November I looked in the mirror, the grey stubble on my face mercilessly slaughtered by the sharp tools of civilization in that endless fight for supremacy I knew I was going to lose. Yet I persisted in the ritual, stubbornly, the grey plague spreading like an invincible tide. I looked in the mirror. November. Is this the way of the dragon when the proud green of his scales fades into the brittle grey and the knight’s spear finally finds his heart? I shook my mane, or rather what was left of it, and roared. The roar still there, my song as powerful as ever. I reached for the reaper’s blade and snapped it in my fist mindless to the blood, then pushed the hooded figure aside, impatiently. I still have one song to sing and you better move out of the way. He soaked back into hell, I opened the door and entered the night. I was on my way to meet woman. Silence. Absolute. For one night, my last, the world died and the mountains were mine for taking and the forests were mine for burning and the seas mine for drinking. I did not want any. All I wanted was you. The night wept white on our wedding bed, gossamer icicles weaving their ephemeral art between the rigid sharp ends of grass blades crunching underneath my shoes. “Blasphemy,” you gasped, your undefined whiteness parting with the night and kneeling next to me, deft fingers unlacing one shoe and making it disappear in a soundless puff of blinding glare, then the other. My now bare feet tingling with the cold. “Let me undress you,” I gasped back waiting for the words to roll around the world and return the long way around in a faint echo. “No, you first,” you answered waiting for my echo to die a second time, undoing my shirt, undoing my trousers, then with one magical gesture blasting them out of existence. I was cold. I shivered. “I am cold,” I said. You placed your open palm on my chest, then removed it leaving a five fingered glowing imprint on my skin. I felt the burn. “Not for long,” you answered. “Undress me, now.” You formed the words, without voicing them. I touched your white gown and it decayed into a filigree of frost melting within seconds and gliding down on your skin, glinting like thousands of stars inhabiting your body. “You glint... yet there is no moon,” I wondered. “Your eyes... they shine,” you answered taking my hand and guiding it gently along a rivulet starting under your left eye, along your cheek, the side of your neck, shoulder, ribcage, belly, and losing its way inside that soft dell where all ends and all begins. “Touch me...” you urged. “And then... can I sing?” I asked. “Yes, when I lose my way... sing, and let me find you again.” “It will be my last song,” I said, knowing. “It will be our first song,” you said, knowing. I suddenly touched you, violently, deep. “You are too soft, touch me,” you urged again. I touched you, hungrily, ravenous. “You are too soft, touch me,” you urged a third time, your hands taking possession of my body, the glowing spots tracing your fingers turning blisters as a timorous flame enveloped me from loins down to toes and up to eyes, and as my fingers crushed your exploding nipple you inhaled with one mighty breath my fire, my skin, my decomposing flesh and we sank into the white cool sheets of our last wedding night melting the ice linen, burning the grass mattress, the ground bed under our threshing bodies turning molten lava and absorbing us into mother’s entrails as we absorbed into each other. I was the first one to hear it, the lark. “No!...” I wailed, trying to get up, unable against the chains of your arms. “The lark vanquished me, there are no larks in winter,” I sobbed. You opened your mouth, I heard the lark again, then again, I kissed you savagely, the lark silent, I removed my lips and there it was again. You smiled. “I vanquished you, I am your lark.” I sank my fangs, my claws into your soft flesh, in anger, in pride, in glory. “I am your last lark,” you trilled. “Do you want me?” I removed my fangs, my claws, soothing your pain with my tongue. “I still have to sing my song,” I trilled, May I sing my last song? Before the world awakes?” “Will I be your last song?” “You will be my last song.” “Then you may...” and you let me permeate once more your body as I opened my mouth and opened my throat and opened my chest and flowers blossomed on your lips and sunshine dawned above your hips and springs adorned your fingers’ tips. “Must you die now?” “I must. You vanquished me.” “I loved you.” “I know. Yet death is immortal. The beauty of death.” I got to my feet, handsome in my scarred nakedness, breaking your chain and looking the grim figure in the face. “You have a new blade to your scythe, reaper.” He did not answer, just raised both arms and with a smooth swish cut my autumn’s bloom. November died. Winter, never came.

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November Dialogues Was it November? Was it November the last time I wrote you the first time a poem? Was it white like the snowflake before touching ground before touching your bared breast like your breast? Which was whiter? Tell me of love in dialogues, you begged sitting across from me, painting toenails, caring not for a skirt pulling away from the intricacies of penciled silk threads and a shirt suckling indiscreetly at the felicity of crushed strawberries and dead suns floating in eye lakes to disintegrate into blinding sparkles... I will tell you of the paradox of penciled silk threads, I offered, fragrant, the way of crushed lilac feeding the mill of thighs, I will tell you of the paradox of crushed strawberries, I offered, dry, the way of watercolors spilling upon the forge of nipples, I will tell you of the paradox of blinding sparkles, I offered further, salty, the way of inclement lubricity chattering skin into dementia. Tell me of lust in dialogues, you begged your toenails done, now brushing your hair, your skirt cut to narrow ribbons tied to your ankles and wrists, fluttering, your shirt torn to as many tatters as nests in the garden, cushioning, dead suns boiling into tails of dragon and horns of unicorn, growling, I will tell you of the night of ankles tied and wrists lashed, I offered, and fluttering breath, or was it death? I will tell you of the night of tearing tatters from lurid flesh, I offered, and cushioning barks, or were these larks? I will tell you of the night of tails and horns and claws and fangs, I offered further, and growling fire, or was it lyre? And the dialogues? These were dialogues. Of one. Dialogues of one are called monologues. So you admit they are dialogues. Of one. I wish dialogues of two. Are dialogues of three called trialogues? Are eunuchs bisexual or monosexual or asexual? This, there, was a direct threat. I rushed through the house hiding all sharp utensils, dismounting window panes, clipping the dog’s nails (yep, threw out the clipper after that, he he). Couldn’t file your teeth, at least not as long as you were awake. A temporary risk I had to face. Thinking of wilder scenarios - I threw out the mixer, the grass mower, the dog's canned food - those pull-off covers were damn sharp. "Honey, where is the dog food?" you asked. "Today he's in for a treat, I will give him my hamburger." "And you, aren't you hungry?" "No, baby, and today's his birthday." I managed to smile. It wasn't his birthday. I watched the dog wolf down my hamburger, french fries, licking the plate clean of the ketchup even as my stomach experimented sailor's triple-knots later to be proposed as a Guinness entry (they were accepted). Here's my small toe, talk to it. I talked to it (just remembered I forgot the garden shears). Hey toe, I whispered under its nail, how does it feel to be attached to that heavenly ankle flowing into that angelic knee rushing through the crushed lilac of thigh into the penciled silk of threads? It feels like your hand... Since when do toes talk? Since when do fingers disguise into toes? Poetical license. Is it the same as lust license? The same as rolling a penciled silk thread around a tiny lilac flower one thin thread to one tiny cup, then one more, then all... It will take you a long time. Not eternity though. Do you have the patience? I have the passion. Do you have the passion? I have the patience. I have the passion. I have the love. I have the lover. You forbade me to use your toes... Your! fingers. ...so I had to use my lips to pick the flowers and my teeth to tie the knots and my tongue to mingle the fragrances and to sort the garlands and to... I tickle... That's an insult. I burn... That's much better. Will you finally plant the seed into the luxuriance, damn you? You gave up on the dialogue of words favoring for this once the dialogue of flesh, our language basking in alien, unwritten, undocumented symbolism limited phonetically to grunts and moans and gurgles impaired physically to splashing sweat and rippling muscles and overflowing cavities afflicted mentally to visions of gods and torn strings of harp and obscene beauty. Here's my little finger, talk to it, you found your voice again. I didn't, yet, still busy gathering my body from your wilderness. Then remembered suddenly those undiscarded shears... Hey finger, I panted like an elephant, how does it feel to be attached to that serpentine wrist flowing into that limber elbow rushing through pools of drying watercolors into the crushed strawberry of nipple? It feels like your hand... You're plagiarizing. You showed the way. I showed you art. I showed you my body, is my body not art? Your body is a pagan's temple, a desert's carnation, a sunset's muse, a poet's nightmare... Nightmare? desperate in reaching for the bottom of his quill and bitter in finding it... Nightmare? when bottomless would have been the only answer and insanity the only poem. I like this dialogue. I love this body. I like this poet. I love this body. I love this body’s poet. You forbade me to use your fingers... Your! f...... fingers. ...thus I ignored the mysteries of phonetic hiccupping allowing my teeth paint the cerise inside areola’s amaranth splits and my lips suckle the cerulean alongside breast’s viridian stains and my tongue alleviate your skin’s uninterruptible pain with monochromatic insistence... I burn... That’s an insult. I fulminate... That’s much better. When the hell will you, finally, strip vestal poetry to termagant vixen? I stole your body’s sensations, leaving it barren of anything but the mute scream of agony and the numbness of expectancy as I stole voice and dialogues and song, and then I started dressing it with the limp veneer of ecstasy spawning and the glutinous fiber of desire sprouting and the lambent flame of intemperance spurting... and then I gave you back your voice and your dialogues and your song removing the wax from my ears and allowing your call to crash me against the softness of your reefs as I hammered my way in and hammered my way in and hammered my way in and led you into a thorns-field afire. * Does the dialogue end the magic? The magic begins with the dialogue end. It began? It ended. The magic? The dialogue. So the magic begins. So you got it. To never end? So you did not get it. To end never. The subtlety of punctuation. So you did get it. Can a dialogue end without beginning? You were getting better than me. It did. End? Begin. The dialogue? The magic. Plagiarist. Yes, you were definitely getting better than me. The rest was lost in that alien language written with the watercolor hues of hips, and thighs, and cavities, and spines, and skin, and mouths... the uniqueness of an artful masterpiece plagiarizing its beauty into endless fractals of itself.

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When November Meets Wind Don’t smile. Why? I want to see you. So if I smile you don’t see me? I want to see you without sunglasses. I don’t wear sunglasses. No, but I will have to wear them. My name is November. Mine is Wind. I know, your caress penetrated my shirt before I saw you. Only my caress? Also the knowledge. What knowledge? Knowledge of what hides behind those lips. You smiled. Damn. I closed my eyes steel shut, blindness never part of my plans as I fumbled desperately for my sunglasses. Insufficient, impossible... hey, help! I yelled and a pair of... round? welding?... goggles slid into my hand, you knew all the time, no? you... you... female. You had to guide me, I kept stumbling against trees and lamp posts and cursing little ladies with barking big dogs, finally we were seated, the smells divine and the menu in my hands barren of Braille codes with a stomach churning loudly. All I could see was a curved stain of sun, a horizontal crescent burning my face... next thing I will look like a panda bear after goggles. Mercy! I almost screamed as a hand snatched the goggles off my nose. I found a pair of lips drawing corners high up to meet a pair of eyes drawing corners low down the only obstacle between them some artistic wrinkles – did you draw these yourself?... thank goodness, no immolating piece of teeth showing. We sat, across from each other, face to face, toes touching, knees touching, the artificial hindrance of leather and textile and silk preventing obsecrating skin from performing the magnanimity of offertory to obsecrating skin. Fingertips touching, no hindrance, as they lay in conniving confrontation middle finger to middle finger, left to right and right to left the others stretching and never reaching, the touch interrupted just for the fulgurant moments when the need to pick a piece of food to feed the ravenous belly arose, before returning to the previous electrifying position. Should we? Should we. You mean we should. I mean we shall. Fingers rising off the table surface, orphaned meeting orphaned palms meeting palms and in never stopping motion knuckles sliding and twining and knotting... when did our bodies recline over the table lips joining the twine with my tie falling in the ketchup bowl? Your tie fell in the ketchup bowl, you murmured, not letting go keeping my lower lip between your teeth worrying about my eyes, my blindness, a distance bigger than a table’s width... how did we reach the room twined? Once more, facing each other, walls assenting to play mute witnesses to art in creation, our bodies fully naked from waist up fully dressed from waist down your big nipples flint rigid my little nipples flint, smaller, rigid the distance nipple to nipple shattering vertiginously... almost... now!... touch!... spark!... the hair on my chest burst in sudden flame and your left hand covered it instantly, clutching, smothering, with your right hand penetrating the atrium between my belt and belly clutching, smothering... I mirrored your move penetrating, clutching, smothering. Our bodies fully naked from waist up fully naked from waist down fully naked. Twined fingers, I whispered. Twined lips, I whispered. Twined bodies, I whispered. Define twined, you whispered. It took me hours, never content with my definitions you demanded more and I had to define sweat and friction and moans and I had to inflict upon you examples of slavery and mastery and I had to write interminable poems starting at ankle and finishing at ankle passing through the smoothness of inner thighs and intricacies of loins and the wide expanses of that smooth back of yours erupting in thousands of needles and gullies each time the pen of my fingernail separated a portion of your spine from your body. This is not love making. What is it? This is not ribaldry. What is it? This is not poetry. What is it, woman? This is the lost chapter of the sacred scriptures. This is blasphemy. This is faith. I did not mind investing more hours, now busy defining for myself the disrobed wonders of your body, never really sating. When do you die? When December hits. Before the twelfth toll. And your tie? Tie? The one which fell in the ketchup. I’ve never been so close to strangling a woman before with a ketchup stained, or else, tie. You smiled. Damn. and as I was busy groping for those welder’s goggles you started devouring me, alive. How the hell didn’t I die before December? I did, though, melt.

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Of Kids Stories And Things Tell me. Tell you what? Your secret. My secret? Which one? I have twenty three. You count them? I number them. I like some order to my secrets. It doesn't sound so many that you need to keep some order there. These are my secrets. What do you mean? She kissed me on the nose. See, this is another secret. Twenty four? No, this is our secret. I have many of these too. So, if this is our our, I guess there are other's our. Sure. Jealous? No. Envious. Are our our more than other's our? I can't tell, then it won't be a secret anymore. You can tell me just the number. I thought you wanted to know a secret. My secret. Which one? Tell me the secret of your longevity. ?? Your age. ?? I mean, you are probably more than one hundred and fifty year old, no? Do I look that old? Did it feel that old when we made love? She had a point, there. I dipped my finger in her love and smelled it. You smell my love? I test and taste. And tease. I sucked my finger and smacked my lips for a few moments. Definitely tasty. Definitely hurty. Hurty? Yes, it hurts. Look at it, it is burned to the root. She took my finger in her mouth, sucking it as well. Better? Definitely betty. Betty? The bite was painful as hell. Better, much better. Look, it grew full size again. You're procrastinating. Do I look that old? I was not. Not procrastinating. Just enjoying the lull of her naked, soft belly, my head cradled by it. No, that's exactly the point. And yet, you have modelled for Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. ?? Lewis Carroll. Yes, I know that. I don't know that I modelled for him. You must have. Did I? Yes, the Cheshire cat. Did I model for the Cheshire cat? Meow... Not for the cat. For its smile. You smiled, the Cheshire cat smile so evident, so embarrassingly conquering, so, well, feline. I moved position, now it was my ear against the skin of your belly, your breasts thankfully pulling each down to its side of chest and your smile showing in between, those wonderful crescent teeth between those wonderful crescent lips, I wondered what your wonderful crescent tongue was doing before it sneaked out cat-like, not necessarily Cheshire-like, and pasted a thin layer of lambent, lurid liquid on your top lip. I saw your canines. Are you going to eat me? The smile split into a top part and a bottom part allowing words to come out. Yes. Was this what I feared or what I hoped for? She pulled away from me, my head bouncing on the mattress, before she started crawling back, above me, on her way to the bottom of the bed, first her head and that impish Cheshire grin, then her breasts, now hanging and bouncing and dragging a stiff nipple across my mouth, then her belly button, then... no, the thighs did not follow as we dipped into each other, all motion frozen except one. No, she certainly was not one hundred and fifty year old. I wished there was a mirror above the bed, not for her skin but for my grin - I still wonder, how does a Cheshire smile look on my face?

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Color Riddles Tell me, Wind, What is the white of your skin? Is it the white of melting snow, Of daisy's crush under the plow, Of crumbling chalk between my toes upon those fields where sunshine grows? My white? Well, let me see... it is... The water feeding thirsty doves, The petal saying - yes, she loves, The promise washed away by rain and saying - yes, we meet again. Tell me, November, What is the red of your passion? Is it the red of burning hell, The bleeding doe upon the dell, The hidden flame inside the grape before my feet its slumber rape? My red? Well, let me see... it is... The sunset burning day's debris, The fawn asleep in poppy sea, The wine upon a lover's lip enchased by lust's dementing whip.

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That Artist I kept wondering - walking the carpet to shreds between the corner of the room with the bad Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso reproduction (saved from the dog’s teeth but not from his teeth’s marks) and the one with the good Andrew Warhola reproduction (just a few tea stains, a bargain) - who the hell was that Flu guy you went to bed with, envying his luck hating his guts. And telling me about it shamelessly – oh, you, wench. It had to be what’s his name? who cares what’s his name? the painter, I was sure, remembering that forest you once showed me on canvas when I almost ran away afraid of the wolves... no, this is just a painting you told me and I did not believe you until you made me touch it, and still – I kept two steps away from your hand carrying the... thing, a guy can never be sure, can he? Or, what’s his other name? that other one? the poet, I was sure, the one you wrote stone melting poetry to (I remember losing my shoe into it, once you showed it to me) and brick igniting poetry to (I remember burning my eyelashes with it, once you made me touch it) and trees inebriating poetry to (I remember not being able to count beyond two trees, they kept wobbling, once I kissed you... oops... it). And what if I was wrong and it was the sculptor, I was sure, or the singer, I was sure, or the actor, the composer, the writer, the plumber?... in my despair I started tearing pages from the Britannica, from the Encarta, the Smithsonian, the Yellow Pages, the Bible... help!... I kneeled in front of the bush in my garden which looked like the other bush (in the Old Testament, people, not in the White House) tell me before I die, I need to know... who is this guy, Flu? But, da’hling, it is not Flu, it is flu, you said, your hand on the vacuum-cleaner’s handle, ready to strike. Huh? I responded, intelligently. I said flu, da’hling, not Flu, you elaborated, a it not a he, and I still did not get it, after all - you, the other you, you dear reader see the capitals, but I could not hear them. I said flu like the middle of Influenza, da’hling, and you laughed the tea stains off my Warhola stuff... by God, you could laugh... Influenza, ha, a matador, I shrieked indignantly. No, da’hling, Influenza a sickness, you replied. Huh? I quoted my earlier poem. You refused to make love to me that night, pretending indisposition. Yeah, I know you women and your indispositions, so I pretended to believe you and after you fell asleep, I pulled the full Britannica under the covers and with a shaking flash-light in a shaking hand started reading shaking page after shaking page, looking for that matador. Even if it took me a life time. Eventually, it did.

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the power the sword, shrieking as it cuts through the butter of trill of lark and of wing of butterfly and of color of rainbow dispassionately waiting for the severed parts to tumble into a grave of boiling water running all the way into an endless sunset, sliding through the heart of pebble of rivers and of bed of seas and of ink of escaping squids mindlessly watching the gash in world's inner skin as flailing life boils itself to evaporating steam flowing into a monster grave of eternally molten ores, slicing crawling rivers of magma into death before and death after and nothing but death as its cutting edge emerges indifferently victorious over nothing but the grandiosity of dream while ash pours through a constricted throat to a grave of cooling passion and basalt rock, swishing back into blue and ash and vapor as furrow and boulder and mountain fall apart seeding as many tombstones for those pieces of animated clay wielding as many sub-versions of saber and dagger and rapier and cutlass aloofly to sub-cut themselves into sub-pieces of clay and mud and dust, and the poet sits back, awed into the fright of annihilation, waiting for all the halves and halves of halves to fall apart and disintegrate into the sun and looking for the reason why they do not with the lark still taking to air and the pebble still rolling with the river and boiling magma still coalescing into poppy studded rock and clay still dancing with clay, until he finds the reason, the only, in the touch of fingertips against fingertips and the caress of lips against lips and the brush of chest against breast and the feel of lover against lover. the power.

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I, Diary Sleeping next to her for so many years, Waiting for a never coming caressing hand the humidity seeping into my yellowing flesh cracks showing up, age creeping in relentlessly and eating away at once shared memories... once shared beauty. I was still in love with her, did she know it as she kept dancing through life forgetting all about me? “Hi...” a soft voice said, and for an instant I was afraid my spine was going to melt as liters of moisture accumulated inside my pages suddenly started flowing down her fingers and I wondered... did it taste salty as she kissed my battered cover then allowed me hear for a few godly moments the thump of her heart before opening my first page and whispering – “tell me...”? I forgot her betrayal, her indifference, now was all that counted and after coughing a few layers of dust away from my lines I started telling her all those secrets I was the only one to know and she was the only one so hungry to hear, mainly the first’s – the first pink dress, the first kiss, the first boy who touched her breast, the first boy who touched her heart, the first heartbreak. Then... second’s, and we both exploded in laughter and we both howled in tears again and again, coffee drops staining her dress and my pages, human tears staining her dress and my pages, drunken in the glory. Finally she fell asleep, hugging me to her chest, I was her lover again, the loyal companion, never even once disappointing her, I, her shield and knight, the keeper of the castle and the keeper of the soul... and I fell asleep counting heartbeats as many as pages, and more. “Hi...” a soft voice said, and I shivered knowing of the pleasures to come as she picked up her golden tipped pen, opened me at my first empty page and started telling me the stories, oh, all those stories I so missed for these many past years. I did not complain that she was tickling from time to time, I only hoped those fingers will never finish caressing my skin allaying my thirst and hunger with rivers and rivers of that inebriating red ink.

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