Abstractism My poetry reifies my “it should be”s or tries to or maybe it pushes them further down into the kind of obscurantism that could be used as metaphor for black hole, rather than the other way around. I do not know, I never read my poetry with another’s eyes with your eyes. My poetry creates worlds real and if no inter-worldly diplomatic relations exist yet it is because no one yet went there to return, no one yet went there, period. Maybe because communication is bound to fail, every untried communication is bound to fail with lizards with spiders with dandelions with my poetry. Easier to fly to the moon, I know. More expensive too which makes it more marketable. “Hey, let’s attach a Nike shoe to the rocket” is a better proposition than “Hey, let’s attach a Nike shoe to this in pectore poet.” Or opscurus. Or tenebrarius. Or inlaudatus inperceptus incelebratus. Not that the Nike executives know Latin, but they know Dollar. Like all executives. Unlike you, you know also Poetry. You went to my world but you are no diplomat. You are poet, like me. We both speak to lizards, also to us. Maybe this should be enough? My poetry fills your pillow, pads your chair uplifts your breasts cushions your stumble offers a firefly’s light for your next step. Do you speak also to fireflies? Teach me? Do you see my “it should be”s? I sit at my desk, write this blather with nerve ends tingling for your tinkle jingle chime and hope that your next return from my world you tell me you found more of me. More of the meaning. More of the wishes. More of the “it should be”s burnt into your flesh as you, proudly, show me the scars.

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Incendiary Do you know how many secretions we merged? All? All would be impossible. Many. Which is not a number. Which is not a number. She looked around at the devastation surrounding us some tree trunks still smoldering. Are we responsible for all this? Unfortunately. Or fortunately. Didn’t expect it to be so incendiary. I took the ‘expect’ part as an insult but I let it pass because of the ‘incendiary’ part. Fire is contagious, you know, starts on a bed and ends eating the neighborhood... ...town... ...country... ...continent, world, galaxy. Maybe even universe? Maybe. I have to check. Maybe even us? Certainly us. We had nothing to dress, everything burned and that included fig leaves. I think Adam and Eve felt the same. Before or after they lost their innocence? They didn’t have any innocence to lose, innocence was a later invention. So what did they have? Love. Lust. Lechery. Lechery doesn’t sound respectable. Lechery is the epitome of respectability when it is for the woman one loves. Or man. Or man. Like you love me? Like Adam loved Eve. Like you love me? Like Eve loved Adam. Like you love me? If to judge by my degree of lecherousness there never was and there never will be a greater love. Strange unit of measure. One of twenty three. And the other twenty two? Even bigger. The smoldering trunks stood no chance this second wave, they turned glowing red before bursting into flames again same as the neighborhood, town, country, continent, world, galaxy... Universe? Yes, the universe. I checked.

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Encounters of the one kind Speed is essential in any real life love story. The slower the better. She smiled good humoredly with a bit of maliciously thrown in. Do you have any other word of advice? I asked, not really confident. Many of them, depends how long you stay. Depends also on how much I love you. How much you love me? Do you want it in 10-to-the-power-of-X terminology or in Shakespearean-blood-and-intrigue terminology? What about in some novel-not-yet-used-by-anyone terminology? Not even by you? Not even by me. She looked at me the way the sole of a shoe may have looked upon the ant to be crushed by it before deciding to side step it. I looked at her the way the ant may have looked up at the sole of a shoe about to crush it before knowing that the shoe decided to side step it. I loved her, I knew, she knew. She loved me, she knew, I knew. I told her, a few millions of words bearing witness to the fact, she told me not in so many words but in as many unexpressed thoughts. I was human, though, I needed expression. I love you. The way the Odyssey loved to be written by Homer and read by me. I love you. The way Antarctica hates each piece of ice melting to no return. I love you. More than the way God cried over each discarded piece of clay before settling for Adam. I did not stay longer than planned, it was not possible for any of us. I suffered longer than planned, both of us, horror stories of death by fire reverberating in our minds each time we touched each time we loved each time we burned. I left. No scars were ever going to fill up those smoldering craters dug into my flesh by the sole touches of her fleeting fingertips. I wondered if I would be allowed to board the plane lest the entire contraption bursts into flames.

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Silence Silence, even when agreed upon it, is silence. Birds halt mid flight rain does not reach down to roofs Earth’s creaking axis stops, seizes... I wait for the supersonic boom of your presence to re-emerge and birds will fly on rain will continue its way down to roofs Earth will creak on its axis, anew. My eardrum may split – drops of our spittle will heal the cracks my skin may split – leftovers of your traveling tongue will heal the cracks my heart may split – your rising smile will heal the cracks and create new ones in the fabric of eternity. Eternity will split? Certainly. Reflecting your smile. Will something pour out through the split? Happiness. Pure undiluted unalloyed happiness. You know I don’t really say these things, silence still rampant, birds still halted, etc. I knew. I know. May I nevertheless dream? You may. For me as well. Birds, halted mid flight. Rain, still not reaching down to roofs. Earth’s axis, seized. I wait. It will come. You will come. It will come. The end of silence.

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Blabbering away With God busy preparing the first accords of Beethoven’s 5th symphony a mischievous cherub was preparing the first words of my 555th poem long, long before any of us two was born, more or less at world’s begin still at the planning stage and long before the claying stage. Yeah, God’s long term planning, his cherub’s too. Yeah, I am a creationist when it suits me, like now. Aren’t we all? Free will? Also when it suits me, otherwise how could I blame someone else for my abysmal poetry, be the blaimee even a revolutionary cherub? Mind you, I refrain from blaming God for it, after all very few poets survived an attack of blood, frogs, lice et co. And these days he added also atomic bombs to his considerable plagues arsenal and I feel responsible also for my neighbors, and their dogs, and their LPs collections.

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Gretel You left behind a trail one mile wide (manner of speaking, not really) that even a vision impaired me (politically correct for blind) hearing impaired me (politically correct for deaf) speech impaired me (politically correct for dumb) IQ impaired me (politically correct for moron) could find and follow with his head shaved hopping on one leg and chewing Cuban tobacco (politically incorrect and even subversively dangerous). OK, sufficient parentheses, I believe. I found a button. Well, a button does not provide much direction unless if followed by another button, further on and then another button even further, before a gull swallowed it and I couldn’t follow it any further luckily under a clump of thistles I found a clump of buttons which told me I should start looking for another directional clue which proved to be a stocking old style, garter next to it, two shoes a mile further which I found by vision impaired luck due to a kangaroo (yes, kangaroo, yes, another parenthesis) hopping the right way since there was no other way followed by a torn sleeve at which point I started to hiccup followed by a second sleeve at which point I stopped to hiccup followed by a shirt with all buttons missing at which point I was struck by total speech impairment thus sat down to sew them back in case you might be cold by now if I find you then stood up and picked a bra... a bra? a bra? a bra? a bra cad a bra? as it was singing in my brain followed by a skirt... a skirt? a skirt? a skirt? followed by a pair of pink panties laced with ruffles sweet like truffles panties? panties? panties? panties? panties? (etc. for a hundred times or more) and I may have heard you giggle if I wasn’t struck by then with optional hearing impairment and if I haven’t had fainted with the delight of not having found you (thus staying alive). I opened eyes. First I saw green, forest, eyes. Then I saw red, fire, lips. Then I saw more red, more fire, more nipples dangling above me like church bells about to crush me. Then I saw life, variegated, indescribable, adoring life and all IQ impaired me (yet still alive, told you higher up) could think of was let my lungs take over the dialogue with the thesaurusless hish language of ooohhh and aaahhh and mmmhhh and other variations on the subject all ending with triple h. I found you, Gretel, I said switching back to humanish when you finished killing me. I even handed you over the shirt, one button still missing. You even refused to wear it letting me dress you with arms and skin and flesh and legs and mouth animal me offering woman you the analogy of fur mine with your head softly landing on my chest and your breath starting to tell me the tale of Hansel as well. I found you, Hansel, you concluded and I doubt if we ever woke up.

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Reader Read my poetry carefully, very, very carefully else you’ll miss the meaning and you’ll miss the gleaning of a pleasure animalic. You may still miss it even if you read carefully but at least you’d have tried and you’d know you had tried. Don’t expect to find any clue to any puzzle leading to any kind of treasure. Unless, if you call my mixture of mind and soul treasure which you should not. Because it is not.

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sight the sea behind you smooth, flat, glossy in a rippleless tourmaline-blue rigidity the sun behind the sea one starved-hair thinness above the horizon undecided if to continue up or down or rolling sideways on the sleek and curved surface curbed in its desire by its fixation with you you in front of the sea in front of the sun and your head blocks the burning sphere with a fiery hoop turning into a spikey halo at the ends of your hair turning you anything between a saint or a ghost or a splash of phosphorescent ink I mesmerized at the end of the sight line watching your cobweb thin cotton dress virtually smolder away in the glare while sharply defined wispy curls draw themselves on the disintegrating whiteness with the sharp end of a porcupine quill dipped in an inkwell of liquid shadow.

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Stones Mutilation, such an ugly word, one of the ugliest words in any language any translation any synonym and yet I persist in it. Mutilating concepts of modern poetry classical poetry ugly poetry, beautiful poetry, political commercial brainwashingal poetry I don’t even know why this is the way it comes out the way a rolling stone down the slope of a mountain doesn’t know of laws of gravity of Newton of mass and inertia and acceleration it just rolls, until it stops or disintegrates. I do not explain, mind you. I do not excuse, mind you. It is just another one of those stones, rolling.

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Oh lover oh lover Oh lover oh lover Come take my hand And let us uncover A stranger land Where lazy summers Draw flower beds And woodpecker drummers Weave golden threads. Oh lover oh lover Come taste my lips And while I hover Around your hips We’ll mix the day’s brine With honey’s dew And turn to moonshine My limpid brew. Oh lover oh lover Obey your heart And let’s take cover Inside my art And when this world Does end one day We’ll lie down curled In ever’s May. ...grasping the tune and the rhythm and yet not the spirit of The Brothers Four’s Cleano.

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Intentions My intentions towards you are disrespectful, at best. At worst too leaving me with such a self-defined narrow range of action and microscopic tolerances that if Earth wasn’t this pompous balloon inflated to such disproportionate proportions by whatever prehistoric pump I would have had long ago defied all leftovers of respectfulness, mine, and ravished all leftovers of respectfulness, yours that horizontal sword cut joining your cheeks and dripping with all known and unknown fires of Hell that vertical sword cut slashing your body in two and bubbling with all of Earth’s hidden squalls and all of Heaven’s hidden elixirs those small sword cuts separating eight of them your fingers eight of them your toes and carrying so many times so many flowers in so many Summers between them added tiny random sword cuts with the rage of incisors intertwined with tiny sword cuts carrying the quest of fingernails all over your body to finally leave you a slab of flesh rustling like a forest prey to the whims of a whipping tempest before ravaging fire takes over. Your intentions towards me are mighty respectful, at worst. At best too leaving me with such a self-defined narrow range of action and microscopic tolerances that if Earth wasn’t this pompous balloon inflated to such disproportionate proportions by whatever prehistoric pump I would have had long ago declined all leftovers of respectfulness, mine, and subdued all leftovers of respectfulness, yours that horizontal sword cut joining your cheeks and promising all known and unknown fires of Hell that vertical sword cut almost slashing your body in two with its strange fist raving with all of Earth’s hidden squalls and all of Heaven’s hidden elixirs those small sword cuts separating eight of them your fingers eight of them your toes and carrying so many times so many strands of my hair in so many Winters between them added tiny random sword cuts with the rage of incisors intertwined with tiny sword cuts carrying the quest of fingernails all over your body to finally leave you a slab of flesh rustling like a forest prey to the whims of a whipping tempest before ravaging fire takes over.

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Oxen The wagon rolls, I look ahead, the oxen heave under the yoke We near the road’s deserted inn where we’ll await that midnight stroke When past’s reluctant lords of life will strike their shields one final time And all my oxen, yoke and me will bide for scythe’s triumphal chime. I ask you, woman, will you share the moments left until all gates Will close forever in my wake and bolts will moor to iron plates That sunder heaven from its lust and hell from fields of butterflies, Will you, oh woman, wed my heart, my soul, my flesh and my demise? I promise you no promise vain I times be Abel, times be Cain But promise do I, to the end Your smile with sun and light to blend. I lead my oxen to the leys where many other grazed before Where shattered dreams and fallen stars have merged with myths from days of yore The yoke has fallen to my axe and lies a thousand splinters wide I let my heart bleed on the mound and it ignites like devil’s pride. I watch you running down the hill aflame with embers in your hair This be my ever last of bids, my ever last of passion’s lair You crush me with the vise of love and leave no pity to be found, The oxen ruminate the myth, and round they shuffle, round and round.

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and when and when I go and I forgo all that I know... here, thoughts I wrote hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands and I connected them in various ways and various styles and various languages and letters I sowed have sometimes bloomed into words sometimes withered into blank pages sometimes kicked me in the teeth like the mules they turned into and left me bleeding asking for no help from fellow, mule or human, melancholy slab of folly vile yet holy... here, memories, one cannot count memories one can remember memories even those forgotten even those one wishes to forget and cannot I never stopped wondering at the depths of that brain-cells sack hugging them all and protecting them all and when the right time comes letting them all out from the sack and drowning the owner, me, in a mix of sweet & sour & bitter & beautiful, yes, also & ugly, all seasons pass all life turns crass and tufts of grass... here, tombstones, accumulated and accumulating and yearning for the moment when accumulation stops family, close and far, friends, close and far, pets, close and far, lovers, close and close and never far, the shine of marble and the shine of candles and the shine of reflections in tears decorating spots on Earth I may never visit again desecrating spots on Earth I wish I never had to visit I will never forget, may I say ever? moon and sun and the one when I’m done... here, countdown, not much left, here, countup, much counted, here, countless ways to say good bye and none as beautiful as the one never said, and when I fly into the sky and when I die...

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The joy of nonsense & son Lately I talk too much about death, I know. Not that death is my companion. Not that I don’t wish it was my companion so I could poison it or push it under a bus or buy it a one way ticket to where it came from wherever it was or is, supposing I knew. Do you think death remembers its parents? Its neighbors its flag? Do you think it has a taste in clothes, in music, in smoothies? Do you think death is a man? Or a woman? Or gay? Do you think death has political opinions? It sure as hell does not discriminate, it always takes the good ones first, no? Do you think death can catch influenza in winter? I believe death is red. Tomato red. If you object you’d better justify your choice, what do you believe death to be – avocado green? Spaghetti long? Alligator hungry? I stand by my red and I do not have to justify it, after all I started this discussion, my prerogative. OK, by now, if you reached this milestone in my poem your reaction depends on who you are. If my friend, you tear out every last vestige of hair from your scalp and raise eyes to the skies mumbling... ‘oh, no, not again...’ If my lover, you pull up every single or double pair of panties you find at home and send me a relevant picture with a relevant text threatening no sex for the coming twenty three years unless I repent and recant and repudiate and recycle this piece of paper (I wrote it on a piece of paper) within the next twenty three hours and send you the receipt. If my critic (I believe the one that ends with c not the one that ends with que) you immediately inform president Trump with ‘I told you so’ and he will not answer but tweet back something about Biden’s prostate (may apply to mine too). If a random reader, I do not wish to lose you and I beseech you to forgive me invoking and blaming God’s plan and Butterfly’s effect (lately I cater to both camps, don’t know why, intelligent senility?) If you’re me, then I really don’t know what the hell I am talking about but one thing is certain – this piece of text HAD to be written, period. Oh, and let others explain, suffer, comment... I simply enjoyed my no effort. Period.

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Bench I sit on a bench, at the left end of it, you sit at the right end. Another bench. Another park, another city, another continent. I look right. You look left. I move a quarter of bench rightways and you move a quarter of bench leftways. Then I move a quarter more same direction you too we are both at the middle, there is no place for two at the middle. No, it matter not another bench, park, city, continent. And half a world in between. Irrelevant. You clamber and sit on my knees hands clasped around my neck breath burning a hole through my cheek, I hope no teeth are showing, it would be gruesome. I wish I could do the same but we cannot both sit on the knees of the other it would be an Escherian paradox in two dimensions an impossibility in three dimensions and I’m too heavy, anyway. Your clothes cannot contain the heat. Undress, I beg, or you’ll go up in flames. You first, you answer. I don’t want you to run away screaming, people are still asleep, I try. Hell is down not up, you continue your line of thought, not having listened. You undress. The chilly morning air builds landscapes of goosebumps all over your body some areas more visible than other some areas more elusive than other some areas breathtaking. Like my nipples? Like your earlobes. Close your eyes, I’ll undress too. You don’t close your eyes. I am half a world away, I won’t run away. Where to? Why to? I refuse to answer. I undress. The bench underneath begins to smolder my turn to go up in flames. I know why. We saddle each other, somehow Escher is not a necessity anymore. Probably distance is multi-dimensional. Make love to me. Make love to me. F would have been a more appropriate word but children might be reading it. And the setting does not lead to F but rather to ML, so I give in. We give in. What with autumn’s leaves fluttering down to your shoulders and turning butterflies upon propinquity and the eye of the breeze trying to steal your breasts from the confinement of my palms and all those puppies and their puppy eyes looking up at us from all around us... ...where did they come from? you giggle, embarrassed. Our sharing? I try, not really certain. We wait until the last one is asleep. The last one snores. Constriction! Coarctation! Contraction! The world is down to pinpoint size we are down to pinpoint size on pinpoint the rage uncontainable the rage rages Rage! We slide from the bench in between the hugging embrace of the puppies butterflies thickening on your shoulders the eye of the breeze still failing to steal your breast from the confinement of my palms Will the world grow back to its bulky self? And we will be sitting on different benches, different parks, different cities, continents. So how did it just happen? Magic, I answer. Heart magic, is my extended corny answer, and I really do not want to understand it. Just to live it. Live it with me? We get up. I from my left side of the bench, turning left. You from your left side of the bench turning right. We start walking. Thankfully the world is round, till we meet again, I promise. Till we meet again, you echo. Or, maybe, it was the other way around?

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Alliteratively Kiss? Lips linger lustfully locked. Hug? Hands happily holding hips. Poem? Metaphors mobilizing more meaning. Is your world always alliterated? Not necessarily. Nice notion. What about something with A? Fast, don’t think. Are all approaches acceptable? Huh, I see... did you prepare for this dialogue? (yawn) Yes, yesterday yvening. You’re cheating. Yada yada, yammer yammer. Just trying to keep it interesting. Could have said Yuppie, yes, yesterday. Yahoo! Now, this gets too boring, you know? Know know know know. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Now, this is the spirit, you know? Pause. This is not part of the dialogue. This is a pause in the dialogue. Sex? Actually, at this stage we were not talking anymore, just practicing. Composition. Concatenation, compaction, convolution.

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Show Show me the beauty asleep in your shirt the beauty asleep in the folds of your skirt the beauty asleep in the depths of your mouth when you open it wide and your cranes travel south, The beauty of ridges that fingerprints hide you burn down my castle to ravish my pride the blinking ordeal of those forests of green you climb my oppidum with armies of sin and argue my body’s defenseless sophism to slobbering muteness and wild anarchism, Show me the beauty of traveling quake with crocodiles chasing my flesh in its wake of traveling skin over pastures of lust with shattering bones grinding slowly to dust then bury my head in that muscled domain that hosts navel’s rich pitter-patter of rain your fingers relentlessly pushing my head my mouth’s trailing slobber fermenting in dread, One knee preys on sunset, the other sun’s rise I prey on the vista invading my eyes A gravity fist horizontally pulls To depths of a chaos in search for the rules About to collate seeds evading my will With life from your canvas and ink from my quill, The hasp treads the loop and the padlock clicks shut The metaphor dies and a kiss clears all smut And under the dome of a ray-riddled hutch You show me that you which my hand craves to touch.

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One One million readers they have. And one million dollars, or more or less or more or less. Are they worthy of one million readers? And dollars? Maybe they are maybe they are not maybe they have one hell of a marketing machine where money does not really matter especially in the beginning. Afterwards is the avalanche effect and no one gives a shit about quality or value or worth. One hundred thousand readers some others have. And one hundred thousand dollars, or more or less or more or less. The rest ditto, saving some ink. What about one thousand readers, I sure as hell wouldn’t mind that even without associated dollars. One hundred readers? Well, if worse comes to worse... But one reader? One, o-n-e reader synonyming with only, lonely, alonely, etc? OK, I know, I may not have been completely honest with you my secondly, additional, unintentional, circumstantial reader, see, one, o-n-e, synonyming with only, lonely, alonely, etc is ALL, A-L-L, everything, the entirety of, the totality of readers I want, need, desire. More is nice to have one is must to have. As long as this one is she. She, the one who, when reading these lines automatically supplants she with you and then leans back laughing at everyone who does not understand my saying. She understands, the only one in the world who understands. Singular. Unique. Maybe she even... loves me?

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One, two And then I lost my one too. I lost her, you depends on who reads these lines. I don’t blame her. You. Damn Cronos the bastard with all infinity to play with he decided to focus on this singular slice of nanotime the nanodifference between us blowing it up to, well, bigger nanodifference smaller than it should have mattered but big enough to have it matter. To her. To you. And I lost her too. You. Less than a blink in time, much less actually than nanotime probably more like nanonanonanotime and more zeroes behind the decimal point of importance and a gigantic slice of nanohappiness sliced off. Torn. Ripped. Reft. Rent. Rived. Ruptured. Cut. Hacked. Slashed. So many synonyms to so much teranegativity. Of course I keep writing. Maybe she will for a moment forget the divide and her eye will wonder my way followed by her heart followed by her smile. Maybe even her hand. A nanomaybe. Worth the effort. Until the effort will not be there anymore lying alongside me. For an eternity bigger than even Cronos can conceive, serves him well, the bastard. And until that moment I will wait. For her. For you.

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Dude and I Dude, please let me carry on Songs of praise from dusk till dawn Then from dawn to dusk anew Songs of ‘woman, I love you’. Dude didn’t really like the idea. After all the effort He put in creation, He expected songs of praise and love about Himself, not about the piece of rib he tortured and torsioned in the thing called woman. This piece of clay whom He gave some (limited) brains was overstepping its boundaries. I should have stopped with dog, He thought. Sure, He could devise some solutions like a better flood or a better virus, but He didn’t feel like starting all the toiling anew – another six days of labor? and another Saturday? c’mon, enough was enough, He wanted some relaxation. And His angels were threatening to unionize, ha, imagine communism in the skies. Dude, I know your mighty hand You could smite me where I stand But as much as I love you I love more her dripping dew. For a moment Dude was taken aback, for a moment He thought He was going to use His mighty hand to smite him where he stood, but then re-considered. Hey, he did say that he loves Me, which is already an admission of kinds. He also did not specify the kind of dew he was referring to, so he probably did refer to lips dew, not some other ignoble kind... well, I did create this other ignoble kind Myself so I better stop complaining to Myself. I think this is something I can work with and in a few millennia things will get better. Thank Me for not letting them live more than 120 years, certainly not this duding character. The word ‘more’ bothered Him subconsciously, though He would never admit to owning a subconsciousness - what a damn long word, they should have stuck to Hebrew. Oh, he’s talking to Me again, yes, not all is lost. Dude, a father you’re to me Love me like I do love thee This word ‘love’ is kind of lame Love you both, but not the same. Hmm, we’re getting there. Admission of love, better than admission of guilt. He ran a few tests, the usual, you know – blood pressure, heart rate, saliva acidity – they all pointed to the fact that he was actually telling the truth. On an uncontrollable impulse (another thing He maintained He did not admit owning) He went back and read all the past writes of this talking clay (He could read almost as fast as Superman, but the clays had a way of abusing their He given imagination), and was forced to sit on a cloud and think a bit more. Then He re-read a second time, a third time... Then He started laughing, disregarding the fact that this triggered hurricane Omega (they were out of clay names already). Oh, My I, or maybe it is more correct grammatically speaking, to say Oh, My Me?... he really has Me hidden in his heart, some corner I didn’t even know I created (hey, am I to remember every schematic?) and when he talks about woman there is always talk about Me, and when he talks about woman love he always talk about Me love, and when he talks about making love to woman he always talks about thanking Me for sculpting this piece of creation (even Michelangelo didn’t do better, ahmm) which permeates his every pore of mind and spirit and body of course. He didn’t laugh again, the clays were running out also of Greek alphabet letters by now. Instead he smiled, accepted the petition of His angels on condition that they change a few clauses, and listened to the last stanza. Me, I love clay so much! Dude, I’ll be forever bard Thoughts of you divine, unmarred, Thoughts of her, on other hand I will hew with carnal brand.

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Linguistic wonderings and wanderings I’ve never admitted yet, or before but I suffer from this brain malady with a name so long and unpronounceable that no one in his right mind dared yet excogitate, a brain malady that drops me unexpectedly down these abysmal abysses with walls so smooth and oily and impenetrable that a cat could not hang on to them, or an octopus, or even a Mallet’s Mortar shooting at it shells adorned with moissanite tipped hooks and grapples and barbs and porcupine quills and other paraphernalia. Why moissanite rather than diamond?... a simple matter of price, mind you. See, the malady started its attack already, I hope it will not extend its unwelcome stay beyond this unwelcome poem, well, we’ll see. So let’s start with swan-song, who was the antiquity idiot who invented such uninventable combination? Carmen cygni, yes, carmen cygni my foot, the right one which is where a swan once bit me in a frenzy of jealousy and protectivity. Luckily it did not have hyena fangs. I believe the inventor was short hearinged, you know, like short sighted so he saw a nightingale or a harp or a turkey and he thought it was a swan. Maybe he was also short smelled, short touched... what else is there?... short tasted. Not short imaginationed, mind you, and reaching notoriety up to Bill’s times Hark, canst thou hear me? I will play the swan. And die in music. Willow, willow, willow— Moor, she was chaste, she loved thee, cruel Moor. So come my soul to bliss, as I speak true. So speaking as I think, alas, I die. and beyond... Geoffrey Chaucer, Nicolai Abildgaard, Alfred Tennyson, Led Zeppelin... Clytemnestra, another arrow to my linguistic wanderings bow, do you think hubby Agamemnon called her Clytie or Clytoria or Clo-Clo before during after their intimate, passionate encounters around killing her first hubby Tantalus raping her seeding her son Orestes sacrificing her daughter Iphigenia bringing her home lover Cassandra getting killed by her sharp labrys so much blood and incest and treason wrapped in those revered myths that today would get them an NC-17 rating even for reading only if not a Fahrenheit 451 event at the hands of some proselytizing do-gooders, oh, Clytemnestra, a name bringing to the forwards of my conscience disassociated homophones and homonyms considered indecent the kind of the kleitoris concealed by the labia pudendi and the beauty of thoughts of shared passion embedded in its modest structure versus the noisome efforts in relegating any mention of it in any literature of beauty, techno-medical and degrado-pornographical excluded. Deformed meaning? Deformed hearing? You are probably right. You are probably wrong. You’ve been warned. And what about virtureality? Don’t google it, it does not exist, yet, I just coined it. And if you google it tomorrow and it wall-papers your screen it means you stole it, someone stole it. I coin a lot of new words, this one is especially dear to my heart because of someone specially dear to my heart to whom I dedicated a not so great poem, fact which does not contradict the previous statement, titled this way. Virtureality You will find online a lot of material about virtual, and virtuality, and real and reality, so what the hell is my brain envisaging to mean differently by this ‘other’ word, you ask. Listen, don’t ask, interpret! I do not control the excess weight and the excess creases of my brain pushing me along these wondering and wandering paths and if you lobotomize them, provided you could find them, this kind of debatable poems will not come into existence, same being true for myths and children stories and theoretical math, thus accept, interpret and if you interpreted wrongly that’s great because you tried, what is virtureality? a world, a rich world, an incredibly rich world where you move in and out of dreams at will where you create and destroy and recreate lives at will where you are the god and the other God accepts your decisions at least until the end of the story the poem the sentence. Ism. What about ism? Well, you could call them philosophies, or ideologies or religions type capitalism, communism, totalitarianism, sufism, judaism, catholiocism, budhism anarchism nepotism McCarthyism plagiarism and various other ism’s but there is a new one not named yet and yet it seems to have invaded and conquered the minds of all new era politicians and leaders to their kinds and this is selfishism. Mine, mine, mine (remember Gollum?) mine! the chair, the office, the leadership, the country the money ah money ah money and the rest can go jump from the highest bridge or tallest building or parachute without parachute for all these new generation mumbo-jumbo’s care and one particularly comes to mind the one who set the foundations for changing president into presidonna as a leading step towards further changing it to presidonnald and redefining the American constitution and its destitution towards idolatry and the setting of his image next to the Statue of Liberty or maybe even replacing it. And in one year probably adding his effigy to Mount Rushmore’s quartet, his lawyers would see to it, hmm, yey! There are other linguistic wonderings and wanderings I regularly dab into like all those words starting with caco or all those words ending with nym or all those words ending with ist, phy, ics and some even stranger triggers to my neurological paths but then I would be writing a dictionary, not poetry. So I’ll give it a break for now. Maybe later on I will add a “two” poem to this one. For now I will just give my back and fingers a break, go drink a smoothie and repair some roof and watch a debilitating TV show, all good for their regenerative powers. I hope you did not read this poem, I really do. Me.

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Ocean When I smoke which I never do I think of you. Running on the ocean side with waves desperate to catch our footprints and we desperate to jump from footprint to footprint and we losing every time and they winning every time until that armistice moment when we all give up the chase and they return to churn and to mourn the litter scumming their kingdom for which we apologize and we return to churn and to mourn the life lost away from each other for which they do not apologize though they lay in between for so many uncounted and uncountable and unaccounted for years. Your hair gathers sand and I work days and days getting each and every one of the sand grains out. I breathe, most of the time. I never think of you when I breathe too busy handling and analyzing and sorting the masses of rubbish invading my lungs. I build us a solid raft autumn leaves glued and sewn to each other and throw it middle of the ocean then throw you on top of it then throw myself on top of you hoping you won’t pay attention which you don’t. I discuss the situation with orcas and sharks and passing flotsam all too busy trying to eat me rather than help me wake you up and let you fall asleep again in my arms. Probably I should have tried another ocean or puddle or barrel. I wash the salt from your body and from under your fingernails and from between your toes. I think of you all the time left after not thinking of you, smoking and breathing irrelevant. The waves died the ocean almost died, I find it under broken chairs and soggy cotton wads and empty, not always, shopping bags hardly alive all of us. I propose to you love eternal knowing eternality to be an eternally limited proposition and you answer by starting a collection of thrash for humanity’ ocean-thrash museum asking me to join you before you accept or deny my proposal and you apologize to me and to the ocean and I apologize to you and to the ocean night finding us exhausted on our microscopic thrash island and its mephitic smells. Is your poetry also here? you ask meaning probably something a clothespin pinching your nose I surely hope so, I answer meaning probably something else clothespins pinching both my nose and my ears since I probably prefer not to hear any answer. You remove all clothespins, mine and yours and point to your meanwhile liberated left nipple though I know by now we probably mean the same Your poetry is also here, statement, not question. The rest of liberated you lies on the wet sand with my index finger drawing continuous contours around it and the ocean erasing each again and again your sigh arising always at the same point in the cycle until I give up drawing and let my finger linger at the sigh-spot for as long as the ocean allows it. And you.

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I guess I guess my books could have been thinner, by some not by much had I but chosen not to start each poem on the odd page for some obscure reason which I cannot reason out any more maybe I wanted a gimmick or maybe I wanted them artificially thicker (by single percent numbers, mind you) or maybe it made me feel good to flick through the pages and always see the titles same side of the book like east always east and west always west and porridge not everyone loving it... whatever it means. I guess my lines could have been shorter, not really shorter but looking shorter if I just placed a random carriage-return (as once called) here and there randomly the way universities teach and contests are won and fashion and fad and temporary coteries à la mode are defined or define themselves or are brought about by those meaningless in their minds but deep in their pockets, gold or virtual. Would compensate the previous guessing paragraph relative to book lengths and number of trees saved or sacrificed. I guess I could have written poetry. Not erotic drivel. Of course I like my drivel else I would not have written it and I ain’t ashamed to admit, contrary to others. After all each have their specialties architect plumber gynecologist drivel writer prime minister and so on. Some jobs paying more some paying less. Some not paying at all. And if some university would have offered me a cathedra on condition that I end my slovenly, nefarious influence upon the brain-washed masses populating their thickly packed auditoriums I would have said “make love to you” (my politeness/deference/respectfulness is boundless) and refused. I guess in one or several other lifetimes you would have loved me for words. It will stay a guess, I guess.

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Those Words Modern world. Modern words, or rather modern use of old words not always in the best of taste but in the best of modernity streetability slang. Buddy-buddy. Chummy-chummy. Matey-matey. Ha! Now, imagine this modern world but with all these words banned or forgotten or never existed be they four lettered or three or five or whatever-lettered words how would our daily sound? Certainly possible but clean? Or simply and alienly ridiculous, at least to our present ear? You’ll need some imagination for the following, since in this “new world” I cannot use these above mentioned words, I can merely use analogies and your up-front forgiveness for my idiocy is an assumed certitude. OK? Fine, let’s start with examples. Assume you made a mistake at an exam and you discover it too late, what would you say out loud? The obvious or make love, make love, make love? Or imagine you are fed up with that fedable up someone what would you tell them at your ragest – make love off, make love you, what the make loving hell? Ridiculous you find?! Well, this is the kind of world we are now defining some small details about. Other examples? Let me see, look, in such a polite world where sob would be just the synonym to cry the other one we like using these days would sound something like you born of a female canine species or in short boafcs (not as piercing as the original but hey, it’s this kind of world) rejecting someone’s argument would be phrased along the lines of bull’s entrails expectoration rather than the “other” one and someone you despise would be called a backside orifice opening or an excrement head or a rooster suckling person... if you get my drift. Shooing someone away? Well, in addition to the above mentioned make love off you could also use urinate off. A bit cruder but still within definition – no four lettered words, no three lettered words, no five lettered words and what they stand for. Get stuffed would still be ok in this world, after all one stuffs also turkeys and things. Goddammit would also be OK, calling upon God is always ok, no? and Bloody Hell could be construed as both medical and ethical, thus acceptable. But inferring that people are masculine or feminine organs should not be tolerated and should transmogrify (I have no idea what it means) into cognomens (another one I have no idea what it means) such as in: you reproductive female organ! or in: you reproductive male organ! or if subtlety yet sharpness is demanded then such as: make love you you reproductive organ and leaving the gender undefined... this would be a real killer with no parallel in the other world. OK, close parentheses. I think we bloody hell should keep on using fuck and shit and other members of the clan else we all die of old age by the time the insultee gets whatever we mean by whatever, and we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?

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Sense You see, I have been blessed with this eighth sense. Which other two? Forget them, skip them, they are meaningless in this context, the eighth is the one I can boast about. And do. You see, I know when I write divine poetry. I know also when I write shit poetry. This is my eighth sense, part one. Part two is I know if someone shits me and praises my shit or abhors my artistry and decimates my divinity, divinity i.e. divine creativity and not the “other”. So whichever you are, don’t! I know. Come back only when you are awash with honesty, if to be Shakespearian and then praise me or abhor me I will love you. Cross all my hearts and hope to die, fast.

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Strangers By the sun’s height over the horizon your eyes are blue and your name’s Lou. She turned off the mike for a few seconds, I guess she did not want me to hear her laughing. We were on the same continent if you account for the bottom of the ocean as part of the structure, but on different planets if you account for everything else. It was an across-the-world dating site, voice only, my first try and probably the last. Curiosity, you know. She opened the mike again. I measured said height resulting in green and June. Hmm... so maybe it was not my last try after all. Intelligence at the end of a phone line was not what I expected, maybe I was wrong Did you use a sextant? I asked. No, I’m not that rich and or talented, I used an Internet table. And my ID. This time it was I who closed the mike for a few moments and when I opened it again she snickered audibly. I guess you had to laugh off-line, right? Right! The discussion started taking unexpected turns each turn finding me more intrigued than the previous one. Laughing was not an issue anymore the mike staying open even during the most embarrassing moments or the most stimulating ones. Like when she asked me my age. Like when I asked her what she was wearing. Like when she asked me my postal address. Why, do you want to investigate me? I want to send you a package. Naked pictures? Also, when I was three months old. Also a few books, CDs, DVDs, if we’re ever going to fuck you’d better know more of me. Do you like poetry? I asked just to kill the embarrassing moment No, she answered. Even rhyming poetry? Worse, she answered. Can you give me your postal address? I asked. Why, do you want to investigate me? I want to send you a package, I do not have any three months old bare-assed picture of myself but I have some rhyming poetry I wrote I want to send you. You know you risk that theoretical future fucking moment? she mussed. I know. Three months later. Mr. Post did not get any richer with one package each way, I am sure. The continent size reduced to one bed size the different planets reduced to same one bed size we reduced to crazed animals finally settling their bodily arguments with one final sigh... well, more of a growl. If I remembered correctly, we did not exchange one word from the moment she landed to the moment after the mentioned growl ended. I believe I fell for your books and CDs and DVDs, I offered. I believe I fell for your rhyming poetry, she offered. Strangers. No more.

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Not quite an argument So, really, why does one write poetry? No one remembers it no one reads it no one in his right mind buys it. Maybe some college professors to justify their paid desks and flaunt artificial knowledgeness towards the innocent flock grazing the waxed floors of their auditoriums and paying with daddy’s hard (or easy) earned money. Or mommy’s, if you insist. Maybe also the afore mentioned flock to get their pass/fail points from the afore mentioned professors. But does anyone really READ it? Dive into it, mine into it, dig into it until the fingers bleed and the spades blunt. Does anyone really try to understand it? Yes, it carries some glow from the “classics” or even “recent classics” not that they were more of a success than of a fad, is it reason enough? I wonder. I keep wondering. Maybe I should stop wondering and keep writing even if I do not remember ninety-nine percent of whatever I whenever wrote and once I become a classic myself someone else will ask the same question and maybe by then there will be also an answer. My answer to myself? Because one loves it. Because I love it, damn humanity’s short span of interest and brain activity and though it is one of the most disregarded forms of art it is one of the deepest sincerest most accessible and most evocative forms of art planted on this planet. No one asks a nightingale the reason. No one should ask a poet the reason.

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Sex lay me awash with sex let my concupiscence betroth your prurience and we’ll chisel longer words straight into bones while you smear thick layers of flesh upon mine sprinkled with thin crumbs of glinting skin allowing me no time to avenge my departed morality and lost time before its departure. let me disembogue into you as I anneal into emptiness of reason do deliquesce into fermentation of wantonness and the sizzle of lancinated insides rise to nostrils with the screech of desquamated outsides like a symphonic orgy of birds trying to find their places on disemboweled staves. leave me hunting for a lifetime lost faltering between worlds unknown to man and worlds unknown to this man while caviling at the injustices befallen me since creation and then gather my entire corporality to lay it down gently in your lap just underneath the garlands of your breasts.

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Fame. Or is it fameish? Or maybe fameishness? Nobody thinks I’m as good as Shakespeare, an overwhelming minority thinks I’m better the rest don’t know I exist. Same idea when comparing to Bukowski, again overwhelming, again minority but this time another minority, I wonder why. In a state of complete and total excitation I tried other names: Cummings, Pound, Plath, Eliot, Yeats, Lorca... each time decisively winning by a minority of 1-2 in a total count of 2-3 the minority component changing each time entirely dependent on the street corner where I ran my research. Significant find, don’t you think? I intend to expand my research from East Papua to West Papua and after this, who knows, the world? I mean, world domination was never my intent but given that it is offered to me so readily who am I to say no? BTW, I will have to raise my books’ prices, everyone thought I was an idiot for asking such a low price for such high quality and kept pointing to their temples with their index fingers going round and round.

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puzzle beauty brought you into my life, yours, bucketfuls of word-puzzles broken into single components which you could magic-wand into bubbling brooks and rising larks and falling snowflakes upon the ends of my eyelashes beauty took you out of my life, the lack of it, mine. it was short measured in seconds, in inches, in pounds it was not as short as it would take not to be cut to slivers. we’ll never walk we’ll never talk we’ll never endure through that riveting gasp that kneads steel into wax and pounds flintstone to chalk we’ll never abide by the groveling tide we’ll never emboss into sinew and bone the profound veneration that alloys groom and bride. read it. learn to. we’ll never live it. accept to. by the time you solve the last puzzle there will be no last puzzle left to solve.

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Tools I listen to the orchestra tuning their tools, ok, they call them instruments, so what? Still tools of trade like hammer, rasp, drilling machine I can also call my tools instruments. So I don’t compose a concerto to one vise and three screwdrivers and I don’t play one since no one ever wrote one but still, these are honorable tools and I play them no less enthusiastically than a cello, or a trombone, or a piccolo like my father before me and his before him and how many before that? I like the dirt under my fingernails making me one of the many those who really count.

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the 8th ...and on the 8th day God was bored and then He had this wonderful idea and He gave His creation free will and from that moment on there was never a dull moment. and at a certain moment it even became maybe... too much. and it got Him thinking...

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Rant. Seventh? Last? I read them. Not all, the good ones, the so called good ones classics and modern classics and neo classics and similar classics trying to understand the roots to their success and influence carrying throughout the masses limited masses, that is, but still – masses, and rave reviews and repeated editions and similar extraneous manifestations of success, not necessarily money. And I found. It is crap. And shit. The more the better. Crap and shit. And the crappier and shittier the resulting world, the better. Distribution. Fame. Compilations, anthologies, fifth editions. Bestsellers. Crap. Shit. Literally and figuratively speaking, there is sufficient analog material available in among drugs, smoking, alcohol, self mutilation, suicidal drive, STDs, jail, parental abuse, parental neglect, parental violence... yes, parental is such a favorite pass-time. Admittedly all this carnival stops short of C words, C male and C female, not always but mostly. Yey! such gentleness of spirit and consideration. And I? Where am I? Damn, nowhere near. Beg to be exculpated but no parental problems, no drugs, no revolution except socially justified, yeap, down in the doldrums and lower. Thus no fame for me, no fifth edition, no bestseller. Damn it, not even first edition. I can’t claim I’ll survive it, I will not but I can claim acceptance. Ranting acceptance but acceptance nevertheless. Listen, you, the one assumedly reading it, I have as much life behind me as you have before you. So maybe you’ll get there, good luck! And if you can do it without crap and shit even better, it means you didn’t sacrifice your beliefs on Molech’s altar. It means your talent was spotted, and accepted. Hallelujah! Inch’ Allah! Soli Deo Gloria! Amen!

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Ecology I have to make sure my books are printed on FSC approved material controlled foresting, recycled non-bleached paper pages soft and thin and malleable ink water-based and preferably food-safe glue non-toxic binding thread fully soluble thus allowing fully flexible and fully ecological solutions and answers to the question “what to do with these books?” after (preferably) buying them or (less preferably) stealing them and (preferably) reading them, at least partially the options variants as in the following, non-exclusive, listing with estimated percentages of the total quantity distributed all based on pre PPP (Personal Private Prejudiced) research: 0.0001% to private shelves or national libraries or lost in public places 23% to composting bins, preferably aerobic though anaerobic would do as well as long as you and your neighbors agree with a degree of stank small price to pay for saving the planet, you’d preferably run the book through a powerful shredder beforehand to help with the process and only then mix with peels of oranges, pieces of rotten tomatoes, scraps of meat, borscht leftovers, torn cabbage leaves, sugar, spoiled eggs 11% to support feet of wobbling tables or cabinets though no responsibility accepted by the publishers for eventual collapse of said tables or cabinets and resulting damage to persons of all sexes, pets of both sexes or property 34% to be sent to sub-developed areas around the globe whereas these books should be dis-paged to individual pages and these pages to be fully mottled and then un-mottled several times after which procedure they should be impaled upon nails of various sizes on walls of private or public outhouses for the obvious use of keeping the planet and people thriving upon it clean and literate (some of them will know to read, I imagine) 3% to feed goats, some like it mainly mixed with fresh cabbage leaves 6% to be carved in between the covers and used to smuggle firearms, drugs, cheese, soup, waffles, diamonds and similar to prisons, from prisons, to mental institutions, from mental institutions, mainly the thick books 15% to be used as individual pages to wrap fish in the market place, small fish, mind you, say sardines they could be also cone-formed for the storage of seeds, cherries, blueberries and similar but nothing liquid, mind you the-rest-of % ... imagination is the limit... origami folding, open fire supplement (one can try to fry potatoes in it), paper confetti, who throws it further games, weight lifting competitions, ransom messages cutouts (not recommended, letters too uniform), bullet penetration tests, winter stuffing for shoes, counter weights for cranes when mixed with concrete, platforms for short people, headgear protection against heavy hail scafanders sink weights balloons ballast weaponry (throwing off the walls of a castle on attackers heads if a time machine would bring us back to that period, still theoretical). Now that I am certain my name will be immortalized on the walls of the hall of fame if not for poetry then at least for ecology and now that the goals of my art were made so plainly clear to me and to a multitude of 2-3 other people by me I have no choice but follow my destiny and add a few more kilograms to said art. Oh, the beauty of this art scraping my shoulders to bleeding raw...

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Bukowski I read Bukowski, I think I connected. Probably only partially but partially enough to call it connection. I thought I connected to you as well but I was wrong with him it was probably because I was close to the age when he wrote those lines with you it is probably because I am far from the age when you read these lines. I read Bukowski, some lines he says I would have said the same but better some lines he says I would have said the same but worse some lines I did. You agree with some of his lines I agree with some of his lines, we are not always in sync. I certainly agree to his one word answer to those asking his advice on writing poetry. Don’t! His answer. I read Bukowski, I did not yet finish but I could write his rest of poems blindly. Except for a few words I would probably nail it, say – 93% ? Nothing to do with predictability, more to do with the mood he put me in. I will have to read now three times sequentially Cinderella in order to erase the lingering taste of futility, impotence and cynicism. Not that I mind aftertaste of such kind, it is reality after all, but I prefer to save the streak of optimism in me that tries to survive life and a Cinderella ending kind of helps. I do not mind if you consider it childish. I read Bukowski. I think I will give up reading Bukowski for a while.

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Mixta Cogitationes Before my soul returns to dust, my dear, Et ne peut plus t’apprendre du désir, Before I melt my quill inside my art Et l’hirondelles avec ces doux mots partent, Just watch how sunset dips its evening brush Et peint ton lit avec des tendres taches Where I will lay you into whisper’s lull Pour faire l’amour cernés par des étoiles. Oh, don’t wake up from this embracing blue Et n’oublie pas ma vie, ma mort, et nous.

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In a way Once I was a handsome guy. Once I was wiry, sexy, alluring. Once I was attractive to women, and not only but only that counted for me. Now, I am not handsome but handsome in a way. Now, I am not anymore wiry, sexy, alluring but wiry, sexy and alluring in a way. Now, I am not attractive to women but still attractive in a way. In a way even more in this way, all of above. Now I do not care about handsome, wiry, sexy, alluring, attractive, etc. I do no try I accept and all I receive is truly beautiful soft sexy alluring attractive etc so much more than once in a way.

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Beyond's There’s a window. There’s a lake beyond the window. There’s a forest beyond the lake beyond the window and in the forest wolves, bears, deer. There’s a room beyond the window this side of the window and in the room red embers singing crackling wood tunes inside an open fireplace and I try to sing along poem tunes succeeding only in the crackling aspects, not even not my poems sound better. Yes, lack of oxygen takes over my expression though the logic stays intact. Your beauty intact. Your beauty incorporeal this side of beyond the window as you pendulate to me from me to me from me in the rocking chair your eyes glued to the row of willows pendulating in the passing breeze imitating you beyond the window before the lake beyond the window before the lake before the forest beyond the window before the wolves and bears and deer. Don’t read one, write one, you say and I don’t read one, I write one. You close your eyes. You smile when the verse is jocund you tear when the verse is tragic you light up when the verse is erotic... you read my mind as I write. Snow has fallen, you say. The bedsheets are cold, you say. Now read it into my ear, you say. You smile you tear you light up and with you the willows and the lake and the forest and wolves and bears and deer rage in illiterate appreciation of human passion. Morning finds us curled into each other. The fire long gone cold the hanging willow tips trapped beneath the lake’s glazy surface the forest painted with a thick whiteness shaped times wolf times bear times deer. Death? Life? Limbo? I frozen into the immobility of beyond wonder beyond beauty beyond the silence of a breast fallen over my arm and the only sign of life an incidentally passing third party might hear are the soft snores of your puppy under the bed.

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Click! Click! I pull both hammers back, click! click! I have it in my sights it’s barely advancing in the deep snow the chicken dragging lifelessly behind it senses me. It stops. It turns its muzzle towards me knowing what is to come, waiting for thunder. You kill me, you kill my cubs, go ahead, you can. I can. I guide the hammers softly back to their rest and turn my face sideways. The red tail disappears in the snow. Life has made another choice today. For whatever reason I feel good.

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DQ What is your DQ? I asked. DQ? she repeated, puzzled. Yes, DQ, I repeated, Dummy Quotient, and my face was not there anymore as her hand lashed out, losing only a microtomic thickness of epidermis to the tip of her fingernail. Because only a high DQ would ask me ‘why do you write so much poetry lately?’ when she knows that She wakes in the East and she sets in the West And she’s muse to my ink’s disenthralling behest With those forests absconding behind dropping lash And my mornings to evenings with laughter awash. What is your DQ? she asked, back into my vicinity and I feared the microtomic thickness would turn millimetric thickness. DQ? I repeated, puzzled. Yes, DQ, she repeated, Depravity Quotient, and my lips were not there anymore as her teeth lashed out losing various other parts of first clothing and then flesh bare of clothing as they disappeared into various other parts of her body lashing out first redefining and then undefining the thin perceptual border between depravity and desire deluging. What is your DQ? I asked, later, losing nothing this time if not moments of serendipity. DQ? she probably whispered, or maybe it was a butterfly fluttering by? Yes, DQ, I repeated, Delicacy Quotient and she did not answer she merely repeated earlier hell, or heaven, or whatever a human mind cannot comprehend.

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Erotistry Erotistically speaking, I am second to last, I stated proudly, in this two competitors challenge. I and then the rest. And the public is? she asked. You. And the referees are? she asked. You and you and you. And the prize is? she asked. You. Very erotful, she smiled. The world didn’t exist, she behind her glass of beer I behind my glass of beer, the world didn’t exist. And if you lose? she asked, the tremolo unmistakably there. Then you don’t give me your body and I die, I said, not even the shadow of a tremolo’s shadow in my voice. ...and thus you are trying to corrupt the referees even before the games begin, she said, another hue of tremolo invading the space the first one proudly owned just moments ago. I know of no more incorruptible referee than you, I responded draining the last of my beer and pulling out the pen. Chapter one, I said. Of how many? Of as many as you decide. Chapter one, I said, repeating myself. * It was after a key turned the room into impenetrable realm. It was after unclothing reveled secrets of creation the masters of creation never engendered and its slaves never desired, before. It was after foreplay of forepaws and hindsight of hindlegs and various other mixed-up terminologies tore gales from unfathomable depths of lungs and left the rest of bodily constituents prey to the misery of profanity and upheaval and delirium of after, again, and again, and again... how many times? I opened eyes, sequentially, my four limbs tied to four bedposts in perfect Vitruvian imitation and you on your fours just above me your lips barely brushing my lips your nose tip barely brushing my nose tip your eyelashes barely brushing my eyelashes your eyes crossed the ferret the cobra the tiger about to pounce the softness in that regard turning dropping snowflakes to tumbling nails and as my eyes focused and crossed and grappled into yours you languidly started gyrating your body above me until you were facing towards my toes and your nakedness started advancing in inimitable felinity away to somewhere my eyes uncrossing with every passing moment rippling shape of muscle glinting droplet of humidity locked bolted latched to that departing end of woman ferreting me into a litany of raging curses and conjurations that slashed impotently at the potent binds eating into my wrists and ankles while imperturbable you contemptuously continued that contumacious course until you halted above a jar overflowing with the viscidity of honey and slowly dipped one nipple in it, hanging breast following, then other nipple in it, hanging breast following and then you gyrated back felinity advancing now towards me living behind a train of sticky splotches with billions of ants and wasps and butterflies battling lives over them yet all I could see were those desynchronized pendulums advancing towards me growing in size in urgency in menace my brain decaying exponentially from millimating to centimating to decimating until one after the other the dangling torture carriers tarried above me lowered their load of nectar into my gaping mouth then again then again... the hell with nectar, I crave the carrier, I screamed... ...and will you behave if I unleash you? Will I behave if you unleash me? ...and will you abide by my bidding if I unleash you? Will I abide by your bidding if you unleash me? ...and will you...? I tore through the bonds broke the bedposts misbehaved and misabided and mis... Morning couldn’t find us, there was not much left to find in that fleshy tangle of knots and knurls and knars, three mornings had to invest overtime to disentangle us, not that we were in a hurry. * A fly was sipping the leftovers of my beer. I tore the page and pushed it towards her then wrote on the top of the following page Chapter two. Of how many? she asked again. How long? she asked again, differently. Until when? she asked again, differently differently. Until you, I answered, not so mysteriously and bent over the paper again. Or until end, I told myself, whatever comes first.

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Interview One hour later. Say, are all your poems, one way or another erotica oriented? All my poems are, one way or no other, erotica stained, suffused, soaked, impregnated, even those that are not, not way and not other. And you keep writing? I keep writing. How many this year? Let me see, ahm, January 1st, January 2nd, January 3rd... no, January 3rd there were three, January 4th... OK, OK, I get the point. No, you don’t get the point, erotica is an art, my art and I am damn good at it. Why should I stop? Can I stop? Could a da Vinci stop? You compare yourself to da Vinci? You’re a bit outclassed there. No, I don’t compare myself to da Vinci, I am much outclassed there, he is a class on his own as were William (Shakespeare), and Pieter (Brueghel), and Auguste (Rodin), and Elvis... ...(Presley)? Yes, I heard the parentheses, I hope I pronounced them correctly. I see you did your homework. I did. Only men in your list? You interrupted me. She smiled, the first smile in the encounter. Margot... ...(La Fonteyn). Maria... ...(Callas). Nadia... ...(Comaneci). Emily... ...(Dickinson). And couples, any couples you intended to mention before my uncouth interruption? It was my turn to smile. The ice was broken. Laurel and Hardy, Fred and Ginger, and thousands of others in singles or couples or multitudes. I don’t compare myself to them. I compare myself to their stopping will. None. Neither I. Or maybe better said either I. None. She had stopped taking notes a long way back in the interview. You are a strange man, she said. I am a nonesuch man, I said. I am just a stopping-will-less man, and this about defines it. Now she laughed, finally she laughed and she felt good about it. You know, I came here determined to either blast you off the surface of Earth or worship you on it. I leave with none of these. She stood up. I simply like you. She handed me a card. Call me. I think I may make a good subject for you. You mean like a muse? I mean like a lover. She left. It was not the last of her that I saw.

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How many different ways there are to say it? Say, are you trying to seduce me? she asked. Who, I? No, I am trying to sing praising tunes to the wandering dunes where a sweep of your hand harvests stars from the sand... Hmm, you are trying to seduce me? she hmmed. Who, I? No, I just try to let armies of runes descry why in the dunes after you wave your hand stars reflect from the sand. I actually do think you are trying to seduce me, no? she looked at me askance emphasizing ‘do’ and ‘are’ but hesitating on the ‘no’. Who, I? No, I kind of try and probably fail to describe green lagoons losing tears amidst dunes when your face flees the hand stars descend into sand. You are trying to seduce me, she stated the question mark gone, a smile pulling corners of lips to corners of eyes. Who, I? You decide, I merely try my hand in or at or with or to join unversed roving buffoons drudging taciturn dunes dreams of us hand in hand seeding stars in the sand. I decided. She didn’t tell me what.

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A man under the influence You dragged me from rapt abysm to paroxysm of esoteric words from inane mires betwixt suspires to trills amidst of birds, You seeded inmost to me wake of deprival the savage revival of verses thousandscore the heartbeat thunder that rips asunder through silences galore, You smiled at me and mountains from crumble and oak trees from tumble rewake to sun delight the Ides of March witness a deadly pen’s swiftness that stabs to death the night.

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Starts You entered the airport and we started kissing our first kiss. We took a taxi and started riding. We entered a restaurant and started eating. We entered another restaurant and started eating. We entered a third restaurant and started eating. We went to a museum and started gawking. We went to a cinema and started seeing a movie. We went to an ice-cream parlor and started licking ice cream. We went to a one-night hotel and started doing whatever people do in one-night hotels. Wherever we went we were either kicked out or had to leave in alarmed hurry leaving a trail of fiery destruction in our wake. Not intentionally. But unavoidably. We went to the airport – another airport, the first was still being reconstructed and started kissing our last kiss. The airplane had to leave in a hurry. Luckily, for all the passengers except for me, you did not fly with me so we couldn’t start anything.

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Shakespearitisms He was a very humil man... Humble, you want to say. No, humil, I want to say. Why do you keep correcting me all the time? No one corrected Shakespeare and he also kept using strange words. He was doing no such thing, he was using the words and slang of his times and composing beauty with them, you use words of no times and compose confusion with them. And why would you care? Because I want people to buy your books. People do not buy my books, aha! I said triumphally... ...triumphantly... ...winning the argument, my intellectual superiority inflammating my chest. Inflating. Women, must always have the last word. She started annoying me. Correcting me, reading my thoughts, what next? Wearing my aftershave? Buying my books? I decided to change my mood from moronic to patient, persuasive, or as they say in French - changer mon fusil d'épaule. English, please? Her ongoing listening to my thoughts was disconcerting. Sorry, no good translation available for the expression. And stop reading my thoughts! She made a face that could mean anything from go f yourself to go f me. Listen, say I want to emulate Shakespeare, say I wanna... Shakespeare would not say wanna. Say I kinda... Shakespeare would never use kinda. OK, now listen woman, who BTW I am deeply in love with... Shakespeare... Yes, I know, Shakespeare would never use BTW BUT if he did use wanna, kinda, BTW and whatever else, would you have objected? Would anyone have objected? And if he was the one loving you, would you have objected? Ha, I got her there, I got her to thinking though I wasn’t so happy with my last question. Hey, you can’t unring a bell, right? I thought, hopefully she will not answer? I thought knowing she can read my thoughts, I thought. Les risques du métier, you know. The métier in this case being lover. I decided to push my momentary advantage further. You know, words you would never blink at even once when hearing them today like unaware, green-eyes, lackluster, bandit, dauntless, lonely... he coined. Even undress, haha. She was still thinking while I was still undressing her in my mind (out of control association of ideas) hoping she could read only words, not images. Say, I discern some blurred images... Hey, your shoes are nice! What are you chewing? Today is after yesterday! La la la!... In vain, I knew it was in vain. Say, why do you bring so much master S in our discussions, lately? Hey, maybe not in vain? Are you obsessed with him? She kept pushing me eastwards. Are you not supposed to be obsessed with me? My knees hit the edge of the bed. Is it pictures of master S that I discern in your mind? The bed rose to meet my other end. Is he always half naked? Gulp. Is he always entirely naked? Gulp gulp. Do you always have this reaction when you imagine master S naked? Gulp gulp gulp. Say, I am not so sure but are you sure he had green eyes... additional gulps. and long hair... More gulps. and breasts?... I did not have any time left for gulps, I needed all my gulps for my breath and my sanity and my apotheosisation. ...apotheosis. I lost consciousness, manner of speaking. This was one scene master S, luckily, never tried to describe even with his broken Early Modern English. A lucky stroke for the theater world... he would have died of a heart attack so early in life. Say, you bringing him up again? Hey, I am smitten with his endeavoration to reach perfectibilation and completitude. I gave her ample reason to correct me. She did not. Good sign.

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Cave Winter, your side of the world. Immaculate, innocent, incorrupt, vestal, virginal, pristine. White. You hate leaving foot-deep imprints in the freshly fallen snow and yet... so beautiful, so symbolic of you one and nature one and you two together one and none and nothing else to disturb perfection falling flakes, hanging icicles, tiny needles of wind... Yeah, sure, none and nothing to disturb perfection if not for the unleashed four-footed one-tailed furry fury criss-crossing between your legs like a demon swarm ripping lose from hell and chasing everything in sight and out of sight from the smell of your today’s breeches to the smell of yesterday’s foxes to the smell of tomorrow’s bears... she stops. She suddenly stops. “Hey, girlie, girlie, here...” you call but she remains frozen. “Hey, girlie, girlie...” you call again but she remains rigid, lips curling slightly back, horrifying fangs showing, hair ends making slow advance muzzle to tip of tail a growl a bark... The mass of air splits thunder I emerge from worlds beyond grab you by the waist drag you to my world and close the portal behind me not before the four-legged fury follows in her teeth sunk deep into my ankle drawing blood. I do not mind the blood. I do not mind the pain. “Hey, girl, easy girl,” I say and the dog lifts questioning eyes towards you and as you nod your head lets go and coils in a corner, growling ceaselessly. “Are you frightened?” I ask. I ask you, not the dog. “No,” you answer, kneeling and pulling my trouser hem up. “It’s bad.” You look around and seeing nothing suitable you pull your shirt out of the belt tear a long piece and tie it around the wound. “It is a cave,” you state matter of factly, looking around, “is there a world outside of this cave?” “I do not know, do you want a world? You asked for a cave so I created one, shall I create a word as well?” You do not answer. “Are you not afraid?” I ask further, partly surprised, partly relieved. “No, I am not afraid. I asked for it, why should I be? And thank you for dragging my doggie in as well.” “I did not drag her, she dragged herself,” I smile at the dog who looks undecided between the desire to tear me to pieces or to lick me to death. “Do you have something hot to drink?” you ask. I throw another log into the fire, the cave around us lighted by tiny coal sparks exploding all around us and a few flying fireflies buzzing a halo around the dog’s head. Then around yours. “Fireflies mid of the winter?” you smile, knowing the answer. “Fantasy allows for anything, fireflies in the winter, I kidnapping you, a cave on another world away from the world.” “Even for hot coffee?” “Even for hot coffee, or chocolate, or soup, or milk...” “Milk for the dog.” I pour a bowl of milk for the dog who decides to let her good nature get the upper hand and licks my bandaged wound asking for forgiveness. She didn’t have to ask, it was nice she did. “Do you have some warm blankets around?” you ask. You lie on the soft sofa, you asked for a soft sofa in the cave so I created a soft sofa in the cave, the blankets up to your chin the hot coffee mug moving rhythmically to your lips and from your lips and to your lips and I do not know anymore which part is my creation and which part is reality... “Are there bears around?” you ask. “Do you want bears around?” I ask. “Are there eagles around? you ask. “Do you want eagles around?” I ask. “Do you want to make love to me?” you ask. “Do you want me to make love to you?” I ask, and then point to the one-eye-awake nightmare sleep-make-believing in the corner, “will she not mind?” “Not if you love me.” “Not if I love you.” None of us ends the statement with a question mark. She does not mind. The doggie. The mass of air splits thunder. You open eyes, look around you, the snow slightly higher the foot-deep imprints behind you start filling up the mass of snow around you unperturbed by even the slightest of imperfections. “O, God, day-dreams...” you admonish yourself and turn around. “Hey, girlie, girlie...” you call the mutt to follow you and you kneel next to her as she gets close to you. There’s something strange with that piece of cloth hanging from her muzzle, there’s something really strange.

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there not there wherever Look into my eyes. Doesn’t matter there not there wherever look into my eyes and find there home for pains for joys for life, love, answered question marks and exploding exclamation marks I’m there whenever you need me there there wherever. Just look into my eyes. Find them. Take my hand. Doesn’t matter there not there wherever take my hand and find there warmth for freezing breath for freezing fingertips for freezing flesh bared of pretense and bared of questions and full of exclamation marks I’m there whenever you need me there there wherever. Just take my hand. Find it. Hear my voice. Doesn’t matter there not there wherever hear my voice and find there succor for cracks in dreams and crevasses crisscrossing desires and abysses gaping hungrily around you to steal your reason and drown your avidity for creation I’m there whenever you need me there there wherever. Just listen to my voice. Hear it.

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Unique Disregard rules and regulations and recommendations that force you through the narrow funnel of some snobbish know-it-all’s, Allow termites and rats and moles to gnaw your dam to dust and let real you burst and overshadow the unreality surrounding you, Mold the fire of your lava and the sweep of your hurricane and the nutrients of your river into those words that you alone can bend to a will forcing them to burn through blocks of marble and slates of iron and slices of oak on their way to become mind statues and eye nuggets and pages in a book of uncountable dimensions. Your voice the green stain in the yellow of a desert. Unique.

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naked's my naked fear is to appear my naked self afore you, elf your eye to curse with thought averse your heart to lose to thought bemuse. my naked crave is to embrave your naked self before me, elf my eyes to nurse with rhyming verse my heart perfuse with godly muse.

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Shrapnel Never used it before, shrapnel, not as far as I remember anyway, strange that I found use for it now same as for mansion. Strange ideas. You cut through me like saber shaped shrapnel the gash large enough for a house to pass through, a mansion, see? Look through the gash use tunnel vision see those galaxies? They are real though not real real, I placed them there, for you not to feel lonely for you not to feel sorry for the gash you opened but elated for the view for the gluttony of stars for poetry yours. Do you recognize it? A crow flew through a murder of crows, mind you, I think I love crows, more intelligent than me. At least in love affairs. None. I’ll never use again shrapnel at least until I use it again, thus all options are covered no promise broken. Same for mansion. Same for gash, though I used it already and I’ll certainly use it again. Same for crow. Same for you. Again. Again. Again. Guess what follows...

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Of geographies and geometries and sex Your legs were pointed east-west. Doesn’t matter which left and which right, does it? Yes, sometimes north-south and sometimes north-north-east-south-south-west and sometimes... okay, take a compass rose and decide what matter is that they were always at one hundred eighty degrees to each other... well, almost, well, I know you’re not a ballerina and splits or spagat or spaccata is more like my dream that more like your specialty and reality was more like, ahm, east-south-west, to name but one possibility i.e. one hundred thirty five degrees, closer to your bodily limitations and acceptable relative orientations sometimes trying more into the one hundred eighty sometimes more into ninety sometimes into zero when you wanted either to punish me or to delight me, depending on when in the process you decided – before, during, after?... OK, I know, there are additional complications to this educational expose this due to us being three-dimensional creatures and using just 2D Euclidean geometry may be misleading to the masses. And then we may be in need for 3D Euclidean geometry. Sometimes, for example, your body lies in one plane yet your feet extend above it in another plane, sometimes perpendicular to the first sometimes not sometimes together like in two I’s side by side sometimes separated like in one V connecting at a crucial point sometimes trying to achieve an O always imperfect and always crushing my spine, I wonder if an R could be achieved or a W without breaking any bones. Geographical references are even more difficult to apply, though we could use zenith and gravity as directional references but these would be easier applicable to me and my whatevers than to you and your wonderfully complementary to mine whatevers. Additional difficulties? Easy. Your legs are composed from a variety of segments your arms are composed from a variety of segments your body is composed from a variety of segments none of which accepts being confined to one or two or three or whatever number of dimensions we may accept as given to us eternally moving eternally attacking barring demanding locking interlocking outerlocking leaving poor me lost in my mushy adimensionality until you decide to lend a helping hand and help me find the one and only uni-dimension of any meaning applying to me and I let it take control forgetting anything about geography and geometry and Euclid and sex when we are both mowed down from whatever dimensionalities to a rigid singularity with nothing around us except the freeze of eternal space and the fires of eternal novae inside us... even eternity is not eternal. Eternity ends. You curl in defiance to any compass rose dictate and whatever dimension Euclidean rule everything about you soft and cuddly and invertebrate and you gather me to your chest letting me sink inside your embrace the way of a burning thorn in honey.

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QED You are proof to the inexistence of gods. Gods would be envious creatures. They wouldn’t have allowed the existence of someone so good at the harp of words that she could sing them out of existence, Someone so good at guiding my mind over the harp of words that I could sing them out of existence. That I can sing them out of existence. Quod erat demonstrandum.

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Shakespiritisms, two Listen, if Shakespeare would have been born these days and written those words he would have been panned, banned, oh-manned by the hoi polloi of critics, literati, intelligentsia, philosophiae doctors in litterae and clerisy of this world, dying of scurvy and hunger while the Rowlings of this world would have kept on making their billions. If I, on the other hand, would have been born those days and written these words I would have been quartered, iron-maidened, beheaded, spiked, burned at the stake by whatever equivalent of the hoi polloi above mentioned was active those days while the Rowlings equivalents of that world would have kept making their billions in whatever equivalent coins and measures were applicable then. And this is where the symmetry ends. While he, then, was accepted by the hoi polloi of relevant mouths at his time and is at my time I, now, am shirked by the hoi polloi of relevant mouths at my time. and there is no way to test the symmetry at his time. Ah, would have been nice to be burned at the stake, would have meant so much would have meant that it mattered to someone sufficiently enough to pay attention. Say, you’re still obsessed with the Shakespearean subject? Or what? I am still obsessed with the Iean subject. He, Bill, is just the crutch I support my I subject with and you’re to blame because you sent me this book of his and I keep rolling his phrases around my mind (not all of which, admittedly, I understand) and it keeps me awake dying of scurvy and hunger while the Rowlings of this world keep making their billions. You’re partially insane, you know? But instead of getting farther from me you inched closer. I know. There is, though, one point in which I win hands down over him, and over all the Rowlings and over the entire hoi polloi above mentioned past and present and future. Hmm, I wonder what that would be. You didn’t sound convinced. I lifted towards you puppy eyes, at least I thought they were puppy eyes and I didn’t even try to make them puppy eyes it came natural. Puppy eyes. I have you, I said. You The publishers excuse themselves for obliterating the rest of this poem thus preventing any kind of criminal and/or civil and/or class-action lawsuit brought against the company due to graphic descriptions of an intimate nature way beyond a child’s and/or an adolescent’s and/or an adult’s and/or a libidinous person’s eye and mind and comprehension [sic].

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it’s you, somewhere there inside abet fire with desire when you pluck that rebel lyre let your horses run the courses painting flames in your discourses winds pelagic visions tragic weave them through your poem’s magic barter horning with a morning every bridal bed adorning fill the terces glowing verses as your pen its light disburses.

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Absolutes, two Was there a ‘one’? I don’t remember, so I call this one ‘two’, just to play it safe. Do you always play it safe? Depends. Thus... no. No, agreed. I could imagine her fingertips flitting above the keyboard writing some snappy answer then erasing it after careful consideration and mellowing the tone. Absolutes what? she asked. Senses. I can hear for example the grass growing. Everyone can hear the grass growing. I can hear the grass growing in your garden, I replied and before she could answer added... I can also see the moon, absolute vision. Ha-ha, I can see the moon too... Yes, but there is no moon here, I see your moon, and it is a nice thin crescent. Sure, you took it from the internet, I know the site... Will the internet know about the plane just crossing the moon’s line of view right now? Quiet. Maybe she went outside to see, maybe she was freaking out. Lucky draw, lucky guess... but she did not really seem convinced with her solution. What about the sense of touch, absolute too? Absolutely. I sounded smug but I was not. Your lips are soft... ...shall I repeat my ha-ha?... ...and there is a soft breeze now touching your left cheek. Quiet again. It can all be circumstantial, she was thinking or rather I was thinking that she was thinking. Taste? Thank God she was not hysterical. I believe gin-tonic, around three minutes ago, following which you chewed two green olives. She was back two full days later. I left the computer on but there was no sign of her until a beep made me aware of a new message waiting for me. OK, there is a bunch of magicians who can do much better than you – David Copperfield, Dynamo, Penn & Teller, Carbonaro... This is your last chance to prove your pretense, lover. Pause. Smell?! There was defiance, expectation, challenge... maybe even entreaty in this one word? Smell, she said. The last of the senses. Well, she asked for it. Yesterday... huh... 7066 kilometers away huh?!... at one hour fifty three minutes PM huh?... you made love. Probably to a non-present me. A flood of beeps invaded my space. It accompanied an ohhh composed of seventy-four h’s trailing the o followed by one hundred thirty-two smileys of all shapes and sizes and colors all of the happily smiling type. Not even one wink. Or bawl. Or wiggle. Well, admittedly, some of them blushy. Happiness. There is only one thig that can beat this, you messaged waiting for me to rise to the bait. And this is? I rose to the bait. To reduce the 7066 to 0... and she disconnected. OK, an order is an order. I mean, all these absolute remote senses may be great and fabulous but still... I started walking.

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Un-poetic I don’t know, maybe I should write about September? Or preferably October? November? No, not December, December is the last, the end, finito, I prefer to stay optimistically one step ahead, or rather afore... still hesitating, help me decide?! Not very popular, any of them, April May beat the shit out of October November in every category – music, poetry, theater – I guess apocalyptic thoughts are present only in apocalyptic minds closing in on their apocalypse, personal as it may be, and then still – these minds need the means to express themselves and find listening ears in a world that does not give a shit for this kind of apocalypse. Yes, I used the s-word twice in this poem, I know. It’s appropriate though maybe not educational but, hey, who gives a shit (3rd one, last?) about education when apocalypse knocks at the door? Fine, settling on November not that it matters, sounds more poetic than October and less abused than September, at least I think so. Have you ever thought of making love to November? Even if inside it’s hot July and stormy March still it is November outside. Of course November can be beautiful with all those gold and copper and bronze crowned once trees now cathedrals and yet the definition could hardly apply to me since my gold and copper and bronze have gone bare not unlike a plucked eagle, dead a shaved lion, dead an antlerless megaloceros, dead and yet so like their hearts I inherited eagle, alive lion, alive megaloceros, alive but who gives a shit (4th) about heart when headdress is gone and November is come? So you think I sound scared. And why would you think so? Pissed off is what I sound (so glad I can use the p-word instead of the s-word) pissed off that my November will never meet your June July August pissed off that my heart will not get a chance to prove its worth over my headdress pissed off that my body will never melt into yours pissed off that your June July August flower will never burn in the sun of my November. Shit! 5th. And last. Oh, so un-poetic!

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Lost Art Lost on me that art engendered by our ancestors before the invention of write and read and further cultivated by our other, more recent ancestors after the invention of write and read but before everyone had it and finally reaching the summum of evolution at the hands of our contemporary ancestors more or ancestors less when everybody knows read and write and compute and internet and tiktok and so on what I mean it’s lost on me the oral art. Poetry, storytelling, theater, oratory, sermon, lawyer double talk... lost on me. So I’m afraid I am going to lose you because of my ineptitude at this art form. I don’t even mention the oral art of singing be it hymenaios or epithalamium or serenade or aubade or aria or rock or punk (hey, I do mention it, damn, told you I am inept at oral art be it even in written form) because the oral art of singing will bring upon me an eternal curse of meowing cats and a few dogs joining as well. Plus a hefty fine from the neighborhood police. I am desperate. I don’t want to lose you yet I must. My oral art insufficient. Lost. I will not hang myself, not in Belgium at least, it is too heavily taxed here, by meter of rope noose excluded, plus VAT. She looked at me, pity in her beautiful green eyes enveloping me like the noose a neck (idiotic metaphor, I know, still in that mood). Then, strangely, her face started changing hue like some strange traffic light a red developing at chin level and slowly ascending to forehead level and then developing at forehead level and slowly descending to chin level and after several such up-down-up moves she closed eyes sighed took a deep breath and exhaled one long... there is other oral art possible... after which she turned and ran away so fast that some of the red hue lingered behind until it dissipated in the gentle morning breeze causing me to bite my tongue (when she turned to run her skirt lifted slightly above knee level, if you didn’t guess). I remained behind, perplexed, mystified, befogged... could there be a solution to my oral art dilemma, disaster, discontinence (I have a vague feeling this last one may try to mean something else) and the girl I love may have tried to hint at it? Without saying it? If there was a solution I was going to find it may it even cost me more that the Belgian tax, VAT included. I rushed to blog groups... I rushed to facebook instagram twitter tumblr youtube... I rushed to a local lawyers firm (first half hour for free)... I rushed to an ATM (to pay for the 2nd half hour)... I rushed to a fortune teller then back to the ATM then back to the fortune teller... I rushed to a museum claiming all arts... I rushed to a kennel (one never knows)... I rushed to a library and the librarian condescendingly told me to look for Come Ma and when I returned a bovine regard her way she pitied me dragged me to an aphotic corner of the establishment where all vegetation was yellow going on reddish-brown and the few human specimens present were reddish-brown going on yellow and where she shoved a heavily dog-eared book in my hand and observing my bewilderment she opened it at a certain page pushed my ass into an empty chair and pointed with a knobby finger... there! And there it was, this strangely named Indian book and the definition of oral art. Another kind of oral art, mind you. I followed the same facial changing hues my lover followed earlier on then I surreptitiously photographed the page put the book back on the shelf, hopefully the right shelf - I was too agitated to pay much attention – and ran out of the place rolling and rolling the images in my mind, text superfluous. I looked behind me... no, police was not following. I called my lover. I kneeled in front of her and she knew it was not yet for a proposal. I looked up at her and when she closed her eyes I looked straight ahead of me. After several sessions I was an artist. Strange art, the canvas participating in the creation effort but such beauty, oh, such beauty resulting from our shared effort pity we couldn’t share it with the world. Well, some art probably better stays... private. Probably. Definitely.

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Idyllatry I’m going to hover from webs stretched above like lingering thoughts I’m going to write you a poem of love with dashes and dots and when you’ll demand of your lips if it really behove to tie their wishes to mine with a hundred score knots I will let my tear drop with my rhyme’s latest crop like a bundle worth naught, I’m going to paint in your mornings a moon dropping ribbons to leas I’m going to swindle late April to June and seed May inside trees when the obstinate seasons will call for the cranes in my rune to share their lives with the mystery lands beyond wandering seas I will whisper your call and await through late fall for my terminal scrawl, I’m going to sing songs I never have known blowing breath into leaves I’m going to drip sweet together in lone under vine cluttered eaves with a rustle awakened to climb to its nest in your moan I will fold lung to lung and to heart as my chest slowly heaves the ink in my pen will retreat to its den as I fade in the glen.

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Softly Softly, you slide between crisp bed sheets the way of wind between flittering leaves, hospitableness envelopes your contours the way of water finding its way around the smoothness of pebbles, thoughts invade your mind the way of nymphs dancing from nenuphar to nenuphar until they collapse in the agony of exhausted pleasure, you fall asleep confident the way of a puppy against the warmth of its mother bitch belly and you both chase robbers and butterflies and tender caresses in your shared dreams, you shudder briefly gaze into the surrounding sea of darkness and then turn on your side to enwrap me into you fusing to me the way of hot wax infiltrating amongst the flaking cinders of burning paper. Morning takes pity on us and postpones its arrival several times lingering enjoying watching us intricately braided around each other the way of a rhyme and its poem.

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Softly, two Your lips battle a rising smile lose the battle rise, I touch them with mine you accept to offer me first the lower then the upper then both tightly closed, vestal in their abstention and arrogant impishness, I do not insist preferring to regard them with my eyes and guard them with my life until such time as you find befit to accept my plea, they touch the rim of the glass... what is in that glass – beer, wine, poison?... what does it matter they opened to the touch and I snatch the glass from your hand and I taste the inside of your lips by interposed party, you snatch my glass and let your lips touch it now full kiss by interposed party I wonder if we could skip the interposed, later, your nose against a shop window I like that hat, you say leaving a lips’ imprint to evaporate behind your face upwards I love snowflakes, you say letting miniature rivulets drip both sides of your lips, your finger points to a cafeteria I delight in winter ice-cream in, you say and a smooth trail follows your tongue and then your lips upon the creamy cone, your lips will they open for me as well one day? Train station. Platform number 2. My train to Nowhere. Our chests separate, softly, our cheeks separate, softly, out palms separate, softly, and suddenly you cling clamp clasp and your lips craze and my lips crack and our lips clash knead foment ingest life. Train station. Platform number 2. My train from Eden.

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Incomplete questionnaire Maiden, can you tell me why Light is dripping from the sky Leaving stains of bleeding color On my page’s scribbled squalor, Maiden, care you tell me what Makes those horses rear and strut Neighing explicit distasture When I snatch you from their pasture, Maiden, will you tell me when Did you join the perky wren Trilling life into my paper As your words carol and caper, Maiden, please do tell me how Do I carve into a bough My impossible romance Be it fate or happenstance, Maiden, now just tell me where Hides the adit to your lair That I may submerge it flowers Born of passion that devours... Sir of one and thousand question Let me frame here a suggestion - Shirk the queries, build the pyre And let’s wrap these hearts in fire.

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Just another day We slide from within each other to the ends of the bed to the ends of the room to the ends of the world. The LP finishes, Sammy Davis Jr. I flip it expertly and let the needle guide its own way on face two guide my way as well on many faces, some I don’t even recognize. Second face finished. I decide to go depression and plug in a great, bitter, incredibly realistic Paths of Glory, movie, followed by a more sweet than bitter The Russians are Coming and then again to LPs, maybe Glen Campbell maybe By the Time I Get to Phoenix will do. It’s raining. It’s windy. I probably have to do some repairs on the roof. I hope I don’t fall What next – LP? DVD? bitter, tragic, sweet, laugh myself to death? Strange ‘laugh’ and ‘death’ in one sentence would have been stranger if not in the same sentence. I don’t feel like philosophy I don’t feel like life I feel like dream we slide within each other from the ends of the world from the ends of the room from the ends of the bed. Was it a dream? you ask. It is, I answer cursing the cursor for its indifferent insincerity while I wait for you to ask if it was a dream.

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Expectations If I set my mind to it I could cleave the moon in two, vertically and push the two halves so far apart that one could see stars between them... Aha, and some obvious obstructing elements like, say, gravitation? It wasn’t the reaction I expected. Why should gravitation be a problem? You are kind of... insane, you know? This was the reaction I expected. If I set my mind to it I could slice the sun in so many vertical slices that it would look like a burning garlic head in the sky. Aha, will also smell the same? It wasn’t the reaction I expected. No, the distance would be too great for any smell to reach us, no problem with this. Tell me, were there other cases of insanity in your family tree? This was the reaction I expected. If I set my mind to it I could rip the galaxy into clusters and then squeeze each cluster into balls thus eventual giants could play galactic tennis or basketball or pétanque with them. Aha, all trillions of tones of mass involved, right? It wasn’t the reaction I expected. The giants would be gigantic giants, I don’t see the problem. You definitely are insane, and this includes all the synonyms of the word. This was the reaction I expected. Now, that we are agreed on all the relevant insanity aspects... is there anything you could NOT do if you set your mind to it? I knew my insanity was secondary consideration, we both accepted it. Our future relationship depended on the reality of the answer to this other question and its relevance. There is. I could do any of those mentioned dinosaurian tasks, just give me a day or two. But I could not cut the earthy distance between us from kilometers to meters, I don’t know why. Even given a lifetime, or the rest of it. The quiet that followed was humbling in its immensity. I guess that your insanity is selective. Write me a poem. This was the reaction I expected.

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My survival kit for a deserted island for the competition ‘my survival kit for a deserted island’ would consist of: 1. a condom, to pull on my finger once I cut it, to prevent infection; 2. a mirror, to give to the natives so they will not eat me, in case the deserted island is not deserted; 3. a few colored beads as back-up to the mirror in case it does not work; 4. an empty tin can for showering; 5. a nail to make holes in the tin can, see above 4; 6. a hammer for the nail, see above 5 and 4; 7. an electric razor so I will have an excuse for not shaving; 8. another condom backup to the first one in case of rupture, cut, pierce, break, lava flow, etc; 9. a Hellfire missile if the communists decide to invade the island; 10. a plastic toothpick, reusable... I continued confidently until I reached number 117 at which point she interrupted me. This is the longest, stupidest, most useless list I have ever encountered, she said, you’ll never win the competition. Wait, I did not finish it, I responded passionately. At 201 she tried to stop me again but I shushed her and at 336 she put a bucket over my head so I had no choice but to listen as she Morse’d me her words by tapping on the thick tin... haha, thick tin, nice poetry, no? She did not think it was nice poetry. Listen, the dichotomy between your list and their expectations is unbridgeable. By now you’ll probably need a trans-oceanic container for your stuff and still nothing of use there. I knew what trans-oceanic meant however I did not know about dichotomy but with a bucket over my head there was no way to access the internet. I guessed it meant she was displeased with me, at least. And why the hell do you want to participate in this competition? At least she removed the bucket so I could look up the dichotomy thing, not that I understood any of the explanations. But her question opened the door for me to prove my superiority, be it solely in matters of islands. The winner of the competition will be allowed to live on the island for a year, all expenses covered except the trip costs. What expenses on a deserted island? Building a fence to keep the alligators away. Building a hut for the TV crew and feeding them. Building an antenna. Building... Lover, I believe that senescence is getting the better of you. I rushed to the internet to find senescence and I did not like what I found. So they invade your life and you get nothing in return, if you win. And this for what? For writing. In peace. A flicker of light shone in her eye for a moment, maybe my imagination? And you think this entire useless list will keep you alive for so long? You did not let me finish the list. I left one crucial item to be the last on it but you interrupted me mid way. OK, so let’s skip from mid way to end way. And what would this crucial item be? I cringed, looking at the bucket, then decided I had nothing to lose. You. Well, it wasn’t a flicker of light this time, it was a bolt of lightning. She forced me to erase my entire list. She forced me to entry just that one last item. She forced me to re-learn the Morse code, just in case. I won. Incredibly so but I won. Maybe I was the sole entrant, who cared, I won. And they were sorry I won. The first night over the antenna short circuited the crew hut caught fire the fence to keep the alligators away fell mysteriously down and the alligators infested the camp, everybody flew. But I and she and the alligators. And no one returned once it was found that the island was under UNESCO protection and the TV show went bankrupt. Now it is only I and she and the alligators. And the mosquitoes of course, which was the sole real inconvenient. Say, lover, she yawned luxuriously exposing to me some feminine secret views I was still in the process of processing, and when you finish writing, how do we leave this damn Eden? Even I knew that ‘damn Eden’ was an oxymoron. Listen, lover, the way you keep me busy with alternatives to the writing, I doubt I will ever finish with the writing. She got up, stretched luxuriously (previous it was ‘yawned luxuriously’) and started floating (yes, floating) towards the water. Listen, lover, if you ever imagined this deserted island to play fulcrum to your writing, (fulcrum??? damn, no internet here!) now you better consider it the embodiment of your capital punishment. Vivamus, moriendum est. I wished she would stop using these Turkish expressions but one look at that divine body slicing through the first wave and any poetical aspirations just flew out of the window (just an expression, we didn’t have any windows). I dived after her, a glorious army of alligator bodyguards diving after me like undulating arrows of light looking for a new dimension of musical cadences. Believe it or not. Creo quia absurdum est, she said it, as you can surmise from the italics. As for me, I will take some lessons in Turkish once and if ever I get off this island. Which I doubt. Yes, promise.

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And the rant goes on I’m a fanatic. Not religious fanatic. Not political racial social fanatic. I am poetry fanatic. All good poetry, mine included, and I can read day and night and in the bus and on the john and in the attic as long as it is not written to impress but to express. Natural poetry, born from the need to say and not from the need to sell. Not from the artificial need to get recognition of whatever powers to be, not based on the artificial need to blindly emulate the tools given but from the need to externalize thoughts while the tools given are, well, just tools. Sestina, sonnet, oxymoron, terza rima, alliteration, calligram, leonine verse, iamb... and hundreds more. Tools, expressions, explanations, dictates of all those compensating their shortness of talent with the length of their exposés dealing with those that do have talent and making a profession out of purporting to explain and teach and impose what they cannot perform themselves. Strange thing, poetry. Such insignificant need of physical tools, if at all, so populist its accessibility so cheap and easy to copy and distribute so difficult to understand without investing time and effort so under-rated in the temple of arts. I did not choose it, it chose me and damn if I am not thankful every ranting day for this bane.

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Blue My heart beats blue. For you. Corny, huh? I know. Probably as corny as I love I miss I adore. Which could be made cornier by adding ‘you’ after each couple. Or corniest by an extra ‘forever’ or corniester by an additional ‘and ever’ then corniesterest with a second ‘and ever’ then corniesterester by... and so on, etc. Damaged, ain’t I? Or maybe just my brain. My heart beats blue, for you. No, blue is not just a color, blue is the sound of train rails the creak of a tree felled by storm the wail of a dog kicked by a mean foot the thought behind a hand waving goodbye the poem of a lover to a once lover the hand ending that cheek caress and never rising for a second caress ever. The color in ink be it red or green or black or blue selling its pigment soul to its word master. What do I know about blue? Nothing and everything and all that lies in between filling up minds with thoughts and patching holes in memories with wishful thinking and drilling holes in memories where wishless thinking made homes trying at least to patch to drill to disguise. My heart beats blue for you. Because I see your blue. Any chance to carve some red into it?

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Hey you, thieves You, yes you don’t look over your shoulder you – the one who steals my words and steals my art and dare pretend it is yours and right now reads these lines and hesitates between stealing and running away. Did I tell you I protect my art in ways you’ll never guess? Did I tell you the FBI is a bitch and the CIA is a bitch and the IRS is a bitch yet I am the greatest bitch of them all? Especially when I sink my teeth in your ass which will inevitably come? Did I define you already as an impotent worm enveloped with bubbling mucus and wallowing in a two years old outhouse diarrhea? I do now. I will not call you even plagiarist, it is an insult to honest plagiarists. I do will call me artist. I do will call you parasite. Do we agree on the definitions?

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Collation of [sic] idiosyncrasies, ha. My poetry is inchoate, I get it. It lacks the beatnikality [sic] of a Bukowski and the classicality [sic] of a Shakespeare and the rhythmicality [sic] of a Raven... sorry, of a Poe. If anything, then it possesses the arrhythmicality [sic] of a Heart, no, not the poet Heart but the heart Heart, the organ sickly sneezing packets of life through a maze of vowels and consonants and syllables and trying to keep alive under the amassment of oppugning indifference of the massed masses and somehow still breathing. Quite proudly so, I may add. Ave Poetica, poetae te salutant. Yes, morituri as well. Sure, I foist it upon said masses discriminately [sic], reducing said masses to a chosen few capable of reining in the opprobrium evident among the complementarytothefew [sic] masses an opprobrium suckling its life from the very radix of knowledge brainwashing said complementarytothefew masses with the glittering promise of a honoris causa title. Or a conventional title, mind you. In an academic institution, mind you. Eyes fixed on the horizon maxillae grinding teeth to dust cogitations rolling in a predefined precisely mindgeneerd [sic] laboriously intellestructured [sic] painstakingly mentagripping [sic] endlessly spinning squirrel cage round and round and round mumbling a stream of cacophonies qualifying under other circumstances as obscenities with a hand consciously sewn to the trousers’ side yet unconsciously barely containing itself from rising and stretching to a deafening Heil! Intellectual bullyism. Joining the nefarious ism family of communism, capitalism, nihilism, nepotism, consumerism, fascism, racism, totalitarianism, imperialism, despotism, sexism and similar human banes... wonder how humanitarianism got itself trapped inside the family the way I wonder why does democracy rhyme with bureaucracy when the later one should have been named bureaucratism, oh, the curse of language evolution and language academies... close unopened parenthesis. Ha, brilliant sheep minds, Ave Magister, ovis te salutant. Yes, other humans as well. And then I met this creature. Female of gender. Intoxicating of word. Free roaming of mind like a swallow rushing up and down a congested street like a drop of water chasing cascade after cascade like a geyser spewing sufficient diamond dust to block the sun and cast upon humanity an Armageddon of enlightened beauty. Upon me too. Words. Sounding so different within her scribbled thoughts and unexpressed wishes that I have to hear. And harken. And heed. Beating the best and worst out of me and forcing me even farther away from any academically forged fogged path as it compels me to thread magical spherules and tread magical landscapes seeded with incongruities and lexicalities and syncopations and lots and lots and lots of [sic]s. And lots and lots of flowers. And butterflies. Oh, ye sycophantic inexistent followers of mine with your inexistent obsequious servileness and your inexistent slavishness catering to my paltriest of emotions Thank You! for your non-stymieing inexistence allotting me with the assubjugated flights of imagination enveloping this wordity [sic] and deviatority [sic] and unrestrictity [sic] of mine. Oh, ye tenderly worded and gently whispered muse of mine with your inexistent inexistence and your impenetrable impenetrability and rolling silences chained to each following other the way morning chains to night and day chains to morning and evening to day and night to evening and midnight to lost heartbeats and butterfly to pupa and my poem to your breath be it before you go to bed or after you wake up from sleep or in between smiles. Ave Puella, verbis te salutant. Mine especially. Yes, one day others will appreciate you as well. But until then let me lay this layer of vociferous nonsense at your feet and may each of your steps tangle it into as many multitudes of garlands as songs there are yet unsung and poems there are yet to incise fortuitous intaglios into humanity’s cerebral cortex. Butterflies, did I mention butterflies already? Oh, so unforgivably corny of me.

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Tableau Push your nose, mouth, face in that enclave between my neck and shoulder while your arms clasp the other enclave between same neck and other shoulder and inhale me, imbibe me, absorb me your stiff nipple this side of my body drilling itself in the intercostal space between my third and fourth ribs with each heart thump the way of a nail into wood a moil point into asphalt a fist into flesh the other nipple screaming in dissonance its rage at being abandoned to orphanage life until I give in and molest it with the tenderness of a mother molesting its baby of a bitch molesting its puppy of a snowflake melting on your face. Don’t move, let glowing coal’s rigor mortis settle upon you and as you slowly burn your way into me through cloth and muscle and bone my yielding corpse turning squirming snake for that moment’s insanity when my mouth totters against yours and reaches into its consuming furnace seeking the solace embodied by the divinity of cocooning pain and tiny drops of saliva gluing our tongues when the grapple of my fingers grabs the roots of your hair and the grapple of my knees grabs the roots of your life leaving nothing for the world but the envy of not being you not being me not being us. Don’t pull your nose, mouth, face from that enclave between my neck and shoulder while your arms clasp the other enclave between same neck and other shoulder and inhale me, imbibe me, absorb me still your nipple this side of my body finally asleep melted between my ribs the way of a nail bending a moil point collapsing a fist turned palm the other nipple tuned into the softness of lullaby under the twitch of those fingers that once belonged to my hand playing it with the tenderness of a mother humming to its baby of a bitch licking its puppy of a snowflake courageously insisting on riding your face until death do you part.

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I am a snowflake, willing to live only if it can die on your eyelash, a poppy petal, its red suffusing into your cheek until it falls to the ground whitened and withered, the Beast, waiting for Beauty’s loving kiss before falling into the beauty of tormenting severance. I am summer’s choice, tenderly rejected after it tenderly adopted your blossom to embosom my leftover stains, oh, the sublimity of rejection...

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Campfire The campfire was hesitating between life and death, flames dwindled to flares with tiny novae shooting into air each time the glow hit a resin filled pocket some landing on my eyebrows, scorching, some landing on your eyebrows, scorching, some landing on the page I was reading creating tiny, star-shaped black craters, the perfume carrying smoke inebriating. You cry? My eyes smart, I half lied and threw another log into the small hell. You were alone inside your own sleeping bag, wishing you were not. I was alone in my own sleeping bag, wishing I was not. I turned the page. I was reading you poems from my self-published book, enjoying it, the flashlight bobbling like a tiny dragon’s mouth between the lines sometimes disappearing when the contact disconnected. You listened to me reading you poems from my self-published book, enjoying it, sometimes even sighing. Or maybe it was snoring. Why self-published? you asked once, and I did not answer. The moon kept laying layer after layer of silver cobwebs upon the meadow never quite satisfied with the previous layer and I felt like an orator in ancient Greece reading love decrees to an accompanying choir of cicadas... or was it grasshoppers? or crickets? with a lower toned choir of croaking frogs throwing in its own impersonation of romance and the baritone of a lost wolf punctuating each poem’s ending, strange coincidence, I know. Strange concert, I know. At which point did you fall asleep? I kept reading, making sure the moment you woke up the sound would be in your ears as if it never stopped. Which it did not. Did you read aloud all night? you asked. Yes, I answered, crawled out of the bag to re-kindle the fire and crawled back again. I am at page... You crawled out of your bag crawled into mine and lay silent. When did we leave? Probably when the fire died. When the cicadas or grasshoppers or crickets turned silent. When the wolf gave up its monologue to the moon. And the frogs? When the frogs all turned princes. I did not know you were once a frog. The greatest compliment anyone ever gave me. When I ran out of poems. No, bad joke, I never ran out of poems, I never ran out of muse, how could I ever have run out of poems?

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And when I’m gone And when I’m gone, and when I’m gone and mornings roll unhindered through willows kneading night to dawn upon a mead encindered, And when I’ve left, and when I’ve left into my last tomorrow, my flesh asleep, my soul bereft of happiness and sorrow, And when the words, and when the words I carefully commanded succumb like flocks of dying birds between my pages stranded, And when beneath, and when beneath a crumbling stone, forgotten lie rhymes I never will bequeath of poems misbegotten, And when old Earth, and when old Earth falls into its hell’s conclusion and nothing’s left of poem’s birth not even an... illusion.

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My poetry (or Rant, x) No, not big words really, neither the my nor the poetry and nor the collation of the two into this brazen declaration: my poetry! After all the world might be partly infused and partly infested and partly inflicted with poetry but I prefer to think of mine as inflaming. Thus worthy of presumption. And proliferation. Infuriating, ain’t I? Maybe also... ahm... infantile? I do categorize it into four levels, mind you. Masterpiece. Great. Nice. Shit. Of course, I could increase the resolution and include extra levels such as splendid, wonderful, extraordinary, magnificent, superior... hey, calm down, just joking but yes, it would be possible to classify it with, say, ten levels of quality. The only thing that wouldn’t change would be the limits. Masterpiece top. Shit bottom. Each with its adepts out there in the world, I guess the majority going with the shit however also the masterpiece is not an empty group, it has at least one member – myself. No haha, haha. As any of my hugely trifling number of followers, largely incommensurate with my ego can easily state my poetry is mostly dealing with the irrelevancies of life: romance, love, erotica and other members of this shamed, outcast family shunned by do gooders, do badders, high nosers, officially publisheds, bitter critics double diplomaed double breasted double minded others. Hey, even Bill was a sucker for love... so why not I? Of course – perfect rhyming is perfect and imperfect rhyming is imperfect and line lengths depend on full idea lengths and not on the millimetric precision of a ruler placed on the screen ensuring that all line ends align to a part of a micron, give or take a few atoms. And of course – no extra inflating spaces neither horizontally nor vertically contributing mostly to obfuscating the view and contributing to the poem looking more like fly shit then like word shit. And of course here and there big words, if they fit, and of course here and there ecological/political/social points, if I feel like it, and of course here and there breaking my own rules, if I consider it appropriate or inappropriate or anything in between. There are other sorts of categorization possible, capped not by masterpiece-shit but by insightful-idiotic (one could add ‘mighty’ before each) or by useful-useless (one could add ‘mighty’ before each) or by entertaining-depressing (one could add ‘mighty’ before each, yes, said it already). All applicable to my poetry with, certainly, a change in the poems’ list falling under each. I do not mind whichever is used. Probably I do not mind also if none is used because, after all, they all fall for me under the top category. Unless if the top category happens to be equal to the bottom category with the bottom one baptizing both of them. Which could apply. In certain circles. With certain minds. Well, as the saying goes, you can bring them to the water... On one aspect, please allow me to insist, a creed I hold onto with the tenacity of a Carcharodon Megalodon or at least a Crocodylus Porosus if for corroborative evidence you insist or at the very least a Crocuta Crocuta if for a neighborly character you insist. I write intelligent poetry. Please, make an effort to understand it. Then I won’t blame you if you don’t. Thankfully, not all are born equal. Thankfully, neither I.

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Making Love oh, the Panglossian locution, the in nubibus equivocation pouring the rose of roses upon the sub rosa moment when two bodies entangled in the inmost of grapples and burrs and ripping claws steamroll petals into abysses of asphalt asperities into crenations of bedsheet creases into ridges of broken hazelnut shells consumed way before contumacy turns consummation and contortions erase minds of pain and of duty and of God, the metaphor fed to babes in arms alongside with birds and bees and flowers and seeds and sexless dolls and storks up to the moment when the babes grow too heavy to be carried and too knowledgeable to care about metaphors and rush out into the world looking for the hammers and the pincers and the sickles and the screws and the anvils and the nails and whatever contraption they deem necessary for the deed of making love only to find out the only tools ever needed were words sleeping ignorant in their brains and heartbeats wasted unused in their chests, the immixture potpourri omnium-gatherum pasticcio farrago medley gallimaufry of equivocation and metaphor and consummation and words all of which salmagundi is too heavy to swallow and too uninteresting to disentangle into its atomic components driving the perpetrators into empirical fields lined with mines leading through gruesome deaths towards magnificent awakenings where love rhymes with nothing yet experienced and making it rhymes with nothing to be found inside human’s tool box and the only tralation coming to mind is a kiss between corners of lips after an interminable century of separation.

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A Different Kind Of Legend You are a princess your white skin all the way from Eden’s Clay and your silken dress all the way from China’s Wall and your satin ribbons all the way from India’s Ganges and your cobweb lace all the way from Belgium’s Brugge and your glass shoes all the way from Italy’s Murano and your golden bracelets all the way from Colombia’s Eldorado and your pearl earrings all the way from Philippines’ Sulu and your smile all the way from Earth’s Sun. I am a frog I was never a prince and will never be a prince eternally rhyming with myself each time I open my mouth with the perfect rhyme dual syllable poem ribbit ribbit ribbit or in its various dual or single syllable translations kerokero kerokero kerokero guo guo guo op op op vrak vrak vrak and not far from the (rather successful) species-gap duckish translation quack quack quack. Could do also for doggish woof woof woof. Or in tenderer birdish chirp chirp chirp. Or in quieter fishish mum mum mum. You will never kiss a frog disgusting irrelevant of relevant legends or curses or nightmares with you securely set to your ocean with your laces and bracelets and etceteras and I securely set to my pond with my ribbits and vraks and etceteras I guess translation from my species into humanish inexistent yet and ever.

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Sculpture sculpt your nakedness in the block of air between my eyes and the wall facing me, dislodge the molecules one by one, slowly, emerge like a magnificent David from under the hands of a Mickey slightly faster, slightly quieter, slightly cleaner, let me regard the nascent outline still coarsely hidden under layers of decorum as the displaced molecules of air crackle, frizzle, sparkle into a deformed corona, chisel away with delicate tips of fingers the rough chunks of evolutionary propriety clinging to the emerging masterpiece and masquerading as a rabble of cotton, leather, silk, buttons, clasps, rubber, freeze! the way of Edgar’s Dancer of Auguste’s Kiss of Thutmose’s Nefertiti you, the first and last self-sculpture in my life born in that block of air between my eyes and the wall facing me so soft, so enticing, so far away...

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Circle Remember, all these old people you laugh at today were once young were once strong, beautiful, proud, needed, had beating hearts, had sparkling eyes, made love like hyenas and sang like nightingales. Remember it, when you get old one day and others laugh at you forgetting that you were once strong, beautiful, proud, needed, had beating hearts, had sparkling eyes, made love like hyenas and sang like nightingales. Circle.

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Vignettes, one ...and suddenly I’ll flare that rage that comes with age then sit and rhyme my worth of dime a poem sweet thus obsolete a winter’s gray in search for May with flakes of white and tufts of night and when you’ll read the words I knead with sparkling eye and riving sigh with wishes laced through dreams unchaste I’ll learn your heart bleeds round my dart I’ll know my breath has vanquished death.

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Vignettes, two I feared the river’s mighty flow Until you dipped your little toe When all its might and all its plight Turned into murmurs of delight, The river braces, gently slows Defying gravitation’s laws And for a moment eons long It bathes your toe with love and song The moment’s dead, the moment’s gone The river dons its primal brawn To roar its mounting rage anew The toe returns to warmth of shoe Yet both, forever, now will miss The magic of that moment’s bliss.

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Love Movie I saw a love movie, yesterday, of the kind where love returns eyesight to the blind heroine where love extinguishes a forest fire where love prevents a war between two neighboring countries, of the kind where love is responsible for all humans born though I call this act copulation and I see it as the one transcending humanity and common to all known and unknown species including and not exclusive to fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, insects and... plants. Hey, I guess it included dinosaurs as well, though it sounds a bit complicated. And yet, I sat down and watched. Maybe because I once loved fairytales? Maybe because I still love fairytales? Maybe because I... write fairytales? Wherein I grudgingly admit to paint things pink and dress things flowers and surround things butterflies and copulations is re-baptized love... at least for a few moments before I give in to that irrepressibly irrepressible impulse of realism which drives fairytale out of the window and forces my hand to grind and grate and gravel my words into the paper until it shreds into complete illegibility. And only I know what I have written. And then I forget.

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Winter. Scene. The crows, in relentless competition with the magpies and swallows attack the crumbs of food I keep throwing in my garden then fly away, hiding from the evil eye while they munch whatever they scooped. Or swallow. Or whatever crows do with food. I just called them again, hoping the neighbors won’t call the police or maybe the medical services responsible for cases such as mine, oh, such a failure at learning foreign languages, mainly crowish not so much the lexicon as the accent. I guess even the crows have a problem understanding me this being the reason they wait for five minutes before falling upon the prey. Followed by said magpies, letting the crows take first risk. Followed by said swallows, letting the crows and magpies take first and second risk. Today there was also a cat. Black. A newcomer. Though I guess it was more interested in the flying food then in the lying food. Leaving hastily soon after, after all one does not play games with a murder of murderous crows. Plus magpies. Plus swallows. Even frogs but there were no frogs in my garden too coldy, too whitey, too snowy. I lie down in a lounge chair on the balcony, a thick blanket over me a thick hat to my head thick socks and wait for birds to come to sing, they don’t. Probably don’t know how. Or too scared to. I wait for you to lie in the lounge chair next to mine, you don’t. Probably don’t know how. Or too scared to. Or maybe because of the thick blanket and thick hat and thick socks and dark sunglasses that I forgot to mention you don’t recognize me. It’s irrelevant, the result is the same. Crows come for my food crumbs. Also magpies. Also swallows. You don’t come for my word crumbs. Even when I do not hide under blankets and hats and socks and dark sunglasses I forgot to mention.

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Like a dream I sit on the window sill, balancing myself delicately so I do not drop the two floors down on the pavement and strumming just do-re, sometimes re-do than back to do-re which are the only accords I learned to play on this second hand guitar bought just for the occasion to impress you. Not expecting to impress you. You sit on the window sill across the street, balancing yourself delicately so you do not drop the two floors down on the pavement and listening to my do-re and sometimes re-do cacophony knowing I am just trying to impress you. Not getting impressed. Or maybe getting impressed, not sure still. A breeze flips your skirt higher up on the thigh you don’t pull it back down. A breeze blows your blouse slightly away from your chest you don’t pat it back down. A breeze tousles your hair. You allow it. Do you have a secret plan? This night I will write you a poem telling about the white horses I will tame to carry us away about the white hacienda I will buy to lead you to about the white bed I will gently lay you on to rob your innocence from about the white butterflies I will summon to dance a crown around your head and then cover our nakedness against night’s chill. Like a shield. Like a song. Like a dream. Tomorrow I will not send you a poem telling about the white carriage that will carry you away about the white house that you will be lead to about the white sheets that will rob your innocence from by another’s hand. The butterflies dead. Never born. Like a dream.

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Live, here, now Live, here, now, Pit your glimmers of light against your glimmers of darkness and take sides in a battle that is not won until you decide elsewise, Prefer ugliness of beauty and foolishness of wisdom over the beauty of ugliness and the wisdom of foolishness when mind joins heart in decision, Regard me, through that temporary hoop created by thumb and forefinger joining in the perfection of a peeping hole, Try to follow your regard with your body the way of a banshee following her keening a swath following its scythe the bliss of quiescence following the bliss of commotion underneath sheets, Forget the paradox of physicality, forget the impossibilities of reality and make place for the wonders of poetical circumlocution pouring over your forms alongside your cottons and your linens and your silks dressing following undressing following dressing finally leaving you bare of covers and words, Read me with a mind allowing words sculpt the gyri and sulci of the brain it will inhabit ingest me with the mind of a newborn full of hungry emptiness understand me with a mind one hundred years old in a body one hundred years younger then you’ll love me.

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Complexities of Love I remember a girl my age, at the age when age didn’t matter I was madly in love with her she was madly in love with someone else someone else was madly in love with someone else else... complexities of love devastating, devastatingly innocent. I remember a woman twice my age, at the age when age started mattering I was madly in love with her she was madly not in love with anyone anyone else was madly either in love or not in love with anyone else else... complexities of love devastating, devastatingly beautiful. I remember a girl half my age, at the age when age mattered infinitely I was madly in love with her she was madly in love with someone else someone else was madly in love with someone else else... complexities of love devastating, devastatingly demeaning. I remember girls, women above under around my age, age mattered, always I was madly in love with them all they were madly in love with various others various others were invariably madly in love with other various others... complexities of love devastating, devastatingly devastating.

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Love Glove Above Poetry ...yeah, back to my favorite subject, ranting i.e. perorating or sermonizing or haranguing or so on about poetry and its endless hanging-on minions if on the doing side or on the undoing side constantly shooting morbific mordacious morbid diatribes aimlessly thoughtlessly deadly. Just because they own a soap box. Just because they own a license. Just because they own a written mouth. They call erotica porn, no one called Francisco’s La Maja Desnuda porn They call romance schmaltz, no one called William’s Romeo and Juliet schmaltz They call nakedness filth no one called Auguste’s Andromede or Anguish and Ecstasy or Danaide filth I guess it’s because everyone has access to a pen and a piece of paper yet not many have access to a brush or a stage or a chisel thus everyone is a poet yet none is a painter or a playwright or a sculptor thus everyone is allowed to open their mouth in depreciation of poetry yet none dares open their mouth in depreciation of painting or playwrighting or sculpting. They think they know. Analphabets. Strange world. Modern world. Diseased world. Thank you, illustrious predecessors for paving a way round humanity’s mephitic tar potholes. I will keep poetrying, If need be then love-glove-aboveing. If need be eroticaing romanceing nakednessing the way of those others I appreciate and adore and admire and applaud and venerate. After all, I also do not know a brush from a stage from a chisel. But I do know my way around a pen and a piece of paper, oh, by God, I do know my way around them and those flames you see rising hungrily from around my desk are my pen rending the piece of paper with thoughts of erotica and romance and nakedness.

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On the subject of LUCA There is a bit of LUCA in your cat. There is a bit of LUCA also in your amaryllis in your gold fish the pigeons family you saved from annihilation last winter the gecko the corals crocodile’s deceased ancestors in the president. In you. One ancestor to us all. Way beyond Octogenarian more likely Hadean more likely brainless sensesless genderless. But... oh, what a legacy oh, what genealogy... *LUCA – Last Universal Common Ancestor

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almost rhyme of almost life and almost death and vice versa and when in the evening the sun dies anew and melts in the dew that will birth it with morning and when in the forest a doe births a fawn and wakes in the dawn mid of wild andromedas and when summer’s fountains are filling the valley aware the finale is summertime’s drought and when pebbles trundle like miscasted diamonds and mixing with almonds are steamroller fodder and when snow dispenses temptations suavely and innocence bravely defies it or dies and when rusty trumpets deliver a dirge yet flowers will surge from within travertine and when lovers argue and senses are torn the memories mourn their children unborn.

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Parallax View Nobody’s fault. Uncalibrated expectations. Mine Uncalibrated wishes. Yours. Like incompatible bucket lists from various periods in a life – the plastic of old, the silver of young, the real of never. Parallax view. Daydreaming. Flight of fancy. Psychology could define a new sub-science and call it Antinomis Oxymoronis to provide it with the necessary Latin justification and academic rationalization to be taught the world over. Also in my classes of once. I thought we’d have a Cleo and Julius relationship, though not so historic. I thought we’d have a Liz and Richard relationship, though not so tumultuous a Marilyn and John, though not so tragic a Lady and Tramp, and maybe so yes and they lived together forever unchanging irrelevant the number of times I screen it oh, the eternality of cartoon beauty. I measure relationships in poetry units. This is one dimension. Of course there are many other dimensions and seven volumes of it do not necessarily mean better than one poem of it but, still, it is one measure. I’ve had relationships with hundreds, I’ve had relationships with a single I’ve had relationships with zero. And if I do not define ‘relationship’ any measure is of course meaningless yet I persist, with no specific reason... well, maybe with creativity as reason. And this one was rich, deep large fervent fomenting but, now I know, not Cleo and Julius. Not Liz and Richard not Marilyn and John not Lady and Tramp. Parallax view. Antinomis Oxymoronis. So sorry. Such pity.

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10 x 10, eleven I wish the days of love forever gone Would turn to waste into La Parca’s womb And as my nights the lure of passion don You be my bride, and I your mortal groom. When morning lures the gullible young sun To choose a death in wait at end of sky You’ll sing me life until my days count none And never answer my beseeching why. I join the womb, beneath La Parca’s scythe You join the sun, and other hearts ignite.

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10 x 10, twelve While Jupiter was busy hunting skirts I hunted words to build your beauty’s reign And scribbled rhymes to paint into refrain Upon the cuffs of my discarded shirts. While Jupiter was busy waging wars I waged a spree of interlacing runes Dripping the trills of larks into my tunes Into my garbs upon your naked floors. While Jupiter was busy chasing oaths You dropped your eyes, you dropped your pride and clothes.

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10 x 10, thirteen I thought I would compete with Bill today And challenge gold with some inspired clay But then I found myself trapped in morass His gold stays gold, my clay turns kind of crass. And yet I know, this ten times ten old art Will forge the key to your desiring heart So here I trudge with a renewed élan And braid my words into insane rattan. I’ll never win, he’ll always stay ahead But I’m alive, and... sorry Bill, you’re dead.

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10 x 10, fourteen The blades, awake in your smoldering sighs, The grass, ablaze in your flickering eyes, The skin and the fingers aglow with crave Your breasts my subject of poetry rave, I came to you days and I parted nights Obsessed with the shimmer of raw delights You came to me nights and ravished my days My body at war with mutinous haze, We cleaved parting reason with lips and nails And watched, bereaved, as the love season sails.

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Octopuses Innocent bystanders, we, lovers, watching impotently as morning forces night into submission before murdering it with color and sound and movement our fingers clutching at each other’s flesh like tentacles of warring octopuses loving octopuses doomed octopuses. Let me dress you, I begged. You let me. Let me dress you, you begged. I let you. We dressed undressed dressed five more times in the following hour until time decided we used up our entire time credit. One more time, time? But time refused. A jarring buzz at the door told us the taxi had arrived. The taxi had arrived, I said, unnecessarily. Let me undress you, you begged. I had no idea how I got to the airport, on the plane, off the plane. And afternoon killed morning and evening killed afternoon and night killed evening and I lay in my bed waiting for morning to kill night anew, alone my fingers curled into a fist, like a dead octopus. And all that sea water streaming down my face drowning me.

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Almost Legend We were drifting into the sun entering you, a goddess therefore alive I, an adoring disciple therefore alive in your embrace we, lovers, running away from prejudices of humans and gods much deadlier than the sun. We knew it. Do you love me because I am goddess? you asked. I love you because you are human, I answered. Do you love me because I am human? I asked. I love you because you see me human, you answered. The sun embraced us willingly, protecting us from world’s jaundice, partiality, misogyny, bigotry, xenophobia and rest of beautiful names to horrible evils infesting humans and gods alike. Do you think it can do it forever? I asked, eyeing the sun with wondrous fear. For as long as we wish. And does it ask anything in return? This time you eyed me, with the same wondrous fear I eyed the sun earlier on. Nothing. As long as we wish together. I see. Forever. I finally dared take my eyes off your big brother and look into the eyes of my sweet lover. I was melting, much faster than I would have melted alone in the sun. Would he mind if we make love? He would be terribly upset if we don’t. The solar flare rested unexplained for eons to come. Not until jaundice, partiality, misogyny, bigotry, xenophobia and rest of beautiful names to horrible evils were expunged from humans and gods. Then they found my poetry book and you inside of it. And they understood.

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transmutation you lie on the snow on your back naked there where I laid you down your feet joined not in shame but in defiant waywardness your arms stretched both sides of your chest not like a Raphael transfigurating Jesus but like a Rodin uncurling Danaide your breasts flattened by gravity you nipples hardened by desire rivulets of color excommunicated from your skin’s flowers slowly flowing both sides of your inert forms and dripping in reds and blues and greens spreading growing gnarled roots into the snow like an amassed forest of veins dissipating into the invisibility of needle thin fingers, ends, nothingness... don’t! you sing, your voice barely audible when I kneel next to you ready to pick you up don’t! you repeat as my motion continues don’t! wait! and I don’t and I wait until the snow soaks in the hues turning to the frozen palette of spring’s flowers to come and day’s deaths to evanesce into sunsets and tree’s greens to err on their dissonant ways to turning buds and you turn pale, aquarelle, beautiful do! I am cold! you murmur, your colors finally ready to explode into the world and I scoop you into my arms into my skin into my life like you were a leaf like you were a feather like you were a rune... I carry you home I cover you seven layers of colors I cover you seven layers of covers I cover you seven layers of compassion please, cover me one layer of love! you whisper and I cover you seven layers of love.

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Domains We have just scratched the surface of the single-X domain. When insufficient time had passed. The one comparable to elementary school relationships when we hold hands push each other on swings chase each other here and there scratch, bite, cry, make up peek curiously at the different way the other pees with no real understanding kiss on the cheek then hide then rush to kiss again then hide again almost innocent almost comparable. I guess we will not reach the double-X domain. I guess insufficient time is left. The one comparable to adolescent relationships when holding hands is not sufficient anymore and brazenly we try to brush breasts, to brush cheeks, to brush lips with thighs squeezing under tables unseen and from time to time chests pushing against each other boldly and hips clashing shortly and fingers venturing where none had ventured before at least so we think some pictures daringly revealing a bare shoulder some sentences daringly using L words maybe even some poems borrowed from some recognized masters but dedicated to each other an open mouthed kiss a touch of tongue followed by disgust followed by restive push and pull and fire not innocent anymore beyond comparable already. I know we will not reach the triple-X domain. I know insufficient time is left. The one incomparable to any other relationship when all limits dissolve and all clothes rip away the hesitating hands of yesterday become the clawing hands of today with the teeth of yesterday becoming the fangs of today bodies rolling and reeling and roiling while the mattress screeches its terror as fire envelopes it its straw entrails bursting into the consummating flames consuming the trinity of man woman bed and incinerating it into the apotheosis of a relationship that only an act of God can terminate and an act of God terminates when they rest panting and sweating and smoldering in each other’s embrace innocence dead and buried incomparable to life or death.

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Statistically You are not virgin anymore The sun rises in the east always Eyes are green sometimes We will make love the way you are virgin still and the sun rises in the east sometimes and eyes are green always never. My only refuge is statistics, it allowing the probability of a lone 1 trailing several trillions 0s after the decimal point that any or all above inconceivabilities may turn conceivable. Including the never. This is a different kind of lottery than the one I never won and therefore it leaves me... optimistic. Irrelevant the trillions.

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Strange Seasons Spring, probably. Mine or yours? I guess it matters, but not really birth and death mixed, the primal scream starting a rolling stone down from the top of the mountain gathering speed, momentum jumping skipping crashing all on its way oblivious to miles and years and tears lining its path loves heartbreaks joys and the inevitable end awaiting at mountain’s foot be it a soft landing in a swamp’s mud or a hard knock out against a waiting lump of iron, crocodiles and stars optional. I, playing with wooden swords and terrible monsters about to eat me many years before you, you, playing with silver dust and pink clothed fairies many years after me, as out of sync as hiccups to heartbeats and yet we knew that letters gather in storm to words and words gather in storm to sync and one day we would gather in storm to us. Did we? Summer, probably. Mine, when? Yours, when? Your music yours my music mine my dances not yours your dances not mine experimenting with life and body parts and cracks grew in the mountain and flowers grew in the cracks and bees visited the flowers eyes of various colors and shapes abundant finger touches of various demand insistence and permission need abundant and I kept losing my virginity so rarely and you kept finding your virginity so determinedly and we tried to identify why the hell is humanity so obsessed with virginity generally and with hymen particularly when elephants and pigeons and mosquitoes aren’t (with the obvious conclusion it’s another means of menfolk subjugating womenfolk) both of us experimenting with our own versions of sometimes virginity occasional virginity as per need virginity statistical virginity and an olla podrida of various virginity levels as demanded by the situation at hand and by words passing temporarily through our minds at that specific moment coupled with invading dreams, wishes, expectations. Never supposed to meet. We. The gigantic gaping mouth of uncle Chronos carving an abysm the size of Grand Canyon between us with no mules hanging-bridges helicopters hot-air-balloons to help the crossing. Not even stopping my watch and advancing yours helped. And yet, it was coming. Poor uncle Chronos. Autumn, probably. Mine passing. Yours looming. And yet the mixing of the smells of crushed fruits and crushing leaves and crushing drops of rain and crushing dry grains of wheat with cranes hesitating between going and coming and the sun undecided as to its zenith location and me finding you before you losing me and us finding us before the world ends whatever was left and whatever will ever be left masked underneath heavy layers of blue mascara dripping on pale pages shaped as letters and syllables and almost poems and never poems I inhaled an entire ocean just to sense your provoking femininity and you exhaled an entire lungful and bodyful just to ensure my senses are overloaded those seven seas and thousand years away waiting for me to choke and come begging for more and I came begging for more asking for your heel to step over my chest and your grip to clench around my wrist and your breast to smother the leftovers of humanity and sanity once given to me and now prey to your womanly whim and delicate charm and maddening perfume pulling clouds down over my head to my shoulders and grass up over my shoulders to my head and cocooned I inside that impenetrable fortress waiting for your body to liberate me from the tyranny of metaphors into the republic of reality where lips are lips and teeth are teeth and hips are hips and grunts are divinity allocated to humans by any number of gods that there might be or might want to share or might want to smile, grudgingly and enviously upon us humans. Is it all real? Winter, imminently. Mine. Past looming. Past knocking on the door. Past friendly nosey neighbor. Wrapping seven tons of bricks around my ankles, each, and little does it matter that the bricks are made of years they could have been made of gold for all I care. Yours. So uncle Chronos does own a debatable sense of humor turning your looming autumn into budding summer with garlands of butterflies dressing your skin and braided in your hair and hanging five inches long from your ears in a fluttering frenzy of living earrings. Break off a piece of your summer, love. Send it to me. So that I can carry your warmth underneath that marble comforter soon to dress my bed while I join the sociopathic and poetry despising society of worms to their various forms and languages and habits and habitats. Hey, do you think that various voracious sounds nice as part of a poem? Do you think that macabrity should make it to whatever academy list of to be created? Do you think that I making love to you would be like you making love to me? Do you think you could love me?

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May Pretty maiden, pretty say what you’ll dream about today? I will dream of itching hay and of you between my cherries crushing grapes and rotten berries telling me I’ve born you May. Pretty maiden, are you happy when we play mammy and pappy? Mainly when you get all yappy as you chase me in the pillows under May’s enchanted willows with your words so sweet and sappy. Pretty maiden, what’s your rush when I touch your bristling plush? I just heard a trilling thrush singing May into my morning and this gripping lust aborning when my blush turns into flush. Pretty maiden, will your fire be my most deserving pyre? As my passing Mays respire and your hands seed me with flowers while the yours and mine turn ours time your words beget my choir.

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Metaphorical Layers All this shit that I write is I metaphorically kneeling in front of you and proposing which can happen, unfortunately, only metaphorically. And does happen. All these metaphors inside the metaphor is I making love to you in that undefined no-man’s-land between consent and rape trespassing borders between undecidedly and unwillingly and their counterparts and hoping for the clemency of a jury composed of a single member you. The metaphors inside the metaphors inside the metaphor is you disregarding any metaphors and accepting my proposing and my love making and taking it all one step further into the Tierra del Fuego of your craving, no metaphor intended, that undefined personal no-man’s-land where you demolish whichever borders or limits or conventions may exist and drag the metaphor ensemble into its reality borders or limits or conventions may they go to hell. Reality the innermost layer of metaphors.

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Waffles We bought one waffle, one, for both of us, one bite you one bite I yet once the waffle ended, the munching did not and we continued with tips of fingers then with roots of fingers then with other parts of one or other anatomical significance for demonstrable reasons of selfless contribution to a wasteless sustainable ecology on a locally global scale. Care to be more specific? Culinaristically or corporealistically? Cannibalistically. I bought another waffle. Still one for two. Then I paused each step explaining (hastily) demonstrating (eagerly) breathing deeply (out of necessity at a certain stage and beyond). If I didn’t know better, and probably I don’t know better, I would say you are horny, you said, using the H word abhorred by any medieval or classical or modern poet and thus banishing any chance for a Pulitzer or similar out of the equation, I mean you could have used Halberd or Heuristically Programmed ALgorithmic Computer, aka HAL 9000 in short, or Hallelujah but you chose horny, leaving me with no choice but investigate further the matter hoping, now that any hope for Pulitzer & co. turned to smithereens, that you minded the Pulitzer even less than I did. Are you? I asked, keeping nevertheless the H indecency out of my question. I kept buying waffles, having incidentally discovered that I had an unknown-of interest in anatomy and had lots and lots to learn about it and the waffles supplied me with the necessary energy and rationalization and (most importantly) excuse to visit your various end-of-waffle areas of interest your own enthusiasm little by little evolving as well in symmetrical opposites. The end of three days found us with unexplainable stupid grins carved upon our cheeks verily more knowledgeable in several non-disclosable matters and emaciated to the point of hardly leaving a shadow in our wobbling wake irrelevant the number of waffles we wolfed down.

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When 45 was king When 45 was king and I its devoted slave and servant and helot shuffling and sorting and flipping through my hundred odd deck faster than a seasoned cards player through his 52 pieces of painted cardboard having the time to sleeve-out and place-on and start-push and cheat-select before the one momentarily in my arms had the time to gather her wits and rebuke my insistence and powder her nose... powder can wait, Paul Anka cannot... and then to the next one both the 45 and the one momentarily some allowing the squeeze some resisting the squeeze some squeezing till my spine was about to break and my chest about to cave in at the onslaught of hands and thighs and breasts and then someone else would shuffle the 45s and another one momentarily would hang on to me, or I to her and I would curse or bless according to who was free and who was taken while the rock or rumba or cha-cha or twist or whatever was forcing us to unglue letting us chase the devils in our souls and those in our pants and those underneath our one momentarily’s skirts and thankfully another slow Elvis or Adamo or some unpronounceable name’s 45 would send us all screaming to look for the light switch off position with the war of the sexes taking place anew under the protecting blanket of small blinking neon eyes (...hey! somebody cover those neons!) with a preferred one or an unpreferred one that was “giving” or an unchoiced one who was the leftover selection on the chairs the rest being captured if you crawled instead of rushed some even married the preferred or unpreferred or unchoiced one momentarilies later. The end of every battle always finding me greedily collecting my 45 kings, and queens, and jesters, and pawns caressing the dust off them apologizing for the rough treatment inflicted sliding them to a well-deserved sleep into their inner sleeves and outer sleeves and external protecting nylon sleeves and kissing them to good rest until next battle. Until the last battle. I don’t remember the last battle. I slide a 45 carefully out from its multiple protection layers (I don’t remember you acting so carefully with our babies, says my wife) handle it with the reverence due to a king place it with surgical precision on the turntable let it start rotating let the needle drop... hey, do I really cry? I ask myself as Elvis follows Paul Anka and Adamo follows Elvis and unpronounceable name follows Adamo and I feel sorry for my kids and their kids and their kids’ kids and so on hearing myself saying the way each generation before me said – they will never know what we knew they will never have what we had they will never feel the way we felt. Only that, in my case, I believe I am right.

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or so I believe I don’t have much time left so I’ll climb up the mountain to drink from the fountain that nurses new youth to all creatures uncouth or so I believe. I feel the end nearing so I’ll roam my first ocean purloin its commotion since swagger and sway keep tomorrows at bay or so I believe. Practically I’m done here so I’ll join masses mining some swearing some whining for nuggets of time hidden deep in my rhyme or so I believe. You’re a dimwit oh these humdrum and boring excuses for snoring my breasts playing tease will get time playing freeze you better believe.

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The reasons, though no reasons are necessary I want to make love to you          because you exist. I want to make love to you          because I exist. I want to make love to you          because we exist. Now, let’s define exist. One may say breathe. Ha! One may say eat sleep move. Ha! One may say think feel love. Ha! One may say whatever one may say and it will still be Ha! You and I and we fall outside the definition, any definition. I want to make love to you because dinosaurs once roamed the Earth. I want to make love to you because Pi is an irrational number I want to make love to you because there was once a guy called Michelangelo because man walked on the moon because dogs love humans because earth is round and sun is hell and in a few billion years the solar system dies. I want to make love to you because we are one single point node event on this infinitely thin single points nodes events randomly tangled skein which is existence leading from minus infinity to plus infinity mathematically said or previous big-bang to next big-bang astrophysically said or ever before to ever after poetically said and if this single point node event which we are fails to occur the entire skein falls apart losing its continuity and reaching from minus infinity to the miserability of no infinity from previous big-bang to the miserability of no-bang from ever before to the miserability of never after and this can never happen. The laws of mathematics. Immutable. The laws of physics. Immutable. The laws of life and its subset, poetry. Immutable. I want to make love to you because we are so fucking unique. Singularity. It happened already we just don’t know it yet. you better believe.

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Dvořák I woke up to sounds of Dvořák’s “Songs my mother taught me” wafting from your phone like perfume from a lilac freshly blossoming, too tired to tell you to turn it off you, probably as tired as I was, disregarding it entirely. It was only after the jingle reached the end of its natural life that I felt your hand crawling out from under the covers and fumbling with the phone’s functionalities... a few seconds later Dvořák was blessing us again with his mother’s stuff. Aha, she likes it, I thought. Aha, you like it, I mumbled. Uh-huh, you mumbled back your consent, you talk too much, you mumbled back your discontent turning on your side and pushing your bare ass into my no less bare hip wedging me into sphinxlike immobility and almost panic. Almost, mind you. I found one hand free, it was mine and decided to turn the embarrassing moment into an instructive one by letting it wander freely somewhere trying to find whatever items of interest there or elsewhere I found items of interest everywhere. I had to focus and at the end of a couple minutes’ focus I started scaring watching the fire-alarm overhead, afraid any moment now it would go off and within seconds get us inundated by shapely muscular bare-chested firemen... aha, this was probably your plan all along, wasn’t it?... Huh-uh, you denied, unconvincingly. Found anything of interest? your mumbled mumble followed your denial mumble and following impenetrable feminine logic you rotated round your longitudinal axis one hundred and eighty degrees now wedging me for real. I had suddenly one of those momentarily momentary moments of human weakness and I opened my mind in respectful yet blasphemous reproach to God contending the fact that he created humans with so few hands and so few mouths when the job at hand was so momentous, I bet, God, you were out of clay though, with due respect, you did not seem to be out of clay when you created the octopus not that I envy the octopus, mind you (I did envy the octopus)... You mumble too much, you mumbled again and soon it became irrelevant the number of hands and mouths and whatever else was of interest for the job at hand so glad that I had whatever was of interest for the job at hand. I wondered if you asked God the same question at the phase that you could still ask questions. I lay over you like a deflated tire. You lay underneath me like under a deflated tire, eyeing the fire-alarm plastic box critically and fumbling again with the phone’s controls, making sure I did not slide down. Dvořák blessed us again, good boy Dvořák, did you ever dream to become a phone jingle for a dream creature? We decided to change hotel. We did not want to risk a regular fire surprising us because of a defective alarm system irrelevant your repressed firemen mentals. It was clearly defective, if to judge by the smoke ascending slowly to the ceiling.