if I if I lose you inside that dream one wakes up from not then dream be called nightmare and wakeup becomes necessary not. if I meet you down the road rolling its pebbles to sea then I will pour pebbles in your hand watching pearls roll down to sea. if I find you waiting in a field of dying flowers wild then I will wait until you lie on the ground and seeds explode around you growing flowers wild.

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The Delicate Task Of Kissing the sun rolls its lonely wheel up into the sky, the spokes unseen their protruding visible ends stretching the way rays do to Earth, touching your face. do you think they did all this way just for me? I think they did, look, they insist through clouds, and leaves and layers of glinting dust... I watch the scarlet mounting your cheeks, almost a natural extension of your lips, I touch it with my fingers trying to smear some on my face – no way, seems it is there just for you. you are beautiful, I tell you, kissing the tip of my finger and laying it on the tip of your nose before descending to your lips and then inside your blouse as my lips take over the delicate task of kissing.

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Stage I saw you there smiling, proud, your letters so beautiful when composing your words, almost as beautiful as your words when composing your sentences, almost as beautiful as you. Nothing's as beautiful as you. Not even your sentences composing your stories. I saw the lights, then the flashes, reflecting in your eyes when you did not blink in your teeth when you smiled in your lips when you did not smile locked in that emotion tear falling down to the wood of the stage to be trampled by knowledgeless shoes, in your heart unseen to all but me. I could read your lips, no, I could not hear you, I was too far away but I could see your lips moving, I guess you were reading maybe you were praying I know you were singing, I wonder if they heard you singing. I waited until all left and the lights went off following you to the car seeing the key turn in the ignition lock... you froze for that one moment when you saw me in the crossing headlights and then I disappeared, the mirage over your blush pulling up your mouth into a smile when you turned the car around the curb not even aware you were still singing.

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lll mornings in lilac and evenings in linden and nights in love, colors dressing the day's perfumes with erotic hues of round, and soft, and warm as you hop from tile to tile paying no attention to gusts of wind and fluttering hems and the inebriating flashes of pale thighs telling of promises, you did not have to climb the trees, branches of lilac, and linden, and love bending down to your passage stealing your hair drinking your lips and inhaling your body, leaving me with nothing but heart.

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White Lilac Cup your hands underneath the lilac bush wait for thousands of flowers to cascade, to pile, a mountain until you cannot carry the load anymore and you open your palms to let it rain... lilac on the world. I look upwards thinking it first spring snow the first flakes touching my eyes not melting the fragrance strangely intoxicating exhilarating and then it hits my reason bathing my senses with perfumes of white lilac and your hands. I wade through the unending rivers waiting for the moment the tiny white drops reach over my head and then I hide sinking to the soft bottom looking for that one violet petal you sent just for me. I will find it, I know I will.

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songbird land on my uprisen thumb, i won’t harm you, sink your shivering tiny claws till they clutch safely to my bone and trill me of the mountain tops you passed and the seas you braved and of her, i hear your heartbeat wild i can’t hear your song weak with exhaustion wait... here... a drop of water down your parched throat and your tattered wing, you tell me of cherries and stings of honey and seeds of sunflower... oh, no, why did you roll over into my palm your heat dissipating your eyes fading your song orphan and the end unknown? a kiss did she send me a kiss, songbird? and i lie between the thistles holding you to my heart hoping to break your eternal silence.

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I Remember I remember your smile. Remember? How can I forget a masterpiece shaping itself only a dining table away from me? For me. I remember your tear. Remember? It never left your eye yet somehow it reached already the masterpiece placing the hue of salt on the red of curving lips. For me. I remember your kiss. Remember? I carry the masterpiece incrusted on my lips forcing their shape to follow the shape and the hue you created. For me.

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Quarters I look at a quarter of window frame re-framing inside it a world and a few moments and floods of you. I leave the other three quarters play their wishes and mind and damn reality any which way they desire or desire not. I carefully cut away my quarter of life, the whole of it and fold inside its scrawny blanket folds of your skin and tips of your fingers and so many teeth lost into biting love into me. There’s a hole in the window frame there were once the sky was painted with unicorns roaming the tops of trees and grasshoppers borrowed nightingale voices with night, the rain and the snow drifting inside and boiling to untimely death upon the sizzle of our sewn skins and fused fingers.

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Venery my palms slide along the contours of your psalms, barely visible hooks bite into my skin dregs of which drag behind smearing the yet wet ink with residua of blood spilled earlier, almost spilling still, the tips of my tongues lick the lees from the depths of your mouths manducating the broiled and the brittle and the bitter brew into the saporous philter of suppurating autumnal cherries and congressing fairies. I sing my agony into the euphony of your screams braiding the clef of sighs with the clabber of burning nipples and fingernails turned claws and linen cleft to ribbons clamping onto the cleats of your shivering ankles, where is your air? I ask of you searching the depths of your lives and gulping the screaming wind cracking the enamel off your teeth and the vinery mud ending your thighs before starting my madness. I dress you back your skin. I desert the chthonian wilderness of tempests for the empyrean beds of flowers and as your head weighs heavily upon my chest bone slowly descending to the abysses of my exhalations and slower ascending to the apices of my inhalations I knot butterflies to the ends of your hairs waiting for the miracle of rain to bow light into colors. I don’t hear the music, I feel it landing between the pale hairs of the pale lashes of my pale eyes as the butterflies ram the rolling tears and break them into summer.

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Hotel I saw you there, between the folds of freshly laid out linens inside the unopened bottle of clear water behind the wardrobe door which I slid to the right to hang my clothes in and then slid back to the left letting you out before. I wanted to touch you, oh, so much I wanted to touch you but you were somehow immaterial squeezing easily out of my closing fists and groping arms and even the blanket which I tried to throw over you to trap you... it piled at my feet limp with no life and no you. I shaved watching you watching me even cut myself wishing to hear you gasp in panic, yet you just kept smiling back from the mirror not blinking even as I undressed and let the shower wash my sweat and my terrible desire for you and my heavy breathing as I finished making love to you making love to my body and falling into the pool of your inexistent hands and exploding foam bubbles. I did not dress, just slid wet and dripping between the covers hugging your dream and allowing the wet sheets drape me in like they were the skin of you and the breasts of you and the coiling hips and thighs and knees of you and your love making of me. I woke up gazing at your burning form next to me then dried and dressed and locked the door behind me not wishing to see the moment you turn ashes and blow out of the window I just opened. I knew, when I return with night I will find you there again.

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Squirrel empty, like the bed next to me empty of you, cannot be emptier. i try to write inside my creases your skin your warmth pressure disquiet sleep as you make love to me hiding behind your eyelashes and my inert shape... useless, cannot write your skin without your creases. for a moment you visit me yet before i have the time to latch you to the bedposts with pieces of your underwear you vanish once more between the window pane and the night leaving just a smear there where your nose squashed itself against the glass and your mouth left vapors of breath and vapors of kisses. i fall asleep guessing i did not sleep earlier and when the sun shakes my frame pitilessly later i gaze at the leftovers of vapors wondering if it wasn't a visiting early squirrel. i know it wasn't.

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Some Kind Of... Artist I wanted to paint at the corner of your mouth a pearl. I do not know to paint a pearl. Then I wanted to paint a flower, so much easier to paint a flower. But why should I, your mouth is already a flower if to judge by those insisting butterflies competing with me on its favors. And flavors. I do not mind so much butterflies, it is the bees which bother me though, until now, they stung me only once... I won’t say where, you’ll laugh and they’ll swoon on me en masse. The butterflies I mean. I decided to paint a sun, looking more like a sunflower or maybe even a moose head. How can a sun look like a moose head? When I paint it it can. I heard a bellow next to my ear and had some problems getting rid of the bull trying to get past me. I wasn’t the only one thinking so. I decided to rub off all paint. Then I kissed you. I did not have to paint a smile, it painted itself. So much art in you, all I have to do is uncover it. OK, I will start with your ankles and work my way up. No, I will NOT tell you

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On The Stage you recite poetry, your nose turned up into the wind your breasts following your nose while your eyes close so as not to annihilate with fire the trees and the roofs and the... wind. they annihilated me already, that ash keeping the warmth in your pockets when you sink your hands deep inside and you knead my leftovers into momentary lumps of burning flesh. after, you undress and slide into the bed, pouring the ash from your pockets upon the linen and as you slowly writhe and trash and squirm inside it like a wisp of smoke upon smoldering coal ash grows skin and skin grows flesh and bone and muscle and I tear your body open once more sinking my desire into the heavenly adobe of your inviting poetry. you wake up, whisk the ash into your pockets like so many times before the tiny powdery layer on you nipples burning its way again to your heart.

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Lover's Eye I’d like to scoop you in my arms and carry you over the Nile and across the Sahara and up the Chomolunga all the way to the rock called Moon where I would seat you on a swing and watch you fall asleep at my song. But, lover, you can’t sing, she said. Thank you, I said.

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Ordeal passion cracks the path trailing me seeds of me falling inside the cracks to die with yesterdays fading and tomorrows few. blossom! i scream at no one hearing dragging my carcass further not willing to know that screams never pulled a petal out of a stem never sprouting. voices where do voices rise from unintelligible yet musical pitter pattering upon the trail and breaking the seeds and sprouting the stems and pulling the petals? fragrances purify the air avenging a passion never dead just forgotten deep inside my memories and forgetfulness. voices coalesce into a voice reminding me of swelling dough and bursting cocoons and dying clouds until bread and butterflies and sun scream my passion once more. and my love.

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Telling Don't tell me about the dust settling on your breasts, unless you want me to brush it with feathers and breaths and the split ends of eyeblinks and eyelashes. Don't tell me of the girth of your waist, least I measure it with thumbs pacing navel to navel and teeth nipping hip to hip and ends of tongue mistakenly choosing paths at cross purpose to the main road. Downwards? Probably. Tell me of the size of the heel having seen so many layers of nylon and silk and cotton and lace sliding their warmth across them on their way to the final destination - a floor laden with our dance steps of earlier and my impatient pacing of even earlier than that. Shall I tell you of my dreams? Such a ridiculous question, of course not. Read my poetry.

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Tide Promises I watch it grow, the tide, from cracking smile until falling mountain thundering its way through the ripples of your flesh and hitting my belly with the hammer blows of your navel. You nurse my bluing patches with lips broken by a tongue smearing delicious slime into my blisters thankfully caring not for my screams and only for my agony. The tide died, your snuggle promising me an encore tomorrow.

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I Don't When I write I don't. I drool, froth, spit, I let glowing cinders and volcanic ash and tar vapors burn their way through my lips to paper and then through tabletops through shoes and toes till back home to the cradle of burning hell roaring underneath me, no, I don't write, I sow. Passion. Before reaping fire. Count my heartbeats, she said and my hand gravitated toward her left breast with a force of ten g's squashing it flat against her rib and her back against the wall her hammer beating the nail of her nipple all the way through my palm, the only cinder hotter than my slavering dribble. I lost count once the wall caved out and we started falling through the density of rock clothes flaring into dying sparks while the melting stratums of millennia old stone sucked us in the way my mouth did hers and her body did mine. I wondered if anyone would ever explain the bubble reaching out from the crater and exploding into billions of tiny fire butterflies.

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Theoretical your first step touching the ground your second step touching nothing and the first following the second dangling freely as I take you in my arms and carry you... hey, I am heavy... ...to the car to the room to the bed your feet never touching the ground or the floor or the car upholstery even once... except for that (forgive me?) first step... and how will you drive? with me on your lap biting your nose and obstructing your view and sliding my hands into your... ahm... pockets? hey, I do not complain that I have to drive with your body squeezed into mine and my chest hardly breathing and your weight nailing me to the chair and my feet glued to the floor - break or accelerator which I have to decide when I start the drive and not change to the end of it, and my hands slid into your... ahm... pockets... that's the easy part. that's the pleasant part. that was the theoretical part. something happened to our clothes so any reference to pockets stays, well, theoretical as well.

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Momentary Glory I take it as given to feel nakedness against me all night to hear it sliding against the linen and against my skin as if in mistaken proximity, those treacherous pores turning needle bumps telling the truth. Sometimes, only sometimes, you are really asleep and I know it from the rhythm of your breath and that of your heart as it does not change pace when I push against it my palm, so unlike when you shudder into sudden wakefulness and your heart thumps the walls away... not my hand though. I know that I will know when an irrelevant after will replace a relevant today that some of the greatest moments of my life were there in that nakedness and that wakefulness and the knowledge that this was just a drop in a sea to come.

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Prints It's only after that I allowed the tears, after you turned after you passed after you disappeared the only visible you just the palm print on the other side of the glass. I tried to retrieve our steps walking backwards first hitting a wall then a cop and finally gave up renewing my effort to get other glimpses of you after an overzealous cleaning lady cleaned every trace of your prints with an ammonia stinking sponge. No, I did not smell it, I saw her rubicund, enraged face at being unable to clean the other side of glass, my side. I kissed the elevator button, hurrying - before the cleaning lady got at me, there was a smudged print of your finger there. Then the car-door handle outside, then the car-door handle inside, the coke bottle, the coke bottle's cap, the sandwich plastic wrapping, the parking ticket... Waiting impatiently to get home and undress, so many fingerprints there underneath... ...got home safely stop... she wrote, ...hey stop did you see the crazy cleaning lady stop why did you keep kissing the floor stop I love you stop Did I? Don't remember. Probably the ammonia did get to me. See, I do remember the tears.

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Calculs? Well, Kind Of you were thirteen. i was... a bit older, just a little bit. did i write you a poem or was i so old at the time that you would have called me... daddy? everyone fourteen and up you would have called daddy, no? no. ok, then... big brother? friend? neighbor? you were thirty. i was... a bit older, just a little bit. did i write you a poem or was i so young at the time that you would have called me... sonny? everyone forty and down you would have called sonny, no? no. ok, then... little brother? friend? neighbor? you are whatever. i am... a bit older, just a little bit. i write you poems, those i missed first time around... daddy, remember? those i missed second time around... sonny, remember? those you will never miss again be you even eighty and i be already a flower, or at least whatever makes a flower beautiful. see? count your years then add mine, or subtract, or whatever and remember that no math in this world equals your love for me. oh, this is not what i wanted to say... and remember that no math in this world equals my love for you.

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For The Dance you dressed festively, sleeveless long robe-de soirée, black, golden earrings a gypsy’s triple circle, three rows of pearls not necessarily in the million dollars range prettier than, silk undergarments... I guessed, silk stockings... gartered? I hoped, black shoes high heels one zirconium, so much prettier than a diamond, a smile... oh... a smile and a potency in those fingers closing around my upper arm. I dressed too, my underwear, why work so hard in donning what would be undonned anyway later, and you did not mind thought you tested the reality of the single layer... it was a single layer, even... there. you chose the music and while you pirouetted I cha-cha-cha’d and while you tango’d I charleston’d and when I finally caught up with you or you caught up with me or we caught up with us you pulled eastwise and I pulled bedwise and you did not scream when I trod on you twice yet I screamed when you trod on me thrice (it hurt like hell) and none of us screamed in relief when the music ended though we felt relieved. “I told you, it was unnecessary to dress,” I told you, watching my finger through the hole in your stocking and your hanging nipple above the tip of my nose and hesitating which was the more hilarious view before deciding which one is the one I should laugh at. “you said nothing of the sort,” you said, “thank you,” you added adding your finger to mine yet keeping the nipple at exactly the same elevation... did you possess a gyro system or something? “why?” I asked. “for the dance,” you said. “no, why the nipple?” I clarified my question trying several positions of the nose with the nipple always following. “for the dance,” you repeated yourself and I blessed the species gap for misunderstandings. we danced, naked, making an effort to keep our toes twined, the rest of us twined anyway.

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Weed I found a weed, begin of May, Amongst the tulip studded clay Beneath the big and shiny rose Where lilac sleeps and jasmine grows and daisies play. I guessed desire in her stance And dreams of color in her dance Yet there, inside the shadow’s deep I heard her petals softly weep for sweet romance. I kneeled beside the wilting stem And touched her petal’s tearing hem To whisper water in her ear And seed inside her drying tear a summer’s gem. I woke up with the end of night And in her eyes I found the light To melt my evenings into hues Of burning reds and glinting blues and sheer delight.

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Rhyme I let my watercolors drift and spot the skies with grey I picked the pink of lilac shoots inside the heart of May And when the innocence of white Embraced your sweet bouquet I let your eyes embrace my night And guide my heart astray. Before I wake to find myself alone upon that isle Surrounded by that endless sea of one and thousand mile I hope to know the grey of bliss When winters start to rile And lose my heart inside a kiss Devoid of summer’s guile. I see the swan inside the bird, inside the seed – the rose, Upon each fingertip a sun and birds between your toes, And there, where larks demand to die And butterflies repose I see the grey inside your eye, The rhyme... inside your prose.

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the other season when desire liberates rapacious fingers and then strikes, strikes, strikes... and then we wake up and the turmoil has left our bodies exhausted the desire gone to its winter lair and our torn carcasses lie on the torn grounds of linen and soaked sweat. short was the winter and desire rages once more and again gigantic hunger acerbated by puny sleep its temper short mauls heavy when jaws part wide and it gulps us whole cleaving our bodies between munching maxillae and turning us desire fodder the mush of our mangled flesh broiling in its own heat and secretions. desire goes to sleep again for another short winter, and we wonder – how shall we call the other season, armageddon?

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remember? remember the moon you were talking about? the morning tooth paste and coffee and shower before and after and sometimes during? the black hole swallowing you whole and spitting you pieces to be reborn once more in between my arms, those being... pieces too? remember? ice butterflies asking to die with the moon’s last rays and the sun’s first as teardrop enigmas sliding from your left eye to your right whence a quadrupled winged steaming pair would further slide into the linen’s interstices? the knock on the door gone unanswered as we, kids, hid under the blanket, whispering and giggling? remember the mouthful of wine shared with no glass interposed and no air and only flesh?

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Elevation your eyes at the right elevation for my mouth, my chest at the right elevation for your breasts, naked, both, our toes at the same elevation except when you start crawling over me and around me and inside me the wildness of your weed massacring the sturdiness of my tree and elevation loses meaning when there’s nothing to define me or you except for some scattered pieces here and there. the blackbird visits once more, at your call not mine, my call lost in the forest looking for a butterfly to bring back and to place on your shoulder together with the silk of your bra’s strap and my kiss and a shamefully red circle of teeth marks, mine. you bend over the sink, brushing your teeth washing your face neck... I watch the mirror refusing to watch your skin afraid to scare away the butterfly and the strap and the kiss with my teeth and flame.

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Invocation why do I keep invoking butterflies? those feeble, soft, squashable creatures hardly able to carry their own weight and none of their colors in the wind? why do I keep invoking rainbows? the fata-morgana of the sky ephemeral, untouchable, a parasite borrowing its smell from rain and its sound from thunder? true, sometimes I invoke skin, I dress it in lust and drench it in sweat and build a skeleton of flesh underneath it to support its life as flames consume the whole of the human monster and its passion. yet sometimes I invoke silence, the only God I am not able to emulate. and you can never know. just imagine it between the verses with me failing to write it on paper. "but then, there is no break to your pace," she said. "true, there is no break to my love," I said.

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Doing Things I will slowly paint away the grey, I will paint back in your eye the sky, And beneath your shoulder blades I will paint the butterfly past a shy and smiling May. I will dress your toes with rings and wings, Then I'll dress your wanting skin with sin, And while demon's warbling flame through your lungs will tear and spin shivers thin I'll dress your springs. I will carve inside your chest my nest, I will carve upon your teeth a wreath, And before your flesh returns to that cruel clothing sheath feed my heath your naked breast.

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Fire, All Of You Fire as you swagger across the room red stains on your flesh marking my brand there where fingers let fingerprints cut fine lines into skin and you exhibit them proudly to my avid eyes, a thin halo of fire marking the border between the crimsonly burning stains and the surrounding palely burning skin. fire, all of you fire. you open the tap and water drops explode on impact unable to chill, to clean a body keen on burning forever inside that hothouse effect tri-dimensionally defined around you by my earlier, fleeting touches. I watch you trying to wiggle your curves into nylons and laces and silks and the textures turn to melted blobs running down your sides and inside your crevices some dropping on your toenails painting them flames. help me! you beg and I refuse afraid to burn my fingers’ many tips and my tongue’s single one afraid to see your fire extinguished afraid to blink and find you not there once I unblink, I refuse until you rush back to me and roll your skin several times around me and the linen several times around us and me several times around your finger and your waist and your breast. and if Adam would have never bitten that apple?... I ask, biting ravenously the apple held between your teeth and then the one between your breasts and then the one between your thighs leaving a trail of sticky stains in the wake of my depredating teeth. then I would have invented the first sin to offer you... you answer, stealing the acrid mush from my mouth together with my tongue and my sin and caring not for my squirming as your fire turns me glowing coal.

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...myths ...and the grass looked up your skirt's line and it shriveled and the rain trickled inside your shirt's collar and it boiled and the flint stone rolled underneath your shoe's heel and it exploded, ...who are you oh, mythical monster of Cockatrice leg of Medusa breast of Basilisk heel of silk ilk of lace grace of light delight? ...I led my finger up your skirt then led my mouth inside your shirt then led my toe underneath your shoe and I shriveled into blossoming roses and I boiled into flickering rainbows and I exploded into falling stars, ...I never died as you collected my flower to your silk and my color to your lace and my sparkle to your light, ...all died yet I live, I asked. ...all live yet you I love, you answered.

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tired tired. need your breast to put my head on, your chest to sing me to sleep, your thighs to promise me the pleasures of ever after. i close my eyes waiting for the mosquitoes to bite me relentless female beasts thirstying for my blood like you. yet there is another thirst in you for love, for me. i hear voices, it is a dream lights and sounds and smells of worlds of single moments coming and going like they never were they never were, true. i feel a touch on my skin probably a dream too but insisting to stay and burn the spot and when i raise my wrist to the light i see the moth stealing a moment of skin and hurrying away eastwards. i know, you sent it to steal one more moment for you. i love you, i scream after the frightened beast and all it knows to do is escape a spider’s net and smash into the night. tell me, when it gets there. tell me if it made its way safely back to your naked breast and its music.

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Sillewdly I want to sit with you in a flower, in, not on, either it big or we small and once we finished sneezing all pollen out of lungs and kicking all bees out of shirts we start making honey inside mouths chewing tongues and between fingers groping fruits and crushing flesh and cracking bones though no bones are to be found... there. hey, away you pest... wait!... the bee, not you. I want to bath with you inside an apple chasing away the worm and crawling into the heart of the bitter-sweet-sour our hands and feet and mouths sticky with juices, apple and... other, and once we finished biting and drinking laughing ourselves silly as the worm licks the soles of our feet with a vengeance. hey, away you pest... sorry, my love, wait!... I mean the stupid bird trying to pull me by whatever dangles out there and is not a natural extension of the worm. I want to make love to you... no, no, those previous instances were moments of poetic madness, I want to make love to you, seriously, at the bottom of a sparkling wine bottle the wine in our belly, we in the bottle, the fat cork trying in vain to find its once thin girth and follow us in (the burping bastard) and as I go for your grapes... oh, strawberries... and you for my vines... oh, peduncle... (which dictionary are you using?) the cork wishes us dead and we comply drowning in our own wine. hey, away you pest... no, not you my love, not even the cork, only the end of this poem which sneaked upon me... we... us... what the hell, next time we’ll do it in bed, okay?

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Evening Rain The drops hitting the porch railing and exploding into tinier drops, spray, mist, who is crying? I lean my head on the smooth iron the drops now hitting my face they don’t explode though the mist is still there, I know who is crying. I wait for the thunder to follow a dog barks... well, almost thunder, will have to do. Shall I bark back? the thought makes me smile, I wish you could see me barking and smiling. I sweep a handful of cold water and let it drip inside my shirt, before it trickles down to my belly it turns steam and burns my palm... yes, I miss you.

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times, once, gone times, once, gone, Bob, John, Mike and Dick and The Green Leaves of Summer and I cannot keep my eyes open and my shivers under control my thorax negotiating a few supple undulations with a spine suddenly lithe... for a few moments... sufficient to transcend me to those times once gone. the radio goes its way and I shake it and rattle it looking for the coin slot wishing it was a Juke Box so I can repeat the tune again and again and leave the worry of shameless tears to embarrassed or disgusted onlookers younger or older or careless. I crawl into the perfect ball I crawled into around my dog the same I saw him do around me days before his death, a Moebius plane of man and dog and life and death, one, looking for the same innocence and the same acceptance of inevitable when powers beyond us cannot help more than the power in that perfectly inhuman love embrace. nostalgia. my lover, sometimes I love you more than I do.

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five little bites turn around, no, the other side, no, the other, no, turn... no, i am not crazy, i am just dying to see all of your sides at once, now, if you don't mind turning... * of course i had my coffee this morning (i hate coffee, i lied) of course i shaved this morning (i hate shaving, i lied) of course i walked the dog this morning (i don't have a dog, you know it) of course i miss you this morning (oops, i didn't lie, shame shame shame on me...) * let me help undress you, first... the panties (no comment) * let me help dress you first the coat, what panties? (no comment) * just let me bite your red of lip and bits of woman sip and nip and when you reach that low pitch note with hips about to float and gloat i let my arrow cut your trail to rip apart your vale and dale and moments fore my horses part to steal your chanting art and heart.

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The Other Way Around You blot away the sun, blinding me... hey, no one is supposed to be brighter than the sun! but my complaint falls on deaf ears, beautiful ears decorating those earrings underneath them... something’s wrong here, everything seems to be the other way around. Your hands slide on my chest not hovering, digging, both, meeting in the middle and parting sideways cupping the flesh... “fat...” I grumble, “muscle...” you flatter, “yeah...” I assent feeling your fingers’ synchronized swim reach my nipples and the shiver which turns nipples to hard wooden slivers clamps also a choking hand on my throat, “yeah!...” I quote myself meaning something altogether different. Ain’t I supposed to do that? I want to ask and don’t ask reluctant to give up on the crawling sensation turning all my known expanse of skin a mountainous ridge and raising another mountainous ridge... well, even more of a ridge... or a mountain. No, this is not supposed to be the other way around, hehe, it cannot though... ahmmm... the hair... no, not the hair on the chest you... you... you beautiful woman. Your little fingers abandon my nipples letting the others take over, the ring finger, the middle finger, the index, the thumb and while the index makes a slight retreat to pinch my pink between itself and thumb the little finger discovers the groves lining my sides between my ribs and starts scratching its way down with a nail made of steel and lust. I moan. Yes, unashamedly, I moan knowing your depraved self will abuse my poor me blindness (yes, I did not yet recover eyesight, no, this is not my shut eyelids) and your little ones continue their triumphal march dragging the unreluctant rest along aiming for that demarcation line defining the geographical boundary where abdomen ends and thigh begins, called groin, I just wonder why it is so deep... a crevasse... my legs, where are my legs? You glide on, along the valley barely touching, burning, converging towards the ridge (remember? told you about...) a nice fight in sight who will win the snail race your left hand? your right hand? my impatience and hastily dying self restraint? I don’t know which hand it is locking, I don’t know where the other is groping, through half open eyes I discern fuzziness descending ridge? what, which ridge? where are your hands gone, what is this soft, slick, soothing warmth embracing, encompassing, engorging taking over my strongholds, my fortresses, my donjons and dripping into me its nectars, and philters, and elixirs... or is it the other way around? “yeah!!!...” I hear myself breathe in third, finally, knowing of the sledgehammer about to shatter my brains.

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Bones your hair, where did all this hair appear your head anything between a beached jelly fish and a squid mutation an opening with white cutting bones aiming for my mouth, throat devouring my lips, my tongue, hungry... “make love to me...” I heard your bones knocking an unmistakable code into mine skull to skull and rib to rib and hipbone to hipbone and moments later a jumble emerged when the witch-doctor rattled our skeletons in lust’s cup making his savage throw on the bed with skull growling against hipbone and kneecap against clavicle and true rib against floating rib and the rest a meaningless mess of vertebrae and sacrums and carpals and fibulas and ulnas and phalanges and... we made love to us the wildness of your hair hugging inside knots leftovers of unshattered bones colluding into monstrous clusters and endless permutations. “which are mine?” I asked, befuddled, somewhere at the bottom of the pile, after one of those perennially penultimate permutations. “all,” you answered, not really understanding the reason to my question, after the ultimate settled in place.

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Rainbow Trail I pushed my palm flat against your chestbone, then clenched it to a fist gathering inside it your robe your underwear, stockings, shoes, jewelry then pulled it away opening my palm again and letting the crippled content drop to the floor. mottled. torn. one heel broken in three. your skin shivering. I watched your white, speechless, the whiter than white even more mottled than the clothing at my feet ants running underneath your skin demolishing its smoothness into crumbling salt the promontory of nipples in seas of areolae on mountains of breasts defiant of my violence asking impudently for the next touch of flesh. I begged for mercy. And crows pulled the shirts off my shoulders and coyotes the trousers off my legs and beetles heaved the rest leaving me naked more than you, needing more than you. I pointed my finger to the sky invoking the hungry rainbow to gobble our bodies following the trail heavily scarred by our mouths and hands the triumvirate of color and lust and love, oh, love. We lay in the hay, my finger drawing circles around your navel slowly spiraling outwards undecided yet if the break out will be upwards or downwards, my mind intrigued by the clash between concupiscence and bewilderment. "What is the matter, lover?" you asked, sleepily. I broke the mirror and raised a shard above your belly showing you the rainbow trail spiraling outwards, hesitating between upwards or downwards. You made the decision. I merely executed it...

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Compass Rose Lie on the bed, slowly, don't worry of feathers and whiteners and bedbugs, of creasing your skirt or shirt or both, it will crease, I promise, they... both. Let your right toe point the east for me the left toe the north, sorry, you cannot do it on your back, how inconsiderate of me you'll have to turn face up. You think you can point east west? Of course I don't mind and in this case you can remain face down... oh, you prefer to turn... Okay, let's settle for east north-west I will help you with the skirt, here we go... easier, no? and your shirt, certainly... I promised you they will crease, right? sorry about the button I will buy you two, and a new shirt, two too, also a skirt how many? thanks, and... oh, you made it east west finally, how old are you? What about me? I will settle for north south, no, smarty, not leg leg but head legs... both... no, didn't decide yet which way which, any preferences? It wasn't a bedbug, they don't come this size. Sorry (what a sorrowful poem this one) you had enough no, it will not get you fat yes, it will get me sore, no, I am not scared of getting fat, yes, it will get you sore. I don't care either. Either. * We ended all over the place north, east, south... all losing all meaning, it was all due to varying gravity I think, and Earth gyrating probably the other way around, oh, you think it was because of all these puffing, gasping, suckling sounds?... ridiculous, hmmm, maybe.

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peyote dreams roll inside the leaf, leave your earthly belongings outside – shoes, clothes, jewels, and when spring reaches your abode let flower crowns lift your bed and buds tear it and beetles carry the pieces into the river. but then i will fall and be naked and be cold... you will not because i will carry you on my fingertips and let flowers explode through my skin and buds adorn your hair and beetles cover you with the wilderness of pollen. but then i will be covered and you will not see my skin and not feel my flesh... i will because your skin will marry the flowers and your flesh will open into buds and beetles will fane the fire of our bodies into the forest.

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Treasure raw, crunchy, sharp, like young radish, like green apples like ice falling into the singing volcano’s mouth, like a twig’s memory like a twig’s hope. I reached for your teeth caring for the caress, reached for your breast begging for the bite, I took them all teeth and caress and breast and bite and everything else reaching deeper looking for the skeleton’s hinges and the mind’s vagaries looking for shy you impudent you shameless you. the day mutilated into a thousand sighs the handhold bending bedposts into wrought iron the kiss like sparkling flitter falling east. I found the treasure in summer emulating your smile.

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a lifetime again young like the want in your breast, younger, your smile on my mouth turning bite then consoling tongue then descending inferno towards the inferno until inferno dies, you pick the butterfly struggling in your heart and offer it to me, I refuse to see it imagining to see your nipple as my fingers pick up the relay, hard, is it melting in my mouth or is my mouth melting around it?

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Motion Sickness Above me, dancing, all I see are the soles of your feet and the shadows beyond your thighs the tips of your breasts swinging, the flesh bells of your body’s chapel calling my heathen hands to prayer. Echappé, jeté, piqué... my flesh a tortured floor convulsing under the kneading toes favoring the motion sickness of dizziness and dazzle over the leniency of abandon. You shake your head and your hair swirls left and right the thousands of roses I tied one to each hair then two and three to some shed their petals and thorns and butterflies covering me with red snow and blindness. I feel a left foot on my belly, your right toe clearing with a fast fouetté the heavy layer from my eyelids, hesitating a moment inside my mouth before I see you floating gently down hanging on to those petals still fluttering around you. “Time for pas de deux,” you murmur finally taking me into your motion and as our bodies slide into each other the elegance of ballet gives in to the elegance of chaos.

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The End Of Privacy The end of privacy, the beginning of intimacy the breaking moment between before and after. A hotel’s one room with walls and bed and TV a doorless bathroom and a white sink, a castle, an empire, a home shared. When I pull down my trousers when you pull up your cottons when I pull the water when you crouch next to your suitcase when we bend above the sink your breasts dangling our toothbrushes mixing when flesh appears and disappears in dazzling flurry from and behind textiles and nylon curtains and linen covers and the only shame is why did we wait so long. Intimacy, the end of privacy, the beginning of love.

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Threats pay you will dearly and more each shiver shivered untouched each word worded unheard, each moment unslept without you... she said. thank you, I said adding shivers untouched and words unheard and moments unslept without me until I stopped counting and she carried on, my skin cringing the flagellation of fingertips my eyes fearing the sight of flaming nipples my mouth quailing the bite of ravenous tongue. the door opened before I knocked impatient as she was to inflict my torture. where shall I start? she gave me the choice between hells. what about starting with heaven, I tried, then I’ll appreciate hell better? aha, and impertinent and wiseguy, she disappreciated my offer pulling my belt away in one smooth move. whatever followed was even smoother, all the way from heaven to hell and back. Earth was a memory, for others to worry about.

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Soap Bubbles The first I shaped butterfly, wasn’t easy for anyone but me. The second I shaped opening rose, even more difficult not for me. Make me a bubble, she said, and much as I tried I failed. Tell me you love me, she said, and I started bending words into butterflies and poems into roses. Tell me you love me, she said, disappointed at butterflies and roses and looking for a bubble. I love you, I said, giving up butterflies and roses for the bubble, and she smiled.

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Night Air I see you there under the blanket your nightie pulled mid thigh... left leg, right leg even higher up, do you know? not of the nightie, of me seeing? Does passion burn your chest in your dream same as out of it, is the hand pressing between your thighs looking for the safety of home or for the feel of me hand and leg and everything else missing? You turn around, one thousand miles and you still feel my stare uncovering you undressing you making love to pieces of your flesh and snippets of your skin and all of you. You slide out of the deranging garment your body freed your palms cupping your breasts and offering them to a memory of me as the rest of me invades the rest of your body and there is no distance anymore between dream and reality when you moan your desire into the pillow and the night air burns.

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Opportunity You opened the door to my morning, the glass of orange juice warming up in your mouth you couldn't tell me... hurry!... or you would have spilled it over the covers over my face and you would have had to make love on a damp mattress. And lick me clean. And apologize for my thirst, then, when apologies would have been appropriate after making love on the damp mattress after licking me clean. I would not have accepted your apology, of course, and asked for an encore of the same. Instead, you waited. Wasting a golden opportunity. I finished showering, shaving, brushing my teeth, the orange juice starting to simmer and drooling on your chin from your mouth's left corner as you patiently painted my morning into the sparkle of rain and the buzz of bees and the piece of sun warming that tip of breast for me. I wonder if you did it on purpose, the orange drop exploding on the sun spot the following one on your belly the next one almost on the bedding as I plunged and caught it mid-air then licked your belly then your breast then ended up scorching my throat with that orange juice you finally poured in. I guess you did not waste any opportunity, after all, judging by the events that followed.

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Not Kids, I Guess what do you carry in your mouth? I asked. verses funny pots of honey and a haven plush and sunny. what do you hide under your shirt? I asked. mellow cherries, pears and berries and the dust of lusting fairies. what do you harbor under you skirt? I asked. strum of lyre coal and fire and perfumes of lush desire. what do you hold in your fist? I asked. dreams apart starlit art and the thread to mend your heart.

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deformations in a world devoid of butterflies what would we poem? devoid of flowers too. no, no sunsets, seascapes, stars, not even fairies and rhymes inexistent. of course love, hence my question. of course you know. deformations. we would poem deformations. the deformation of clothes struggling in the grip of an adoring fist, the deformation of bodyscapes of bulges and valleys and secret hideouts and miraculous crevices squeezed and ironed and crushed into sighs and fantasies and edible crumbs by flesh sculpting flesh with flesh and fingernails and teeth and writhing muscles, the deformation of linen under the sculpting hysteria of bedazzled flesh. and butterflies? and the flowers, and?... the flesh the field, the sighs the seeds, reality deforming into sprouting butterflies and flowers. the rest too? the rest too. you wrinkled your nose, distrustful, pouted, then raised your head in defiance... prove it!... you snarled with no menace, expectant, hopeful. I proved it, so easy was it to prove. I had a bit of a problem with the fairies, you assented to my victory though once you saw the filigree of wings sprout alongside your spine. illusion?... you tried one last time, weakly. reality, I answered deforming you into rhyme.

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Beyond Dreams I saw you bestride an alligator swamp reek turning lilac, mosquitoes dragonflies, baby alligators paddling alongside your guard of honor, a pterodactyl diving from the deepest blue to shower you with tatters of torn rainbows and the dry leaves of autumn to come. I woke up seeing you emerge from sand waves freezing mid gale foaming crests hanging in the limbo of indecision separating gravitation from fantasy, each drop imprisoning a tiny seahorse a tiny siren combing its mane and tiny sea stars tied to its tail blinking away moments of wonder to shine between your eyebrow's tiny hairs. I blinked to watch the inner of my eyelash's screen and you swimming in the crystal of my tear deftly rolling the invisible boulders of salt upon cymbals and across strings and through flutes, your body crumbling into nightingales pouring away from my eyes to form the green in the leaves and the reflections of butterflies in ponds crawling with baby kaleidoscopes. I opened my eyes. The silver of hesitating darkness buried in the linen. A shadow breathing next to me I touched it, soft, silken, warm. The darker shadow of ruffled hair on a creased pillow an escaping sigh a rustling sound as naked flesh stretched an arm armed with five tender tendrils and took possession of my wrist. You opened sleepy eyes watching me, questioning. I dreamt of you, I said.

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A Bit Of Unmagic I wish I could tell of dragons, yet my high school history teacher beats them all in the she-dragons class making tellings of magic impossible. No, no fire no wings, but lots of attitude. Fairies? My kindergarten teacher, my fairy, betrayed me at the ripe age of five (my age, not hers), how can I believe in fairies? See? I remember her deed though not her face. Maybe some of the dust but this was part of the unpaved street. Magic stick? Yes, some teachers used them, it hurt like hell. Same with magic snapping - Out! Fortune telling looked promising until I found my pockets empty and the gypsies were far, far away, not in the sunset rather in the next town and I had no money for the bus to chase them (told you, my pockets thing...). Sure, there were kings (on stamps) and queens (on stamps too) and princesses marrying princes (Indian movies but not yet Bollywood) oh, there was something, magic beans (and oranges, in brown paper bags Made in USA). * She snuggled against me, as long as I was ranting the world was perfect, it meant I was next to her. Suddenly she rebelled, sitting up cross-legged across from me and stabbing my chest with a manicured fingernail... "C'mon, there must be some magic left in you." A knowledgeable snort. "There is no poetry without magic!" she added defiantly. I watched attentively those dangling breasts (how long did I?) then that crossroads at the end of her crossed legs (probably even longer than that) and I moved her finger from my chest to my mouth. I bit. She screamed. Before making love I confessed. "Yes, there is magic. Guess!"

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Further On... You came to sit on my lap, not asking permission, assuming granted and forgetting the rest of my vocabulary like denied, not home, have a headache or my period (a different one, don't smirk). The butterflies insisted on joining, you not me nestling in your hair, on your shoulders, upon your innocently (ha) batting eyelids, crawling their way inside your bosom (bastard scrawny bugs, would have wrung their little necks but there were so many of them), doubling the weight on my knees and all this fluttering did not add any lift to the composite weight of insect and flesh... oh, flesh... oh, flesh... (no, not stuttering, trying to get rid of that big butterfly hovering between our mouths). I love you, you said, or I think you did (too much buzzing around) pulling the hem of the dress to the mid of your thigh and the hem of the hand to the nape of my neck and whooshing that damn big butterfly out of way as lips collided and teeth crunched and fingers sank beyond muscles seeking for bone (and the butterfly tried to crawl into my ear, hey, a jealous butterfly?...). I revised my vision of the world as a rustling sound suddenly conquered my hearing and millions of tiny claws sank into cloth, skin, hair pulling us up (with the chair underneath me) and carrying us like a miraculous carpet past doors, floors, rooms and dropping us softly on the bed (they dropped the chair along the way somewhere, oh, yes, they also pulled the bed covers away, told you - miraculous). I love you, I dared say looking around in fright for that bullying butterfly... but it was gone... they were all gone, we were alone. What happened? I asked sad and happy and... something else. It did not yet, it will soon, you smiled knowingly opening your arms and floating to the ceiling (huh?...) your clothing suddenly dissolving into billions of moths and as the swarm disappeared through the door you floated softly towards that frantic figure (mine) trying to dissolve its clothes as well before... you landed, oh, so softly, we embraced, oh, so softly, we merged... you know... merged, oh, so softly. In that last moment of sanity before vision blurred and heartbeat crumbled and breath choked I saw that big (big? more like giant) butterfly letting go of you, winking (butterfly winking?) smiling (butterfly smiling?) and rushing out of the door following the moths to some statistically probable candle. Good luck my friend, I wish you not to find that candle, I thought, before the final blur and crumble and choke. Sorry, my love, I have a small confession to make, when we were making love I was not fully here, with you, part of me was there, elsewhere, promising the god of butterflies that I will follow high studies (starting next Monday) focusing on invertebrata sub section arthropoda sub sub section entomologia (hehe, poet or not poet) sub sub sub section lepidoptera. You didn't mind if to judge from the following session(s) of blur and crumble and choke.

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regenesis dressed in your skin, the ancient bounty hunter having trapped the virgin and opening the claws of the trap to close around his waist cutting him into halves writhing in that lurid agony of prurience and realization that there is no return from the virgin’s skin. I count spiders carrying invisible ribbons across apple trees, I count needles sewing the mantle to pine trees, I count minutes growing the belly around sequoia trees and drilling devastation holes in the time bulk separating us waiting for it to collapse into raggedy pebbles upon which roads our bleeding toes finally meet. open those legs let me investigate the miracle of recurring virginity in the sacred seclusion of that inguinal hideout and fill the lands beyond with the death of withered flowers blooming and the despair of fallen doves soaring and the dread of forsaken cubs roaring and summer. open those arms and let us compete on heart size and chest size and emerging drumming size and nipple size and count of ribs and decay of flesh in between crushing fingers when muscles atrophy on the blueing expanses of rebelling blood stains and the red blots of coal sizzling and summer. open those lips in surrendering admission to the well between worlds of flaming pale skin and eternally missing eternity ingurgitating the sweet drivel off tongues and the noise of teeth grating on teeth and sand and glass when lungs join into the humidity of one enormous cave and the genesis of that ancient scream cuts through our humanity and lasciviousness and summer. you lie, pale, panting no longer, and I caress your white plains letting the sirocco pouring from my fingertips burn scarabs upon that of your skin enveloping us.

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Fingers On The Mountain I am trying to reach once more that shamelessness my fingers found when pulling up your skirt there, on the mountain, your eyes blinded by the green of grass your fingers failing to find my belt our existence improbable as none of us dared breathe for countless minutes. The beauty of the rotten wood smelling like a thousand broken perfume bottles failing the conquest as my fingers tasted your lust bringing it to my nose and lips just as your fingers finally worked their way inside struggling to pull the cage apart and liberate the beast. We did not make love except in the nightmares I kept waking up into later on wishing we did reminiscent only of that terrible desire our lust stained fingers claimed to own mixing the life essence of our insides with the bitter green of crushed four-leaves clover and the fluttering white dust of mating butterflies.

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Technology Of Senses I hear you, there, at the other end of a wire entering a hole in the wall my side of existence and exiting a hole in the wall your side of it, the irrelevant black-box between us a minglement of electronics and finance and architectural monstrosities aimed at dirtying the landscape and reducing the distance between us to zero. Click. Touch. Sigh. Hi. Hi. My voice, no, not my voice but me, there, next to you thirsting for your body covering it with the lust of whispers and the gaud of insinuations and veils of gripping debauchery, your fingers, no, not your fingers anymore watch my fingerprints take over see that tiny scar on my index finger sliding down your belly, or is it up your thigh looking for the gate to your eternal fires beyond those meaningless, worldly cotton shields, open your mouth wide to gulp the air in the lonesomeness of that room there, where my disembodied presence invades you through the thinness of eardrum and the shiver of searching fingers, the chair the bones of my knees the current of air fluttering beneath drapes my scorching breath, open your mouth wide, gulp those bucketfuls of air to fill your lungs and fill your chest and saturate your bloodways for that moment when your lupine howl sings of Verdi and the masses of air purify your vocal chords into the absolute silence of after. Your breathing, now breaking through the paralysis of muscles and cutting the quiet to the smoothness of ribboned shreds, I can almost feel it glide upon my face as I am about to return from distance zero to distance of wire, and wall, and wall, and wire and technology's damned limitations. Your flesh, when your flesh? you ask. Your flesh, when your flesh? I answer. Hi. Hi. Sigh. Touch. Click.

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A Whole Lotta No's don’t look into my eyes, sink into them just one tear-depth away from my heart, sink into it, my heart, to find no flowers, no butterflies, no rainbows, no music, to find you. no, not your twin, not even a mirror, you visited before you stayed behind when you left. no need to understand, not even to try, just cuddle between the arteries and atriums and aortas... no, no areolas... and fall asleep. of course you can suck your thumb, after all you are a child. of love.

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decisions did you decide if to slide or to roll or to crawl from floor to bed from bed to body from body to that amalgam of skin and flesh and viscous rivers upon the once pristine once smooth once virginal expanse of linen desert? did you decide what your tools of trade and tools of war and tools of music are going to be once the clothes eject us and the air in the room turns vacuum as it inflates our chests with walls bending inwards about to follow the air along with paintings and wallpaper and lamps right into our lungs? did you decide which tune will you scream the moment come will it be rock or classic or jazz or simply woman calling upon those beasts dying in the forests and those seas dying into skeleton cluttered abysses and those stars dying into spiraling rocks between skies to expiate for a meaningless life when they join you in the spark of that one moment into life?

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Tired, Two Tired. I crush the banana in my palm, imagining myself Hercules crushing the olive tree’s trunk into a flute. Holes to follow. Oil to follow too, oozing out of my other hand crushing the olives and the seeds to pulp. I watch closely – it is a tomato and I stain my trousers and the carpet with ad-hoc ketchup and cucumber green. Told you, tired. The radio wails its harmonica into my density and the blues is from another world and from another singer, sounding as tired as me but much more articulate. He gets paid for being tired. I get paid for getting screamed at. By customers. I wish I would have been talented enough to sing and face customers waving unbranched-alkane-called-butane lighters and candles and throwing their underwear at me (how do I sort male from female, shit?) rather than customers waving invoices and hatchets. Tired, oh, so tired. I stretch my mind and muscle and eye, curious to see what kind of nonsense my tired brainwaves emit to paper and keyboard yet don’t dare read afraid I will laugh so hard that I will not be able to sleep and I may loose a tooth. Don’t ask how. Don’t ask why. Probably the blues is to blame. I chew some German chocolate (terrible blasphemy in Belgium but I am in blasphemous mood) drink some Belgian beer to compensate and think of you and miss you suddenly though I missed you all day too. Also all night but I don’t remember. Tomorrow I will read this again, probably backwards it will make better sense and if I am honest I shouldn’t edit it, tomorrow I will know if I am honest though you will not. Or maybe will. Or will. Maybe. I wonder if Heine ever painted when tired. I mean wrote poetry. I mean my German is lousy at best, how could I know? Or Homer of the Simpsons. Or Hercules. No, certainly not Hercules, he was too busy playing guitar. Or killing Philistines. Yes, this one was Samson, I know, the same macho. Delilah was a bitch, how could she do it? I miss you. Goodnight my love. Tomorrow I will probably bury my head in shame and in ketchup, but who cares? I am tired. I love you.

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Technological Limitations You sent me your nakedness, your word of mouth disarticulated into acoustical waves of grunts and moans and words of a language known to you only, guess I need private lessons same room, same mouth, same bed, wonder not when student turns better than teacher inside hours, inside mouths, inside clenched fists unclenching at lesson's end. You sent me your nakedness, that technological painting dismembering you into pixels of red and green and blue recomposing as skin upon my retinae and as half open lips underneath half closed eyes inside my mind, I wish I possessed pixels of your breath, of your touch to push against in my desperate need for fires to extinguish and rekindle at wish. I sent you my nakedness, clumsily attempting to awe you into admitting the want for more of the same and of other, knowing that the moment of shared shamelessness to come will prove the superiority of reality and flesh over technology.

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don't, want don't want to hold your hand. want to hold your hand, your elbow, your shoulder, your waist, the flowers to offer you the handle to open the door for you the shoelace after I untie the knot the waistband after I remove the silk the arms to pin to your sides as my body ravages your mind. don't want to walk with you in the forest. want to walk with you in the forest and on water and beneath grass picking stones from your shoes and thorns from your skirt and withes finding miraculous ways to penetrate your shirt building nests around your breasts to warm the back of my hands as my palms cup your softness and your hardness and fall asleep. don't want to make love to you. want to make love to you, and to the rest of you, and the whole, before you wake up unknowing why you're sated after you fall asleep unknowing why you're naked when you shop and you clean and you cut potatoes my body your pillow your belly my playground your dreams torn between reality and hallucination our voices the midway between the neighing of horses and the harping of sirens. fill the sea beneath my chest bone and wait for the sharks to nip your nipples, crush my olives between your toes and let the oil crawl into your curls, chase the sun down my throat and fill my mouth your tinge of tongue.

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Lust in F major My skin quavers feebly, like a foal shaking away fears and desultory buzzing predators I shake away desires working their fumeous way through my body’s thousands of porous fumaroles and drenching my flimsy clothing in frangipani ethers and fulgid crystals of salt and barely contained lust. My skin hangs in fringes, like furbelows, like flounces festooned to my extremities upon the layer of flesh upon the layer of bones upon the layer of marrow the muscled interstices limp and ungainly in atrophied pseudo-indifference to fever’s lambent fire and blood fermenting into the thickness of moaning magma and its fomenting impatience. My skin suddenly feral, the ferocious fulmination at the moment of touch and quaver turns howl between fringes tightening to steel filigree when veins swell and muscles swarm slithering snakelike between bones and veins and pulsating flesh sending the famished tentacles lining the periphery of my palms into the landscapes of erogenous no return lining the secrecy of your body until the feast is consumed and the screaming feminine fumulus of pink virga pulverizes into shared felicity.

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asynchronicity before after became the only reality, walking with you through tall corridors of wheat and corn and rye counting our treasures the gold of grains with kisses and the silver of dew with eyelashes and the copper of copper-butterflies with discarded garments. after before ceased to exist, watching the image in the mirror yours, not mine, as you stretch behind my back thinking yourself unseen and cupping your breasts my way and arching your pelvis my way the aura around your body born inside my eyes... or in the linen? in between, while before and after lay meaningless among our shreds, the bed shivering in empathy as grains burst between palms and breasts and dew vaporizes between pelvis and thighs and the coppery aura around your supined shape materializes to the flutter of wings carrying your suspires into the flames enveloping our disintegrating flesh and turning sun.

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reality dream so you wrapped your body inside your skin inside the water pouring from that artificial sky with its round nickel shape and symmetrical holes and controlled temperature reality remembering a dank wooden enclosure and a barrel of chilly water attached to a string as we wrapped our rigid bodies inside your skin, inside the heaven of that putrid smelling water boiling away from our lost innocence dream the soft towel hiding the glamour of your flesh-dressed bones from a steamed mirror, sucking away the insolence of water from forms outer and inner and leaving behind the desolation of burns uncaressed reality remembering sawdust and dried pine needles and sand sifting away from hands pouring roughness between your breasts and your thighs and the grating sound of teeth licking away the humidity and feeding you the river dream you fell asleep in the kingdom of linen reality? burning in the lust of flesh dream?

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You Lie You lie wasted, most of you above me the rest of you around me some of me inside you, not even panting like pizza dough stretched paper thin now filling all of my irregularities with yours, even the hair on my chest even my numb elbow even my navel, and the rest. You lie, are you alive? the bountiful bounce of your breasts now crushed into insignificance against the odoriferous muscles lining my ribs glinting invisibly with itching sweat previously dripping from the tips of your nipples and splashing inside the puddles pouring outside my skin from the sources of my impatient passion, I hear steam hissing sideways, the vapor palely pink with leftovers of wine and lipstick. You lie, you moan, you are alive, and it is by sheer willpower rather than muscle that you pull your pizza away from me your face a medieval warrior's mask of snarled hair and some teeth with a Cyclops' one sleepy eye, imprisoned geysers finally exploding to salty liberty as your skin sloshes around over mine guiding my way back in and the bounce thunders into action once again all the way into the rattling paintings on the walls, who designed this ugly ceiling framing this celestial creature? I wonder before celestiality is all which rests of my mind changing in its turn to mush.

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Farm, Kind Of You shake up the blanket, and with it the crumbs of last night's lovemaking calling for diving swallows to compete on lost grains of gold and hopping sparrows to fight over leftovers of leftovers timidly sizzling in the dew. I watch you, and you watch me watching you when you brazenly pull your left breast out from your brassiere letting it hang loose together with sticking your tongue my way while the blanket floats down over me canopy style and I feel tens of tiny clawed feet walking all over my head picking and twitting and probably mocking. Something is probably wrong as you, mysteriously, don't follow underneath and I worry even more when I hear the clinking of glass and of tin and of wood and of plastic and... barks?... a sliding door sound... come, quick!... the corner of the blanket lifts and you throw something underneath with one hand pulling me rudely with the other. I lose my underwear behind rushing after you while a swarm of birds and dogs and chickens and ducks and one old goat invades the bed pulling and snapping at whatever you threw over there and you slide the door closed after us... quiet... now we have the world to ourselves, you smirk pulling off the rest of your garments and as our skin freezes on the grass and the grass burns under our skin I cannot shake off the awkward feeling of that old goat looking at us from behind the window and shaking its head in embarrassment.

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Oh, The Torment Of It All The torment of undressing you, with fingers taken by autumn shivers shedding off the last of hairs, with lungs assailed by a hurricane finding the exit of nostrils indecently narrow, with eyes blinded repeatedly by spots of skin revealed. Oh, the torment of it all, forgive me love the yellow thread pouring out from an undone seam, the metal buckle which lost your shoe somewhere, the elastic band hitting me square into the eye. The torments, those gentle appetizers to that duet of arias working its harrowing way out of constricted throats, to the macabre realization of swimming in a sea of dying convulsions and moans and gasps, to a quiet equaled only by the desire of torment to start all over again.

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Paradise The stone in my shoe, rather a rock sculpted for optimized discomfort by the hand which tore it apart from the reef, The sea, littered with fish shit and screaming gull congregations and pelicans so prominent in their absence, The crack between the beds, who fell into it - I or you, when we swapped the ritual of love making with hysterical laughter?... did we finally make love? The wet underwear... no, mine!... no, because I washed it!... yes, certainly, who needs underwear at all in paradise? The woman.

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The Smell Of You The shirt, atop my short-sleeved shirts and my t-shirts and my trousers beneath my underwear, shapeless without your body to fill up its inner side, fragrant with your deodorant and Chanel 5 and your skin. The pillow, a few hairs - yours, a few creases - mine, a few stains where your lipstick wore off into my mouth's linen and the pillow's lips and sweat tried unsuccessfully to wash it off and tears... mine?... added the chemistry of salt to the chemistry of your femininity. The room's corners, upon the floor where I crawled on my knees collecting the crumbs of a waffle, the crumpled wrapping cellophane of a sweet, the molecules drifting into the ceiling's corners which I have difficulty to reach and those buzzing away inside an angry mosquito's belly, lost forever. I sink my head inside your folded brassiere and hope you will not find it hilariously funny when you return... yes, I know this is funny, yes, I know how much I will miss you soon.

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Dead Crocodile no dead crocodile in my mouth with morning... you threatened, walking stiff (and bare) assed to the bathroom to brush off all those poor steak leftovers into the black abysses of that white, gobbling gullet called sink. you walked, stiffly still (and bare assed still) back to bed breathing en passant a mint phrensy into my face making your threat true and my mind mush. morning. we made love and I called you dove. yet, though there wasn’t any dead crocodile in that mouth of yours there certainly was a living crocodile in that mouth’s body. no, you get me wrong again, my friends, no poetical metonymy here.

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Almost Rhetoric I wish I was whiffs of air... one breath in and I would be inside your lungs and you could keep me forever. And when I breathe out? Do you have to? I wish I was the paved road... each of your steps touching me leaving an eternal imprint dislodging tiny stones to carry in your pockets. And when I step away? Must you? I wish I was the door handle... your palm clasping me crushing me turning me into a lump of twisted metal. And when I close the door? Why should you? Molecules of me will get lost in between your ribs and heart dust of me will encrust within your pocket’s fiber slivers of me will penetrate underneath your skin. I wish molecules of you to swallow me dust of you to paint me slivers of you to pierce me. And when I leave? Do you have to? Must you? Why should you?

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Perpetuum Mobile looking for that corner to kiss, hiding from the multitudes of strangers inside arms raised around heads and mouths hiding inside mouths and an oblivion sistering what the hell?... the beauty of that departing coat inhabited by the beauty of that departing body, luggage pieces hanging on to multidigited appendages conniving with gravitation to pull her shoulders down to mask the heavier than humanly bearable sudden solitude. woman, oh, woman, when a wind gust stole my tear your way and Earth’s rotation twisted my neck around and the swooshing doors in your back strangled my breath into the nearness of death, nearness? I let my body grapple with the chair’s back, growing acceleration trying to sift my parts through its texture while the rest of me floated in chase after you trying to engage you once again into the one-two step upon that dance floor we refused to quit. my dear, finding you amounted to coincidental miracle, parting from you amounts to recurring suicide, loving you amounts to the perpetuum mobile of poetry.

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Impress I try to impress you, I don’t have to I know, the way gulls impress you without trying or squirrels nibbling on their nuts or waves making sounds of rain and of another sea, the one luring sailors to perdition. All I have to do is be, betide, bechance, befall... exist and you would cull the copper off descending sunsets and the color off disguising chameleons and the fragrance off dying white lilies to seed it all to my wake pretending it to be mine. I try to impress you, my inadequacy rivaled by your heart’s purity, complemented into the knowledge of the impossibility to deceive the believer. So I follow in your feet’s indentations on dry ground and deep water and cold tiles and cull your traces’ copper and color and fragrance to seed them all into rising sunsets and bragging chameleons and the pride of flowering white lilies.

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Prolegomenon You saw smiles behind every corner chasing them with your butterflies net frustrated at their seeping through the densely woven nylon mesh delighted at their entangling in your hair like dangling grapes on fluttering vines. You found a pebble hardly big enough for your right toe’s tip and you started dancing on it the most complex of classical ballet moves and craziest of rappical break-dance contortions then pulled me in as well, God knows where you found place, forcing the wildness of a devilish cha cha cha into the depravity of a smelting tango. You pulled your hair up to a bun and your clothes down to your feet offering the shower’s needles a steaming death upon the volcanic plains of your body and inside those burning craters of a flesh tendering to non existent gods the alms of your passion. You sang half an octave lower than right and I sang half an octave higher than right our average just right for finishing off the repertoires of Morandi and Del Monaco and Cinquetti, the walls cursed into immobility by the witch of Builders Guild screaming their sufferance with immobile calx tears and shivering candelabra. We made love, finally, the destiny of a world forming pearls in our mouths as we swapped grains of time and patrimonies of tempest and legacies of skin.

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Collector I will collect your scattered limbs from mountain’s lofty peaks Your bones from valley’s crawling beds and spitting morning creeks, The falcon I will beg your heart from yonder forest’s shroud, Your nail the bear, your flesh the tree, your breath the flitting cloud, And when the time will be to come to find the frailth of lips I will beseech the blazing muse of sun’s assailing ships. A ribbon clad in copper’s blood to bind the puzzle’s grace, A golden thread of autumn rust to pour through silk and lace, With cobweb tender filigree and yarns of glinting mesh To patch the last of flaming skin upon the last of flesh, In blinding awe of having thieved the vineyard’s only vine To guide the chalice to your mouth and drip that one drop wine. I will behold the rush of day inside the pale of cheek, The glowing coal alighting stars inside the depths of bleak, A whooshing tempest tearing chest to pennons beating wild And fists unclawing into birds from love’s awaking child, If death to die then wish I do when sparks your eyelids graze And read I read of deathless love inside that burning gaze.

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pH Your skin smooth, tanned, tense, rippling muscles showing off when you turn one way then the other then the same one way again... (are you doing it on purpose, lover?) Mine (skin) once (smooth, tanned, tense) hidden (rippling muscles dying to show off under some extra layers) and now this random, intricate mosquito polka-dot design red, itching... I feel like screaming if not for all the other tourists. "They" (mosquitoes, not tourists) "all invaded me, none invaded you," I whine secretly in your ear, scratching secretly again, screaming secretly again as well. "They" (mosquitoes, not tourists) "are female, they have good taste," you wink my way, mollifying my attack, buttering up my vanity, slapping lovingly a non-intimate flabby portion of my anatomy (don't do that! I protest with my mind and scratch with my nails). "Nonsense, it's all a matter of pH," I flaunt my (inexistent) chemistry wisdom returning the loving slap to an intimate taut portion of yours (anatomy, not wisdom). The sun burns (all the time). I itch (all the time). I scratch (all the time). Back to the room (thank God). You undress (thank God). You undress me (thank God). You taste me (thank all the gods, past and present). You wrinkle your nose (oops...). "Nothing to do with pH," you claim (and your chemistry lurks even more into ignorance than mine) "it is rather to do with hP..." huh?... Hewlett Packard? "no, silly, h-y-p-e-r C6H12O6..." you spell it insultingly slow and start spitting things like mellitus... erythrocytes... hexokinase... glycolysis... help!... the last one mine, the previous yours with other words interspersed making sense for you and a lot of noise for me and finally I choke your flow with a despairing kiss (ok, so you know your chemistry, big deal, shut up!). "You know, there should be bees chasing you, not mosquitoes..." you open languid eyes, blink twice excessively slow, and I cannot see the end of your smile as all of you invades my vision and those rippling muscles lock me into the pleasures of death. "Aiii..." I tear my mouth away from yours, the pain of that needle something terrible. "Told you so," you laugh happily, taking control of my mouth again and somewhere along the way I stop feeling the needles though I cannot prevent myself from hearing the growing buzz.

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In White In front of the white wall, close to it, as close as feeling my breath reflecting back into my face. I try to write on it with my finger scratching the lime white layers getting underneath my nail smarting, the pain not as intense as the pain of inability of telling you of my feel again. I don’t recognize the words though I know them, I try to climb the wall stepping inside the traces and I slide again and again yet I keep trying knowing you are on the other side sleeping inside the settling dust. Exhaustion seeps to bone and finally I fall in a hump, not even snoring. I feel fingers softly combing the whiteness off my eyebrows, eyelashes, upper lip... how did you pass, you are not a bird?... I say, did I ever say I am not a bird?... you say, snuggling next to me. If I was a bird too I would have seen those words I scratched settling like a blanket around our hugging forms and forming a mesh of interwoven promises in white.

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Dress Code I don't want to dress you in diamonds and gold, In satin's rich spangle as evenings unfold, With trimmings of silver and nacreous tints Embracing your summers with glorious glints. I don't want to dress you in crushed petal dust And slices of apples invaded by rust With zephyrs entangled in fringes of hair And gliding down eyebrows with devilish dare. I don't want to dress you in nightingale songs, In tinkle of cymbals and rumble of gongs, In deep scarlet hues flowing shoulder to foot And fighting your crimsons in bitter dispute. I just want To undress you.

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