Worlds Tell me the color of your eyes, I asked. I don’t know, you answered. It is your eyes I am asking about, I repeated. Whatever your covet is, I wish to satisfy, you answered, hurt. Are you witch? I asked. I could read in my mind the look of distress on your face as you stood up, the chair ramming into the wall, turning over, I hurried to correct the situation... Are you angel? ...only to get it worse, my imagination guiding me onto reality’s path watching you pick up your coat then bend to click closed the shoe’s tiny buckle the one you just opened... Desperation, or was it desire, how did I come to mix all the d’s in my head... doubt, doom, drought... what was it that took hold of rampaging dementia and clamped down on it for one last try?... Are you woman? Quiet. The miles in between rolling lazily indifferent to the waves battering my chest bones into mush as I waited the hours long distance of your answer, my imagination for once betraying me enshrouding you in the secrecy of my unknowledge of you. I heard a door slamming half a world away, oh, God, no... don’t... the cold waft of air hitting my face and I refused to open my eyes not asking not wondering just accepting a door slamming just a breath’s distance away. I opened my eyes. Where did you drag this posture from, one shoe dangling from an index finger stuck under the strap the other still on your foot the lopsided effect enhanced by a coat dangling from your other hand dragging behind a wooden chair, one sleeve clutched in your fist, a torn, hanging piece of blouse baring a white shoulder, half a bra’s cup... What did you get hooked on? I asked caring not for fantasy or reality. An airplane’s wing tip, you answered, and it sounded logical somehow. You cut the breath’s distance to half, then to nothing, inhaling my lungs. No, you did not kiss me. What did you me? I woman’d you, I think you said, and at that moment I knew this was the only answer and the color of your eyes whatever I covetted it to be because... I tore my lungs away from your mouth and savored my victory asking again Are you woman?... and before you had the chance to vanish through that hole in the ground back to your world I added You are woman!... making sure you heard the exclamation mark. You heard it. I felt it. Your mouth ascending from that sunken south, demanding of its breathless prey its famished want with bites allay and curb its ageless drouth. Your hand emblazing time’s untarnished sand, descending through a flaring swarm amongst the crumbs of raging storm its lust with coals to brand. While knotting muscles down my spine the soothe of balsam shun And plowing nails invest my flesh in search for crimes undone We share the desert of a night beneath the willow’s bark The spasm a dance, the pain a balm, the scream a trilling lark. Your breast denying skin’s demure protest, invoking gods of sunken suns to guide my fingers just this once and claim its lasting nest. Your eye enchasing stars in morning’s sky, beseeching passion’s cleaving bane and endless waves of screeching pain till morrow’s sad good bye. I kneeled to remove the lonesome shoe you dropping the one hanging to your finger, you dropped the coat’s sleeve as well and the chair made a hollow noise as it disappeared to your side of the world, I pulled down your stockings... there were wide runs all over them. Do you want the white of my flesh? you asked. I stood up and further ripped your blouse pulling along the one visible white cup of your bra regarding the tiny blue veins of your breast pulsing as they pumped fresh supplies of blood into a nipple demanding the pity of my touch... such cruelty in my ignorance of the plea, my rampant fingers destroying the other half of the bra dark red stains threatening to explode through your skin and straight into my mouth. Damn you, you screamed against my neck, your canines penetrating and our hands taking hold of each other’s waistlines in one savage pull our nakedness joined and the stank of burning clothes charred our arms to the elbow. The cruelty of ignorance replaced by the cruelty of conquest melting tiles cracking in a cacophony of mutilation a black funnel descending around us as our bodies inhaled the hiding sun’s threshing corona and next day’s comatose dawn enthraled to be touched by the reaper’s long blade. What eye color shall I wear now? you asked, painting circles around the corner of my mouth with your tongue. Kaleidoscope, I answered, watching imploding galaxies and exploding buds playing havoc in your eyes and on my brains. You are... I started, and you placed a shushing finger on my mouth, scared. Please, don’t break the magic, you implored. I removed your finger ever so gently, placed it once upon each of my eyes, then placed it on my left nipple, I wanted you to feed my heart with memories. You are woman, I said, and you smiled. * You put on some of my clothes, a t-shirt, a pair of jogging pants... I don’t need more... you said when I asked what about shoes and underwear. I stopped you for a moment, before you fully pulled down the t-shirt, tracing the intricated topography around the maturity of your breasts, skin deep valleys and dull stains decorating the skin’s otherwise snow whiteness, other lines running around your abdomen... Birth giving marks, flesh deformation marks, gravitation age marks, you smiled, unembarrassed. Life marks, I admited, and you thanked me sucking my lungs into your mouth for one last time. Gravitation will never touch my inner side, you added, and fell through the hole in my world back to your world. I keep sending you words. One day we may unbury this hole again, or we may forget where we hid those spades, or that there ever were spades, who knows? I will never forget the color of your eyes, though... Whatever your covet is...

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The Book You let me touch your book jacket, not yet the book, not even the cover. I will leave stains, fingerprints, I feebly objected, eager to touch. It isn’t new, you brushed my insincere objections aside pointing to the miniature tears along the edges, a few oily stains, one burned spot... Cigarette? I asked. Heart, you answered. I turned the book over and over in my hands absorbing the smell, the warmth, pointing to some pen doodles... rings and squares and triangles... Poems someone wrote for me, can you do better? you asked. Yes, if you allow me, I answered and wrote you a poem. Then laid the book on the table, my cheek on it ready to fall asleep, it was so soft... When you wake up I will allow you to peel off my book jacket, then my dress, my shoes. Why? Because you wrote me a poem. And then, will you allow me to open your cover? No, you will have to peel my cover, then my lace, my silks. And leaf through your pages? Peel my pages, my skin, my eyes. Why do you keep saying peel? You are a book, one opens a book, one leafs through a book. I am also a woman, you have to uncover me, discover me, then cover me with poetry. But you are written already. You will have to fill in the blanks. Like my heart. I dreamt of falling asleep on a book, then sinking into it, letters settling comfortably inside the groves lining my brain delectating in the tiny electric jolts I was sending their way. A woman started telling me her story. I touched her.

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Ship I will launch my ship into the red of your rivers, the white of sails blemished into lover’s epiphany by the blue of ink, the black of cannons cut to giant’s wedding rings by the green of grass blades, the helm deserted as the anchor fails to grab the undulating walls leading to the thunder of your cavern where it will smash against muscle, and whorls, and oxygen blasts. You send your scouts to the wreckage salvaging as much of the colors as you can, the white, the blue, the black, the green, the diamond, the topaz, the coral, the ruby, the emerald and let the dye set in your bedcover’s linen where you curl alone at night and let the hues soak into your eye’s white, and your skin’s topaz, and your breast’s smoldering ruby.

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