inside you like a snail slides back into its shell... Yuck!... this is a disgusting metaphor. Do you have anything else? I wish to slide inside you like mercury slides inside a thermometer tube. Huh? Now you switched to manufacturing mode? I’m about to leave. I wish to slide inside you like a Boeing airplane... Hey, stop right there! Did they pay you for this ad? Your last chance. She stood up. She picked her handbag. She picked the last biscuit. I had another metaphor, something to do with DIY but it probably was not what she expected and I’d better refrain, hell, I felt like a nail head like a train track like the receiving end of a mule’s kick like that moment before dropping that tax declaration with that comma shift... I wish to slide inside you the way spring slides into summer the way sunrise slides down a mountain’s slopes the way a mother’s nipple slides inside her newborn’s mouth... I froze. Like the moment before God decided what to do with the piece of clay in his hand. Like the moment before the Big Bang. Like the moment before I knew I was being born. She froze too. One eye started shining, the other eye started shining. The halo around her head... oh, this was a round neon light. Your stupidity is overwhelming. Kiss me, stupid. (Kim Novak, I don’t think she saw the movie.) She took my hand, right there, she took my mouth, right there she took my body, right elsewhere and spring and sunrise and nipple all turned reality.

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Religion God found religion called it Mankind found god called him Man and he worshipped, loved, adored. To God eternity is but years years are but seconds, instants, eye blinks he blinked and then he saw the crucifixion of Jesus another eye blink and he saw the burning of Bruno then the extermination in Auschwitz then the mushroom above Hiroshima... God made a fast forward and fast backward and fast between eye blinks and was horrified at his religion, his god God renounced his religion. God renounced his god. No worship. No love. No adoration. I’ll get along just fine without this pain, he thought, I’ll wait another few of my years and after they finish finishing themselves I’ll find a new religion. Until then I’ll stop looking listening I’ll plug my earphones and listen to some celestial music. They don’t need me. I don’t need them. I’ll not even wonder what next eye blink is going to bring upon them, the final bane?

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Nakedness Nakedness is boring like being stuck middle of the ocean and nothing around but the flatness of an endless horizon day after day after day like being stuck middle of the desert and nothing around but the darkness of a starless sky night after night after night. It’s the passage unnakedness to nakedness nakednessless to nakednessful unnaked to naked it’s the passage that is the enravishment of life the poetry like God burned on the tablets of the Covenant for Moses on mount Sinai like God was willing to forgive Sodom and Gomorrah if he found one verse of it there like God placed in the quill of Solomon writing the Canticle of Canticles the sunsets chasing sunrises chasing sunsets chasing gigantic waves middle of the ocean rolling the boat rolling life enravishing soul and flesh the stars thudding all around you in bursts of sand and fountains of glass middle of the desert quaking the earth quaking life enravishing soul and flesh. She looked at me, her eyes the size of light her tears the weight of beauty she stood up rolling my life quaking my life enravishing me.

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G Another one of those “started as a 100 words story then...” so... get used to it. May be not the last of its kind. The 100 words version follows, of course. * I had a boring job, but I did not mind as it was paying my studies. I worked at the university for professor Zandt, and my job consisted in calculating G, the gravitational constant, on a daily basis, based on a piece of equipment developed by him. As the name implies, G is an absolute constant, same like Pi, no deviations or tolerances there. However, while Pi is a mathematical constant and is theoretically calculated, G is a physical constant and is calculated based on empirical data, i.e. measurements. Therefore its precise value was a matter of debate and experimentation for... centuries. It still was. I did not question the roots to my professor’s obsession with the value, I was just running the experiments, daily, calculating the result and noting it in a paper notebook. Yes, paper; professor Zandt believed that important facts are to be stored on physical media rather than be entrusted to the whims of computer memory. Of course, secretly I kept the results also on in an XL table. The notebook went back about 15 years, and leafing through it I found slight deviations between the measurements, positive or negative, as boring as my job. This, of course, due to experiment related inaccuracies: measuring person, equipment tolerances, environmental fluctuations and the like (all of which parameters were registered as well). After a couple weeks on the job I was reduced to measuring, calculating and jotting down the results, not even paying attention to them. That’s why I was mildly surprised when one end of month, after I showed them to my professor, I saw him raising an eyebrow as his eyes turned upon me, inquisitively: “And what do you think of it? When did you have the equipment calibrated last time?” The following end of month a grimace added itself to the raised eyebrow. And the month after a wrinkle added itself to the grimace. I wasn’t really sure what was bothering him, the G numbers were their usual average value, but I started getting worried once he decided to join the measurements and calculations sessions on a daily basis. I don’t think he did not trust me, he was probably seeing something which bothered him but wasn’t’ so obvious to me, not yet. Finally I dared ask him the question, and his answer unsettled me. “Well, Jake, I hope I am wrong, I damn well hope I am wrong. Can you please copy the last 12 months G values into the computer and bring them up on a graph?” I did not have to copy them, I had them already in my XL file and I brought the graph up within minutes of his request. He did not even complain. Well, what I saw was the G values settle around some imaginary horizontal average, above or under it due to the afore mentioned tolerances, nothing special there. “Apply a 1000 magnification.” I did. “Draw a regression curve based on the points.” A regression curve, of course, approximates the theoretical value around which the empirical values oscillate. “Linear?” “Fourth degree polynomial.” I was surprised at the request – why look for a curve where there is just a straight, horizontal line? But he was my employer and I did not ask any question that might highlight some incompetence or inattention on my part. “Here we go.” I pushed the button and I gaped. Incredulity drove my fingers to choose a small portion of the graph and without asking permission I pushed for a 10000 magnification. The calculated line was slightly curved and clearly not horizontal – it carried a distinct predilection to move lower in value. “Calculate the curve.” The computer obeyed my shaking fingers and the exponent number against the t hit me like a hammer. The t was scaled in days but it did not matter at all what units were used. “Go into predictive mode.” His voice sounded dry, strained, hollow. I pushed the button. Then I instructed the computer to calculate the impact point where the curve would strike the horizontal time axis, and we both looked at the resulting number stupidly. “Where are you going, professor?” I asked, my voice not mine. He dropped his white coat on the back of a chair, picked his hat from the coat hanger and turned to face me. “Take care to inform whomever you think should be informed. The universe will end much earlier than...” he looked at the graph’s impact on the t axis “much earlier than 7072 days from now. Probably when G will get around seventy-eighty percent of today’s value. I want to be with my family. Good bye, Jake.” G could not change, it was a constant, it was part of the unwritten laws of the universe, it could not change any more than Pi could change, it could not change any more than... I kept looking at the graph, knowing the futility of trying to find snags in the equipment, or errors in the calculations or bugs in the programs used. Gravitation was disappearing, imperceptibly now but at an accelerating rate. I wondered when and how we will start feeling the effects. Was it universal?... probably yes. Will we start feeling lighter before Weight Watchers will feel there is some anomaly at play? Will water from the seas start floating into air before humans do, will air float away into space before waters from the seas, will the sun start expanding and swallow its planets before all this floating starts? When will the entire range of universal bodies disintegrate into aimlessly wandering dust without any chance for coagulating resurrection? I asked myself, without really caring for an answer. Gravity is the traffic cop of the universe, was one of professor Zandt’s preferred expressions. I did not have any hat to pick up. I just dropped my coat on the same chair he did and went to be with my family. I didn’t even bother to turn off the lights. * the 100 words version The job was boring but paid my studies. I measured and recorded the gravitational constant G for professor Zandt, daily. Statistics, probably. Everything was recorded on paper, 15 years now, by a variety of students. I showed him the last results and for whatever reason his face darkened. “Oh, God...” Following month he joined me in the lab. “Show me a graph, fourth degree polynomial.” I showed him. “Oh, God...” He left without a word. I looked at the graph, transfixed. G was diminishing at an accelerating rate reaching 0, i.e. the end of the universe, in exactly 7072 days.

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Swoon, three Lie at the bottom of the ocean under a canopy woven by strange fish and coiling weeds and a bubbling lava fountain molding to your curves smile, you won’t be crushed you won’t be boiled you won’t even be eaten they smile at you who’s this strange work of art masquerading as woman and writing poetry on the outside of bubbles rising to the surface where they explode upon the macadam of boulevards under the wings of dragonflies and between the pages of empty books? Lie upon the softness of clouds rainbows supporting you on all sides and the sun pouring an ultraviolet curse turning benediction when encountering you smile, you won’t fall you won’t burn you won’t even be asked to pay for the exclusive rental everything smiles at you who’s this strange winged creature masquerading as woman and writing poetry inside drops of rain falling to ground where they impregnate macadam boulevards and glide upon wings of dragonflies and soak into pages of empty books? Lie inside the embrace of my bed where petals filling the mattress ooze welcome to your sensory organs cobwebs hanging above you turn silver twining with the gold wafting away from your skin smile, you’ll be crushed boiled eaten you’ll fall burn pay with your flesh I smile at you I know this strange light masquerading as woman arousing my eyes with a million lumen of poetry blazing macadam to embers the dragonflies’ nation its fire remembers and worships the words in a gospel called... human.