Hobbies - Poetry - Anonn
back to Poems...

 

blank

corner
Concessions

    Do you concede, now?

    Why, are you sick with cancer?
    Worse, I am sick with time,
    it’s eaten already great chunks of my body, not much left,
    do you concede?
    Concede? It’s my wish.
    I raped her.

    Do you concede, now?

    Why, you are not sick with cancer.
    No, I am sick with your time,
    not much left before it eats you away, wholly,
    do you concede?

    Concede? It is my dream.
    She raped me.

    How much have you left until life?

    If you asked me before concession
    I would have said until concession,
    now I say it matters not and nothing,
    before I would have been regretful for leftovers of life unknown to any of us
    now I am regretless with leftovers of memories known only to both of us
    and to that creaking bed
    minding not getting its springs mangled and its sheets rent
    and those ravenous cimicidae feeding themselves into obesity on our shreds of skin
    and scattered, short, ripped curls.

    How much have you left until life?

    Yesterday, it was until yesterday,
    today it is until today,
    tomorrow until tomorrow.
    When it rains until rain when it blooms until bloom when I sing until I sing.

    Your answer as blue as your eyes, as muddy as unpolished diamonds.
    Meaning my eyes are muddy?
    Meaning your eyes are diamond, once you pull eyelashes out of way,
    your blue muddy, like a sea bed bubbling with cooling magma.

    We walked hand in hand,
    she barefoot, I carrying her shoes, she hopping from puddle to puddle.
    She hoped into an open door, it was a bus.
    I stayed behind, relishing in the poisonous exhaust fumes,
    hands raised until rain filled her shoes and I drank it
    letting the catholicon drown my thirst of time
    and of woman.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Encounter

    I put a grin there,
    not mouth to ear, rather mouth corner to mouth corner
    meeting somewhere at the nape of your neck...
    luckily for your hair
    else you would have been mistaken for Cheshire Cat’s floating head
    or Cinderella’s pumpkin slit mouth
    or the horizon upside down
    or... muscles slowly relaxing, grin subsiding
    until the mouth corners turned to their rightful place, yes, both,
    each under its own cheek
    and Cinderella’s grinning pumpkin turned smiling Cinderella
    the Disney one - beautiful, elegant, gracious... no, not sensuous,
    Disney’s were never sensuous.
    Though you were. Are.
    Sensuous. Wild. Body and mind.
    I was once wild too, body and mind.
    Left the body wildness somewhere along the way
    in one of those time lockers I passed by,
    I kept the key.
    My mind still as wild as ever,
    like a desert storm
    like a barracuda swarm
    like a teenagers’ dorm... after midnight.
    Like Cinderella. After midnight.
    Yes, mixed up. Mixed metaphors,
    I always mix my metaphors
    not to be original. To be realistic.
    These don’t usually go together.
    My hands do go together.

    My hands do go together
    thumb to thumb middle finger to middle finger
    your waist encircled between phalanges squeezing slightly, locking
    fingertip to fingertip
    your air ascending from belly to chest
    your fire descending from chest to loins
    your thighs bindweed suddenly turning three times around mine
    forcing me to pull out the key and open the lockers
    until rampaging wildness crushes your breasts
    and pours boiling desire inside the delicate texture of boiling flesh.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Self Confidence

    Do you write as good as Shakespeare?
    Better, he probably didn’t write his stuff anyway
    and he used ancient English.
    Decide, he did or did not?
    Irrelevant. His rhyme was off, and then someone invented a form for it.
    You’re envious.
    I am not.
    I was.
    Better than Joyce?
    Did you read him?
    Yes.
    Did you like him?
    No.
    So. You said it. Did you read his prose?
    Yes.
    Did you understand it?
    No.
    Finally an honest person. Neither did I.
    Cummings?
    The one with small letters and big ego?
    The one with small letters and big talent.
    Yes.
    Yes what?
    You asked ‘Cummings’. I answered ‘yes’.
    Whatever your question was. What was your question?

    She kissed me. Hard.
    I had nothing to envy Shakespeare for. Or the others.
    Let’s make love.
    No.
    It took her by surprise.
    No?
    No.
    Why? Logical question to illogical answer.
    You didn’t tell me if I write as good as Shakespeare, Joyce, Cummings, Poe, Bukowski...
    Angelou...
    No. Not Angelou.
    Female. Black. Gay icon. Perfect. I cannot beat this.
    Are you sarcastic?
    Only half. The other half realistic.
    And the other half?
    She clearly did not fare well at math in high school.
    The other half personal.
    No.
    No what?
    You don’t write as good.
    Huh?
    Better.
    Huh?
    Better.
    Now you’re sarcastic.
    Only half. The other half realistic.
    And the other half personal?
    (And I did fare better at math in high school.)
    No. Horny.
    Well, she was a poet. She had a right to be original.

    She kissed me again. Harder.
    Nothing original in that kiss.
    Except maybe its taste. Wild.
    Except maybe its feel. Wild.
    Except maybe its declaration. Woman. Wanton. Wild.
    You think you’re as good as Shakespeare?
    I crushed her breasts. I crushed her thighs.
    I wrote on her skin, in her flesh.
    He’s dead. I am alive.
    She was even better than I was. Writing. Alive.
    Even when she killed me.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Insomnia

    You lie in bed
    nothing between you and the ceiling except the light blanket,
    eyes closed
    darkness inside darkness
    looking for sleep, for dreams, for something,
    you turn, you turn again,
    you turn again your finger teasing a reluctant nipple...
    sleep, sleep!... you command meaninglessly
    letting the same finger slide further down,
    allowing it a moment of intense pleasure between your thighs,
    sleep, sleep!... you command again,
    complaining unconvincingly
    as you slide out from between covers
    and close the bathroom door behind you.

    You open the tap, hotter,
    and inspect yourself in the mirror
    counting the blemishes,
    pinching the skin
    still tight, still smooth, ass
    still firm, enticing...
    to whom? you wonder
    as your mind crosses into fantasy’s forbidden territory
    and your body cuts open the water
    almost like Moses cutting the Red Sea,
    you sink at the bottom, the steam enveloping you, you disappear.
    Only the tip of your nose, the tip of your nipple, the tip of your left toe
    break the perfection of uniformity.
    Sleep, finally invades you.

    You shiver. The water has chilled.
    You stir involuntarily, finding your hand between your thighs.
    Again? you moan, this time not complaining
    but searching, finding, driving,
    the water around you a frenzy of biting barracudas...
    relief...

    Drops of pleasure drip behind you
    as you slide between covers once more,
    the wet hair embracing the pillow
    as the pillow sucks your life
    and delivers it to an appreciating Morpheus.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
The Color Of Your Passion

    Which hotel is it that we don’t remember?
    The one we don’t remember the color of the carpet when we made love on the floor
    the one we don’t remember the color of the bedding when we made love on the bed
    or was it under the bed
    or the one we don’t remember the color of the tablecloth
    when we made love on the table, the din of falling and breaking crockery
    and glass and china
    drowned by the din of your screams before, during?...
    no, not after,
    after just the purrrrr... with many r’s.

    Which elevator was it
    when we jammed the emergency stop between floors
    and you climbed on my shoulders
    praying for the abolition of innocence
    with me gulping mouthfuls of your perfumed desire,
    remember the angry matron who confronted us on the ground floor
    with a flood of abuse
    until you lifted your skirt showing her the reality of life?

    Was it a bench in the park the next one?
    or the statue of what’s his name? or under the rotting boat?
    the vandalized phone booth? the dirty car hood? the bus station?
    the bus? the church,
    your eyes big, alight with the reflection of thousands of candles
    as you faced the altar until you got lost inside the skirt’s folds
    that covered your head
    and I faced the altar of your round mounds of flesh
    under a Jesus forgetting his agony for a moment
    to smile upon us
    with the tolerance of knowledge?
    We skipped the police station, the oaks garden, the mayor’s velvety chair,
    there will be a next time, no?
    We still have the Everest to conquer
    the Niagara falls
    the dark side of the moon.

    I still remember the color of the carpet.
    I still remember the color of the bedding, the color of the tablecloth.
    All of them. The color of your passion.
    All of it.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
nascent beauty

    your eyes,
    hiding behind fallen tulips,

    your mouth
    working its way out from beneath mountains of smoldering petals,

    your breasts
    laying tired nipples to bed
    inside the folds of my palms.

    the rest of you
    abdicating to the insolent demands of poetry
    and nascent beauty.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Dead Man Walking

    What do you prefer -
    make love to me or write me poetry?
    she asked.
    I didn’t hesitate.
    Careful, she warned me, one way street.
    I still didn’t hesitate. Write you poetry.

    Silence. Was she angry? smiling?
    Why? She was still talking to me.
    Because making love to you has an end. Then endless pain.
    Writing you poetry is endless pleasure.
    And the fire?
    Fire?
    Fire. To consume you, to consume your nights, to consummate your poetry.
    The pain before rather than the pain after. The consuming inconsummation.
    She knew.

    I heard a plane. I heard a bus. I heard a door.
    I heard butterflies sliding up and down a violin’s strings.
    You can hear butterflies?
    Poets hear the strangest of things. Like a plane, a bus, a door.
    I see fresh hay, dry leaves, broken nails.
    I looked around, there was no such thing. You see hay?
    And leaves, and nails. Poets see the strangest things.
    I told you I prefer poetry.
    You told me. I did not tell you. I prefer both.
    And the one way street?
    I watched the thick tomes already cluttering my desk.
    I came for the fire.
    I have none. Only words.
    My fire. And words.

    I felt the hay, itching,
    then the leaves, soothing, then the nails biting, cutting, renting,
    then her breasts smothering and her thighs crushing.
    I sat up. I turned around
    letting her pick the hay, the leaves, pull out the nails from my back
    bandage my surface cuts with ribbons from her skirt
    sew my deep cuts with nylon thread from her stockings
    fix my splintered bones with straps from her shoes.
    I look ridiculous, I said.
    You are naked, I said.
    Don’t worry, she said. Now you own the fire.
    Not have. Own. Fire. Memory.

    I died. Then returned from the sun. Dead man living. Dead man writing.
    Was that the smell of burning butterflies,
    of burning jasmine, of burning ink?
    Dead man burning.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
orchard blossom

    between the skin
    thirsting its death across the desert of my palm
    and the skin
    going to waste down the ridges of your ribs

    harpoons grappling
    and trains derailing
    and baby plesiosaurs hatching
    and orchards blossoming...

    touch...

    charred skin, smoldering flesh, crumbling bones,
    tiny magma beads roll away from your quaking belly
    burning their way through bedding,
    through the wood of bed and the stone of floor and soil
    finding their way
    home,
    to a mother Earth’s belly
    pregnant
    with fire...

    our fire?

    it took me time to answer.
    no. yours.

    I swathed your wounds the best I could,
    I dressed your body the best I could, with tatters,
    I left you pulling out harpoons
    and mending railroads
    and caressing baby plesiosaurs
    and inhaling life together with perfumes of char and smolder and crumble
    and that heavenly enveloping orchard blossom.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Curls

    I rolled her curls around my fingers, mainly those around her ears.
    they refused to stay curled
    and I kept trying.
    Your finger is not hot enough, she said.
    Was there a devil in her eyes?
    I can get it very hot, I responded, making a meaningful motion.
    You are very impertinent, she answered, slightly parting her thighs.
    Can you also uncurl the curled? she continued,
    the devil growing horns and a trident
    and her thighs parting slightly further.
    With the same finger?
    With whatever you consider useful, she said
    dropping the blanket
    and guiding my head to her need...

    I took a tiny brush and started painting her toenails,
    smallest to biggest.
    Then repeated it for the other foot,
    biggest to smallest,
    missing the target several times.
    I made a mess of the bedding.
    You are not focused, she said
    pulling her first foot closer to her eyes, for a careful examination.
    I am, I said, my eyes crossed... or is it called split?...
    Yes, on the wrong target, she snickered,
    her other foot still close to her face
    my mind a mix of mess and mush and toenail polish.
    She did not make it any easier
    as long as that leg was in that position
    and I on that other position.
    The devil had two tails by now and his trident grew two extra spikes.

    I got slightly higher and painted a smiley on her knee.
    Then considerably higher and painted a smiley on her belly,
    the belly button one of the eyes.
    And in between?
    I spread her thighs as wide as possible and got my face close to the in-between
    cautiously smearing nail polish on each curl,
    trying to freeze them into uncurls. In vain.
    It was like flattening an old clock’s spiraling steel springs
    inclusive the zinggg... once liberated.
    Shall I show you? she asked,
    showing.
    I did not blush before, I blushed now.

    I stopped blushing once she let go
    and allowed me to paint her fingernails.
    It was slightly easier than toenails,
    no distracting curls, no distracting curls...
    You have a fixation with curls.
    Yes, I wish you had a moustache, I answered.
    Or a beard, she answered,
    pushing her breasts up and close
    so I could smiley them. There was not much work there,
    the red eyes already in place, made just a biiig circle around them
    the red eyes already in place...
    You said it already, another fixation?
    ...the red eyes already in place (yes, probably another fixation)
    I touched them to make sure they were reacting to touch...
    Usually they should react to light.
    ...they reacted
    and I reacted
    and she reacted
    and the nail polish spilled all over the bed sheets and between our bodies
    as we tried to curl the uncurls
    and uncurl the curls
    and test how much blood could squeeze out from inside scratches
    and beneath fingernails
    and between teeth.

    I leaned on the bark,
    my back bare, my fingers playing havoc upon her nipples,
    her nipples playing havoc upon my sanity
    her bare back crushing into my chest bone with feline ferocity
    and softness.
    Butterflies playing havoc upon our poetry
    as I wrote rhymes on the nape of her neck
    and she wrote long poems around my kneecaps.
    Do you see that flower? she asked.
    There were no flowers. Yes, I said.
    Do you see that fluffy cloud? she asked.
    There were no clouds. Yes, I said.
    I know there are none, she said.
    I see them, I said.
    I know you do not lie, she said.
    I do not lie, I said. I did not lie.
    Count the curls, she said.

    I closed my eyes, started counting the curls around each letter,
    around each petal, around each grass blade, sand grain, seed, chirrup...
    Many?
    Endless.
    Let’s not wait until you count them all, let’s make love.
    You mean make love?
    I mean make love. Do you want to make love to me?
    There was no question, there was no answer, there was no statement,
    there was... expectation.

    I did not have to write a new poem.
    Just add one stanza.
    After all, making love was not a style, making love was...
    Let’s make love, I quoted,
    as we started sculpting the canvas
    and writing the marble
    and painting the letters.
    We made love, I said.
    We made art, she said. She knew.

    I left with her my tools - my adze, my brush, my pencil.
    I’ll probably never return.
    I’ll probably never want to use them again.
    Stealing virginity comes at a huge price. It is priceless.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Teacher

    How many more stairs to heaven? I asked,
    reaching the third hotel floor,
    panting.
    None, you said
    making love there, on the dirty, worn-out carpet.
    Heaven is a matter of definition, you added, later,
    letting me examine the nakedness erupting from your youthfulness.
    Youth is a matter of aspiration, I added my bit of philosophy.
    How so?
    People past it aspire to it, it keeps them almost young, indefinitely.
    In business it would be called a stretching goal.
    And in love?
    Stairway to heaven.
    Led Zep?
    Also. Also here. Also you. Especially you.
    Stairway to heaven?
    No. Heaven.
    No interface needed. Before. After. Digital. Binary.
    You speak like an engineer, you smiled,
    starting to put on your clothes.
    This cloth is counting your heartbeats, I said,
    joining my ear to the cloth.
    Is it accurate enough?
    Let’s see... one, two, three...
    This cloth is luckier than me, always counting your heartbeats.
    You are wrong, you are so wrong...
    Wrong? In which way?
    In every way, you said,
    getting up and taking my hand
    and practically dragging me further up.

    First, it was not one, two, three,
    but rather one thousand, two thousand, three thousand...

    I let myself be dragged on like a limp rag doll,
    Second, everything youthfully is not only a matter of aspiration
    but also and rather of perspiration...

    I had no breath left to respond so I didn’t,
    Third, all that preceded was just an introduction
    to eruption, to Led Zep, to stairways (more stairs?) to heaven...

    The silence that followed bothered me,
    Is there a Fourth?... I managed to hiss.

    The door clicked closed. The key clicked twice. The hifi clicked on.

    I was an analphabet in a library.
    I was a primate in a museum.
    I was a eunuch in a harem.

    You taught me read.
    You taught me understand.
    You taught me make love.

    You taught me life.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
beyond

    I went beyond the mountains,

    and the marble was flesh
    and the wine was blood
    and the sea wandered into your eyes looking for the moon
    and finding the fire
    that burnt away its waters
    leaving the salt
    and the blue.

    I tasted flesh
    and drank blood
    and carried buckets of water to your eyes
    trying to wash the salt
    and bring reflections of moon
    into the blue.

    I returned from beyond the mountains,

    carrying scars of flesh and scars of blood
    and scars of reflections of moon.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Lovers

    What’s the difference of age between us?
    Don’t know... twenty, thirty?
    Wrong.
    More?
    Wrong decimal point. Two, three...
    You mean I’m younger just by two, three years?
    I mean I’m younger by two, three years.

    She did not smile,
    she twinkled
    the way a dew-sprinkled orchid twinkles
    viewed through a time-lens camera
    speeding its metamorphosis from bud to petal.

    Not if to judge by the wrinkles adorning your skull
    and by the bulge adorning your belly.

    Yes, if to judge by the insides of the skull
    and by the bulge beneath the bulge.

    She did not laugh,
    she sparkled
    the way a moon-born baby would sparkle
    would the moon bear daughter
    to the sun.

    You’ll die much before me, you know?
    Poetry and bulges won’t change the fact.

    I know.
    I kissed the ends of each finger
    then licked her palm, slowly.
    You’re salty,
    like coconut flesh dipped in Mediterranean foam
    and dragon tears.
    There are no dragons.
    I am about to make love to one,
    extract the woman inside it
    and mix her skin with mine and bite her scales to diamond dust.

    When you die
    I am going to tear a page from your book
    and burn it above a candle. Then gather the ashes in an empty matchbox
    and bury it under a tombstone, at random.

    You honor me.
    Not all of it, some I will sprinkle under my pillow.
    You honor me.
    Not all of it, some I will pour in a glass of tequila and down in one gulp.
    Make love to me.

    She did not make love,
    she created
    pieces of dying sun
    mixing them with cropped wheat heads escaped from millstones
    and sinking the cantharidian philter
    selectively in each of my skin’s pores begging for mercy
    and in the roots of my curls.

    Curls?
    Her perfumes exploded all over me
    as I sank into her calligraphy
    writing the only poem I would ever write inside her.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
glass

    a seagull
    locked in a water glass three quarters empty
    hitting against tall, steep, solid walls - thump, thump, thump...

    ...crack, break,
    crawl squeeze bleed evade escape
    fly!...

    I watched her circling clouds
    roses
    cypress trees and fox tails
    I watched her voicelessly singing storm music into my mind
    and waited for her to turn fully woman
    before I opened my cape and covered our shared nakedness
    for none to see
    for us to feel
    for bodies to merge into body
    and flesh to drip water and salt into the glass till overflow
    and melted ore to cool into shivering shapes
    of dragons
    of larks
    of tumbleweed...

    the bed headboard cracked.
    the lift motor seized.
    we rolled down the wooden stairs heads banging thighs locked
    with the pectineus sartorius rectus femoris vastus medialis vastus intermedius
    vastus lateralis semimembranosus semitendinosus biceps femoris
    adductor magnus adductor longus adductor brevis and the graceful gracilis
    running from the pubic arch to somewhere
    forming full carrick bends with each other and all others
    as gelatinous fluids envelopped our insides and our outsides
    turning us one mass of struggling flesh
    and fiber
    and disintegrating bone.

    I watched her wings
    opening
    I watched her claws
    sharpening
    I let her beak tear a piece of my liver as she soared back into the clouds
    away from glass
    and water
    and reality’s implacable rules and regulations.

    Poet.

    Soar! Roast my liver in the sun
    and turn your burning feathers as many quills as many fingers
    and endless words.

    Poet.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
verticality

    elbows
    barely touching,

    we walked slowly, carefully, attentively,
    the single drop of sweat - mine? yours? - gluing at elbow
    by mere surface tension and gravity rejection and obstinacy,
    as powerful as steel surgical wire
    as mortal as a rotten book, be it even masterpiece.

    we started turning,
    facing,
    the drop thinning, stretching
    until it covered every interlacing atom
    of locked pubes and nailed maxillae and knotted tongues and braided fingers...
    we froze, a howling universe freezing with us
    or, were we howling?

    “your back, is covered with bark. and with...”

    you hugged the tree, fell asleep
    as I started pulling the incrusted bark
    then washing the lichen
    then tweaking the splinters.

    I waited impatiently for you to wake-up
    and turn around again
    so I could start collecting bark from inside your thighs
    and rolling away splinters from your nipples
    and lick away lichen from your one, crumpled cheek.

    there was a new, waiting howl
    between my ears.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Fata Morgana

    Inspiration,
    that strange Fata Morgana
    hiding in your body
    and crushing my palms with your breasts
    and my manly pride with your womanly difference.

    Squashing my rotting intellect into glistening pearl
    and quashing my rebellious talent into the whimpering pulp
    of words burning underneath my skin
    and the resulting puss of dross and ashes
    spreading through my brain.

    I’ve never seen a Fata Morgana before
    sacrificing her hideous layers of silk
    on a human’s altar
    to cover my shivering mortality with her magnificent layers of breath
    and transparent softness of flesh,
    her fingers seeding red roses among the competing armies
    of my wrinkles and her desert grains
    breathing into them the instant bloom
    of a bleeding sunset.

    Go away with your illusion, I groaned,
    suddenly glutted with dream derivatives
    passing my hand through her immateriality
    only to meet the hard resistance of bone and muscle
    and human claws guiding my hand to the burning liquidity of life and lust...
    I groped, I gripped, I grappled
    with the desperation of a sinking bag of nails
    mouths meeting halfway
    groins meeting halfway, then all the way, then beyond
    and the pale Fata Morgana disintegrated into an invisible whiff
    under the onslaught of the fully blossoming orchard
    of woman.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Crescendo

    I wrote you once a rhyming song
    Between my loves, and then among,
    Before the two that turned to joke,
    The five that died in choking smoke,
              and all along.

    huh?

    I kept the verses in a jar
    And gathered glimpses from afar,
    When lovers touched your wanting breast
    I painted flowers on my chest
              with drops of tar.

    hmm.

    Come summer’s pain through autumn’s tears
    I let your voice caress my ears,
    I learned from winter’s dying birds
    The crave to die inside your words
              and souvenirs.

    oh!

    I live to rough your mouth and shirt,
    To rob the warmth beneath your skirt,
    And once I pry your thighs apart
    To let you rive my flailing heart
              and bite the dirt.

    mmm...

    The music dies. The buds unfold.
    The spring invades in ways foretold.
    The paper mottled in the bin
    Holds drops of love and dreams of sin
              and stains of mold.

    ?!...

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Plethora Of Poetical er Licenses

    Scene. One.


    You are a gazelle and I am an elephant,
    you are La Belle and I am La Bête, you are early spring and I am late autumn,
    you are an opening bud
    I am a herbarium. Dry leaves. Dry flowers...
    where the hell did this dry fly come from as well?
    You are younger, thinner, softer, beautifuler... sorry, poetical license.

    I am faster, you said.

    You took off in the general North-Northeast direction
    until you were no more than a dot on the Northern Hemisphere map.
    We are, though, oxymoronically equal in one aspect.
    I was reading your lips through binoculars,
    there was no way to hear you at that distance.
    You are longer. I am deeper.

    My head jerked with a sudden twitch. Church?
    Church bells toll in heavy bronze, this was tinkling in fragile crystal.
    I put my eyes against the binoculars again.
    You were laughing. Laughing and gesticulating,
    a variety of unidentified birds circling you
    like as many winged satellites.

    I rang your cell phone. You had no binoculars
    and there was no way to make myself heard at that distance.
    I am er than you in one aspect, I said.
    I am patienter.
    The tinkling paused for a moment.
    Another poetical license?
    Maybe I am even attentiver, enraptureder, abandoneder, lustfuler...
    Quiet. Only Doppler chirrups
    as the birds kept nearing and parting from you mouth’s vicinity.
    That’s a lot of poetical license, you chirruped,
    no Doppler effect to it.
    It takes some proving, you added.
    Sure. If you would only agree to desert your ornithological foster family...

    You glided back. Like a snowflake on lifting smoke,
    like down dropping from a nest,
    immaterial
    like a thought
    followed by its shadow.

    Shall I float?
    Yes, please.

    *

    Scene. Two.


    You wore nylons
    No, not a horrible pantyhose
    but real nylons, real stockings,
    the WWII kind
    held up by garters and used by GI’s to seduce French women
    worn since by whores and movie stars and fragile lovers and brides...
    ...which one am I?...
    Shut up!
    May I?
    I asked, sliding the hem up until one garter started showing,
    cutting it,
    sliding further until a white triangle of silk started showing... a round, wet spot...
    ...are you just a gawker or also a doer?...
    I did not find any comparative irony in these specific er’s
    as I pinched the nylon
    picked a thread between thumb and forefinger
    and started pulling.
    How many feet of thread in one stocking? I wondered aloud,
    or is it maybe miles?...
    and you moved from floating
    to floating and rolling
    my fingers first trailing the thread away from your flesh
    then tracing it on your flesh
    then trying to count the countless tiny goose-bumps that hit my fingernail
    like a living species of road speed-bumps
    your shivers making me miss the count
    the wet spot growing by gyration, I reached the knee...
    ...you’re going the wrong direction...
    What can I do? The damn stocking is built the wrong way around.
    Or you started the wrong way around,
    is it something like err, you know, an er with two r’s?


    Now, this was already mockery.
    If my er’s weren’t sufficiently stretched already
    (at least those with pat and att and enr and... no, not the one with lus,
    the lus one was hitting the ceiling and moving on towards the shingles
    from the inside)
    so, as I said, if this wasn’t sufficient
    now you were moving into mockery, next you’ll start laughing, next...
    No! Way! Okay, let’s say I am slightly impatienter...
    you offered me a respectable escape chute
    picking my hand and dragging it upwards... please, stop gyrating
    or you’ll have me wrapped all around you in thin ribbons...
    ...and there will be so many of these, wouldn’t there?...
    I didn’t have time to evaluate the mockery-slash-worry in this one
    as my hand ended a bit higher (bad er) than hoped
    yet lower (good er) than too high
    and I stopped wondering if my palm pushed itself underneath your shirt
    or your shirt pushed itself above my palm
    and if the sudden pain in it was a heart attack
    starting somewhere in a tiny vein along the life-line
    or your nipple turned hot tipped dagger cutting right through it
    cutting, cutting, cutting... something snapped.
    Was this the sound of a heart attack?
    No, fancy, cheap stuff, you declared authoritatively
    shedding the colorful bra to gravity’s voracious appetite,
    ...you’re so much braer than my bra...
    and for whatever reason I bent forward
    letting you bite my lips
    and I forgot that I wanted to correct your oral typo
    telling you that you should have said braver and not...
    Shut up!
    It was your turn. I didn’t remember even whispering...
    No, you’re certainly not a breast whisperer
    though you might qualify as a breast mumbler.

    Well, one or the other, not a bad qualifying er
    and I probably passed some unknown to me test
    since the next I knew you picked my hand, bleeding palm and all
    and cancelled the earlier mentioned higher (bad er) than hoped
    making it land... was I qualified xxxxx screamer, maybe?
    You... definitely... are...

    I wondered if I screamed for long. My then as well as my now recollections
    qualify for nil. Do they?

    You reached into my wetness
    you tore my silk
    you reinstated gravitation
    commanding it to take control of my body
    your body
    your clothes torn by ravens
    my thighs torn by rave
    our mouths ravished by armies of teeth and legions of grunts
    and the flailing tongues of dragon seed...


    *

    Scene. Three


    Am I a poetical license for you?

    You are a complete new ruling.
    A whole new grammar. A language. A theory
    competing with the Big Bang in unprovability and power of seduction,
    how do you write a language of touches
    of smells of warmth of lust
    of passionate existence in three dimensions and three only
    when one would probably need twenty three
    for you?

    All I have is poetical license. Cannot compete.
    Cannot succeed.
    I fail trying
    and all I wish now is keep on trying.
    With my hand on your breast.
    With your nipple between my fingers.
    With er, lots of er...

    ...er, like ever?...

    ...er, like ever.
    Like after. Like dreamer. Like erogenous, paper, deeper...
    Eros?
    ...no, Eros is competition...
    Mermaid?
    ...hmm... siren maybe?
    You kind of mix your er’s, that’s a lot of poetical license.
    Okay, perennial, permanent, perpetual, eternal...
    Terminator... you smiled.
    Schwarzenegger... again the church again the tinkle, you laughed.
    Poery. This was a sudden inspiration.
    You lost a t somewhere.
    I looked somewhere and did not find the t,
    I found though perfume, leftovers, fire...
    ...fire, that’s a nice er, auditive.
    ...never.

    Quiet.
    I could hear the brain cells dying in my skull.
    I could hear your hair grow.

    Please, spread on the window.
    Like a gecko?
    Like a deco... ration.
    Wrong time
    for rhyme.
    Wrong time
    for rhyme.
    It’s never wrong.

    You extracted me from inside you.
    Turn off gravitation.
    I turned off gravitation.
    You lay spread-eagled across the window
    your palms suction cups, your ankles suction cups,
    your hair floating, squirming like thousands of thin snakes
    warming themselves in the sun...
    ...which hair? Tinkle.
    You’re impertinent.
    I know where you’re looking.
    You don’t. Eagler, please?
    So now it’s applicable to nouns...
    but you obeyed,
    a four armed spider with poppy tipped breasts...
    your breasts!
    What about my breasts?
    You look ridiculous.
    I can set them horizontally,
    I can set them one up and one down, one left one right,
    cross eyed.
    Flat?
    No way, not trying even.
    I still carried the crucifixion holes in my palms.

    I waited for the sun to cut through your flesh and examine your insides.
    The pinks, the reds, the darks, the zebra ribs,
    the fluttering butterfly called heart
    the incandescent grove called woman
    the sons of sun called eyes - invisible, tormenting, blinding.

    I had enough of sun, I brought moon.
    The fashion freak to dress your skin webs,
    to pour moths in your hair, hang fallen petals to your eyelids
    and seed owl hoots between your toes
    while stealing tiger tenderness from underneath your nails,
    to feed its missing half with dew, its mourning
    with morning.

    And when I got fed up with the moon
    I called in the cars
    headlights and horns and motors
    to play a light-and-sound cacophony over your body
    more beautiful than the Niagara falls
    more beautiful than a tulips bed
    more beautiful than a sleeping puppy.

    Beautifuler.

    I cannot hold gravitation off much longer, you know, I said.
    We have to part, you know, you said.

    We tore into each other,
    our bodies giving up, unsuitable,
    like a kitchen sink trying to channel a river.

    *

    Scene. Four.


    We held hands. We walked.
    She got into a bus. I got into a car.
    She stood. I sat.
    The bus drove East. I drove South South West.
    Turning left, right, around roundabouts, across bridges, train rails, borders.
    The hands still holding.
    Strange thing, hands. So flexible.
    Flexibler.

    I smiled. I even closed my fists trying to contain the blood. I could have answered forever
    but the poem was getting too long already.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Of Cyclic Explorers

    I finished shaving.
    I am conservative about sex, I said.
    By the time she finished laughing, I had to shave again.

    *

    I licked her clothes away.
    There was stiff resistance in some spots,
    they called these heaven.
    I always thought there was just one heaven,
    shows one’s never too old to learn.
    I had to bite these away.

    I started mapping her body with the tip of my tongue,
    first longitudinally, long, slow passes,
    then latitudinally, same tempo, more work rolling her and rolling her,
    then went into more detail in a variety of semi-closed environments
    starting with a dangerous one
    the one called mouth,
    my tongue sneaking timidly past stiff, white pillars
    and checking minutely for the variability of landscape
    of muscle and carnivorous reaches
    and a soft breeze, undecided if to move in past me or out past me,

    I moved on,
    past other regional points of interest
    leaving behind some fingers to deal with these
    while my tongue followed the trail between two longitudinal lines,
    hey, I did not mark this one, a short one
    and I started investigating deeper, slower,
    there was a spot there and on the spot there was a dot...
    what did you say, love?
    She said something, sounded inarticulate to me
    so I kept my focus on the task at hand,
    my tongue tip sliding sometimes perilously inside a swampy area...
    no, no crocodiles... I hope...
    sometimes ascending the slope back to the spot,
    back to the dot...
    what did you say, love?...
    she was still inarticulate, the sounds started worrying me
    though my intellectual curiosity kept me researching uninterrupted,
    human women have such magnificent geography...
    and what are you? not human?
    oops, suddenly she was huffingly articulated
    probably something wrong with my hearing,
    I’d have to advance that appointment with Dr. Rappaport
    and anyway I could not let her know
    that I belonged to a lesser species called men
    so I answered her in Sanskrit. She did not speak Sanskrit.
    Neither did I, but it seemed to calm her back into inarticulacy.
    Lover... I hated it when she got articulate again,
    nothing good could have come out of it.
    ...do you mind moving on, not far away from there...
    and as an indication she changed her position slightly
    allowing access to inaccessibility
    and showing the path to other longitudinals, other perils.
    I felt like Livingstone.
    Dr. Livingstone, I presume?

    I forgo the spoof. I was a serious grown-up, after all, or so I thought.
    Yeah, sure... My imagination, of course.
    I followed the well defined trail
    and started mapping the outer edge of the well defined rim
    then moved to the inner edge of the well defined rim...
    can you move a bit?... she moved a bit...
    then I made an effort to descend beyond the rim...
    I wish I was a white man.
    Huh? I may have spoken loudly.
    White man speaks forked tongue, I said,
    trying to imitate... who was it?...George Chakiris playing Indian
    or something like that,
    wish I had a forked tongue, like a snake.
    Huh? She seemed have entered an echo chamber,
    I looked up - she was still there.
    She made another comment,
    unprintable,
    the right words but the wrong context.
    Yes, then I could have made a double research in one go... I added.
    Ohh... Finally out of the echo chamber,
    same number of h’s but a much better composition.
    ... hummingbirds have also forked tongues.
    Huh? It was my turn to visit her echo chamber,
    though, thinking of... nectar...
    I moved back to the spot, to the dot...

    She closed her thighs around my neck, my nape,
    strangling me
    pulling me
    pushing me in, in, I gasped, she froze,
    the boa constrictor crushing my skull, her muscles heaving
    I was sinking...
    oh, God, the beauty of those depths of inarticulate feminine illiteracy...

    *

    And I’m a nun.

    By the time I finished coughing
    she finished walking the dog, jogging and showering.
    She was about to start another cycle of dog, etc,
    when she looked me straight into the eyes...
    George Chakiris was one hell of a hunk...
    Who? I didn’t ask, I squealed choking under waves of indignation...
    ...by the way, now my turn.
    Your turn... to what?

    She licked my clothes away.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Encounters Of The Park Kind

    We walked in the park, hand in hand.
    Counting birds,
    not the human kind, the real kind with wings and feathers.
    One approached us,
    not the real kind, the human kind with bag and skirt.
    She, the other she, seemed to know her, my she.

    Love, didn’t know you had a father,
    she said, the other she, making eyes my way.
    Last time I checked with mom she was not an autogamying hermaphrodite,
    she said, my she, tightening her hold on my hand.
    No, I mean I’ve just never met him before,
    she said, the other she, nonchalant and making more eyes my way.
    I’ve never met him before either, before he autotomized,
    she said, my she, crushing my hand.
    Huh... I...
    she said, the other she, getting slightly ouichalant.

    She, my she, turned my way and kissed me. Hard.
    Mouths and tongues and hands...
    you can imagine where and what her hands were doing.

    She, the other she, shrieked.
    She stumbled away mumbling words that sounded like insect, or incest, or...
    making first Christ’s cross, then St. Andrew’s cross, then an Ankh
    then a Double CrossCross (said so, double)...
    Busybodies, I, the only I around, laughed,
    extracting myself from her, my her, clutches.
    Birds of prey, she, my she, laughed back,
    getting back to what she was doing before.

    A buzzard landed next to us.
    Don’t insult, she, the buzzard she, said
    dropping a live mouse from her bill and buzzing away.
    The mouse moused away hurriedly.
    I didn’t know buzzards talk, I, the only I around, said.
    In this world everything is possible, short of a miracle, she, my she, said.
    You are wrong, so wrong, I, the only I around, said
    You saw it yourself, she, my she, said. The buzzard she talked to us.
    No, I, the only I around, answered. Miracles. They are possible.
    What other name would you call this one?

    We walked in the park, hand in hand.
    Counting birds.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
River

    We met, once.
    We touched in a way.

    We unmet, once. Distance, I know. Time distance.

    We met, again.
    We touched in a way, a different way, a sun birthing way.

    We unmet, again,
    we untouched in away... forget it, I don’t typo. You know.

    I watched your back
    imagining your vertebrae under the skin and the skin on top of the vertebrae
    your knees, all the way back to the source of your thighs
    the nipples - do you have nipples like the rest of the world
    or flesh cherries
    like poets, female poets? Creators.

    I turned away from you, no need to watch you around flesh.
    It started drizzling.
    I let it pour inside my collar
    enjoying the burning sensation of boiling steam
    captured between flesh and shirt.

    Tomorrow is not another day. Tomorrow is first day.
    Maybe I should start counting first days, maybe make first days count.
    First days have an uncanny quality about them,
    they end. Why do I say uncanny? Don’t know,
    maybe because no one knows.

    Going now to think of flesh. It will probably be yours, for some time.
    Then not anymore.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Book

    I thought to write an entire book about you.
    Maybe not “thought”. Maybe “dreamed”.

    I’m not even at chapter one,
    not past the introduction.
    Probably more like chapter minus one.

    I watch your legs open and close around a variety of invaders,
    some circumstantial, some mercenary,
    a few even for several hours.

    I thought I would have an entire book,
    at least several chapters.
    I did get the title.
    The content is written by someone else.
    I’ll never get to teach you poetry, I guess.
    I’m probably too talented, I guess.
    Or too old.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Sins

    Hey, I wrote you a poem.
    Hey, I didn’t write you a poem.
    Hey, you don’t have to, you are a poem.
    Hey... she didn’t continue, I guess she didn’t find an answer.
    Better so, I guess I wouldn’t probably have found an answer to her answer.

    We lay in bed.
    I played with her nipple.
    She played with something else.
    Not that else, another else.
    To each his pleasures, or her.
    How did you write me a poem,
    we just made love?

    In my head, it always starts there, you know.
    So I wasn’t interesting enough. Not meaning it. Teasing.
    You were too interesting, therefore I had to write you a poem.

    A moth kept beating against the window pane.
    She descended,
    leaving my fingers orphan in her heroic effort to save the moth.
    I didn’t mind the orphancy. The dangling beauties compensated amply for it.
    She opened the window, saving the moth
    while inhaling deeply night’s scents - lilac, dew, fuel fumes.
    Her chest inflated to triple proportions
    the dangling beauties still dangling, thankfully.
    There was magnificence in that composition,
    her body silhouetted darkly against the starry sky,
    one street lamp just behind her head
    giving here an eerie, saintly appearance,
    another... please, move a bit to the left, a bit more... just between her thighs,
    yes, saintly as well, no doubt.

    What are you laughing at?
    There was mockery in her voice,
    I couldn’t be sure, she may have guessed some of my unsaintly thoughts.
    I turned on a flashlight and pointed the beam to her face...
    yes, definitely mock, yes, definitely devilish eyes mid of that saintly halo,
    lowered the beam about half a body down
    yes, definitely saintly.

    I did not expect the shriek.
    I did not expect the rushing feet.
    I did not expect the hammering pounding battering
    my body was suddenly subject to,
    the flashlight thumping to the floor and rolling from side to side,
    a complete light-and-sound spectacle
    as my skin’s blisters kept popping and bursting, popping and bursting
    and that blessed hammering pounding battering went on and on and on...

    When did we fall asleep inside each other?
    The battery dying, my flesh dead,
    the moth returning through the open window to check on our well being
    and then tell the story to some cheap, thrash, porno black-and-white magazine.
    Why not color?... asked a sleepy mouth
    yawning watermelon size.
    I see down to your stomach, I said
    extracting us from each other.
    I started playing with her nipple.
    She started playing with something else.
    Not that else, another else.

    Because there’s no color left in the world, I answered
    lost in her blue and her red and her pale.
    I was getting ready to get thrown out of Eden
    and start the War of Troy once again.

    The moth left with the news.
    I started rehearsing my sin for the umpteenth time.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
life signs

    flow

    through me
    underneath me
    inside me

    tangle me inside the length of your arms
    and the sinews of your thighs
    while guiding me to perdition
    inside the strangeness

    of you

    crawl

    alongside my hunger
    above my hunger
    around my hunger

    dangle your stiff disobedience in temptation
    and i’ll map the back ivory of your teeth
    and the humid jungle of your womb
    looking for woman

    in you

    hum

    your lung’s music right into my tongue’s muscle
    and your nipple’s command in between my thumb and forefinger
    and once i offer you my wine
    take my heartbeat along

    for you

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Negatives

    Do you remember the park where we didn’t walk together,
    when we didn’t walk together
    when we didn’t make love
    when we didn’t meet?

    Do you remember the bench? It was never built.
    The green painted woodwork,
    the rust spots on the green metalwork covered with shiny snail traces
    on their slow way to a fast trail to nowhere,
    the green splinters under your fingernails
    I never had the chance to pull out after I pulled out the rest of me
    from your wounded insides
    and the cracks stretching through your tense skin filled with pouring milk
    and opening apple tree flowers?

    Do you remember me not parting? No wonder, I never arrived.
    The shirt buttons closing
    the park gates closing
    the airplane door closing upon me with that dull, finalityful, musicless sound?
    Your shirt buttons still open
    sleeves trailing on the earth underneath the bench unwilling to mount,
    your thighs still slightly apart,
    your breasts’ beasts still howling their separation from my fingers
    and savagely biting off pieces of your mind and serenity
    looking for that which was not?

    Do you remember? What do you remember?
    You walk slowly through the park
    looking for the bench
    looking for green splinters
    looking for bits of your mind
    and serenity.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
The Green Leaves Of Summer

    Finally, alone, I smile.
    It’s a joke.
    She looks around.
    Of course alone, this is an elevator, she answers
    hitting the stop button. Between floors.
    I stop smiling. I think I’m not panicking. I think I’m not.
    She waits. I think she does.

    It will take them forty minutes to get to us, I say.
    It took you forty years to get to me, she says, making a step sideways.
    Another full step separating us.
    It will take you forty years to know what it feels like, I say.
    I make a step sideways as well. Not the same direction, the opposite direction.
    Elbows meet,
    jumping for a moment away from each other
    then towards each other, forcefully, it hurts.
    We turn.
    She left, I right. Her breasts meet my chest, barely.
    We move.
    She west, I east. Her breasts solid, her nipples pushing through.
    We move again.
    Same west east. Her breasts flatten, our hips meet.
    I feel you, she says, feel me.
    I hesitate, my hand lifted.
    She grabs it, pushes it under her shirt.
    I feel you, I say, feel me.
    She feels me, further.

    What rhymes with east. Beast.
    What rhymes with west? Breast.
    What rhymes with south? Mouth.
    What rhymes with north? Swarth.
    There’s no swarth here, jus a cold metal elevator floor...


    We cannot tear our clothes. We peel them down, neatly.
    We can tear our flesh.
    We tear, cut, bite, penetrate...

    It took them thirty nine minutes. It took us thirty eight.
    Maintenance were deeply apologetic, Security were deeply annoyed,
    Services were deeply puzzled, Reception were deeply worried.

    I carried her stocking in my inner pocket.
    She carried my tie in her purse.
    I made a time jump into youth, I said.
    I made a time jump into beauty, she said.

    She goes back to her desk, still a pile of work, she says.
    I go to the garage, drive home, park and mount the stairs.
    Where’s the record?... aha, here it is.
    I flip the LP expertly, The Brothers Four, I choose the track
    and watch the needle descend slowly. The Green Leaves Of Summer.
    Then I sit in an armchair, a cool beer next to me
    and I cry.
    It feels good. To cry.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
rencounter

    twined.
    welded, fused,
    our arms elbows wrists fingers legs knees ankles toes
    rolling seventeen times around each other’s body like wild grape vines
    while teeth carve teeth to ivory dust
    and the rest of you glides around the rest of me
    goading me into writing upon the walls of your body’s inner caves
    those depraved psalms
    once complementing the Canticle of Canticles which is Solomon’s
    and ripped away from his book
    by later generations of self-righteous, envious, prude-minded
    scribes.

    depraved?
    magical, you mean,
    you said,
    your tongue flogging me into spasms of poetical insanity.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
almost

    at first, it was
    almost fire.

    then, it was
    almost inferno.

    then it was
    nothing.

    a killer called life with its variety of acolytes
    snuffed the fire
    quenched the inferno
    before returning to its lair to brood over skeletons and what if’s.

    snuffed... almost.
    quenched... almost.
    down to a spark holding a sun.
    comatose. sleeping.
    dead.
    dead the way a dead volcano is dead.

    a comma, where there should have been a period.
    a smile, where there was no reason for a smile.
    a voice slightly softer
    the passing touch of a finger
    lingering behind an imperceptible fraction of a second longer
    the swish of a skirt as she turns and her breast brushes against my upper arm
    a mile down to a lethal inch between chests between eyes between lips
    and the suddenness of fire
    and the emblazing of the inferno

    and a life howling impotence squirms on its bed
    watching us embroider fingertip traces into shivering skin
    and teeth marks into bleeding lips
    before ripping off, before ripping through, before ripping in...
    before dying.

    almost.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
No Expectations... Well, Maybe

    Do you want me, to impress you

    with my invincible rhyme
              from the folders of time
              dragging flesh to perdition
              through spirit’s attrition
              ...a horrible crime?

    Do you expect me, to convince you

    starting with the second word said
              painting daisies in red
              and then on to the third
              breathing song in a bird
              ...seven centuries dead?

    Do you wish me, to whisper

    nonsense of the type found in books
              penned by heart thieving crooks
              with a poison tipped dart
              and a hole in their heart
              ...and a lie in their looks?

    Do you ask me, to abstain from

    touching you once you enter my space
              float with a grace
              born in verses divine
              sprinkled silver and wine
              ...dipped in summer and lace?

    Do you command me, to obey to

    that finger which beckons my way
              like a talon of prey
              first to pick up my chin
              then to rip through my skin
              ...like a flower of May?

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Death. Oh, so beautiful.

    I blushed
    like a sixteen year old virgin.
    Neither sixteen.
    Nor virgin.
    And not that I wanted
    to be
    or to blush.
    Or the other way around.

    I come, she said,
    cutting my age into half with one sentence
    and my life expectancy to half as well
    with the blood
    rush
    with the heart
    beat
    with desire, deadly.

    I calmed, manner of speaking,
    how can one calm dangling from top of the Empire State Building
    at the end of a single thread
    crossing a tight wire across the Niagara with one wooden leg
    meeting a dream
    and knowing it to be a dream,
    momentous yet momentary
    terrific yet terrifying
    sweet
    yet bitter.

    I ran to the window pushing my nose against the pane,
    I looked an idiot from the other side,
    I looked an idiot from this side too nose invisible
    shiver uncontrollable
    did anyone call emergency? Luckily not,
    they would all have been dead,
    she’s coming and nothing will stop me making an idiot of myself
    lest it be round and fast and 9mm diameter big. At least.

    I finished the day,
    noise persistently flat
    I guess the emotion. Or the window pane still pushing against it
    all the way down the stairs, in the car, up the stairs, between sheets.
    I did not mind the cuts as it shattered.

    I woke up, time later.
    She left, time ago, when?
    My nose back to normal, my eyes glassy.
    With pain.
    With memory.
    With tears frozen by the recollections of that uniquely one timelessly death.
    Death. Oh, so beautiful.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Good Bye

    We drive. I mean I drive, you sit next to me.
    Not next enough, I wish it was nexter.
    Your hand on my leg.
    My hand on your heart.
    Your hand on my leg.
    A leg is a big place, your hand hopping gaily all over
    playing hop-scotch, hide an seek, sometimes just seek,
    a leg is a big place to play hide and seek especially for a hand
    aspiring for a second childhood, maybe even a first childhood?
    My hand on your heart.
    Well, your heart is an internal organ, I have difficulties reaching it actually,
    I get as close as humanely possible
    without having to cut through the ribs.
    Pay attention!
    Of course I pay attention, all I do is pay attention.
    Pay attention, to the road! she repeats, gently.
    Yeah, sure, all my attention is there,
    some of it goes to the road. A parking run-away. Empty. I stop.

    Do you love me?
    All women ask the same question and expect to be answered with adoration.
    I adore you, I answer as expected, because I adore her.

    Your research advances vertiginously,
    with such zeal you should have been an alchemist -
    you would have found a way to change lead to gold.
    Look what you do to flesh. I hope you don’t turn it to gold,
    I wish it to stay flesh. Thankfully you don’t work in a mortuary,
    it would have resulted in distasteful... ahmm... effects.
    You pull your tongue back from the depths of my stomach
    and proceed to cleaning my teeth.
    I reciprocate, after all I need your teeth.
    Yes? What for?
    Questions implied, not expressed.
    Why did you turn on the motor?
    It’s not the motor, it’s your heart.
    I try to reach it, to calm it, but a stiff nipple battles me corps-a-corps,
    I try to trick it by a move from the other side of the chest
    but it has a no less fearful ally there
    so I try an even more daring trick
    from lower down...
    You will not reach the heart through there, you admonish
    melting all over me.

    A flurry of clothes, horrible commotion,
    parts of bodies being re-set re-designed re-configured re-appropriated
    a divine source of inspiration for the Picasso guy had he been alive,
    for the Kamasutra guy had he been a guy, for DIY shops
    had they been selling atom bomb kits for adults 18 and above.

    Do you love me? you ask, not lighting a cigarette. This is not a movie.
    You investigate panties leftovers, trying them for a measure on my head.
    Then you lie on your back, head in my lap,
    big toe drawing a smiley on the inner side of the passenger window.
    I need to pee. I too.
    We sneak out of the car, looking right and left,
    get it done side by side
    and rush back through the door before the approaching car
    is at eye focusing distance.
    I lock the doors. I love you.

    You look respectable, outside.
    No one to see tatters of panties and tatters of bra and tatters of heart.
    I look respectable, outside.
    No one to see tatters of death invading me.
    Good bye. There are people around. You don’t kiss me.
    Good bye. There are people around. The sky splits at my scream,
    no one hears. Only the sky. Only you.
    Good bye. Good bye.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
The Sun

    The sun.
    The bird. The bird died.

    The sun sank into the sea
    and the bird died.
    It did not know the sun will rise anew.
    It died, of sorrow.

    I put the bird in my breast pocket
    so they will bury us together.
    I didn’t know the sun will rise anew.
    It didn’t.
    I died. Of sorrow.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
You didn't come. Again.

    You didn’t come. Again.

    I believe I should change my name to You didn’t come. Again.
    Or Ever. Or Never.
    Or You didn’t come. Period. Not written Period but Period Period. Period.

    No, not all capitals, just as if said, thought, written,
    the sentence correct, the frustration unbearable,
    the memories deadborn.
    Or is it abortion? Or maybe imaginary pregnancy, yeah,
    that’s a good one,
    imaginary pregnancy with no child conceived,
    At all. Never. Ever. Again.

    I look at the mirror. Yeah, I guess you are right.
    I look at my ID card, hmm, yeah, I guess you are right.
    I investigate my heart. Yeah, you are wrong,
    oh, so wrong.

    The table. Three legs.
    The chair. Four.
    The wardrobe three shelves, one door, a lot of empty cloth-hangers.
    A lamp on the left.
    A garbage can. Empty. Facts.
    Dead, dry, factual facts.
    My heart. Beating, madly. Fact.
    My dream. How does one factualize a shattered dream?
    It doesn’t even stink.
    Even when dead.
    Is it the definition of immortality?
    The immortal dream, ha,
    what a joke.

    I wonder - does a dead fish dream?
    Did he (it’s a male fish) dream before becoming a dead fish?
    Is there a difference between a dead fish dream and a living human dream?
    Is You didn’t come. Again. a dead dream?
    I guess I wish it was. A dream.
    I guess it is alive. A dream, dead.

    You didn’t come. Again. a dream alive.
    A nightmare.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Wishes

    I wait for you.
    The way Jesus waited for his resurrection,
    for his mother’s embrace before,
    for his mother’s embrace
    after.

    I yearn for you
    avidly
    like a black hole yearning for a sun.

    I want to make love to you,
    like seed to earth,
    like humanity to idea,
    like hydrogen to oxygen
    at the strike of a match and ensuing holocaust.

    I want to remember you,
    virgin.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
The Touch

    Your father, one, a summer’s day,
    your mothers many, goddesses of grace all
    but one
    of fire.

    Your thighs
    rhyme with your breasts
    and I dare not touch poetry
    with my artist’s pagan hand
    lest I disrupt
    perfection.

    Touch!

    And I dare not touch poetry with my artist’s pagan hand.

    Touch!

    And I dare not touch.

    Touch!

    I touch
    and the wrath of progenitors descends upon me
    cutting my fingers at knuckle
    and my tongue at root
    and skinning my lips
    to leave me die, smiling, remembering

    The touch.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Damn Nowhere

    You smile on the phone,
    oh, you smile on the phone,
    we joke.
    I joke. You smile. Then the other way around.
    The line dies,
    we kill it click, click.
    I don’t hear one of the clicks, the other one is sufficient.

    I wish I could smoke, I don’t.
    I wish I could smoke and let the match burn my fingers,
    drag the glowing cigarette end on my skin
    and wonder about pains and intensities
    and which is more than which.

    I close my eyes to kiss you.
    I close my eyes to make love to you
    welcoming all burning matches,
    all glowing cigarette ends,
    all pain, pleasure, the moment.

    If I open my eyes
    will you still be there?
    Will your hand still be ripping the insides of my thighs,
    will your nipples still be pounding against my ribs, breaking them,
    will my mouth still be tasting the leftovers of the earlier meal
    from your tongue?

    Do I want to open my eyes?

    I open my eyes,
    my hand lingering behind, in the darkness,
    groping for chunks of your flesh
    then it joins the eyes in the here,
    now,
    nowhere.

    Damn nowhere.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Memory

    Take my memory of you
    and seed it in your garden.

    Watch the cherry sprout,
    blossom,
    drop its ripe beads of heaven at your bare feet
    for you to squash in delight.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
grizzly

    to touch
    with the tip of my tongue
    there
    the tip of your iceberg
    a touch, one
    to turn you from ice to savaging grizzly
    to devour me
    alive
    and dead.

    iceberg?

    was the only word she seemed to have heard.
    I touched.

    she remembered grizzly as well.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
reciprocity

    to get you drunk
    and drag you by the hair
    to the beach of a deserted island

    where I will wash your skin with coconut milk
    and comb your hair with a branch covered with dry thorns
    and cover you with the dry leaves of previous autumn.

    and you?

    to smoothen the tracks in the sand.

    why?

    so no one will find me.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
reality

    flowers
    dried, turning dust, turning desert’s forgotten memory

    sunsets
    extinguished, like a bulb switching off, like a match in flooding rain

    smiles
    changed, to grimace

    reality
    caught up with me

TextConcessions

blank

corner
lack of knowledge

    I tore my clothes,

    I tore your images from the wall
    and from my heart
    and passed them through the meat grinder together with dust and mud and pebbles
    until the motor seized and burned,

    the smoke stinging my eyes,
    my lungs.

    then I tried to find you amongst the mixture
    but all I found were hints of color and blood.

    I waited until you appeared
    and took some new pictures
    for the wall, for the heart,
    making sure the new meat grinder is more powerful than the previous,

    who knows, with some luck
    the house will burn down upon me.

    it didn’t.

    maybe because you still love me
    but I do not know?

TextConcessions

blank

corner
shoes

    no!
    she said
    touching my hand

    she took off her left shoe
    let me carry it, limping
    she, not I

    she repeated the no! when I got off on my floor
    handing her the shoe
    and waiting for the elevator door to close

    the elevator ascended
    then descended
    I was still there, in front of it

    she handed me her shoe, the right one this time
    I guess there was a moment of thought in between
    I guess she might have reached her door

    which one?
    she asked
    dragging my hand not holding the shoe

    I opened the door
    she turned to leave
    she turned to enter

    she entered.
    I waited.
    come! she said

    I tore her clothes
    she tore my bed sheets
    we tore the flesh

    good bye!
    she said
    taking both shoes

    I had no good bye’s left
    I offered none
    starting to sew the torn bedware

    sewing my fingers to the shreds
    my mouth to the fingers
    my tongue to the mouth

    what did I sew my heart to?
    not even a memory.
    a wasted life.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
personal

    you
    and your morning hue
    among liquefied stains of rebelling soft blue

    i
    and my fading sigh
    where the lilac shrubs guide my desires to die

    we
    never been or be
    never would never will twine the you to the me

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Robins

    Forget your house beneath the east,
    The waiting plains enrobed by mist
    Where robins pray that once anew
    You rise, to boil the sleeping dew,

    Forget your bed into the west
    Beyond the mountains’ shaggy crest
    Where robins paint with blistered tunes
    Your fire’s trace on dying dunes,

    Forget your way between the two
    And let me burn in dreams of you
    With robins taking up my rhyme
    To touch your breast, this one last time.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
relegated

    relegated
    to second,

    to seventh
    to seven hundred seventy seventh,
    to none.

    relegated
    to dust.
    on your sleeve
    on your shoe
    under your shoe.

    relegated.
    the irrelevant to irrelevant.

    i took my pen and started to sing pain.
    why did you smile my way
    and danced with other?

    my toe shattered my heel shattered
    my knee my hip my heart
    shattered.

    relegated to. still irrelevant.
    does hope for nothing mean something?

TextConcessions

blank

corner
lover

    her breasts,
    smaller than green apples
    slightly larger than grapes
    hanging above me,
    dangling... if there was enough there to dangle,
    there was enough
    to drag me into quartering quarters worth of eternity’s hell
    without a blink
    for a moment’s touch
    and let death ensue.

    death... eternal memory
    of pleasure
    done.

    she offered nipples
    pebbles to break splinters off my front teeth
    ribs
    coated in human silk in search for fingernails to cut ruts through
    and seed pleasures in
    thighs, together, apart, together, apart, apart, apart
    apart until they sent my body halves each its way
    as they crushed my waist to finger girth
    before splitting it altogether
    keeping
    the essence of me
    locked.

    I found the rest of her,
    after I found the rest of myself, gluing it all the best I could in one piece again
    and knowing to look like Boris Karloff playing Frankenstein’s monster
    I found the rest of her,
    and she guided me into mysteries I did not know
    before sliding back inside her textile skins
    and leaving me with that death
    I asked for.

    there was no reason to cry
    after all
    the pain was so beautifully unbearable.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
attributes

    Your smell
    like my past,

    lilac growing wild along the neighbor’s fence
    and white lily cluttering artificial mounds
    and jasmine bushes driving butterflies insane,

    Your skin’s
    touch
    like the start of my hurt,

    when I groped the glowing coal
    when I groped the electric wire
    when I groped the dead stem of the dead rose,

    Your parting pain
    like my future,

    quiet
    painless
    eternal.

    Make love to me
    with your smell,
    let your skin follow
    and your parting hair stay

    if just for a tiny eternity.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
could've's

    I could have written you rivers of poetry,

    I could have roved and ripped through your mountains
    and turned them to cubes of ice
    or fists of burning coal
    or forget-me-nots hanging upside down from clouds
    fleetingly caressing your breasts
    and fomenting rebellion in the tips of your nipples
    and the depths of your loins,

    I could have what I did not

    I could not have yet I did

    watch the sun sneaking into your shirt
    before slithering down your skirt
    your thighs
    into your shoes into the floor
    drunken as I wished to be
    with the fragrance of you
    and you.

    I could have remembered that which never came to pass,

    I could have called upon dying trees
    and promised them eternal green
    or wings floating down canyons
    or hands ending in myriad palms ending in myriad myriads fingers
    combing your hair in thin strands
    and twining petals at ends of thin braids
    and hanging ribbons at tips of those nipples in earlier rebellion,

    I could have, why I did not

    I could not have, yet why I did

    let you slide away through that northern entrance
    leading to that nowhere north
    alongside icebergs and aurora borealis and polar bears
    and none of that flesh of mine
    staying back to hang on my bones
    with none of your fragrance
    and you.

    could’ve
    grabbed you
    bit you
    crushed you not before breathing into you flame
    to keep your crushed insides glowing with fireflies found.

    could’ve...
    not.
    just watched you, disappearing
    between icebergs and aurora borealis and polar bears
    and wailed on my knees inhaling your fragrance
    like inhaling shaving blades.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
ephemeral

    summer
    shapes itself along the soles of your feet

    ephemeral gardens
    unseen but to your treading skin.

    I give up following you,
    give up taking in images of closing bloom, falling petals

    I lie in your path.

    your left foot steps on my chest
    and for the unending ephemerality of a moment

    your skirts flutter above me

    as summer assails my breastbone
    and my eyes’ vision

    God’s intent.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
moonflowers

    the ruts
    crossing my palms
    plow deeper as I close my fists

    hoping for seeds to dig in
    and take root
    grow into moonflowers spreading around my body

    waiting for you
    to come and pluck the flowers to stick behind your ears
    as you wiggle between climbing runners and skin, mine,

    and as the vine starts tightening, cutting, marrying
    to let myself into your garden
    and plant love.

    I open my fists,
    you cup the palms upon your breasts
    and the nipples take root, before bloom, before withering into parting.

    the scars are still there,
    pits, where the seeds exploded from,
    burn marks, where the nipples deserted me from.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Thin

    Thin.

    You are my thin one, you will always be my thin one.
    Transparent.

    Your body fitting inside one crush of my fist,
    your ear lobes filtering candle light into the red of blood
    your ankle girth three ants end to end, maybe four.
    Your nipple, a premature cherry.
    Your thigh steel
    velvet
    snow. Fire.

    Your memory... a promise. Thin, like the cutting end of death’s flailing scythe.
    Like a memory
    dead.

    You know,
    you would fit inside my coat.
    You would fit inside my shirt, my pocket, my ring.
    You would fit inside my mouth.
    The mouth part of you
    the lips part of your mouth
    the softness part of your lips and teeth and powerful bite.
    Your breath.
    I measured you every which way,
    even naked.
    Though even dressed you would still fit. Everywhere. Measured. Fitting.

    You remember
    departing?
    Probably not. I do.
    How could I not?
    How could someone as thin as you
    leave a hole sized somewhere between the Grand Canyon and the Andromeda Galaxy?
    Trying to fill it with words, ha!
    Nice try, poet.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
The last. The last?

    I wonder if I could define it,
    the last.
    Like the first
    only... the last.

    The pen traces the last curve of the last letter.
    The pen places the last period after the last letter.
    The pen dries,
    that last period having drawn off the last of its ink, its life.
    Maybe the end of this poem?
    Maybe the end of next?
    Maybe I stopped writing poems a long time ago
    and these are just ghosts, wraiths, passing shadows on the face of the sun
    by a bigger sun,
    now dead?

    I wonder if another pen would help.
    My fingers’ stumps will grow, maybe,
    my dream will stay
    stump.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
nothingness

    you touched me
    through the clinging fabric of nothingness,

    I felt your fingers
    handling the silk, twisting the silver into it,

    pushing needle’s knotty thread
    through the desert of my bed
    tiny pricks upon my skin
    telling me of should have been
    and the gale inside my head...


    I found the crushed rose inside my fist,
    its petals bleeding
    I wanted to see how it looks behind your ear
    I wanted to see how it reflects in your eyes
    I wanted to count its thorns sinking into my palm
    as the stem rushes away from me.

    the ends of your hair brushed against my eyes.
    that meant the ends of your lips should have followed soon,
    your hair was cut short.
    they did.
    nothing like nothingness, I told myself
    used to accepting impossibilities
    and not minding them as long as they made everything possible. tangible.
    my bed creaked,
    were we two?

    tie your hair
    behind my ears,
    ride your spring into my winter at the beckon of my years...


    it made no sense counting your nipples.
    no more sense than counting snowflakes
    or waves
    or daisies in a daisies field spotted with deer hooves
    and pebbles from King David’s time. one of them probably having hit Goliath.
    no, not here, brought over by a crusader from the Holy Land.
    to the Holy Land of your nipples
    those lying now underneath me
    inside my cupped hands
    above your bare back above the nettle that preferred to die
    rather than bite into your skin. even though it was dying to bite into your skin,
    the way I die to bite into your skin
    and do
    dying.

    I see your eyes. yes, through the eyelashes.
    they devour me
    I am nothing but a bleeding mess of meat leftovers
    and you lick your teeth before licking your lips
    before licking my mouth and asking for the dessert of my tongue.
    the taste of years, corrupted, ripe, lustful
    the neighing of humans
    or what is left of them after. after. after.

    don’t look back like sorrow’s sister
    as you pour inside your cotton
    knowing that my eye will blister
    with a passion misbegotten...


    spring follows winter, you know?
    death follows winter as well, you know? it’s not by choice,
    it’s by evolution.

    I fix, unseeing, the sun parting wherever you part
    and wait for whatever is never going to happen
    or happened or happens
    with the nothingness finally pitying me into the insensitivity of losing
    what I never had.
    the eyelids drop,
    I wonder when they will rise again. if ever.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
bull

    only the deep red
    could penetrate the absolute blackness
    of the silk shirt
    reaching down to your thighs,

    only the deep red
    of murderous nipples
    reaching out to my fingers
    and to my rapidly dwindling reason,

    I had to get rid of the black.

    you got rid of my sanity
    and as the black knotted itself around my wrists
    the red exploded inside my mouth
    and I fell to the floor, bleeding.

    like a bull
    vanquished by a rose.

    I didn’t even bellow,
    your tongue
    scripting odes inside my mouth.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
The last? The last.

    One of those promises I do not make
    lest I cannot keep,

    though I intend.

    The last? The last.
    Of words, commas, other punctuation
    and many more thoughts than punctuation
    and dreams,

    endless.

    An end, physical,
    and I cut my fingertips so I cannot hold pencils anymore
    and shred all sheets of paper so they cannot hold pencil traces anymore
    and lay to sleep dictionaries
    so that I can commit murder with no witnessing of the murdered.

    The last. Poem. Rather obituary. Rather death sentence. Rather cessation,
    extinction, termination, annihilation.

    I take your fingers to count one last time,
    left, right, left, foot, toothpicks ending with painted fire
    carrying dragon tongues and scarring flame... see, all those tiny scars
    on the inside of my thighs, on the inside of my cheeks,
    on the inside of your thighs after guiding their prisoners there, my fingers,
    my rage.
    I take your breast to crush one last time,
    never giving quarter to nipple or nipples or words
    begging for more, harder, rehearsal for the empty days to come
    to no end
    while spider-thin ribs penetrate behind mine
    twining in prayer
    and abolition.
    I take your craving femininity to taste, one last time,
    to taste again, one last time,
    and to taste again... how many times one last time?
    before I welcome its embrace
    its blaze
    its grappling constriction taking all
    leaving none,

    but regrets. Sticky emptiness. Dead flesh. Rustle, of pulling up silks.

    I turn my back not to see,
    just to hear the click of the lock.
    I bite my lips listening to descending heels.
    I watch dripping blood as a car engine purrs to life
    to carry my life away.

    You did not leave even a memory.
    Only an unending howl.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Crossing Legs

    You cross leg over leg.
    Then you uncross
    and cross again, the other way.
    Your skirt pulls up slightly
    and you pull back, no, it doesn’t make it down to your knees
    and the nylons get lost into an enviable darkness
    which is all I can witness.
    I am certain it is a pleasing darkness,
    the monsters and devils and wraiths are all in my head
    under tight control... I think.

    You smile,
    you uncross cross again
    and I am torn between two fronts,
    finally choosing the smile.
    There is time enough for darkness and monsters
    if
    when
    whenever...
    You smile again and I am pleased with my choice.
    It is freezing and I start melting.

    You uncross your legs and cross your ankles,
    knees pressed tight against each other
    as if telling there would be place for my monsters
    only if you would permit
    and is the only way I would like place to be made.
    For my monsters. And devils and wraiths.

    “My knee, I wonder if you could cup it inside your palm,” I think you say.
    “My knee, I wonder if you could cup it inside your palm,” you say.
    “My knee, I wonder if you could cup it inside your palm?”
    It is only when the question mark registers
    that my various monsters faint
    and my palm needs your guidance to find the correct position.
    Perfect fit.

    You uncross ankles
    and separate knees so you can walk.
    I follow, dazed, your hand dragging mine, my feet dragging my shoes.
    I wonder since when did I start wearing lead-soled shoes?
    Next time you sit you don’t cross leg over leg anymore,
    you just stretch your left foot my way
    waiting for me to remove the shoe

    and I perceive light at the end of the darkness.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Idolatry

    ...that fulgurant smile
    to cut steel,
    that undulating body
    where atheists
    kneel...


    Luckily, you’re not steel, she smiled.
    But I’m atheist, I answered.
    And flesh, she complemented my biological formula
    kneeling next to me.
    Touching you is sacrilege, I said, not touching her.
    Making love to me is sacred, she said, touching me. I didn’t die.

    It was difficult finding her fingers... they were so thin,
    it was difficult not finding her lips... they were flaming
    it was impossible to keep away from her breasts
    and after I tore all textilian monsters off her body
    I demanded permission
    and I received permission
    to measure nipple with thumb and forefinger
    and breast with cupped palm
    and heartbeat with mouth...

    and the rest of me?... she asked...

    and the rest of her with mortal’s avidity
    for eternal life.

    I found it, I said, retrieving my flesh ribbons from the convoluted knot
    we formed, earlier on.
    Eternal life? she asked, refusing to let go the last of my earthly leftovers.
    I didn’t answer before I measured again
    with thumb and forefinger, making certain of my answer.
    Life, I finally answered.

    For whatever reason, a string of stars fell into the sea,
    sputtering.
    Sacrilegious? I asked, slightly frightened.
    Sacred, she said, cutting steel.

    ...that tip of finger
    reaving my heart,
    that skin’s pastel
    redefining
    art...


TextConcessions

blank

corner
payback

    ...and yet
    the decennia separating us
    would not have prevented me from dragging you across thorns
    and nails
    and broken stones

    until all of your clothes turned shred
    and all of your skin turned wanton

    waiting for you to pay me back with annihilation
    feeding me thorns and nails and broken stones

    your tongue lacing my insides with barbed wire, melting,
    flowing,
    stealing innocence I did not know
    I possessed.

TextConcessions

blank

corner
Closure

    There is always closure.
    If by atomic bomb
    if by waving hand
    if by...

    silence.

    Sure. Time. The greatest closurer of all,

    separator
    administrator
    of feelings that could have been and are not
    or are but cannot. Be.

    How many closures have I seen, had, wished for, wished for not?
    Life, love, adventure, pain, book, poem,
    you. You don't even know who,

    who you are...

    or do you?

    Death. Just another metaphor for closure,
    a word composed of meaningless letters
    adding to a meaning imposed by whoever writes, reads, lives it.
    Yes, lives the death, isn't it funny?

    Last poem.
    Last line,
    Last word, letter, punctuation,
    I wonder what the closure of this closure poem will be,
    I don't know, didn't plan it,
    didn't wish for it.

    Goodbye.
    To your lust for me
    to my lust for memories of lust for you,
    to your legs coiling, uncoiling,
    to your fingers almost transparent
    to your stockings ending just before the end of the thigh
    your brassiere falling
    your eyes closing above the fire
    and mouth biting through your lips into mine.
    To the transparent dress you wore before
    and after
    and never again
    except for someone else.
    Goodbye. Untranslatable.
    Except into nothingness.

    Closure. Yes, a closure word as good as any. As all. As none.

TextConcessions

blank