Underwear I wanted to write you three poems this morning, I hardly found one, and it was about your underwear smudged with the mud traces of my fingers soaking in my tangerine saliva and your liquid pollen and the shared sweat of shared bodies and moments. Your underwear, happily huddling its tattered remains on the third tile away from the room’s corner, beneath the tattered remains of my shirt and my trousers and my own underwear in this order, one shoe three tiles farther away the others unknown, buttons... red, white... scattered over the floor. You pull the shades, silk leftovers hanging desperately to one proud nipple, the sun invades the room after perversely passing through your body shadow painting the sharpness of thighs, and curls, and that other, hidden, nipple, blinding me. Not the sun, your body. You are dressed... well, kind of... I sigh relieved not really remembering the details, hating the sun for its dare and the rest of the world for ogling you through my eyes. You rummage with your toe inside the discarded clothing mound, picking up the piece of soggy underwear, Shall I wear these too?... I leave the shades open, liberating the nipple liberating the body dressing your intimacy once more with my skin’s flaming, corrosive brand of underwear.

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NewBlue's The knot in your throat... Don’t want your diamonds now or ever, I said, squeezing inside my fist those few you could not roll back and turning them proterozoic coal, my new pen... coal blue. The dart in my heart... I wish to circle thumb and forefinger around your waist and never let go, you said, compromising for your arms and squeezing my waist spine thin, my new heart... poppy blue. The love in that glove... Do we want to write our story upon the mystical plains of forever? we asked, squeezing our bodies through the ordeal of a thorn thin ring and emerging into knotted, interminable ribbons, our new reality... love blue.

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Eletters I finish packing, lock the suitcase, hours and thoughts to kill, numb. You are washing dishes, from time to time pulling away that strand from your eyes, drying dishes, storing dishes. Dear lover, I sit down to write electronically, wish it was paper, wish it was your flesh. You hear the beep above the tinkle of pans, rush to the keyboard and as detergent slides between the keys you push Return. Dear lover, I am about to lock door, lock heart, mount a flying piece of iron carrying me even further away from you, I have no poetry left in me I have a lot of love left in me... care to take my love instead of my poetry? Dear lover, I just finished drying the dishes, ranging them, my hands are swollen less than my eyes, my hands are red my eyes are poppy fields, send me your love it is my poetry. Dear lover, I am looking for a word I misplaced it, wait a moment... Dear lover, you did not misplace it, you left it here. I must go now, wait for my next letter? No, there is no need to wait. Good bye, my love. Hello, I guess time dies between your letters, my love. Or is it me?

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I Love You Too the tick-tock clocklike precision of departing heels, he thump-thump imprecision of dropping tears digging craters in the wake of the tick-tock marble splinters ravaging nylon stockings and boutique windows, the single hush spreading like a plague from the thump-thump impact points and crawling towards the ceiling of the departure hall muting the fury of turbo jets and the impolite bark of passport controllers with the only sound carrying over to my Dumbo size stretching ears being... I love you too.

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Overslept I tried to hold on, lying to you, telling you this is the world, reality, the other is just a dream, a bad dream, a lie. You knew, yet... you accepted, lingering a few more minutes underneath my covers upon my pillow inside my clothes... inside my clothes?... ha, who wore any clothes? Finally... they were stronger. The rooster, the sun, the insistent monotonous ring, pulling you away from me into their world into the shower into the clothing into the make-up. No, they didn’t win it all, you winked at your reflection in the mirror working hard at covering that bit of torn flesh on your bottom lip.

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No No, not your beauty. No, not your intelligence, smile, big heart, small breasts, the morning in your eyes the promise in your lips white skin, broken finger, red shirt with uncountable buttons. Nor, neither, not even that fire pouring from your loins’ inferno purging my thirst with red-hot mud and awakening suns, the moths circling your pen holding finger waiting for the moment you pour the paint on their grayness of wing to die knowing of being a one night’s Swallowtail, those sounds escaping your throat’s strings and woodwinds and percussion and brass and forest birds and mountain brooks dressing my wake-up moments with never wake-up desires. No, none of these. All and more. You.

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Almost Like In A Fairytale You went to sleep in a thistles field – red, blue, yellow, wasps and beetles and scurrying mice and pollen lining your nostrils and long legged spiders dangling from flying seeds curiously investigating the texture of your skirt and eyelashes. I walked the cobblestoned path beyond the field, no shoes to my feet a bird on my shoulder a yapping puppy in my pocket, my little finger tied to a long string dragging a pink cloud behind me the string crawling with hopping frogs and hanging bats, almost like in a fairytale. I saw the glitter of petals cupping dew in your hair and pearl shells opening up underneath your fingernails and sugar crystals gathering at the corners of your lips ready to fall to their perdition into a sea of awaiting clattering jaws of ants and soldiers and hungry queens. I tied the string to my puppy’s tail let my bird chase it around the field shrieking excitement and as the pink cloud started dropping pink drops I gathered the ends of the field underneath my arm and pulled the ground from underneath you hearing the thistles tear into your cloth tear into your skin leaving you naked and covered in red and blue and yellow flowerheads. You did not object to my pulling the sharp spikes away, to my laying of petals and pearls and sugar crystals between your body and the center of the earth, and as boiling rocks started flowing into exploding hydrogen we made love inside that transparent bubble hosting our flesh, our fairytale, our pink cloud fluttering at the enthusiastic end of a puppy’s tail.

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Burglar my body, full of slots and holes and finely shaped profiles, like swiss-cheese out into the four dimensional world and then back to ours not before alien hands cut away indefinable slices and chunks and bits. you watch it, carefully, your puppy head turned to one side your cat tail painting imaginary art with its flexing end your nails honed, purring. then you start shooting words my way, and steel balls, and oddly shaped syllables and pieces of plastic and mashed cardboard shapes and contorted letters translating into phrases, finely filed, finely oiled, they start sinking in the slots and holes and profiles, the smirk on your face all knowing, the art at your fingertips perfect... burglar. the last fragments click in, like never cut out, like inborn, the vines and the veins and the texture aligning at molecular level of mind, of soul, of body... the absolute alignment, the only... you turn the key, I open. it is only then that you smile, knowing the difference between life and annihilation, finding my life. you enter the forbidden plains, bringing in your feathers, your rains, your forests, building your nest facing the sun and turning the key the other way round... forever locked. I did not know you brought in your flute as well until I heard your lips approaching it and watched my mountains and my rivers and my does start following you.

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Blossom as you kneeled on the pebbles bed and the pebbles turned dust and the dust turned thirst and your lips dried to cracks asking for the flood and for the seeds, I kneeled next to you kissing into your lips the seeds and the flood turning thirst into dust into pebbles and weeds filling the cracks and flowers covering the weeds and butterflies drowning the flowers, and we made love and I covered your body pebbles and you covered my body weeds and flowers and butterflies and when morning tiptoed around us afraid to break lovers’ spell it dragged pebbles and weeds and flowers and butterflies down desert’s valleys leaving us the skin to our flesh and the scratches to our knees and the seeds to tomorrow’s magic. and the blossoming world around us.

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Peep lying on my back in the grass the ragged end of a dandelion’s broken stem filling my mouth with bitter milk, the sun burning... a rush in the grass a sudden shadow hovering over me I opened my eyes in fright catching a view of art in heavenly motion as a muscled pair of legs skipped over my head and you landed on the other side leaving me with memories in white, and shadow, and skin. “show me... again...” I begged. “no...” you smiled defiantly, lying down next to me and refusing me the white and the shadow... you did though... consent to the skin.

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Your Love Your love as innocent as a newborn branch sprouting off a juniper tree. As a hummingbird trying to collect the nectar from the flowers design of your shirt? As a drop of honey failing to splash as it falls on your wrist and, conceding failure, slides lazily down. As sweet? No... and you pout then you smile... Sweeter?... No... and you pout, not understanding. Your love as tasteless as fragrances permeating young juniper berries, as whirlwinds embracing invisible hummingbird wing tips, as drops of sun forever imprisoned in living pearls of honey. As inebriating? As beautiful. As sweet? You insist, I have to give you an answer, how can I give an answer to the unanswerable? How can I measure the immeasurable? The pout changes once more into smile, I guess I answered correctly, I guess that now... you know.

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And When... I And when your robes the last have twirled You bare your ankles to the world, The scratches written on your shin Acquainting all with sharing sin On branches dry and thistles mean. I hide inside my pocket’s den A feather off that frightened wren Of bluish breast and wail forlorn, A grain of sand, a bloody thorn, A lock of hair in passion shorn. And when you run across the dell And skip the deep and punic well Imposing on the peeking sky A fleeting sight of muscled thigh I curse the vault of heaven’s sigh. I chase you through the depth of woods, Beneath the oaks’ majestic hoods, Awaiting sun’s deferred demise To feed the hunger in my eyes Your glints of flesh and mocking cries. And when you stop beneath the stream The nipples cut the stretching seam To let me drink your boiling milk And taste that flesh of fairy ilk Before I die inside your silk. I watch the glow beneath your lids, A crescent long a teardrop skids, As turmoil fades to peaceful rest Your nails escape the thudding nest And smiles invade my bleeding chest.

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The Act I sink into you. You sink into me fangs and claws and tentacles the oak running through my spine cracking longwise as God’s hand claps in thunder and lightning bursts through nerve ends consuming annihilating. My eyes rain, leaves cover wounds, igniting, cauterizing, slashing, moon slabs crash into transparent flesh piercing tunnels side to side followed by copper lianas sewing belly to belly, shoulder to shoulder, thighs, brains, birds dive into your gaping mouth bringing back to mine pieces of your tongue still singing your sighs. It’s never over when it is over. We spit blobs of sweat into the sun watching transfixed erupting geysers transversing galaxies, we spit bits of chewed skin into the moon creating new craters, new mountains, flowers growing for seconds long until the fire geysers incinerate the carbon matter to die as glowless ash in the oxigenless waste. I help you pull up your underwear, hook your bra, kiss your foot before putting the sandal on, button your shirt. You lock my belt, close the last of my shirt’s buttons, kiss me. The act is over. No one believes the kid with a ten bucks telescope rushing in with stories of sun flares and moon exploding dust.

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Milky Way It’s only then, when you think of me, that you... love me. Crawling desires conquering your loins, your body rolling through the cacti fields of life screaming happiness with thorns puncturing your skin and infesting your arteries and bustling through your heart’s deserted halls to reach your mouth and flood the milky way with that thick, treacly tinge of honey. But I think of you... all the time. I know. How do you know? I pull you out from beneath the covers from beneath the ceiling from beneath the roof dragging you beneath the blackness of the scintillating dome... look! I say pointing to the sky, your jaw sagging in wonder at the resplendence of the treacly tinge of honey flooding the milky way. But... it is impossible, it would take eons... Or a love as great as the milky way expanse. Do you really think I love you as much? I fall on top of you rolling through sharp stones, through broken glass, through detonating cacti, and as our bodies explode into each other I watch, fascinated, that evaporating tinge of honey rising from the darkness of your widely open mouth all the way to the milky way. Yes, I think you do.

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Genesis Of Lark Sensuality like the thinnest of violin’s sounds reverberating in a forest having known nothing but silence. Genesis of lark. And lark engendered its father, sun, and sun killed lark and sensuality died. Wait! shrieked she-lover thinner than the thinnest of violin’s sounds the only sound in a forest having known nothing but the thinnest of violin’s sounds after eternal silence. And she-lover crushed the fire out of sun her eyelashes burning her fingernails melting and kissed it into lark’s chest. Resurrection. And lark fell into sun once more its trill thinner than she-lover’s shriek sensuality floating in the eternity of unabating hell. I saw a flurry of feathers, and clothes, sacrifice... The sound inaudible anymore, ashes filled she-lover’s cupped palms as she offered me everything there ever was and ever will be, sensuality.

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Beyond Lust slide the velvet wrapping your bones between the covers, lover. pay care to that dry bark awaiting you there lest it pulls thin threads and mars your perfection. may I cleanse myself from lichens and lustrous snail dribble hoping for your nearness and warmth? no!... you touch me and galling friction begets spark begets ignition begets blaze. tarry between the white skies of my covers and let’s not stop counting bursting burgeons all the way back to genesis. ashes soft venture in tumbling waves between the mattress’ edges speckled with marbles of velvet and pebbles of bark. morning finds last night’s smoldering marrow barely breathing through immolated lungs and incinerated lips.

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Manicure Your nails diamond edged scimitars slashing through window panes and wine glasses and rubies set in emeralds set in sapphire ossatures, the glide turning sweep the sweep turning frenzy as you chopped the shapeless shards into shapely octahedrons and smaller tetrahedrons and butterfly wing dust. You inflated your chest and inflated your cheeks gulping seven measures of air and then with one mighty blow scattered the mountain skywards covering the dome horizon to horizon with billions of glimmering specks and roving microscopical rainbows. “...and this is when the dinosaurs die...” I commented phlegmatically wallowing in a sea of iridescence hanging fanatically to every pore of my skin. “No, this is when only a worthless poet can save the world,” you said, lying down next to me, waiting. I could not let the world die, dinosaurs, and flowers, and babies, I had to prove myself a worthless poet... “...but I don’t have so much to write...” I whined. “Oh, you do,” you answered confidently, leaving it up to me to ready the world for your wake-up. I cut away your outgrown fingernails carefully, then started sucking in mouthfuls of the rasping glitter mixing it with my saliva and filling to refuse inkwells, then barrels, the swimming pools. And every time your nails would grow a few millimeters I would dip my pen in the viscous mixture and sit down to write on the newly born crescents stories, and legends, and poems... funny, all of them ending with I love you. And then I would clip the horny protrusions carrying the recently written episode and throw them down the ravine next to our bed. It is not only that I wanted to save the world, I wanted as well to say I love you all those billions of times. Finally you woke up. Deciding yourself on the moment inside the time, your yawn turning smile as you heard dinosaurs growl and flowers open and babies cry, “...see, I told you, it is in you,” you said, looking at the huge mountain where once there was a ravine. “And all these are our love stories?” you smiled wider. “All these is our love story,” I responded, uncertain, hesitating. “OK, I will do it,” you beamed, and you took the clipper from my hand clipped the last nail and threw it all the way up to the mountain’s peak. I watched in fascination as it fluttered, rolled sideways, and finally settled down. I heard the rumble. * They are still excavating that crater reaching down to earth’s boiling viscera, scientists turned poets and archeologists turned starry eyed collecting at the ends of atom-thin ceramic pincers miles upon thousands miles of molecule thin sentences written with that incredibly resistant compound of glass dust and ruby dust and emerald dust and sapphire dust and histatins and statherins and lysozymes and lactoferrins and darkened blobs of chitinously semblable residuals. They still wonder why the dinosaurs did not die. They still sing songs ending always with I love you.

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Glass Ribbons leave your buttons home, leave your belt and your zipper and your clasps home, burn your panties, your stockings, your bra, and as you dance on the river’s deserted bank your skin clinging on to the insides of pouring walls of sweat and tiny crabs clinging on to pirouetting toes I will tie glass ribbons to your hips and glass ribbons to your wrists and glass ribbons to hang down between your breasts knowing when splinters cut my flesh and spill my blood amidst the crystalline tinkle of breaking glass and clacking clams as atrocious pleasure follows atrocious pain that I was the first.

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Definitions woman is not a gender. it is the safety taking my camels in from the desert before the waterskin dries and me, it is the certainty carrying the shadow at my side to hide it from the sun for me, it is the liberty to impart her love to a world and choose me. woman is not a gender, is a divine ordeal.

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Pastels, Two I left my footprints in the mud To mark your waking summer, Asleep beneath that lonesome bud In wait for morning’s drummer. My dreams assailed with sunset’s claim To own my bulging rivers, My pains to soothe, my words to tame Then quash my dawning shivers. “Be gone, ye nightmare’s paradise!” I cawed into your morning, Into that blaze to hit my eyes Bereaved of heed or warning. I blinked away the spider’s web To watch the crawling blossom, Then smiled at graydom’s eerie ebb To hues absurdly awesome. A fairy licked my caking mud And covered me in summer, Then went to sleep inside the bud, “Hey, hush... you ribcage drummer!”

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Immeasurable Love “Hug me,” she said. Why? I asked. “Kiss me,” she said. Why? I asked. “Let the seconds to my death Count that one and single breath I will seed inside your mouth Once your touch allays my drouth.” I did not ask. The muscle in my hug fragmenting her spine, The rove in my kiss incinerating her skin. Bones and ashes pouring between my fingers, My forehead digging the dirt between my knees. “Never will the shape of death Glaze a path inside your breath Time I feed your thirsting mouth Nectars brewed amidst my drouth.” Lianas tying our limbs knotting knurled arteries into a grotesquely writhing primordial creature agonizing in the steely claws of immeasurable love.

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Dying Sun I peeled that hidden piece of sun you hid inside your shirt And kissed the scold inside your eye ablaze with pouting hurt, Then dressed the wound in fragrant mint with flakes of crumbling leaves And left a strip of flaming skin beneath your flitting sleeves. Your rolling hip, your dancing toe, your morning smile I gleaned, Return I will when find I do... I told the gasping wind, You dressed a riddle’s wasting heart in dying ocean’s blue, Return you will when find you not... then find you will and do... I gazed upon the graying sun beneath the spreading stain Its wafting stink invading worlds with rot’s terrific bane, My pocket rich with fires sane... my lover’s heart and breath, The half of life, the one of pair, the seed of sun or death. My rags I dragged between the roots of grizzled, tumbling stars, Beneath the rage of warring gods with comet dripping scars, I erred beyond eternal black’s incogitant design... Then eons late, or maybe days?... assailed anew your shrine. I failed!... I wailed, your fire’s lust inside my trembling fist, The sun a threshing cup of mud beneath a bloated cyst, I failed!... I wailed, your piece of sun between my fingers’ tips, The seeding pair I failed to find, now death bespeak my lips. Return you will... then find you do... you took the piece of hell And touched... my heart?... to pull the lid and sink into my well, Then pulled the raging piece of life and raked the mud above... The sun, my dear, was ever here, inside a piece of love. The dragon’s blink returned its shine to blind the daring fools, And sunrise birth through sunset mourn to forge its welkin tools, We sleep inside its gloating eye and share its blaze of heart, From time to time it whips a flare and blames us for its art.

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Morning In Italics Lazy. I hang back under the warmth of covers, cowardly, delaying the moment I have to face the judgment of water and soap and mint flavors. I sense a multipede almost as lazy as I crawling upon my unresisting form to investigate that everything is fine, still in its original place and packaging, touching here, poking elsewhere, lingering a bit more than mere curiosity and common modesty would allow there. I return the favor finding everything organized the way I remember before I stopped remembering, even an intruder giggle when I touch there. Another there, different. I roll on my side reluctant to open my eyes... I always hated sun in the morning... I peek... thank goodness your eyes are still closed, yet I think that I hate this mirthful glitter crawling into your lips ...hey, keep your tentacles to yourself, I protest trusting your stubborn streak and rolling on my back glancing sideways. You (of course) insolently disregard my protest (thank God) pulling this, probing that, prodding the other, then finally heave the whole of your bulk atop of me letting things hanging dangerously close to my mouth... somehow they look deliciously so much better than seen with you lying on your back. The multipedes are at work again, more of them... how many do you have?... do you have more?... making sure I forget of water and soap and mint flavors as that damn truckload of fireworks spills its full lading inside my belly... a bit lower actually... and its damn driver lights the fuse... where the hell did I scatter the following moment? I don’t think (once I finally wake up) I wanted that. Liar! I think I did. Good morning, my love.

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the Prude, the Rude, the Lude (ie Lewd)   the Prude “Turn off the light,” she said. “Close your eyes,” she said. “No!...” she screamed pushing my hand away from the topmost button and finishing the job herself. I heard some rustling noises, undefined. “OK, you can come,” she whispered. “Ouch...” I yelled hitting my head against a shelf which was not supposed to be there in a dark room with closed eyes. I slid under the blanket. “Did you shower?” I rushed to the bathroom, showered, shaved, blew my nose, brushed my teeth, clipped my nails, got a haircut... then slid under the blanket again. “Your hands are cold,” she said. “Where is your skin?” I asked, striking a match (“...you want to smoke? now?”) and watching the beautiful knee length bloomers, pink with blue flowers and neat calligraphic inscriptions at various angles reading I love mom. I dressed and ran away screaming.   the Rude “Where the bleep are we?” She jumped a few times on the mattress, the sickening thud of spiked heels nauseatingly penetrating the styrofoam layers. “Great bleeping bed,” she said, “come here honey pie,” and she dropped the burning cigarette on the carpet patting motherly fashion the spot next to her. I snuffed out carefully the glowing stub, sitting next to her. “What are you, a prissy or something? Do you want to bleep or not?” She pulled my belt, zipper, shorts grabbing a handful of... “Careful...” I begged. “Hey, nice bleeps you have here,” she conceded, taking a bite, a lick... her technique wasn’t so bad, “...now turn around...” and she rolled me unceremoniously on my belly “...let’s see your bleep too.” She probably appreciated my endowment since she started slapping it then scratching it and when I (think) lost enough blood she started kissing it. “Are you ready, bullman?” Personally, I would have preferred stallion, or caveman, or even superman, but I wasn’t in a position of choosing, not with her on top of me rolling me on my back again and taking my two bleeps... oops, contagious this bleep business... in her palm and squeezing them to (small) bead size. I bellowed (in pain) “Hey, you like my bleeping treat of your bleeping bleeps,” she completely misinterpreted squeezing further to (smaller) size beads. When I woke up from the faint I asked with... was it nightingale’s?... voice “What are you doing?” as she was stuffing ashtrays and towels and bed sheets in her purse, it was a big purse. “They have bleeping enough of everything,” she flashed her canines at me dropping her purse and her pants and sitting across my face, “Ready to taste some juicy bleepy?” she roared, wondering at my struggling form as I crawled from underneath her, dressed and ran away screaming. “Where the bleeping hell are you bleeping going?” she screamed after me, stuffing in her purse the curtains, the carpet, the toilet bowl...   the Lude She kept trying to sneak inside my pants, it would be OK if it wasn’t in the street, first trying my posterior, then my inferior, “Hey, people are looking,” I said locking my belt. “Hey, people are looking,” I said again locking my belt again, pulling up the zipper and putting a groceries bag over my head to hide the blush. She waited for the fullest elevator squeezing in between two matrons and while I kept myself busy finding air to breath she found a way into my pants and I had to stop looking for air and moved the groceries bag to the front of my trousers to hide my happiness. She threw me on the bed, pulling from her pockets whips, handcuffs, a banana, batteries (not for the banana), blindfolds, one chainsaw, an electric drill (after a slight hesitation this one went back in), then in one move pulled me out of my clothes, zipped herself out of hers and climbed on the wardrobe, ready to jump on top of me. I looked at her with eyes the softness of dawn, the warmth of mother’s first embrace, the adoration of a teenager for his rock group, filling the room with poetry fit for the gods... “I love you,” I concluded blowing her way a kiss with the tips of my fingers. She jumped down from the wardrobe dressed and ran away screaming. She returned a few days later to collect the whips and the rest of the stuff. She did not mind that meanwhile I ate the banana (I was hungry). When I tried to kiss her she threw some garlic at me and ran away screaming once more.

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Morning Rapture I found your ankles on my pillow, A bit away I found your knees, And fading smells of peccadillo Beyond, way Northwards some degrees. You rolled, escaping morning’s tickle Then moaned when finger followed lip, Your leg asleep, your temper fickle Inside that cobra’s lashing whip. I guess you let a bluish crescent Behold the world around your nose When slashing teeth and cheeks rubescent Assailed with doom my vestal toes. The blanket flailed in raving fury And hit the floor those miles below Uncovering a seething houri Of madness wild in eyes aglow. I found your head upon my pillow, And way below I found your knees, And in between... that peccadillo And thousands Fahrenheit degrees.

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Pastels, Three The day has set upon my toil, I lay upon the furrowed soil, The shivers of descending night My gate to worlds of sheer delight, My candle’s oil. I listened to the mirthful mole Insult once more the hungry owl, Then back inside its burrow’s deep Tell legends of a mighty ship To heaven’s hole. I let the vixen clip my ears And boast to sounds of barking cheers, Then marvel in that broken den To rooster’s once-upon-a-hen Sweet souvenirs. My old and faithful garden snake Just peeked to ask if I’m awake And tell me for the thousandth time That Eve’s account of Eden’s crime Was crudely fake. They toured all night around my bed, Above, beneath, inside my head, Some friends of old, some friends of new, Some bringing tunes, some berries blue, Some poppies red. I waited, patient in my crave, The crescent hid behind a wave, When spikes of bliss inside the dark Poured glory through my body’s bark And stinging rave. I saw you sliding down the slope The one beyond my earthling’s hope, A petal heart, a morning wine, A rhyme tied down a poem’s line With silver rope. You reached my crumb of silent world Inside my skin you softly curled And once again you taught me flame To put those vaunting suns to shame With wings unfurled. The skulking day crawls on again, Its bulk invades the sleeping plain, I watch your parting silken kites Encased in lovers’ flitting rites As perfumes wane. I roll anew my toil and sweat To pay my petty human debt, Beyond the day my friends await Then love, once more, will crash the gate To no regret.

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Open Your Mouth Open your mouth, not to talk not to sing no, not to kiss. Open your mouth so that I can breathe-in your insides. I have your skin. Open your mouth to give me your life.

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Dear Lover I feel itchy, scratchy, I sit to write you a love letter before washing my hands, or face, or neck, before turning off the car ignition and unbuckling my safety belt. I start, Dear Lover... I know the multiplication table by heart. I know the formulas of seven deoxynucleotides plus maybe an eighth and the maiden names of thirteen US presidents’ wives. I don’t know to write you a love letter. Dear Lover... It is midnight plus three hours, I am sweating again. I exit the room to the porch letting the sudden tropical outpour wash the clothes off my body and the ink off the crumpled piece of paper, Dear Lover... I didn’t see you arriving. I watched left you came right and the only sign of arrival were those two hands sliding underneath my t-shirt, pinching my nipples. I wanted to apologize for not writing you a love letter but you filled my mouth summer.

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Love Me Tender... I hold the black piece of plastic between finger tips as if it was made of crystal, of living tissue... I flip it around once, twice, then place it gently on the heavy metal platter soon to start chasing the end of that fine spiral hugging so many tender souvenirs inside its rugged walls. I watch attentively the wonders of pneumatics drop the diamond inside memory’s halls and one hundred decibels of absolute beauty invade thousands of empty stages I once readied in my chest for those songs he will never sing. “little sister don’t you do...” I feel like crying. I love his music, I say, almost as much as I love you, I say, and you know. You slide the record back into its sleeve smiling as you listen to me singing completely off key... “love me tender...”

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Wallpaper The wallpaper carrying yesterday’s sunshine and birds and calendar papers lies in tatters on the floor, the indomitable time machine pushing forwards ramming its mindless way through flesh cells and celestial bodies and eternally irretrievable reasons for I’m sorry’s. A new layer already peeling at upper edges the more the new day advances, its sun drunk-red, its birds tired, its calendar pages’ ears already between impatient fingers too eager to pull and tear, soon to join yesterday’s putrefying leftovers and all those other long gone long evaporated yesterdays red marked for the terrible sorrows of Luther King the Martin and Elvis the Pelvis and Teresa the Mother, and my mother The mother. Birth paired by death, the absolute irrevocable binary relationship ridiculously compensated with inanimate in-between souvenirs recorded on those man-made idolatry carriers – celluloid, and magnetic dust, and copier powder. I count the layers still to go, melancholic nostalgia little by little giving way to bubbling buds of excitement as I check meteorological bulletins for scheduled sunrise times as if they own them, and chase birds all over my courtyard to keep them away from the cat, and keep peeking through the following calendar pages till they yellow like a smoker’s finger tips... so many still?... and yet less than before... I brush my teeth and shine my shoes and wax my buckle waiting in restless anticipation for the last layer to wither away when beyond a new sun and new birds and a new calendar page you fall into my arms. It’s when I stop counting, scared. It’s when I start my life, again.

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Cotton Innocence The mountain underneath us, no world, just air and grass and a broken roof between us and the immensity of blue haze, and that skirt immodestly sliding up muscled thighs to reveal a white patch modestly dressing that junction of your body permeating the innocence of cotton with invasive wine cellar fragrances and spreading stains. The growling rumble... not a tiger... you assured me sliding backwards on top of the moss covered wooden tabletop and dragging me on top of you unbuckling, unzipping, unlacing, liberating me in one fluent motion and guiding my mouth into your fangs and the rest of me inside you. I should have brought another pair of panties, you giggled after having dropped environmental-conscientiously the tormented, drenched cotton leftovers in a public garbage bin. Hey, it has no bottom, I laughed hysterically seeing them float to the ground, enjoying the secrecy of knowing you naked underneath the knee length skirt. That’s funny, I thought, those tens of butterflies fluttering around your ankles, finally hanging upside down to the skirt’s hem spinning several times on spidery legs and pinhead indecision which flower to choose. Don’t ask me, I told them, knowing what my choice would have been. We reached the hotel room late at night. Careful... you whispered, as I pulled the skirt over your head and away from your body, the inner lining crawling with sleepy butterflies angrily fluttering their indignation at the invasion of privacy. Ha, I commented, they are the indignant ones... hanging the skirt from the overhead lamp. What do we do with these? I asked, pointing to the few that still clung to my territories on your skin. I guess you will have to work your way around them, you grinned mischievously dragging me on top of you unbuckling, unzipping, unlacing, liberating me in one fluent motion and guiding my mouth into your fangs and the rest of me inside you. Hey, gently... I muttered, before forgetting. I woke up in the morning, yawning lazily... then suddenly jumped in fright tearing my head away from your belly. There was no reason, we’ve probably been extremely gentle last night, not even one wing lay crushed to your thigh yet the commotion against the glass was unbearable... Wait, wait, you light cannibals... I shouted and rushed to the window pushing it open to screams and squeals in the street beneath as a glinting cloud in thousands of fluttering colors burst out of the room and streaked like a kite’s multiple tail up the mountain. Hey, you too... I nudged the little fellow still cluttering your cotton innocence with his impertinent colors, reluctant in his own little way to leave. He yawned, poorly emulating my earlier gesture, stretched a pair of wings the size of a baby dragon’s and in a gesture covering the sun for moments few squeezed through the window and zoomed out following the swarm, dropping a rain of glittery confetti taking ages to reach the ground. Love, sorry, I think you’ll have to change panties again, I said, terribly embarrassed, pointing to the wet spot the last butterfly left behind. It was the first time I saw this kind of ripe-watermelon red mount so rapidly to your cheeks. I got the point, when I saw the spot spread slowly wider... There was no drag, unbuckle, unzip, unlace and liberate this time, though the thing with fangs and the rest of me inside you stayed the same. And the bin did have a bottom this time. Poor innocent cotton.

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Dear Lover, Two Rigid, numb, like a concrete pillar, watching you turn, wave once, disappear, waiting for infiltrating rust to turn invasion then turn my iron skeleton red dust settling down into my feet leaving me hollow, feeble, frail. I waited for butterfly messengers... yet none came, I waited for a sneaking rainbow to lace my shoes, a kite to crawl along the ceiling dripping pink dew, a phosphorescent snake, a singing snail, a field of blue clover... yet none came, you left. The miracle turned itself off like a light bulb, like a match, like a departing airplane. Dear lover... I started falling asleep inside a pool of blue ink and transparent tear. I refused to wake up letting butterflies lace my shoes with sneaking rainbows and phosphorescent snakes drag kites dripping pink dew and snails chewing on blue clover sing me your voice Dear lover... you started and I knew you left the miracle with me so that you will have good reason to return. I don’t need a miracle to return, you said. I need a miracle to live, I said.

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Retail You counted your blessings. Then you counted your scratches, your blueing spots... some out of eye’s reach, your bite marks, your missing heartbeats. You filled a thick notebook tiny vertical marks, crossing horizontally the tens in black pencil, crossing diagonally the hundreds in brown pencil, boxing the thousands in green pencil... What are you doing? I asked spotting by your side wasted blue’s, and red’s, and violet’s... Counting my happiness, you answered picking a brand new orange pencil and marking a small sun top right of the cover of the first notebook, then picking the next notebook, then the next... I peeked in the other rooms careful not to be buried under cascading paper, then in the cellar... there is the attic too... you remarked, smiling, never stopping your branding flow except for sharpening the pencil from time to time. Do you have enough pencils? I asked. I emptied the swimming pool, you answered, your forehead wrinkled in concentration. I called for a pizza and beer, I estimated I would have to wait... a few years.

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Shower You look up at the shower, asking forgiveness before you turn the tap two full turns left allowing thousands of needle thin water soldiers invade your body with demented loving fury the lucky few clinging despairingly to every single hair, every goosebump and freckle and skin cut, and after the infinitesimal moment of adulating caress slide exhausted down invisible drain lines running along breasts, along arms and belly and thighs to finally drop to stinking sewage death from cliff hard nipples, and fingertips, and toes. Paying a hard price for ephemeral moments of glory, I remark, soaking the last infiltrators into the thick towel, all your folds and crevices desert dry, these water soldiers must be loving you desperately. They love everybody, you laugh at my naiveté, indenting the white linen with your weight. Not as much as they love you, I insist shaking my wet mane above you and watching a small army of drops form thankful smiley’s beneath your breasts, before joining in a thin trickle to disappear inside that tropical forest I deserted just minutes ago. See, I told you, I remark knowingly. Poor soldiers, are you going to leave them alone in that awful darkness? you ask smugly, shrewdly brushing en passant against my paternal instincts. I cannot, oh, I cannot, I admit to myself, my conscience will chase me for a lifetime... and doggedly I follow the trickle inside that tropical forest I deserted just minutes ago.

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Perfumes Of You The power of that hand clasp squashing the steel ball between our palms to coin, then to tin, then watching it gathering its robes into a drop shape and flowing down enveloped in a bluish flame to meet a boiling mother howling for her son all those thousands of miles down there, beneath the rocky headstone. It hurts... so much, you said, and I added fire to the wound kissing the raw flesh of your palm. Not there... you said and pointing to that rib hidden beneath the left breast I did not dare kiss, afraid I will not separate before a mouthful of flesh will rest imprisoned behind my ravenous teeth. My mouth sating its hunger spasms biting away the nacre of your shirt's buttons chewing them to glossy dust and swallowing them down along interminable paths of protesting, bleeding entrails. The last touch, fingertips, the last touch, eyelashes, the cold room with its blaring loudspeakers swallowed you. You looked ridiculous holding your shirt closed with the left hand, holding your bag with the right, and tears exploding in your wake all the way to the airplane. I saw the rainbows in the salt crunched indifferently by so many following feet. I looked ridiculous spitting traces of blood all the way to my car before falling asleep on the rear bench, my head wrapped in that jacket you blissfully forgot behind. Perfumes of you.

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The Dog Of Earth You decided to test it, the theory of flight. You clambered up the window ledge let your nightgown drop down your ankles and dived into the void. It wasn’t happening, the air streaming around you with a deafening shriek, your flapping hands useless, your groping fingers useless... and then you remembered what it was all about... and you smiled. The asphalt pulled back in haste, the rocky crust underneath cracked into a craggy crevasse all the way down to the fire scared for a moment to have touched you... but you sank beneath then soared above rolling and fluttering like a ribbon in the wind, passing underneath my nose and tickling it laughing away as I snarled and sneezed and bit a piece of skin off your departing toe, stretching impotently against the chains tying the dog of earth to the four ends of that giant, rolling ball of clay underneath me. I waited, for those single moments of sunset when you would close your struggling wings to alight next to my bulk, to catch your breath, to allow old mongrel me suckle the breast of young baby you.

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Sleep Sleep, liquefied nonsense asking no permission to pour through me wasting irretrievable moments when I could think of and write about and glorify you. Red, painting itself like lipstick inside my eyes telling it is time to accept nonsense and try that other venue of closing eyelids and let you invade me. Poems, my swords, my scimitars, my sabers cutting paths through the fields leading to you and wide channels through my flesh denying the inevitable nonsense its right of wasteful passage letting us meet midway with blazing words consuming us both. Sleep, finally wins its battle knowing damn well it lost the war as my kisses graze your eyes and your beautiful blue delightfully corrupts this merchant of dreams.

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Needle The time you would have called... like a junkie I squirm inside the flesh container hosting me, waiting for the phonetic needle to puncture my auditive system, for its plunger to feed my flesh with the daily ration of melodic whispers and sighs and frolicking smiles. The time has passed... I can hear your need on the other side of the inexistent wire tuning into mine resonating towards explosion demanding deliverance, until we erupt into a lovers’ duet written to two screams and several octaves apart and one thousand miles away and no orchestra. The time has passed long ago... I gather the pieces of glass and bone and mail them to your address wishing you to know that it wasn’t a coyote’s shadow reflecting on the moon earlier on but the one human who can sing or scream at the cue of your voice or your silence.

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Escape Chute I take a step in to escape those ogres out there... spiraling butterflies and flirting birds and blossoming orchards and no you... I close my senses and open the chute letting me flee the inferno into memories of your lap where I lay parts of my body, all other curling around and around and around your waist while fragrances of you spiral and flirt and blossom for me.

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May's Tell me lover, may I borrow Your today and your tomorrow, And that lonesome yesterday One delightful day of May Tainted clover's wilting sorrow? As your spirit gaily races Dropping pansies in its traces May I crowd your body's lay Perfumes, gems, then kisses stray And my dreams in wooden cases? When the sleek, impudent Amor Lays his trap of chinking glamour Reaching for your mortal clay, May I chance your erring way Pouring songs inside the clamor? May I feed your hungry quiet My caress abounding diet, Seeding blue inside your gray And my heart in your bouquet Whetting in your chest the riot? Lover, oh, my sweet enslaver, Artless boy and guileless raver, Do and give and take you may Long as rhymes my pain allay And we share this kiss’s flavor.

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Tree Lean against that groaning tree Dying in a sea of clover Letting cheeky sparrows rover As your skirt glides up your knee. Watch the last of curling leaves Spiral down to touch your finger, In your palm to hide and linger From oblivion's scouting thieves. Smile, when squirrels bite your toes Then your ankles hug, adoring, Finding though your manner boring With those glasses on your nose. Do you feel my sneaking hand Sliding there beneath your laces Dropping shivers long its traces With its delicate demand? Flies your pen and flows your rhyme, Thoughts of me your chest invading, Crystal stains your lashes raiding As your sighs turn lark sublime. Guards the tree your sleeping form, Knotted roots above you hover Envying the lucky lover Seeding dreams with grains of storm.

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Communion rain drowning in the river, liquid bodies joining in a thundering spasm of love chaperoned by lustful old willows washing their heads in the foam. mountains impotently watching lightning fairies skipping from cloud to cloud in a frenzy of carousal lechery, waiting to die in the unforgiving fire of their treacherous touch. lovers, resting head on her shoulder, roving hand tracing his magnificent sculpt of unshameful desire, rolling down the blazing mountain to die in the boiling river's embrace.

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Declarations When you blink away in embarrassment the hesitation you professed, once, that first time, When you clamp the rebellious mop of hair with a plastic crocodile, out of the way, to allow you see better my shameless nakedness, When you run in the rain wet to your skin worrying through your shivers at my wearing a sweater, When you sit up all night for the dubious pleasure of watching the dark grey of my body lying inert on the lighter grey of the bedding, Such innocent declarations of love. Absolute.

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...and I Will Lie by me and I will count your ribs as you sleep uncovered, Eat and I will follow your munching jaws collecting the falling crumbs into my mouth, Smile and I will cover my face to protect it from the flare, Moan and I will know that my touch cut through your flesh straight into your dream, Arch your belly and I will paint it painful colors and singing souvenirs, Dance and I will lie at your feet kissing your traces.

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From A to N As I watch your figure rolling those designer hips mythical eyes abstractly bouncing breasts, giggling insanity pouring from a mind evading the earth dancing the dust devouring the day offering me nipple's nectar and nopher's resplendence, I punch holes through walls and rip away hinges and steal reflections off lake's disquiet mirror impatient in my delirium to make room for your rollicking gait and invading desire and paint flittering frames to your seditious canvas coloring it lust's blindness and crave's bitterness. You stomp the trees and mill the mountains the detritus between your teeth sounding like hail beaten tin as you approach me and rivers of grit escape the corners of your mouth building deserts in your wake and wings to falling condors and rolling pearls choking the seas, Until we meet on the virginal white of madness letting stars die between our ribs and anthracite crush into diamond into dust as our fingers claw their path in ecstasy heralding the ominous advent of linen’s Armageddon.

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Breath unbend your pain, unfurl your banners, uncurl your curled curled curled spine, let the wind billow your skirts and as it picks you up pulling and tugging at the wool thread in my hand I let go regarding you aim for the sun... how the hell did the wind reach that high?... my eyes burn, images of you slaying my eyesight as I watch you raise your hands above your head and plunge into the boiling swamp a flaming arrow emerging on the other side rolling and rolling and rolling with the wind still chasing you, screaming love in its agony and guiding you back to earth, to me... fire dripping from your skin caresses my blind eyes and all I can sense is you bending and furling and curling into my lap smoldering your contentment.

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Piebald Eagle rapacious, ravenous, hovering above your valleys and mountains and stretches of water my universe trapped the reach of your voice my tether's end the depth of your skin my bottomless abyss, roaming, roving, my plight hanging to ends of blunted talons waiting for you to open the gates to your dungeons and allow me encounter those hungry demons hiding inside the light to be eaten alive into ecstasy.

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Gull I found a scrap of paper. I wrote you a poem. Driven by demons I turned it over... sinking to my chest in a black and white image, deserted sand framed by deserted grey sucking me in while a lost gull entering the frame from nowhere on the right limped its lonesomeness to the left to leave for the same nowhere, or another, its claw ripping through indents of pen. I turned the scrap of paper once more adding a few words... you entered my life from nowhere, you will never leave my poem.

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Pillow Green the pillow you squeeze shaping it to my size and my forms and not my heartbeat and not my warmth. Soft softer than my ribcage and my bony elbow never scrapping your cheek with unshaven stubble or stealing your blanket or kissing you good night. Uncomplaining undemanding of fresh shirts unexpecting of compliments unreplacing the burnt lamp high on the ceiling unloving back. You hug your green pillow... it absorbs your tears better than I do.

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Expression Laying claim to expression, molding it the way of a master blacksmith, rolling curls at hot red ends and twists at groaning middles and hammering flowers inside iron hearts alive for the mere moments of torturing blows. Expression takes shape, first in black and white, then in tricolor, then in omnicolor from the scathing depths of infra red up into the annihilating fangs of ultra violet, arrogant splashes of phosphor deserting suicidal moths’ tips of wings to find sanctuary inside your pen. I wrote you a poem, you said, remembering your working clothes and deciding you needed no clothes. I read your poem, deciding the same. You lay down next to me, cinnamon seeping into our bodies as we hugged, waiting for the drops of fire to flutter down and turn expression to birthing phoenix and bodies to burning ashes.

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Home you will find the dust on my shoulders waiting for you to brush away, the nails to my fingers reaching down to my knees waiting for you to snap and polish, my hair invaded by old cormorants having nowhere else to go in their hunger and waiting avidly for your hand to feed and caress, you will find sand in my eyes and trees between my toes and beneath each leaf a sleeping mockingbird hanging to departing green by tiny, shivering claws, you will find my skin hanging inside the cupboard dripping the swarms of sweat you once dressed me in, my teeth beneath the sleeping grey mouse the ferocious guard to ivory and pieces of flesh once belonging to you, my heart splashed on the cold tiles looking for the departed warmth of your soles, my flesh... gone... questing for yours. don’t cry, only love me, and my body parts will find their way back home and my friends will find their way back home, and you... found home.

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SomeX When sometimes turns to many times and many times turns to always and always is the end of the road as meaningless as infinity being the end of the count, linguistical aberrations going the way of mathematical aberrations trying to define the abstract notion of love in terms too simple to comprehend. My moment of morning philosophy, as regular as my fake Breitling. I smell your coffee. I hate coffee... orange juice?... you sip a mouthful and pour it down my throat generously allowing me to lick the last drops off your tongue... it tickles... not my tongue, my unshaven cheek eternally challenging the supremacy of dissimilar unshaven parts decorating your body, losing, as always, and settling for the crumbs of broken suns writhing in liquid death between collapsing life support systems and momentarily atrophying reason, muscles, and linen hearts. When somewhere turns to many wheres and many wheres turn to alwhere and my English aberrations are words lost to poetry never to be incepted in the almighty sea of uninvention, and my almost resurgence of philosophy dies a final death (for today) when I smell your coffee anew and you sip a mouthful of juice anew and we move once more into the blossoming nowhere of atrophying reason, and muscles, and linen hearts.

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Shine Of Silver Don’t let the tresses, those you never had, fall into your eyes, Don’t let the poems, those I never wrote, cloud your heart, Do let me lace in those tresses those poems and if ever someone tells you you never had, he never wrote, just let the mirror turn its shine of silver upon you and watch there, in the depths of that wall of glass words fluttering away from you and poems never written hanging on to tresses you never had chasing you like kites abandoning the call of the sun for the embrace of earth.

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Something To Do With Much And The How Of It I am out of words, I am out of love, of numbers, arid, a desert. I counted first the letters, all of them, in all the languages, then the words, then the words written, said, sung, all of them too, in all the languages too, then the words unwritten, mine. I moved on to deserts. Started with the Sahara, moved on to Kalahari, to Sinai, the sea shores counting first the grains of yellow sand then the grains of white sand, then the wet... it was windy, I may have missed a grain or two. I did not count the seeds, there were too many and birds of unknown call and rich of glamour kept attacking my left ear, don’t know why. Looking for echoes of your music? Or for grape seeds about to become wine?... I tried to count the numbers, I gave up. No, it was not the birds, they nested inside my shirt first picking at my few, orphan freckles then at my nipple then falling asleep, head in feather, still singing. They were countless, the numbers, and the seconds and raindrops and stars. It would have taken me too long, At least one more day. I could not let one more day pass without telling you I love you. I just had a problem telling you how much.

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Linguistically Spoken Why? Because else the earth is a cube and the sun is blue and dogs meow... Oh... Because else Aussies fall out and flowers close with sunrise and Beethoven’s Fifth is never written... Oh, you mean... And butterflies walk and women have no breasts and there are only two vowels to our voice. Oh, you mean this will happen when you will stop loving me? I mean this is when I will stop loving you. A pondering moment. She suffered from those horrible moments of lucidity. You know, then... ahmm, linguistically spoken, you should say it differently. Instead of... They should know when... ahmm, linguistically spoken, it is time to shut up. Instead of telling her I kissed her. By the time she caught her breath her teeth had fallen out and I had lost my hearing. So it didn’t matter so much anymore. aaa wooof ooo... It might have been what she said, yet it might have been only what I heard. Though, linguistically spoken, I know it to have been perfectly expressed.

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The Last Layer Look, she said, opening the top button and letting a Giant Swallowtail fly away. When I looked back she had opened the rest of the buttons and started disintegrating into Leopard Lacewings and Common Jays and Blue Tigers and Striped Blue Crows... Stop, I yelled, chasing the flitter of color with my butterfly net never catching even one before they rolled into porcelain marbles and started flowing down to the sea. Make love to me, she said, before I melt away, and she let the wind catch the rest of her laces and silks to pursue them barking with infantine gusts between the bark’s cracks. I embraced her the swarms fluttering away from between our bodies as she emaciated into deeper, sharper colors, layer after layer of beauty escaping into the light and inviting me to make love again and again to layer after layer of warmth and velvet and caress... No! I gasped knowing it when I almost reached that end before nothing. This is my skin, she said, and I knew this was the last layer before eternity. I carried her to the sea of porcelain marbles and we sank to the bottom before I dared make love to her one last time I am afraid... I said, and the skin stayed and we never stopped making love knowing that the moment we stop she turns butterfly and I die inside her sea.

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Kitchen Story, And Love I found you among the pots and the pans and the potato masher and the pestle and mortar and wire sieves and teflon baking forms and nylon pastry brushes the white scarf around your brow drenched your cheeks red your arms flour-white wrist to elbow a bunch of left toes scratching the back of a right shin the forgotten shoe on the floor bursting in tears at momentary abandon and fears of an unknown future. I love you, I said, disregarding incredulity of potatoes and aloofness of tomatoes joining forces with fried onions and pieces of meat simmering together into a goulash pulling at my stomach’s strings but never at my heart’s... though they tried. You dumped the scarf in the sink and the apron on the back of a chair the second shoe screaming indignation and intolerance and infidelity as it rolled over to join its blubbering mate and finishing its way upside down in noble protest. We didn’t make it to the bedroom, it was too far away, we barely made it underneath the table crawling between a forest of chair legs overturning and crashing as we tried to dump the rest of our rags and in the cacophony of cold tiles cracking underneath your bare back spice jars started to explode in two’s and three’s on the shelves covering us with volcano ash and the sharp aroma of oregano and mint and love making.

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Art Nouveau pull your pennons up the pole with morning, the art of holes gaping at knees and toes of fluttering stockings, a brassiere missing clasp and ring one strap dangling uselessly, panties swarming with buzzing beasts fighting for ambrosia flavors... bees and wasps and hornets and desperate hummingbirds and my mouth, sing the morning with screaking spine and throbbing vein and constricted throat, the art of bones looking to escape the prison of sockets, red drops eagerly following fingernails into hell or heaven or short flashes of nothingness, gurgling sounds reminiscent of smothered pine trees ablaze with exploding resin pockets and sputtering needles refusing the soothe of enshrouding dew, leave traces across poppy invaded wheat fields, the art of crushed spikes in the wake of tangled bodies grinding grains to flour between chests locked in an interminable spasmodic grip, petals drying on skins alight with the fever of a dying eruption feeding departing suns, gazelles skipping across a flesh hugging flesh continuum huddled amorphously mid of hurricane’s dead eye in wait for resurrection.

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grab grab a handful of spikes one millstone to your back a mouthful of leaven grab my hand my mouth lips teeth tongue my legs and beyond grab a cartful of silk ribbons and porcelain marbles and kites wheels plowing to axle in mud your muscle a bow’s string about to rupture grab the raspberry wine and the charcoal pen and the vellum drop it all and pull the curtain to the world and there wherever you did – love me before bread before dress and decant and drink before slivers of razor sharp sighs abandon the safe haven of your chest to lancinate that of my nipples hoarding the caress of your staves

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Of Four, Screams When on the other side of glass is the open mouth of lipstick the rest of you gone long before your scream died I see dogs bark and girls bark and flowers bark remembering dogs barked and girls caressed and flowers smelled once upon a time when you sang me your breast’s ambrosia and combed my skin with razor studded screams and bathed me in the heavenly stank of your loins’ afterlust. Dinosaur seed, I, oozing layers of falling days cocoon me into immotion and I do not hear the scream that should be there as the thick amber slides down my throat embracing the harpsichord you loved And my eyes fixedly unsee untaste unfeel the other side of glass waiting for the mouth to join the lipstick once again and the scream to break the amber.

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Kirsch-Kitsch Interlude I I spit the seeds sideways, stalks tumbling awkwardly upwardways, then the cherry flesh bucketways and when the bucket started oveflowing downways I clamped your lips between my teeth and spilled the bubbling liquour over your head, drenching your pale nondescriptways. I hated that artistic tri-dimensional rendition of fermenting acridity foaming at the interstices of your shirt’s warps and wefts and those damn nipple stubs waving their swarthy red of insolence inside the sodden red of stains like puppies’ tails looking for fingertips’ playfulness. I bit barely missing the stiff lumps of flesh clammy pieces of cotton and satin and nylon sticking between my teeth as your craving pride offered my mouth fire. I wondered whose hands were ripping whose clothes into whiping flagella my foot stuck inside the greedy bucket and you giving up the fastidiousness of a buckle dragging my tatters and my body and my sizzling liquour all the way into you.

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canvas duality first i tried the quill, dipping it in poppy ink and running it around the tips of your breasts, lips, fingernails. soon i gave up the pedantic approach picked the inkwell and spilled it in one go over your skin shaking it for last ink drops wringing it broken cutting in my palm a second lifeline, gushing. then i started grabbing swath after swath of begging flowers munching their flesh and letting bitter red ooze between my teeth together with broken stems and chewed leaves and ripped roots in the artist’s insane fervor to beat the beauty of canvas. you waited patiently. i gave up. i swept you clean then wiped you clean then licked you clean then decided that no art could beat your beauty. you forgave me for trying so hard, after all you were an artist yourself painting my heart’s irregular beats and my garden’s crawling beetles and those eye sparks singing fringed freckle-like stars on your skin. let’s make love, you proposed as a way to make up turning from canvas to artist and showing me your ways of using poppies ink. i’ve never been a canvas myself, before, never knew how hard it was not to go up in smoke.

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October Butterfly Parts of words ending in letters, even in parts of letters, indecipherable. It started with an l... was it supposed to be love? lust? the connection bad the meaning tainted by noise, by a need blinding the senses and occulting the mind, was it patience you said, or passion?... maybe even parliament though what the hell has parliament to do with love unless if they decided to outlaw fire in favor of blandness and routine and indifference and define burning hearts as arson, a criminal act of insanity punishable with extinction. I close my eyes, trying to focus, impossible, not with the October butterfly crossing my path and dropping flakes of white in its raggedy wake as it searches for your nectar... of course I know, it flies in the scattered shape of your name, all I have to do is connect the dots of its random breaks and I get all of the last letters and strange punctuation, the way of butterflies. I open my eyes again, the butterfly flying from my dark to my light through a curtain of rising eyelids and sizzling eyelashes and before I have the time to shout a warning it plunges into a broken jar slashing its wings and my heart. I found it, I guess at its antennae’s wriggling write, out of my time and species, and I do not know what it means and if it means. I love you, I hear you finally saying, as clear as white and silence, and I burry the butterfly beneath a flower knowing I will never understand beauty but I will live it as long as I can close eyes and hear parts of letters and only from time to time understand words and butterflies.

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Some Kind Of Forest, I Think Lay your head against my heart, the other side... are you confused with emotion and fright?... no need, just listen - no pounding waves, no shrieks, no orchestral intermezzo’s and finale’s and andante’s, no whirring motors, just the sound of broken glass colorless shards crashing atop of each other in a universe of flesh and memories. I hear a forest, you say, probably mistaken. I try to listen myself, impossible, my ear too small my neck too short my chest hidden underneath a sea of waving hair, your left ear there, somewhere, still attached to the visible side of my skin. I try a headstand losing you along the way, same kind of sound... my mistake?... It still sounds a forest to me, you claim and the sea of hair rematerializes out of nowhere once again attaching itself to my chest with your voice there, somewhere. I never heard a forest. I once saw an owl on my balcony, this was the closest. You trick me into removing my clothes, shoes too, guiling me into believing you are looking for proof then into making love to me then into sharing one pot of yoghurt and the same bathtub, the same toothbrush, you even write a poem called My toothbrush in Your forest claiming I inspired you, inclusive the use of capitals. You trickster! Told you that you sound like a forest, you say, shaking the bed and me with it and watching first the leaves fall to my feet, then clouds gathering above me to pour buckets of rain, and finally opening all doors and windows and even the chimney and letting in birds and frogs and rabbits one limping snake coiling shyly inside my shoe and even several bears... they could not all fit in so they slept on the threshold, snoring. You may have been right but I still refuse to admit preferring to let you dress me in order to undress me again and keep whatever dignity I still harbor suffering those other indignities you so excel in delivering with your hands and your fingertips and other parts. Hey, now I hear the glass, you finally admit and just as I am about to scream Victory! you guide my ear to your chest and shake it. I hear it, the glass, keeping another sense concentrated on the twin pendulum of your breasts tinkling against each other Does it hurt? I ask, meaning both. No, you answer, not for as long as I can listen to your forest and you watch my breasts, and you squeeze tighter into me making place for one insisting bear. I guess one of us is crazy, I think, and this one is certainly not me, I think further laughing loudly. I could have done without the giraffe but, hey, it brought me an apple and it wasn’t apple season. It is always apple season, you say biting off half of it and handing the other half back to the giraffe. Yes, definitely crazy, I reach a final decision then fall in love with you. Again.

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Magician When I put my hand on your shoulder playing my magician’s trick making the shoulder strap disintegrate into fire descending long your arm to burn underneath your fingernails, When I touched your knee with mine and the violins asleep inside the tree’s trunk materialized into their cordless nakedness stealing strands of your hair to cover the shame and voices from your chest to play our dance music, When I bit your ear lobe fitting a pearl descending my eye’s sanctuary to hang by the silk of your shoelace and swing in your head’s rolling wake as you watched me trying to steal your heart, When your waist squeezed in between my thumb and forefinger and all your dresses slid down your hips drawing patterns of closing flowers on bare skin invading the evening night with fragrances forgotten out of petals’ prisons, Is when I knew that my magic was mortal and your love eternal and the real illusion was my reality.

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Fires In The Rain I see your fingers, I read on the ground the words written by last night’s rain running through the same fingers and clinging to tips of green blades before chiseling their message through colonies of rushing ants and hurrying centipedes carrying pieces of my skin and snips of my chest’s hair. I look up, my back reading those earlier written words, sharp grains of sand clinging to bone ends protruding through layers of ligaments and muscles and blood vessels and copying the message into spots laid bare of skin exposing nerve ends to soothing drops of salt and penetrating thorns. I don’t remember, did you always hover there above me tasting northern winds and feeding diving birds the thin garment ingesting your skin through thousands of suckling cups telling me those of your flesh secrets I did not know before and will forget after? I try to get up on my feet, the warm mud clucks delighted allowing its next of kin hordes dress my nakedness and bury the words I read beneath thick layers of decomposing leaves and dead petals and barely smoldering stardust. You decide it is time once again, and you invoke gravitation to drop your pale amorphousness atop of me to smother me your crawling weight demanding unconditional capitulation peeling the mud rewriting the poem and inviting me inside that wet garment lonely witness to fires crying life inside the rain.

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Garlands Garlands, efflorescing off your earlobe’s tiny puncture down to your hips on to your ankles to drag, tumbling, behind you and shed buds and bees and birds... Anadems, braided with your apple soaked hair and orange curled eyelashes sending ribbons beneath shy breasts to tie across gaping ribs, round and round thighs, measuring the infinity of sleeping fires... Bouquets, milk flowers and honey butterflies pouring along sweat trails marking your love exhausted body and sowing grain sized mountains underneath skin parcels parched by the hollow of my hand... Take it all, you say. I fall asleep on a bed of garlands and anadems and bouquets and you sing.

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Dinosaur I heard the noise, I saw the black cloud rising above the horizon driven by lashing red whips cutting it end to no end, darkness rushing ahead of it like a rolling wave slashing thousand years old trees like hollow stems, I heard the wail... I ran, crying for you, buried my head under your body waiting for your warmth to protect my scales, to replace the sun, to dandle me to sleep... “Wake up, my love, wake up...” I opened my eyes to a finger sweeping ashes from my eyeglasses and after doing it twice a pair of lips bending above me to kiss my gasping mouth. “You are dreaming, my love, you are dreaming...” No, I am not, I knew and buried my head under you body waiting for your warmth to protect my skin, to replace the sun, to dandle me to sleep...

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M Miaow, she made, feline to the marrow. Moooh, I responded, trying to sound toro yet sounding cow. I tried meeeh too, hoping she didn’t know of its gloryless bleat origins. She knew, but did not laugh (yet) and decided to shoot my way a few other m words getting out of onomatopoeia and straight into dictionary, having fun... Mustang, mule, mongoose, she chipped. Mycelium, myocardium, myelin, I retorted, all knowing. Magination, I added, biting my tongue immediately after... too late, she was laughing already, so I corrected my aim with molybdenum followed by a mischievously intended mast... hey!... erpiece... ohh!... Hmm... mama, she said, kissing me. Too bad love doesn’t start with an m, I said. But it does, she corrected me – magic, miracle, magnificence... Mud, mistake, mediocrity, I countered, going for the kill. Muse, music, melody, she pulled from thin air leaving me hanging on a thread above a mean murderous mob. Mentally insane, I tried weakly. My love, she smiled, happily. Mmm... I tried and she spanked me... you did already write an mmm poem. Yes, but it was not with capital m, I countered, rubbing my ass, this is different. Don’t argue, she spanked me again seeing that I actually enjoyed it, and you even wrote a similar story, it was about d. I gave up. After all, all I wanted was to lose and she made sure I was losing in style. I wonder if she knows what merde stays for, I silently wondered. I know what merveille stays for, she silently whispered. My god...

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You Wait You wait. You smile, hearing the door open. Bang your head, twist your ankle, break a nail rushing to kiss me... kiss me... kiss me... summer heartbeats and paper butterflies and peeled oranges and your bottom lip swollen, did I do that last night? No, this morning. We limp to the bed... you, your twisted ankle, I, you hanging on to my neck, I touch your heartbeats watching the butterflies float down on the oranges as we turn a perfectly solid bed into a perfect wreck and your smiles and laughter and moans soothe creaking joints (mine, not the bed’s) and complaining ligaments (the bed’s, not mine). I finish dressing. Bang my head, twist my ankle, don’t break a nail rushing to kiss you... kiss you... kiss you... you trap me into looking for those heartbeats and butterflies and oranges and one hour later I have to dress again, I touch your swollen lips, both now, apologizing. You’ll pay for it, this evening. You wait.

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Like Telling Of Love I love you. The words beneath your fingers’ tips Take early morning prying trips Invading paths my mind forgot And cutting lanes through loves-me-not With fire dotted nips. Look, a falling star. I watch the paper butterflies Reflect inside your questing eyes And as you blink away the rain I read there rhymes of gist arcane Yet innocent of guise. Please, tell me a love story. I ain’t got gift to tell of tales Which countless scores of nightingales Have died in vain attempt to praise Before the feather set ablaze To paint my mornings’ sails. The call of blood I savvy not Beyond a mindless crooning trot Besmearing pages’ pallid hearts With brash affronts to sacred arts And cants abrim with rot. My trailing bag is flapping bare, When dreams assail my human lair And swathe my flesh with epodes new I plod my way through turbid brew To wake in gloom’s despair. Please, tell me a love story. The woman breathing in your skin Through saline glints and smiles unseen Bestrides my wish with nimble feet To seed her rose inside my sleet And dye my desert green. Look, a falling star. You trek through waving clover fields, A dying sun its color wields And yields the rule for moments few To scatter grains of love-you-too In budding sunrise shields. I love you.

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Love Lean into the sweeping gale Letting time’s departing whale Leave its song on staves unseen Longing for that might have been ever more. Open doors in fragile stems Oozing streams of tiny gems Only dressing gliding sands Out of reach to groping hands’ vain demands. Vow a word inside the stone, Vulcan’s ribcage blazing bone, Virgin of deception’s gown Vie for sunset’s tender frown old of crown. Ease my way your guiding sail, Enter worlds behind the veil Erring in your questing spree Echoes rich and anguish free, loving me.

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Ponder Don’t let blisters gain your lips Running errands down my hips When the moment of emotion Ties the garlands to your neck Dripping crave’s infesting potion Round my body’s gasping wreck And your scream belies my ears Hiding suns inside the tears. Smiles confess while words deny Flirting cherubs in your eye, Imps uncovered by the splendor Of that moment raw and mean Royal in its sweet surrender To the afterglow of sin As your lashes flitter on Lost in worlds of times foregone. Where is gone your human shield? Is this whirlwind in the field Running wild with flowers’ plunder Sowing petals in its wake And as forests rage and sunder Gleaning ebbs from sunset’s lake To adorn your body’s dew, Was this... is this human you? There’s a soft, insistent drone... I awake to scents unknown And to touches long forgotten Born of dreams in lands beyond Rich of senses misbegotten Time abandoned Eden spawned... Then you don again your self While I ponder - human? elf?

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The Wonder Of Moths Your steps die. The echo dies. Silence plows reality into my brains, cutting furrows across those contorted decorations laden with all I ever was less what I ever wasn’t, irrigating it the knowledge of despair twined into the knowledge of happiness. I have seen butterflies out the window, you said earlier on and I believed you, sleet, night, ten stories high walls... I believed you. You saw them. It was my turn now as the technological monster took to the sky expelling hordes of paper butterflies from its engines. This was not the wonder. The wonder was that one, lonesome, colorless moth escaping the swarm’s grip and penetrating the numberless layers of glass and brick and plaster to fly my way and settle at the corner of my eye, its invisible claws cutting tunnels into my tear ducts to bathe tiny feet into the mud of memories. Are you my friend? I asked it ranging my pen until writing the answer much later. I wouldn’t have been surprised to have found I was crazy, after all, I know moths cannot speak. * Much later. Now. I took out the pen before daring risk to forget, remembering its words before its ashes sank underneath my skin leaving a colorful scar, so much unlike its colorlessness. No, it said, I am a moth. And the swarm? I asked. Just paper butterflies, it answered. Moths don’t talk, I refused to give in to my senses, hoping to be shown wrong. Are you in love? it asked, wrong question from a moth, what do moths know about love? What do moths know about love? I asked, certain it was a statistical aberration, ha... a lepidoptera talking and then about love of all things. I saw the swarm descending from a blinding sun, the tiny flame they carried annihilating butterfly after butterfly after butterfly and on they came passing the torch wing to wing mindlessly, carelessly, obstinately, until the last one floated down, a mass of burning cinders shriveling at my feet... That’s insane, I shrieked in horror, what for? For love, the moth answered, fluttering away from my hand. Love, what love, what do you know about love? I repeated myself. You’ll never know, unless you believe, it answered diving into the snuffing flame and turning a tiny falling star, a spark tumbling and tumbling to fiery death. I waited till the blaze spread through fields, then through forests, then through oceans and finally I dared lay my hand into the fire to such atrocious pain, such great love. I think I finally understood. I buried its ashes underneath my skin close to my eye, remembering never to ask what I fail to comprehend. And to accept the wonder of moths.

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Sisyphus I opened the poetry book, your present, reading for the n-th time the dedication then once more. Time to move on, I finally decided going to the list of poets, none I’ve known, anonymous all. Well, I exaggerate a bit, there was Bill, and there was Robert, oh... Edgar Allan too. I started reading, back to front, looking for the love, the passion, finding the love, the passion, no, not as good as mine, I know, no one wrote their life, I did. Oh, so much beauty... A wild impulse... I turned the book upside down, opened it at page three and watched it sliding out and floating down... the paper cut-out, the butterfly printed in glorious offset on the waxed paper which packed the orange before we ate it. I picked it up, you have carefully cut out even the thin antennae, a masterpiece. Finally, I found it, a poem even more beautiful than mine, what a challenge to face up to and fail. I love you.

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Mood, Maybe Not yet writing, thinking of what to write later on when I write, inclusive this prelude telling you of intent, and maybe execution, probably already writing in my mind but not yet writing. Beauty, the first word which pops to mind. Have written so much already about beauty... about butterflies, and rainbows, and stars, and dragons, and lovemaking, breaking the scales opening the interspecies barriers purging myself of hideous monsters roaming my bowels and letting them metamorphose into the absolute truths of love and loving and being loved. Tenderness, was this one maybe the first? See, this is what happens when I try to mind write rather than finger write but tenderness wouldn’t mind being second as long as it stays first and I plagiarize the classics and dissect the moderns and enter my own version with the result barely tangible yet incomparable to classic and modern and my yesterday self. Hmm... warmth, softness, innocence... no, wrong direction, too many of them. Reset. This will probably not be my night for the best poem ever so I better stop before I start writing and regret it later on when it is too late for both. I close my physical eyes, temples on knuckles, I feel your breath on the nape of my neck then it is gone. So beautiful, and tender, and warm, soft, innocent. And you are not even here. And this is not even a poem. This is all I wanted to tell you.

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Idyllic a fist bursting oak laying rails digging coal black soot its blood and choleric its temper and down its touch on your cheek before holding the fork and sharing the one piece of dried meat... you, first. a fist scrubbing floors picking cotton laundering carpets biting chemicals its blood and impatient its temper and silk its touch on my freshly washed brow before holding the fork and sharing the one piece of slightly molding cheese... you, first. eyes seeing each other for the first time each time and sharing all the pains all the time and, oh, so much more of the beauty.

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With Morning You watch for those quarrelsome billowing winds To burden your mornings with whispering babble As sunrise persistently shadows rescinds Unleashing the chords of its chattering rabble, The ear-scratching dogs, And pond leaping frogs, The sniveling grunts of the rummaging hogs, Sad quavering cars And smoldering stars Through hammering sounds of parading red clogs. Your skin is assailed by an impudent stream Intent on denying a dream’s call for glory By battering eyelid’s invincible seam And turning your flesh into blistering quarry, The white that you wore, The shells to your shore, That smiling denial in beauty of yore, A shivering toe A toenail aglow And drops turning snowbells of countless the score. Your heartbeat imparts its magnificent croon To stairs pouring downwards beneath rushing ankles, Your smile feeds its blush to a vanishing moon Which constantly whines and eternally rankles, The music in sigh, The kite roaming high, An innocent quest roaming patches of sky When hand touches hand And gold tinted sand Writes stories of love in a famished blue eye.

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Dressing For The Day White on skin then red on white then the warmth of woolen brown, drops enchasing crumbs of rainbow to your forehead’s morning crown, Mesh on toe then shoe on mesh then the butterflies in knots, long kaleidoscopic laces kissing tender ankle spots, Smile on lips then sun on smile then the smirk in biting flint, flakes of snow invading gardens with perfumes of sprouting mint. Is it me? bats your eye, proud yet meek, bold yet shy. And as heavens pull the shutters waiting for your whirlwind pass And the billow of your dresses burns a path of burnished brass, As your shins cut dreams in crystal and your fingers touch the east Cries the day its waking glory pouring from your twirling wrist.

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Gardening fingers frozen frozen leaves leaves lying dead underneath my feet crumbling to dust. biting sun sun uncovered uncovered my sweating brow to the chill of northern winds. torn glove glove wet wet to the bone I peel off my overwear and my wear and my underwear. shivering flesh flesh burning burning pain infests the links of bones and muscles and bleeding lungs. wait lover lover wait wait for my skin to dress you warmth of summer in obstinating winter. shamelessly naked naked body body singing your enveloping art of life giving love. day ending ending travails travails shared in a mind smiling with the beauty of my protecting lover.

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