Hobbies - Poetry - Anonn
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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.

TextBeforeDeath

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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.

TextBeforeDeath

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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.

TextBeforeDeath

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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.

TextBeforeDeath

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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.

TextBeforeDeath

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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.

TextBeforeDeath

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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.

TextBeforeDeath

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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?

TextBeforeDeath

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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.

TextBeforeDeath

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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.

TextBeforeDeath

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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.


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Swoon, four

    you know

    there is this raven inside of me
    powerful raven

    eagle, you want to say

    no, raven, powerful raven inside of me

    there is this cat inside of me
    powerful cat

    tiger, you want to say

    no, cat, powerful cat inside of me

    and now you’re gonna say puppy and I’m gonna say wolf and your gonna say no powerful puppy
    no, I was gonna say salmon and you were gonna say shark and I was gonna say salmon
    strange choice salmon, what about cod, or carp... hey are there also insects inside of you?
    yes, I say ant then you say wasp then I say again powerful ant
    microbes?
    not familiar with them, sorry

    there is this words peddler inside of me
    powerful word peddler

    poet, you want to say

    no, words peddler, powerful words peddler
    looking for the canticle to swoon you off your feet
    an all I find is a dictionary still waiting to be messed up into the passion of lyrics

    for a moment you looked deflated, dejected, dismayed and I almost pitied you
    proposing to you to sit on a fallen trunk
    on the grass
    we almost sat on an anthill


    I love you, you said

    and as the innocence of my green drowned under salt’s sudden invasion
    your hand tore at my skirt until it sundered
    yanked at my garter until it snapped
    grappled at my stocking until it split
    hooked into the that flimsy indulgence into decadence and debauchery and elegant intimacy
    and pulled until its tensile strength submitted to the physical laws of rip and tear
    and while it was still floating gently to the ground
    you swam my moat
    dismembered my gates
    crashed through my walls the way of a lump of burning coal through a mound of freshly fallen snow
    and let your millions of soldiers run wild through the muddy fields
    until they all died, to the last, in the fumes of those caustic mires
    dressing my insides.

    I felt you dying, with them.

    I took your head
    laid it on my breast
    and started singing to you.


    I love you, I revived feeling half way between holy and damned
    and undecided yet which way my clay should crawl

    your bare nipple proudly piercing a way to the sky upon the barren expanse of your breast
    just a finger away from my face
    with my eyes competing which of them should focus on the masterpiece
    until both won the contest
    at the cost of their controlling muscles and my blurring vision

    raven, cat, puppy, salmon, ant?
    eagle, tiger, wolf, shark, wasp

    word peddler?
    I hesitated

    poet, I conceded
    sacrificing my soldiers anew
    inside the caustic mires
    of your beauty.

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a shortie...

    to whet your appetite and wet your... appetite?

    I swear I could hear her laugh there, beyond the aurora borealis
    where a statistical mishap placed her dwelling.
    Mishap carrying back to the Big Bang?
    Yes, and carried over to these days by Bradbury’s...
    or Lorenz’s... or Lorenz’s... or Poincaré’s... or Poincaré’s... or Wiener’s...
    or whoever’s you wish butterfly effect.
    Clearly, this imaginary dialogue wasn’t going the way I intended.
    And if I am not an evolutionist nut but a creationist nut?
    (...yeap, definitely not the way...)
    Different parameters, same argument.
    Aha, Bradbury’s and Lorenz’s...
    ...and etcetera.
    I see.
    She certainly did not see the beads of sweat that started rolling off my forehead.

    I could hear the wheels and cogs clicking and clucking and clacking in her brain,
    locking on a different path.
    Is a shortie same as a quickie?
    Similar but better.
    Contrary to a quickie, in a shortie you can control, bend, create, adapt
    any rules to suit your fancy and increase your momentary pleasure.
    Momentarily monumentally?
    Any rules so yes, momentarily monumentally monumentously,
    rules in the physical, psychological, unnatural, mental, geological...
    Geological?
    Yes, you’ll see later, technological...
    Technological?
    Yes, you know what I mean.
    Yes, I know what you mean... giggle... this shortie is getting kind of longie, you know.
    I know, this is the only kind of promise that I make and cannot keep,
    the one related to words.
    And you keep all the other?
    I keep all the other.
    Like that you’ll love me forever and ever and ever and ever and ever?...
    Ten to the power of ten to the power of ten forevers.
    Insufficient.
    It’s more than atoms in the universe.
    As I said, insufficient.

    My shortie was moving from longie to long.

    Undress, I said.
    I’m undressed, she said.
    Lie down, I said.
    I’m lying down, she said.
    Let your fingers...

    The vacuum between my skin and hers absolute
    not even cosmic dust, not even dark matter
    muscles grappled around her nipple dragging the rest of my body in between her thighs
    past the curvature of curls
    underneath the miracle of the pinnacle
    petrified flesh insistently drilling its way in between tectonic plates that refused
    accepted
    shattered
    roared in sudden rumble
    forcing a moon hanging outside the pane to pull back a full mile in apprehension
    of cataclysm pending...

    Earth
    ruptured.

    Poor Californians, they probably thought it was the Big One, I laughed.
    I see what you meant geological, she laughed.
    Poor us, she echoed with delay, not laughing.
    Us?
    You miscreant, me minx, and now she laughed. Poor us, poets.
    She knew, yes, poor us poets.
    An aurora borealis razor wire forever between us
    and the only way for us to die into each other’s depths was by means of shorties.
    Or longies.
    Or whateveries.

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Bridal

    I was dressed all white

    white tuxedo
    white bow-tie
    even white shoes

    She was dressed all white

    white bridal dress
    white orchids
    even white spectacles frame...
    white lips?
    painted white
    white fingernails?
    painted white
    white hair?
    this one copyrighted to me

    The fields were dressed all white
    snow
    the wall were dressed all white
    wall-paper
    the nuptial bed was dressed all white
    satin
    and the white of her skin blinding none of my senses, none left to blind

    And no red stain following, you know
    I knew. I knew?

    I married her at fervor’s scend
    When innocence with madness blend
    Her body’s offer fragile lure
    Her smiles naive her words demure
    And when the moon impaled the bed
    And glinted in the dripping red
    I painted round
    The stain’s contour
    My season’s end.

    She married me at midnight’s toll
    While she a doe and I a dhole
    She tamed the rage astriding me
    Then offered lust upon her lea
    And virgin memories of mind
    In hip’s to hip euphonic bind
    The warm mirage
    In her decree
    Consumed me whole.

    I ripped a piece of bedsheet’s claim
    To fantasy devoid of shame
    And locked it in my sacred book
    To nurse my life’s decaying brook
    I was that special very first
    To answer her increasing thirst
    And now I’ll crawl
    Back to my nook
    To crave the flame.

    The underwear white?
    yours? mine?
    ours!
    maybe
    probably
    was white now dust

    from rust
    to dust
    through flogging lust
    and dying gust


    She gathered my remains
    mixed them with hers
    and promised me her virgin self
    in another poem.

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Bridal, study, two

    moon rays
    impale us upon the bed
    a human limited edition insectarium
    embalmed in the acrid smells of its own intoxicating mixture of liquid death
    a frozen image of love
    and eternity

    I
    impale you upon the bed
    the abstract design of immeasurable forces applied by impaled to impaler
    martial law decree metamorphosing into martial love decree
    metamorphosing into myth
    and eternity

    my lips impaled upon your teeth
    your nipples impaled upon the distal phalanges of my deceased fingers
    themselves attached with sinew leftovers to my petrified hand in its final convulsions
    our regards impaled upon our regards
    while storm decays into love
    and thunder decays into eternity’s silence.

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Bridal, intermezzo, three

    I gaze upon your nakedness

    light
    copulates with darkness birthing sunset

    body
    copulates with body birthing ecstasy

    I
    copulate with you birthing beauty

    time
    copulates with distance
    birthing nothingness.

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Bridal, coda, four

or

Cannibalism

    I sprinkle salt over your body
    here, there,

    I sprinkle black pepper over your body
    there, here,

    I sprinkle dill over your body
    here and there, there and there, everywhere,

    in the holds
    in the molds
    in the ever hungry folds

    are you going to boil me?
    we will boil, oh, we will boil, oh, we will boil
    are you going to chew me?
    we will chew, oh, we will chew, oh, we will bite and chew and masticate
    are you going to swallow me?
    we will swallow, oh, we will swallow, oh, we will swallow

    and then we’ll lick each other’s fingers with other each’s lips
    and then we’ll pick each other’s teeth with other each’s tongues
    and then we’ll doggy-bag the leftovers of flesh and skin and bones and other anatomy
    for much later consumption
    and consummation?

    when starving
    for that never again materializing
    meal.

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