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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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. ?!...

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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?

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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

• back to list   • back   • next

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?

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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?

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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...

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back   • next

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.

• back to list   • back