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Forest In the desert I didn't find an oasis, I found a forest. True, some branches broken, some weeds, some buzzing gnats... paradise, how would you call broken branches, weeds, gnats mid of the desert if not paradise? There is water, feeding the roots, and shadows, caring for boiling brains, and squirrels, lions, I even saw a camel... real desert. Real paradise. I lay my head on your breast listening to heart beats, a complaining stomach... "hungry?..." a few hiccups, "how did you grow mid of the desert?" I asked you. You kept feeding me softness and songs in a language close to rustling leaves and childhood memories claiming the hiccup was actually a bolting deer and the complaining stomach the murmur of a fresh spring "and the heart beats?" these were heart beats, and I believed you. After all I was dying of thirst and you saved me. "I was dying of thirst and you saved me," but you shushed me and offered me also your strawberries. "There are no strawberries in the desert, even if the oasis is a forest," but I had to accept the juicy evidence of life. Of lips. "You tricked me, I thought these were strawberries," I thanked you and wrote you a poem. "You tricked me, I thought this was a poem," you thanked me reading my poem and feeding me strawberries.

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to know you crawled on all four, if you had six it would have been on all six, rummaging through the wet sand... shells, shells, shells, like it was pearls you were digging up, or nuggets, or, better still, kisses. here, another one, you raised your fist in victory and all I could do was sink in the mud and enjoy in your pleasure, how long since you finished being a kid? did you ever? you even forgot all about me and how could you ever forget anything about me, let alone all of it. we walked back, I carried your shoes, your shells, you camera, you carried my heart, my heart, my heart, the blessed inequality of sexes there, where it counts, everywhere, where I adore you, worship you, maybe even love you... more than I love you. hey, got you there, didn’t I? how fast can a smile change into a frown change into a smile? I just proved it – as fast as the word reaches the brain, as fast as your mouth reaches for mine, as fast as fastest. yes, my English, and proud of it. your hand looking for my skin, later, once the shells were safely packed and your feet warmly washed and your camera momentarily forgotten, I did not want any sex, you wanted only sex... of course love, love, sex without love is like a crocodile without teeth. don’t like it? ok, like beer without gas. hate it even more? ahmmm... what about like world without sun, like violin without strings, like death before life? you smile, you like it better. no, I don’t like it better, I like all the same. like it like I love you. like the teeth, the gas, the sun, the strings, the life. of course I want only sex. and love. the paradox of the only? no paradox, love, just the linguistic limitations of the one dimensional universe of poetry. that’s why I write only for those with enough imagination to complete my job. that’s why I love you. you have sufficient imagination to know.

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It's That Time Of The Year It's that time of the year or of the day, depends on how or when I look at it, that I feel once more the need to talk in pinks, in emerald greens and sea-deep blues, opening a call for duty to flowers, to butterflies and rainbows and doves carrying lilac branches in their beaks and dew drops at the ends of their tiny claws closing and wing ends opening... where are you to paint it all in my mind's eye with fingertips dipped in tears and a skin sweating thick blobs of honey after making love? Is this the reason that I stick to you each time after? Or that I cannot open eyes heavy with contentment? Even if you harness your nipples to the effort and your lips slave at rolling away the skin from my flesh? It's that time of the year or of the night when you turn around your pillow letting it turn around you and you turn around your blanket letting it turn around you and you turn around those moths wondering at the insanities of a world as you slowly spiral around them together with candles alight at the ends of your fingers and glittering dust turned for the occasion fireflies around your ankles, the world you ache for behind the mirror lying on the floor reflecting your heels, your thighs, your silk from a lover's view and you touch its face looking for the secret door to make it all all right again. It's always that time of the year, day, night. The yoke crushing your chest composed of so many miles that your fingers bleed from counting and so many seconds that the doves tire from flying and you open the window inviting snowflakes to your lungs and sparrows to your eyebrows and words to the mottled paper you pirouette on then suddenly you smile seeing that which no one else except you has ever seen, will ever see - a rainbow in the falling snow.

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Waltz I dreamt about you, this morning, I dreamt about you this morning that we were waltzing, and then waltzing and waltzing and waltzing you, dressed in three layers of silk the third layer containing almost the whole of you except from the neck up and from the arms out and from the ankles down the other layers rustling between my right palm and your hip never allowing me to keep fingers on the same spot to absorb the heat, the undulation, the screaming flesh asking in its lost nakedness way underneath to melt in my palm. I? don't ask, I was dressed in that ridiculous ballet-dancer's attire leaving no place to either imagination or to scratching opportunities doing my best to keep a respectful distance from you, as per etiquette, with all except palms and eyes and heart and as we revolved around... don't know if the floor was flowers or sand or wood or thorn-less roses... the waves of frolicking sound kept hitting us again and again and again your bare feet leaving charred traces which my bare feet tried to step in without disturbing neither the violins nor the orchestra nor Aram Khachaturian himself, in flesh and blood, conducting the mirage. I killed the Masquerade, feeling in me the sudden rage of poetical death with Pushkin, Lermontov, Mayakovski, Yesenin wedding the absoluteness of beauty to the absoluteness of death in my mind and I tore your three layers of silk and my one layer of ridicule and looked for the thorns in the thorn-less roses upon which to drag your body and make love. Passion does not come any more passionate.

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Civilization Civilization. I started uncovering it slowly, delicately. First... the shoes. Followed the shirt, skirt, stockings, after a moment's hesitation and a nod of approval the whites, all of them, two. The majesty of civilization invaded my sight... Do you like it? asked a voice. I hesitated once again, before daring a frightened No, moving my head slowly left to right. I know, was the answer, and before I could move back my head right to left a primal tide took over civilization and attacked me with the savagery of stampeding wild horses or wild buffalos or wild... love? asked the voice. Never knew of such sweet savagery, before. Civilization started crawling back into the flesh, some resistance pockets still panting in anarchy, gashes closing, blood rivulets drying... Wild flowers, where did the wild flowers go? I asked, contentment making room for disappointment. Wild flowers? echoed the voice and the stampede was all over me once more horses and buffalos and love and... wild flowers? I wanted to live. I let my head hang above the precipice, allowing civilization to return yet making sure there was enough of wild flowers to last me a lifetime. I covered it all slowly, delicately. First the whites, then the stockings, skirt, shirt Lastly the shoes. Civilization hidden once more beneath the layers of so much reality. But the wild flowers still keeping me insane.

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Do You Think do you think it could snow in the kitchen, do you think I could carry a sledge to the kitchen’s door and with one shove against the wall reach underneath your dish-washing body waiting for you to fall atop of me to carry you through the sink, wall, water-pipes up that mountain where freezing to death is the only law except for lovers in lust and in dream and in love? do you think I would mind your detergent smelling hands underneath my garments? do you think Elvis could pop out of the loudspeaker in the living room, do you think he could grant us one of his Cadillacs and enough fuel to carry us half way through the sea southwards, the passenger’s door closing on your fluffy skirt’s hem as the book drops from your hand to the carpet and the wind ruffles your hair and your eyebrows while one of my hands ruffles the rest of you from belt up and the other from belt down and your feet rise high... well, to hold the steering wheel? do you think I would mind one of your hands ruffling me from the belt up and the other from the belt down? do you think you could give up your green pillow, do you think I could offer you the part of my body beneath my layer of coat beneath my layer of shirt beneath my layer of cotton to host your dreams packed in your brain packed in your head with your fists locked in mine and my lips locked in yours and as body... whose?.. locks in body... whose?... the green pillow explodes dragging with it the ceiling, the roof, the sky into the black of nowhere and us, with it? do you think I would mind green feathers around your blue eyes?

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Peek-a-boo lift the hem of your dress... no, not for me to peek but for your bare toes to step between hundreds of broken shells and leave sunken, swiveling imprints in sand's wet memory, lift it, a bit higher, so that waves will glide upon your ankles unhindered, and upon your knees, and between your thighs... see, told you, now the hem is wet, I guess you have to pull it a bit more, yes, I know, the wind likes to play around as well, bastard. oops, I peeked. it is the wind to blame, who else, I am just an advisory position. oh, no, not sorry, delighted.

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Bark Lean against the bark, let the resin of its tears dirty your cheeks as its wrinkles dig their age proudly in your flesh with groves, and splinters, and chrysalis leftovers, It remembers tears when your salt wouldn't feed its roots but your water splashed crystals, and the smoothness of skin before competing for wrinkles when you leaned your cheek against it upon a time, it remembers butterfly days, yours, and color, Hug it, it lives, leave it, it allows you to dance through its dead leaves and collect their dust in your upheld hem and in your fluttering hair and as you shuffle your barefoot flesh away I will shamelessly pull the hem over your head and make love to you.

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Gardens Gardens don't grow around you, there are no flowers, either, in the hollows of your heels, when the sun shines it is not in your eyes but between the hills, above the horizon. So why do I see gardens growing around you, and flowers budding in the hollows of your heels and where does it come from, that shine in your eyes which blinds me? * Here, he said, baffled, handing me the security video against a promise, on my mother's grave, to return it next day. I watched it, carefully. There was sand there, earlier in the day. There were daffodils, later, in the hollows.

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That Train Station That train station just meters away from the first time, from the event, the chill in fingers hesitating between blouse buttons timidly advancing to meet pale flesh smoldering underneath yet shivering with fright, with anticipation, with a word you forgot its spelling in all languages... desire. The slow penetration, between tautness of skin and flexibility of satin as fingers mount the soft mound of breast sacrificing liberty for the fire locked in that prison housing the gift of God to his humanity and humans to feed their mouth and senses. The first touch, the first moan, the first arousal as a taxi pulls up and we disentangle knowing that next time we entangle our bodies die together. The death before life.

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watcher don’t watch me when I watch you, you could not, even if you wanted. even if you knew. I am there, in your eyes when you watch yourself back in the mirror, your mouth full of toothpaste dripping inside your pajamas, sliding dreamily along sleepy breasts to caress sleepy nipples and navel, in your hands, when you wash your hair, when you comb your hair, when you tie your hair and the rubber-band eats into resisting roots it is me who relieves you of the pain with that touch that makes even the longest hair stand up like a steel wire and you look like the most gorgeous of all Medusa paintings, in your finger tips, those guiding the soap where even I could never penetrate... oh, I did?... and guiding the water drops to later chase soap’s invasion of privacy then the fibers to chase the drops then me, unknown to you, to settle there, in your shoulder’s roundness, before and after the strap comes on and comes off, before and after it slides into the sleeve and out of it, after you lean your cheek on it, and it stays there, in your knees, bent underneath your sleeping body when you try first the left side then the right side and finally you lie on your belly, your hands around the green cushion, I, in the warmth of that darkness so close to your beauty. I watch you, my eyes closed, my eyes seeing, don’t watch me, I don’t want you to know that I love you.

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etc. beep! you rush to the screen, your hands full of flour... damn, again this Viagra ad, the bastards spelling it via gra to fool the spam detectors. There is one detector they don’t fool, and your flour covered spam finger clicks a virtual button and via gra joins its brothers in sin and bin. More flour afterwards, some oil, salt, three eggs... beep! I hope they don’t go through the usual cycle again, you simmer, there is another email I am waiting for, and you rush to the screen once more. Damn, once more. They do go through the same cycle, now tempting you with sackfuls of m&m’s, colorful, tasteful... spam! your spam finger talks again, smearing a few keys with flour, and oil, and salt, and egg yolk and the invader dies. Yippee... you don’t feel like celebrating, you just scold the screen into the punishment corner and return to the kitchen. beep! No, they don’t fool you this time, you know that the next one will be honey tasting vaginal oil, and the next one... beep! Damn! You hesitate between carrying with you a heavy pot to the screen or nothing, and you prefer nothing just in case you lose control... Damn, damn! This time you mumble to yourself as the vaginal honey oil was the second beep. The first was an email from him. And you missed it by several excruciatingly painful seconds. Dear lover, please come... You do not faint, you are not the fainting type. You sit next to the screen leaving flour and oil and salt and egg and some late coming fried onions all over the keyboard, and you type in your order. Then return to the kitchen, humming. beep! You don’t care anymore, what comes next, usually?... ahh... the million dollars win. You can’t resist and peek at the screen... the stingy, penny-pinching, close-fisted bastards, only one hundred thousand this time. * You rush, towards me, I catch you, hug you, oh, that hard body that I missed carrying that laughter that I missed adorning that woman whom I missed. In the room. You still talk. I still listen. The unpleasant flight attendant, the handsome passenger, the warm coke, the via gra spam... “I know, I get it too,” I interrupt the flow, “voie gras,” and I try to impress you with my French accent. “No, that’s foie gras,” you try to impress me back, “that’s a different spelling, I’m talking about...” “I know it’s spelled differently,” I interrupt again, impatiently, “f like f...” Your finger shoots into my mouth, aware of my dirty spelling intentions and I choke on smells of lilac and promises of lust. “Mine is without s...” you specify, and I give up on the promises of lust for the right to righteous indignation, I pull my mouth away from around your finger to voice my protest... “Without ass?” then chase the finger again and let it invade me. For whatever reason, you pity me. In a gentle way. “Close your eyes,” you say. I have no choice but remove my mouth from around your finger once more, the voice of my protest breaking hearts (had there been any hearts around). “First no ass. Then eyes closed. What’s that, medieval inquisition?” “Close your eyes,” you repeat patiently, “brought you something.” Oh, that sounds promising. I obey. “Now, open your mouth...no! no peeking,” and I am left choiceless and lightless, relying on your kindness of heart... oh, no, I hope not foie gras, I wouldn’t mind the other thing without ass but not foie gras... I want to tell you but my mouth is open... I hear some rustling sounds, something squeezes itself between my lips, hard, I roll my tongue around it several times, suck it, lick it, it starts melting... ahmm... and then realization downs on me and I drop the a and the h to be left only with the mm... making sure it is exactly the same number of m’s as in the source of my delight, m&m’s... “Open it, again.” It wasn’t so bad first time around, what’s there to lose? and I open it again. I hear some rustling sounds, different, something squeezes itself between my lips, hard, I roll my tongue around it several times, suck it, lick it, for whatever reason it does not start melting, it even refuses to be swallowed and yelps when I try to bite into it... ahmm... and then realization downs on me and I drop the a and the h to be left only with the mm... trying my best to make sure it is exactly the same number of m’s as the number of p’s in the source of my delights, yet failing miserably as the m’s refuse to end turning my once coherent language skills into gasps of mm... mm... mm... Will it ever end? “Open your mouth,” I hear you. I’d rather die, but I cannot talk. I open it. “Stick your tongue out.” Okay, you may think you can fool me but I know when you get me ready for a portion of ice cream. Something engulfs my tongue, hey, it is not cold, actually quite warm, I roll my tongue around several times, suck it, lick it... well, its taste is reminiscent of honey... ahmm... then sudden realization downs on me. I hardly have time to drop the a and the h and the pants, and the rest of the story, unfortunately, will have to stay shrouded, in mm... etc.

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violin ...until one by one the cords snap, lash at my flesh cutting long, thin ruts alongside teeth and fingernails, till last. your muscles relax, your body turns rag, the moment gone. you spit pieces of skin and crawl from underneath me, offering me your tongue’s nostrum and infliction. who needs it more, you or me? who revels in the touch more, you or me? I hear a soft hum, cord-buds sprout anew and you mind-tune them to the accuracy of hair-thin crystals and lark-thin pitch and then offer me once more, your body, until one by one they snap into the euphony of ecstasy again.

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Watcher, Two I catch you, watching me when I undress. When I dress, when I shower in between and towel myself dry in between too but after. The shower. I imagine catching you watching me, when I sleep. When and if I snore, when and if I roll, when and if I am about to fall out of bed, knowing I will not acting as if I will, hugging me. And if I wake up hoping I will wake up further, to make love to you. I do not catch you watching me when you drink your milk leaving a white moustache for me to wipe away but I am not there to do it. Neither when you bathe, shivering, wet, handing me the towel but it falls to the floor, my hand is miles away. Nor when you slide in between covers, naked, and your hand cups your breast protecting the warmth I left behind.

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Sex-Maniac Soft, what is softer than chick’s fluffy down, the moment of birth, what is softer than anther’s yellow, powdery head, the moment before floral copulation, what is softer than you, lover? A human dandelion, your body a nation its citizens thousands of gossamery dandelion seeds stretching impatient necks at barely existing molecular tethers and dreaming of slowly sinking to fiery death in the sun. I almost forget... ...a touch, the end of my finger imperceptibly brushing against your skin even a mosquito won’t shy away from it, and transmutation sets in steely wires sending tiny sinews into the hearts of dandelion seeds and fluff, powder, gossamer turn fang, horn, talon while a scaly tail shoots up to grapple the sun and buries it deep inside my loins. Dandelion turned virago, death the only dream alive. Resurrection. I pull away from the shapelessness of the flesh rag draped all around me and watch fangs subside into fluff, horn into powder, talon into gossamer, I bite your lip, my mouth the only organ alive and I groan my dissatisfaction inside your ear... sex maniac!... who, me? the dandelion bats innocent eyes and my teeth melt inside its lips, you dreamt, lover. oh!... I try to fall asleep again, I guess I could if not for that rebellious sun fighting its way back to freedom from my loins. * Morning stings my eyes. I open one, two, I remember something... no, c’mon, ridiculous, a tail?... I start lifting the blanket, carefully...

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PS Today at breakfast the soft-boiled eggs were hard. And cold. It was raining, I missed an exit and had to spend an extra hour to find my way, the GPS is a piece of garbage, bought a map. I waited next to the machine, this is also a piece of garbage. Poor customer, I love him. I pity him. The part received is defective. Another day lost. Maybe I should start building machines myself. Drank a Coke. Ate a biscuit. No, lying, ate a few biscuits. Ate also a Turkish pizza. No, nothing like the Italian, it is meat and salad in a soft pitta. Probably spelling mistake. Called the office, read some emails, answered some emails, no salary raise. I didn’t expect any. Billions in profits have to come from somewhere, no? Went out for a smoke. Passive smoking, everyone else smokes so my lungs are darker than theirs. I should think of writing down their names, so I know who to blame when I die. Not that I will die of cancer, I have other plans. I want to die in bed, with you under me. Or above me, or in the shower with me, or undressing in front of me. Yes, this is a brand new machine, new generation. Should have stayed beta for another year. Sure, gives me a job - repairing the unrepairable, promoting the dogma, bullshitting the customer. I don’t bullshit the customer, they will fire me for the don’t of that statement. So what? Another part arrived. Wait. Back. DOA. That stands for Dead On Arrival. Our specialty, no money for salary raise but a lot for unnecessary double shipments. Another machine crashed, have to look into it. Sorry to bore you with details. Going. Kiss. PS are you naked?

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sails tie sails between fingers. tie sails between hairs, in pairs, in triplets and quartets and quintets, between eyelashes in sextets and around your waist, knees, ankles in singles. leave clothing home, who needs clothing between clouds when you let loose all sail ends and wild gusts of wind carry you beyond tree tops, beyond lark’s song? I try throwing flowers your way, to weigh you down, back to Earth, but my flowers hardly reach the bottoms of tree tops as you soar further, looking for the slit between sunset colored clouds to go higher... how high can you go on thousands of sails? I fall, exhausted, mid a mound of flowers still raining back down, don’t remember having thrown so many upwards. look, I hear a whisper in my ear, and I look, to see you laughing above me, your arms full of flowers I’ve never seen before. I don’t ask, I don’t ask where the sails are, I drag you down to me to cover your nakedness with my flowers and to soak the warmth you stole from the sun.

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covers the covers glide off you silk off satin... or maybe the other way around, my limited knowledge in all matters textile nullified to absolute zero by an uncovered greed for uncovered flesh, be it once silk off satin or satin off silk shrouded. you shiver, asleep in the chill, and I am too selfish to pull the covers back my eyes busy with the shadows my hands busy with keeping away from the shadows busying the eyes, my neighbor underneath using his broom-handle... yeah, neighbor, you’re welcome to quiet my heart beat and my howl. I turn on the radio, find a frequency in harmony with my mood and start dancing with your cover draped around me, some of your warmth still inhabiting it, captured perfumes dancing with me yet deserting me, slowly, the lonely, naked man and the dancing covers now alone on the stone tiles. come, I hear the whisper and the covers pull me towards the bed... too late I see the hand pulling the covers and too late I wish to turn the radio off and too early the shadows disappear under the covers and too late for me to run away as the shadows wake up to life and silk or satin or both engulf the whole of me... even the broom-handle’s regular beating is now music.

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The Fingertip Of Illusion And yet, it wasn’t the desert. The moon doing its best to impersonate the sun, the cars playing moving dunes, you were there. Mirage. I know, I tried to grab you, almost caused an accident. Hi, you said. It wasn’t you, it was the mirage. Hi, the mirage said. I didn’t answer, one doesn’t answer a mirage, certainly not a car mirage unless one is officially certified. I was only certified to drive a car not to talk to mirages, hi, it insisted There was no one else in the car, I could chance it, no one would know... hi, I answered hesitatingly, and the glow surrounding the you mirage deepened. Was it the smile? Fifth gear. fourth gear, fifth, sixth, back to normal speed, the ambulance diminishing behind me. Are you real? I asked, my finger going again for the empty air finding again empty air. No. Made sense. So what are you doing here? A screaming entity overtook me on the right lane, the ambulance having its revenge leaving behind a trail of howling Doppler and flashing lights. I missed you. I didn’t answer. Made sense. You miss someone, you visit someone. And if someone is far away you mirage someone. Elementary, my dear Watson. Yes, I know, not Sherlock, rather William Gillette. So what? Still elementary. Still, I couldn’t touch you. I wanted to touch you. I want to touch you. You started getting up. What are you doing? Mirages don’t answer, not when their top half disappears through the roof, carrying with it the ears as well. Sure, mirages can do it, they can also move around and sit on you. You moved around and sat on me. Face to face. I could still see the road through you, hold the steering wheel, the gear stick, what are you doing? I asked again once your ears descended back through the roof. You heard me this time. You said you wanted to touch me, no? I still couldn’t touch you, it was worse than touching a hologram. You need to use your hands. And who will drive the car? I will drive the car. Your hand stretched backward, your finger touching the windshield. Facing me, with your back to the road, with your hologram hands? Mirages can do amazing things, like letting you touch them. Willing to risk it? Willing to risk it? Of course willing to risk it, but only after getting back into the right lane, the cistern driver behind me making the sign of the cross three times, I wondered - did he see you getting out through the roof? I let go of the steering wheel, I cupped you breasts... didn’t feel a thing. Avidly, you said. Avidly I did, and suddenly there was breast flesh underneath my palms and thigh flesh upon my thighs and lip flesh against my lips... the car swerved wildly... hey attention!... I wanted to scream with a mouth filled with lust, my hands glued to your breasts, your wild laughter dying inside my lungs as the car settled back in its lane and our clothes melted and our bodies merged and I howled. Do all mirages do that? I asked, watching you seated again in the passenger seat, dressed, the safety belt across your chest, your hands in your lap, your eyes closed, pale, only your lips red. I have to leave, you said. Do all mirages disappear? I asked. Mirages do. Lovers don’t. You disappeared. The blinking blue light pulled me to a halt on the emergency lane. Sir, we received reports about you driving without hands. I heard them, but didn’t listen, my eyes riveted to a thin fingertip smudge on the windshield. The fingertip of illusion.

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One Toe Tango You danced on a coin, all of you on one toe twirling, undulating, you even tried a rock’n’roll step and almost overstepped the coin boundary, smiled, embarrassed and reverted to tango, a one toe tango, your specialty. You could have done it on half a coin... how did you do it on one, anyway? I threw your way a smaller coin. You jumped over to it, bent to collect the first one and drop between your breasts never a moment stopping your flesh and dresses flutter, I would have tested you with a 1/512 mohar if I had one, I did have though a paillette in my pocket... I threw it over. “Join me?” you beckoned. “Two on one paillette?” “I will carry you...” I jumped. You couldn’t carry me, of course, we stumbled together your hand snatching on the fly the last coin and dropping it in your cleavage parts of second before my hand dived the same way... “My money or my life?” you asked. “Your dance,” I answered rolling with you on the wooden floor, coins raining as you lost your clothing and your virginity.

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Grabbing The Simplicity Of Happiness Hey, Mr. DJ, how did you know it? Five fingers, open, and you got my radio in overload with those AC/DC guys telling me of the Highway to Hell, and I closed my little finger, not yet exhausted, almost happy. You followed with Status Quo’s statuesque, incomparable execution of Johnny B Good turning the nape of my neck into a bristling mess of steely bushes closing my ring finger and losing me some heartbeats, then chained it, most cruelly Mr. DJ, with The Stones beating me to a pulp with their version of personal Satisfaction and my middle finger closed as well, almost breaking the last phalange. I almost said give me Elvis and I die a happy man and you gave me Elvis and luckily I didn’t have to die since I didn’t commit yet even though I almost lost control of the car pumping the volume to competing levels with the power brakes and singing along T-R-O-U-B-L-E with everything I owned except my ass which was stuck to the unforgiving chair, my index fingers closing and joining its brethren. Sorry, Mr. DJ. I lied, it was a white lie, you don’t mind, do you? You don’t care either, I know. See, I’m not yet ready to die, not really, I still have my thumb open, waiting for my last song, she, and once she joins I close my thumb grabbing the simplicity of my happiness with a fist not even you, Mr. DJ, can open. Sure, I have to make love as well, that’s what I have the other hand for. And my mouth, oh, and my mouth.

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times times, I sit in front of my screen-paper my fingertips frozen on my keyboard-pen immobile, waiting for some miracle to take the images from my brain straight into my fingertips to translate them into the calligraphy of my keyboard-pen to spread the words on the brittleness of my screen-paper and once the resulting masterpiece of truth is ready to fold to seal to stamp to send with my email-post straight between your breasts, where you will put it anyway, if good if bad if wonderful if garbage. you will even smile, without reading it, knowing, what can I say which you don’t already which I didn’t already? times, I listen to my radio-orchestra my muscles rigid inside my pajamas-tuxedo while my toes take on a life of their own joined by heels tapping and ankles flexing below rigid knees upon a carpet-dancing floor waiting for some miracle to take the rest of my body there where my thoughts already gasp and sweat and whirl with your fingers at the other end of outstretched arms pulling you from time to time close enough for the tips of your breasts to touch my chest and the hard flesh of your thighs to flirt with that of mine in an unbreakable unwritten undeniable promise of later unclothed of the limiting effects of the pajamas-tuxedo, the radio-orchestra drowned by the ecstasy of gasps as we dance the amorphous dance of love making upon the comet ridden carpet-dancing floor till into oblivion and beyond. times, you are there. always.

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Naked Naked. Nakedness. Which of the two is Poetry? Your poetry, the one you are irresponsible for, the one you are irresponsibly flaunting around parading in front of my eyes, one and both and all as I see you with fingertips and nostrils and eardrums and lips and my senses overload into the near-death experience which is the prelude to life. Stop dancing. Stop painting the air with ribbons you forgot to tie to wrists leaving variegated streaks of molecular disturbances as you soap your stanzas and dry your rhymes and comb the unending flow of metaphors with long, slow movements turning me poetry slave and nakedness addict. Rotate slowly in front of the mirror, so the twins of me see the twins of you and all four of us join in an orgy of the senses chasing the colored streaks with butterfly nets and the breasts with cupped palms and the tingling skin with ointments stolen from our shared insides. Naked. Nakedness. The bliss in you. The passion in me. The Poetry we share.

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Naked, Two Naked. After I despoil you of your worldly belongings and your breath and your soul, curl modestly in the welcoming arms of a plushy armchair knees gathered to belly hair hanging low nothing showing but interminable skin and start reading. My poetry. No need for book. No need for paper or screen or voice no need for anything but the knowledge of me watching the skin and filling it up with pullulating whispers shooting out of seeds I harvested, earlier on, from same skin and its craves. Naked, I see nothing my hands don’t see as they wander shamelessly upon trembling topologies and shuddering morphologies investigating the spots desire visited so often and the spots desire visited never and the spots desire never left after encountering desire. Wait, don’t move!... too late, too late for me to not see beyond the touch of hands too late for me to retreat into make-belief indifference of creation as you advance towards me ordering me, naked, ordering me, supplicating, ordering me upon the soft bed of cold tiles morphing their melting ceramics to my back as my chest morphs its melting ribs to your breasts and topologies and morphologies and biologies lose hold on reality turning their owners a viscous, slushing puddle of prurience.

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Morning Shower You emerge from morning’s shower trailed by whiffs of orange flower, Leaving tiny, stylish puddles where your toe imparts its cuddles On the face of blushing marble, turning verse into a garble As that... goodness!... skimpy towel, shorter than a single vowel plants a promise in my bowel. I submit to dreams of passion, both king’s ransom and his ration, Rummaging through old confessions for those quiescent obsessions Big in prospect and in number, shaking off the lethal slumber When a brimming cup of fire rushes through my vessels mire lusting for your body’s lyre. You parade your dangling booty like God’s given right and duty When you innocently shiver, innocently bend and quiver, Innocently pull your stocking way beyond its mid-thigh docking, Evidently innocently... innocently?... evidently?... when I watch you rolling, gently? From temptation to salvation I will stop at sheer damnation, Counting sand-grains for one hour then a lifetime’s silo tower Pulling at that towel’s fringes, testing all your body’s hinges, Like magician, like musician in crescendo demolition as we crash, we join, we fission.

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Filling The Hours With Dust Filling the hours with dust, flowers cannot grow in dust. Passion, passion can. Like sand-flies, like sand-worms it copulates and thrives and grows feeding on leftovers of skin and leftovers of memories riding the taste hidden between teeth, carrying pieces of your tongue and food leftovers and muted screams. I spit in the dust, I cry, bleed, chew interminable mouthfuls looking for the lost seeds of crocodiles and flowers. I regard over my shoulder, behind me, the dust overflows from hours into days, weeks... what comes after weeks?... looming high above me threatening to topple over, to smother... “...hi...” I hear a thin voice. Is it yours? I don’t know, but suddenly dust turns into flowers.

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Conjurer You sit on the bench, eyes closed. You remember the bird on your shoulder, the puppy jumping around your feet. You smile, invisible to passers by same as the bird, the puppy, the memories. You raise your body, you never stop rising even when you are already fully standing when your toes stretch, their tips touching the ground, losing contact with the ground, you float. The puppy asleep in your pocket, the bird singing proudly past chickens past storks past larks... you don’t reach the sun, not even the clouds as you let the flimsy clothing drop off your shoulders remembering to hold the puppy, the bird, the memories, paying no attention to hawks circling with you, or maybe the earth is circling underneath and you and hawks and stretched toes hang there, above, motionless. You descend. Slowly, falling back into your clothes, sticking a hawk feather under the puppy’s collar and one under the bird’s wing... which kind of bird is this?... never mind, now it thinks itself a hawk and attacks a huge worm as the puppy starts jumping and yapping again and you start walking following the one smile followed by the many smiles and by a yapping dog and a piping bird trying not to be swallowed by a worm.

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Rewind The moment after, when death finds heavenly nest inside our exhausted flesh and we slide away from each other, sweat bonds stretching almost to infinity before breaking down to lash against the steaming skin then splash upon it giving way to silence. The moment during, when death dies and our threesome threshes like a pit of snakes beginnings and ends of flesh spluttering upon the walls leaving lilac shaped stains to drool down the brick joints and lilac shaped holes to gap through bedding and mattress and mind. The moment before, when death, humbly, knocks at the portal of our joined lips offering its purgatorial kingdom in return for consent to dress my fingertips its gossamer skin and rest there as I touch your button, your lace, your nipple.

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Where Four Leaves Grow There, where four leaves grow and clover follows looking upwards for the sun for your skirt’s insides for your hidden flesh, where the life hardened soles of your feet wade through green perfumes and the lust hardened tips of your breasts crash through white cotton and the three leaves cushion you and the four leaves penetrate your crevices and my five fingers tear and split and crush and... caress, after. There, where green stains paint abstract memories upon your discarded underwear and bees buzz and grasshoppers hop and ladybugs unladylike taste my liberated nakedness competing fiercely your eyes, your hands, your lips, where we stopped counting passing cranes and admiring visiting swallowtails and imitating soaring diving soaring larks when we dragged flesh inside flesh once again alongside three leaves and four leaves and fingers. There, where four leaves burned. And will grow, next time anew.

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Locations Where is your hand? Supporting your chin? Cutting cucumbers, pouring milk, dusting furniture? Hesitating between supporting your chin or cutting or the rest and holding a pen to write me a poem or a pencil, maybe, that needs sharpening or hitting the keyboard, single fingered? Fisted? Your eyes? Yes, your eyes, question mark. Do they chase the withering, falling apple tree flower or the titmouse nesting between the tree’s branches or the apples, growing, patiently? Your shirt, do you wear it? Your skirt, do you wear it? Naked, are you naked? Are you willing to undress for my thoughts? You walk in the room, pick up a crumb, reach up to a book, pirouette, almost falling against the table corner your breast quivering, your buttocks bouncing, your calves’ muscles tightening, stressing almost in the steel of making lust, making love, making legendary promises before you tiptoe out of my thoughts and into your clothes, again. You hum. Which song? Is it a poem? I click the pen shut, the rest is on the keyboard. The rest is in my mind.

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Vision Was you, or visions grim on mountain’s crest Alight with starlight haze, astride a mare, The hand dragging the sun to sea deep nest Same maiden hand that fed me summer share? I watched the swarm of butterflies and bees Turn rainbow carpet under crushing hooves Then cloth the sun, his anger to appease... Is it my mind, that of your wine reproves? A hand, I know the feel I know the voice, Yet I know not the neigh which follows suite, I turn around in perfumes to rejoice And clouds of butterflies my morning greet. I wondered, if from me with sun you part. “Then wonder not, yours be my nest, my heart.”

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I, Pelican following the BP oil ecological disaster I, Pelican do not accuse you, Human, for hunger. Do not accuse you for the conquest of my world for the perpetuation of your species, for satisfying your hunger, your pleasure, allaying your frights and creating hideouts to protect you from the rigor of storms and tools of death to protect you from the rigor of enemies knocking at your door and threatening your tribe and your whelps and your water, for creating tools of barter to take and give and create and live. I, Pelican do not accuse you human for existence. I, Pelican accuse you, Human, for greed. For heartlessly robbing the world and killing its sons and raping its daughters more than your need and less than your worth. For indifference. For selfishness. For arrogance. For poison. I, Pelican accuse you, Human, for genocide.

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acrobatics. mental of course. no, not only make a hands stand. ok, a head stand would do as well... no, no need for trousers, that would be counter productive, skirt is perfect, no, length wouldn’t matter, gravitation takes all short, long, plated... no, not a narrow, tight one gravitation hates narrow tight. it hates shoes as well, don’t know why, maybe because they keep hitting it? still, stop wobbling like an upside-down Foucault pendulum, no, you may not lean your heels to the wall, I have to keep moving around you... hey, thanks. for what? for the white, I couldn’t write black on black, or blue on black, ok, maybe green on red, or blue on yellow, I prefer though black on white, one day they might be an exhibit in the museum of the famously dead together with newspapers, books, parchments... be still, please, I am about to start writing, just underneath... hmm... in this position it is probably just above the elastic rim and I wouldn’t want to stain your skin. I know, I know, you wouldn’t mind but I would, it would annihilate my unique masterpiece and the first digit is crucial, that small i... yes, small, not capital, it says the same but I can get more of them this way... aha, you smile, happy - aren’t you? stop it! stop it, don’t tickle, surely not there, didn’t know one can make a head stand with just one hand and one head, yes, yes, I know you have only one head, you know what I want to say... good, this is much better, now let me start going around and write on, you can close your eyes, you lust maniac, you cannot peek underneath my trousers I tied them with bicycle clamps, he he, I know you better than that... ok, just finished with the u, time to start over again. yes, you can sleep, you will know when I get there, you will know because I will know, God help me... * my turn? what do you mean my turn? no, I refuse categorically to wear a skirt. ok, without skirt... do I have to? ok, fine, no trousers, just careful, gravitation may not help certain aspects... like that? happy? stop tickling, I didn’t. no! I didn’t, it was the pen tip. of course I heard of mouth painting... don’t you dare! we are serious artists, poets, we write! we don’t smear, splash, spill, splick... sure, I know, just keeping alliteration alive and net spiders unaware of any erotic intent, are you already at the second letter? not even the first? so what are you doing? what do you mean looking, looking what? ok, looking at what? sorry, oh, so sorry, oh so sorry, damn gravitation and its inefficiency, may I propose to continue... later? yes, yes, what I meant to say was... after?

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I, Once Human following the BP oil ecological disaster I, the last one. The last of the damn species. I wade to my knees in the brown-black-sticky muck cluttered with floating belly-up tunas and dolphins and sharks and whales the stench of rot not even reaching my nostrils its chemistry cowering under an inch thick film of oily glut and clouds of migrating cockroaches. Why am I still alive? if not for death, scared to use its scythe one last time and then be left behind, alone, to die of eternal hunger. Death, do you like cockroaches? And after roaches die? A piece of ice floats by, not bigger than a dead whale. A white bear cub, wailing, pulling desperately at the blackened, dried tit of its dead mother. I wish I had a rifle to put it out of its long misery. I wish I had a rifle to put myself out of my long misery. I wish you a swift death, cub, that’s the only blessing left in me. I, once human, watch my destruction, and start walking back through bloated carcasses of horses, dogs, pelicans, and once humans.

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nightie we were so definitively happy, we decided to celebrate. my prize? my body. your prize? your body. where? inside my nightie. where??? inside my nightie. I watched you unfold it, then unfold it, then unfold it... what size is it, quintuple X? you unfolded it, then unfolded it... if I was the smoking kind I would have had time for a whole cigars’ box, big only on the outside, just right on the inside. will I find you, once inside? I found you, easily, it was nice, and smug and... tight. do you really sleep in this thing? you preferred not to answer, just to pat lovingly. luckily your boobs are small. yes, luckily, yours are big. she did not hurt my pride, she complimented my belly. muscles, I remarked. yeah, sure... she answered, noncommittally, patting again. stop patting, or there will soon be no place inside here. there is always place for this... inside here... and you (dear readers) should imagine an italics inside italics for this and here which I cannot, unfortunately, render. I started struggling out of my clothes, just imagine - undressing inside a nightie, big enough on the outside to drape the Empire State Building small enough on the inside to accommodate a waspy Cleo(patra), ridiculous, no? you just undid some clasps, zip, it all flew to your feet like oil... hey help me!... you helped me, snickering and patting, patting and snickering, snickering and snickering... the last combination is unthinkable of. here, better? there wasn’t enough place, we had to do something about it... we did. we loved, we lusted, we launched, we lecherously lamented, we... alliteration is such a wonderful tool, especially when you oh’d, then ooh’d, then oooh’d, then omg’d, then a variation on that last one which is not suitable for the innocent eyes of you innocent readers... once more!... you continued your alliterative onslaught, oops! I had to curb your enthusiasm with an alliteration of my own, after all there is a limit to everything. we didn’t crawl our way out of the nightie, after all it was cozy, sweaty, stinking the right way, my limbs numb so they didn’t bother me anymore, I left them where they were, other things numb too, but as long as they didn’t bother you I preferred to leave them where they were as well. were there birds painted on the nightie? I asked. it sounded completely different, my lips were numb too, but there’s no way to write the differently way. you understood, though, ears don’t get numb, somehow. no, these are real ones. aii! that was me, they were real and they were really pecking. they are envious, they don’t like being left alone. you mean you sleep with all of them, every night? no, only when you are here. same with the butterflies. they don’t like being left alone? no, they peck. so what do you propose to do? let them in. nooo!!! I didn’t have the time to cry before you lifted the nightie’s hem and several swarming nations of birds and butterflies and bees (bees?...) and grasshoppers (grasshoppers?...) thank God no skunks... me and my big mouth... and several skunks joyfully joined us crawling clawing chirping climbing... thank God, I heard my self saying. thank God for what? you rustled in my ear. that pooping does not alliterate with the c things. yeah, me and my big mouth... we fell asleep, finally. what is it, some magic nightie? I think I heard myself mumbling. no, a magic story, I think you mumbled back. I did not learn my lesson, I should have stopped invoking God every time I wished not for something. thank God lust is over, I snored away into blissful sleep. yes, as said already. me and my big mouth...

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Sweat I watched it, the lazy blob of sweat as it made its way from the bottom of your neck along the upper swell of your breast reaching the nipple and... hanging on there. as if there was no gravitation in its world or as if gravitation all but stopped at the tip of a nipple and a sweat blob could rest there indefinitely laughing at me, my impatience, my thirst. I pounced... bastard!... it dropped just the moment my mouth was about to engulf it and I found myself unexpectedly with a mouthful of nipple, and breast and flesh, bastard! I wanted to change my mindset to mouthset and scream yet giving in to mind over mouth command I started suckling. I made myself seem ignorant, watching a twin to the first make its way upon the swell of the other breast, reaching the end of the nipple, smiling at me pompously the brother bastard, knowing I stood no chance... well, brother blob, you have a surprise coming... and I pulled away like lightning away from my nipple the thunder clap in my wake cracking the glass pane pounced, bit... aiiiiiiii!... you moaned... got it! I hummed wordlessly, my tongue roasting the sneaky invader, decimating it, smearing it, licking it... death to sweat! written all over my radiant countenance, before closing my eyes deliriously and suckling my way into another after life. I heard it, rather than saw it, was it the swish, the trailing current of air or my sixth sense?... and I opened one lazy eye to watch the third of the family making its way slothfully, covertly, imagining itself unseen, unheard, unawares of ever vigilant me following its advance between dense eyelashes as it descended between your breasts, down to your navel, making a half-detour around it, down, further down, bastard! bastard! bastard! I wish I was a frog to swipe it out of this world with one long, thick, sticky, black, sudden-death tongue... I pounced, hit, missed... oh, shit! ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh!... I heard, oh, what? ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh... whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?... I heard again, in my mind this time, and inside parts of a second I understood that there is, out there, a fate much worse than death, oh, poor sweat drop, and I watched it dissolve into a cloud of disappointed fury smiling to myself and giving in to the incomparable pleasures of sweat spotting... oh, sure, and spot suckling, what else?

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Memories Of Nakedness I rummage through memories of nakedness, then leaf through, slowly, then rummage again, almost desperately looking for a specific corner of your body I forgot its accurate shape, and color, and smell... ha, corner, there is nothing resembling a corner in your body, not even your teeth not even after they finish feasting on me. I rummage further, is this your toe or your breast? and I feel the smack on the back of my neck as the memory of you laughs and shoves one full breast into my mouth doing its best to choke me, trying to shove the second one in as well, hey... easy, your breasts may need me another day or days or more. At times, in an attack of over righteousness I try to dress your memory’s nakedness with layers of cotton, or silk, or plastic or Diolen or Tergal or Dacron or whatever other polyethylene terephthalate’s man’s insane mind has conceived and your memory smacks me once again “nakedness is righteousness” it screams then whispers then caresses then snuggles against my skin bringing along the memory of memories and twining the memory of my nakedness with its own and they both ignite and burn like dry leaves. I stop rummaging. Soon I will have reality.

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Madonna You held my body in your lap, across your thighs. Like Madonna holding the bleeding body of Jesus. But I am Jewish, I complained. So was he, you alleviated my worries, pulling out the nails from my flesh and dropping them to the freshly plowed ground. Do you think they will sprout flowers? I asked, groaning in pain. No. Poetry, you smiled my pain, plugging my holes with fistfuls of clay and fistfuls of kisses.

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Disagreements You dragged your fingers through sand, five traces one less deep than the rest, there, where you broke your fingernail last night. Half of it still in my back, I refused to let you pull it out. It will get infected if you leave it in, you said. It will get lost if you pull it out, I said. I poured sea water in the traces, then shells, then seeds then sand over the seeds and sea water over the sand. They will never sprout in there, you said. They will if I tell them you plowed the ruts, I said. The beach was deserted, just a few gulls, some egrets, a crab crawling backwards then sidewards, a few lumps of dry seaweed a pearl, then some more pearls. Plastic, you said, pointing to the through-hole. Nacre, I said, pointing to the empty shells around. You’re a child, you said. I am a child, I agreed for the first time that day, and to prove it I made love to you, rolling to a new spot then to a new spot then to a new spot... carefully avoiding to break the glass that kept forming underneath you. Hot, you barely breathed, spitting clumps of sand and malformed glass beads from your mouth. Couldn’t go on agreeing with you for the rest of my life. Searing, I disagreed, collecting the glass beads in my mouth and letting them slaver like thick, steaming goo between our locked lips.

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Miss You Miss you. Miss the chocolate in your mouth, melted, with liqueur and bits of cherry and bits of tongue which you feed me when I expect least. Miss the tips of your nipples, after you dip them in the glass of wild-berry wine after you stoop over me before the first drops hit the back of my throat before the rest of your breast follows. Miss the trail of honey, that you smear from the tip of you toe upwards, beyond ankle, beyond knee, beyond... no, below navel which my bloodhounding mouth follows dying in the anticipation of not knowing which way we will make love. Miss the quiet, of the sticky bed clothing of your fingers searching the leftovers of chocolate and wine and honey through the variety of my body and mine caressing your hair, just caressing your hair.

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white thighs your thighs, white, warm, soft, deadly like a polar bear’s embrace like a cloud of pure cocaine like the snows of the Kilimanjaro punctured by that sleeping crater about to rumble about to quake about to wake up and swallow me whole in its fire. and if they were black? you mean black like the insides of closing crocodile jaws, like the depths of a diamond’s mine like unpolished ebony like the heart of coal starting to glow at the edges sizzling sparking sputtering until it becomes glowing white warm soft deadly like... you always know to twist it around, no? i always miss them.

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oh, lover mine like wine divine, if andromeda owned your grace deity would not have fallen prey to humanity’s massacring mind and philosophies, if venus owned your touch seven planets would have been named after her and the sun her son, if cleopatra owned your word egypt would have sat on rome ’s throne, i dwell in your smell, when odors of flesh take over from perfumes of flower and love turns lust before turning love once again with dry hay and uprooted grass and crushed mushrooms hanging in the air to block our nostrils and our throats and fight desperately for supremacy with returning waves of jasmine and lilac, and all i remember is the joy of surrender, with white cottons peeling off white skin and white skin peeling off stretching muscles and stretching muscles vibrating in the pain of imitating the song of whales and the swish of comets and the beauty of memories to come.

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Halogen Paradise No vision. No, no chance. No light passing through you, no frozen mist floating around you no weird sounds. Too many details. Real. The long dress reaching to your ankles, stains of sweat a few creases one part of the hem hanging lower, loose, I knew you naked underneath, your hair unkempt... or was it? You raised your hands to your sides, muscles relaxed palms relaxed fingers relaxed, just sufficient effort to fight gravity and start undulating like ribbons in a light breeze the rest of your body following your hips your chest the tiny breasts oscillating like a pendulum left right left right from time to time loosing synchronization and bumping into each other then left, right, left... you closed your eyes, the Lo-Fi emanating from the computer’s loudspeakers speaking of dreams, past magic, past wonder, past sounds in frequencies not below 10 kilohertz and not above 12... who cared about kilohertzes when the willow in you took over and all of you immersed in present magic, present wonder, present sounds?... I feared an anti-climax as I dragged my underwear’ed self to my feet let my arms hug your waist and my screeching vertebrae joined yours joined the limited hertzes and we grinned as we grimaced and eased ourselves into our private, small, halogen paradise.

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Nothing To Do With Brecht Stop! I said, as you moved barefoot between the shells. You stopped. I took a stick and traced a circle on the sand around you. What are you doing? you asked, misapprehending. I am preparing a new dictionary, I answered. So? still misapprehending. I just defined paradise.

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Pollen Freedom I lay under the willow. Butterflies tied to knots on its branches fluttering incessantly, the branch-tips tickling my face as they dandled up and down and sideways, as the butterflies tried to tear away from dance slavery and sunless shadow. I saw you approaching tiny scissors in your hand and carefully start cutting the tiny strings and chains and ribbons liberating tens, hundreds, thousands of butterflies, all the butterflies to pollen freedom. And now, who will tickle my face? I asked, upset. You started pulling the branches, up and down and sideways jumping above me from time to time with a girlish giggle and making me forget the tips of branches with the tips of your toes and the hem of your dress and visions of shadowed nakedness fluttering high above my eyes. Who are you? I asked, not upset anymore, curious. You lay down next to me taking me inside your skirts, inside your hair, inside your skin calling for the butterflies to feed your lips then feeding me the nectar drops building on the tips of your teeth. I, am the one to feed you, too, pollen freedom.

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Naked Moment Put on your long, red dress, doesn’t matter you don’t have one, put it on. Put on your three-inch high-heeled shoes too, ...yes, I know, doesn’t matter... your elbow-length gloves and your heart-shaped sunglasses and gold-threaded stockings, of course, the Picasso reproductions on your fingernails and the Van Gogh reproductions on your toenails and the zeppelin sized diamond on the third finger both hands assorted with the apple sized emeralds hanging from your ears... don’t worry, they will not rip your earlobes to shreds as you put them on even if you don’t have them the same like the diamonds and the sunglasses and the high-heeled... and the... Put it all on, all, leave nothing to thought or imagination then look yourself up in the mirror and let me see you, with my eyes, with my senses, with my desires... what do you see? What do you see that I see? Naked! Oh, how did you guess it, how did you see it, how did you acquire my eye sight beyond the red and the zeppelin and the hanging apples, how did you?... I? Told you? Unfair. It isn’t fair that even my mind is not invisible anymore, that even my senses, my needs, my wishes, my wish. My desires. My desire. To undress you. Completely. Naked! Take it off, all of it. All you don’t have and all I don’t see and the long red dress, and the high heeled shoes and the gloves and the reproductions, the apples, the zeppelins, the sunglasses, your smiles, your sighs, your sunshine, just leave me your body. Your nakedness. Your lust. I want to make love to you. Now!

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Critic You sit, one leg bent underneath you. Then you switch to the other leg. Then both until thousands of needles visit your thighs and you lower both feet to the floor and start jumping until the blood circulates again and you sit down again, almost same posture, eyes glued to the screen chewing... something, maybe an apple? You steal a glance my way and I make as if I don’t see busy counting the letters on that book’s page I don’t really read. Your eyes back to the screen mine back to you, counting. Counting the short laughs the long laughs the in-between laughs, the frowns and the questioning stares, the occasional tear, sometimes more than occasional, another glance my way, your hand to your breast at times, between your thighs at other times, rarely, meaningfully. You finish. It is the moment to light a cigarette if you were smoking. Liked it? Loved it. The moment for my cigarette if I was smoking. Biased. To the core, I complain, enjoying it nevertheless. Not biased, you lie, knowing I expect you to lie. I like the way you write, you tell me what I want to hear, just perfect, no need to change anything... and you leave the softness of the chair for the smell of my skin, closing your eyes your hand leaving the haven of your thighs to look for mine. I am ready. My hand finds your belly’s skin and starts tracing the route of higher interest, so often traveled. ...though... oops, ...though I would remove the second girl in the first chapter, not that it would be absolutely necessary, the action might have been better located in London, you think you could cut the number of words to half and add three Germans yet remove one horse and maybe the murder should not take place but be replaced, possibly, by a torrid love scene... what about an alien?... and the woman’s mother must be called Marietta and if her father instead of being a lawyer in Vietnam could have opened a hot-dog stand in New York then you could add a Mafia character, blond, with... I bite you. My hand squashes the gravitational center of your body and smells of grapes and woman invade my nostrils as you bite back your hand responding in kind, no grape nor woman smell in my body’s gravitational center response as it drags us until we find ourselves somewhere, unknown, in this galaxy. You chuckle. After the explosion, after the quiet. Don’t change a damn thing, you say, and I don’t know anymore if you laughed at me earlier on, before, or now, after. I decide I don’t care. Before, after, biased, true... all I want now are the grapes. And the woman.

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Not Only For The Insane Don’t sit with me, sit on me. Then let me sit on you. Then you on me. Then vice-versa. What about clothes? Clothes? What about clothes? Do we still wear clothes? Eliminate clothes, exterminate clothes, extirpate clothes, at my count of three... Don’t sleep next to me, no, don’t, don’t sleep. Plow my flesh and rake my flesh and invade my... ...flesh? no, mind, with my howls and my yelps and my brays as you find the tools of music lost ages ago in the darkest caverns of my body and you prime them and you tune them and you conduct the orchestra with all your countless fingers and teeth and rest of tools of mass destruction and of mass music until I howl and yelp and bray like Pan’s flute... Don’t make love to me. Make love to and with and against and between and inside and outside and all over me. Don’t make love to me. Make love to me and you and us and together and apart before sunrise and after sunset and after the before and before the after and don’t let butterflies hide the sun. Sorry... You’re not to blame, you don’t control the flowers in your wake... Curl between my thighs. Paint my toenail. Bite half my lip, then the other half. To make it last longer. Don’t. Talk. But... Don’t. Talk. I will break your fingers between mine and your teeth between mine and your ribs between mine and when you ask for more I will break your fingers between mine and your teeth between mine and your ribs between mine and your nipples and elbows and knees and loins and when you ask for more I will tell you of the rainbows I unpainted from the sky for you and the roses I drained the red from for you and the snow I melted into yellow daisies with blue hearts... And what will you do with so much color? Oh, tell you that I love you, oh, tell you that I love you.

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...after love? I miss your hair tickling me, making me scratch sneeze suffer making me comb its drops of water in long long strokes after love sweat shampoo shower love sweat shampoo love sweat love and who cares for sweat shampoo shower after love? I miss your fingernails scratching me, missing my jugular on the way to my spine correcting their mistake the long way around down then up with a long pause in between stations and in between thighs finding my jugular again and fighting for possession with your teeth and who cares for life after love? I miss your songs lullabying me, feeding me the virtuality of seedless, chewed cherries and pineapple juice with tangs of apple and pepper and woman caressing me with the sounds of knowledgelessness of word and certainty of knowledge of intent, drowning me in your milk I’ll never know and have always known and drank from those pores you allowed me to, all, and those nipples you allowed me to, all, telling me of your past and who cares for future after love?

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Phone I can almost hear the clapping sounds bare soles on stone tiles... clap, clap, clap... as you rush to the phone hand stretching to pick up the receiver, my ring. You know it is my ring, what matters how? My ring and you know it is my ring and you fly, almost an arrow, almost there, reaching... Freeze! I freeze you. In mid motion. In mid stretch. In mid air, are your feet touching the tiles at all? Do you feel? Do you know? No, you don’t, you never will once I release my mental hold on your body and you flow on and you reach and you pick but now... Freeze! You are frozen. Rigid. Stone. Stone? I let my mind flow into the room, lazily, I have time, why rush pleasure when pleasure is the slow drop of honey and the sticky goo of drying sweat and the long stretch of elastics before they give in, give up, break... zinggg!!! I let go of the bra clasp and it zings against your bare skin pinching it slightly. You’ll wonder, was it a mosquito bite? I make an effort, rein my puerile, undisciplined instincts take a step back and watch. Oh, just watch. Oh, just watch, and the difficulty of this Oh, just watch’ing is almost as insupportable as the difficulty of Oh, just wait’ing, the other half of the non-identical twinship with the meaner, more miserable Oh, just wait looming in its interminability. I near you, the Oh, just touch slightly weaker than the Oh, just wait yet slightly stronger than the Oh, just watch and I suddenly decide to give in to it, puerile or not, it is natural, no? It is the other way around that is not natural, no? That’s it, done, having won with this Oxfordianly profound argumentation my Spiderwebly feeble case in the definitely biased courts of law of my mind I approach, I reach, I... I... I... no, not yet, sorry, I watch, I just watch. Forgive me? I just watch. Oh, the pleasure. Your buttocks. The see-through white cotton ready to burst at the seams ready to uncover the magic underneath and for a moment I toy with the idea of running a fingernail along the dark line and see it rip apart in front of my eyes, liberating, proudly... my palms cupping... Hard, tense, the flesh the smoothness of a teenager’s the muscles the power of a twentyfiver’s you, at least twice that age yet your buttocks flowing into smooth, powerful thighs flowing into narrow ankles fit from my thumb fingertip to middle fingertip grip... you sure you did not lie about your age woman? youngster? child?... no, you did not, I guess when I reach your toes, knobby with the weight of life and childbearing and caring and carrying this body through the hardships of being, my first touch, I kiss your big toe. I dared, that’s it, taboo broken, shall I move now on to your belly? Where from this tautness? This elasticity, that flesh hiding underneath your limply hanging t-shirt the muscled trampoline in its perfect harmony with my pounding weight when I test its resilience and my immortality on those occasions when I investigate the reality of wonder and find that paradise is just a rung on the ladder to final immolation, oh, memories invading when I insert my index finger inside the elastic band and the irresistible wish to pull down invades me, the last step between fascination and madness and my finger slides out fighting madness for the memory to come, soon, too late yet soon, hey, what about sooner? I get on my toes, peepingtom’ing I let my line of sight penetrate the shadows of the t-shirt’s upper hem following your cleavage all the way to where the impertinent cups conquer your hanging flesh still wobbling slightly from the sudden freeze, half a nipple showing my mind a mush my need a volcano and I give in to puerility and all and my palms slide in between textile and flesh cupping those girlish, ridiculously small breasts and letting them mold inside my hand shaping themselves to my palm lines and to my fingerprints and to my clutching phalanges... I pull back, in horror, I almost lost control of the freeze and your head moved a fraction my way, oh, no, shameful, shameful, shame on me my hands slide out my face the red of dying poppy, I float around you once again, then once again, then once again, then... I find it hard and I finally pull away, the whole of me, even my lingering hands which trace a last path along your ribs... “Hello!...” I hear your panting voice in the receiver, “you wouldn’t believe it, I am fully covered with goose bumps...” I hear you laughing, “...probably the draft... damn!...” some undefined noises, what happened? I ask, “damn mosquitoes, guess where it bit me... and it is not even mosquito season...” and I sit back and just listen, delighting myself, hating myself, oh, miserable me. Why the hell didn’t I give in fully, completely, totally to my childish, infantine, puerile instincts? I may have had some more material for my bouts of lust poetry. And you, you may have had also some additional, tougher, unanswered questions than just about that one, single, isolated mosquito bite.

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Mirage I see you, the first time that I see you... dressed. You smile, why do you? My mind, that devilishly lustful machine that relentlessly keeps undressing, denuding, disrobing you suddenly going in reverse, like a movie reel turning backwards and panties slide up your ankles bra piles its textile upon your breasts, pantyhose, skirt, shirt, shoes, eyeglasses... eyeglasses? You wait. In my mind, for my words, for my appreciation. Dressed. Bedecked. Blooming. Beautiful. You smile. I melt. My words flow, I don’t even know telling you about the bloom the beauty the smile and you bloom more and your beauty grows and your smile widens and then I tell you more and you start laughing and you blush... everyone applauses and no one knows... Over. Everyone left, you sit down, exhausted, close your eyes. I snap, the mirage not yet over, never, the last echoes not yet over, never yet I suddenly start shivering as the primitive urge takes over once again and I undress, denude, disrobe you and make love to you, violently like a hurricane rushing through a forest like a petal falling down to earth like a memory about to get born.

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Mights A belligerent, whoring Earth passes out poisonous gases from thousands of pussing wounds contorting itself helplessly in a caging, gravity straitjacket and screams for deliverance and motherhood, A silent, horny Asteroid hurls mindlessly through space eagerly looking forward to the howl of colliding atmospheric atoms disintegrating into the chaotic fire of impregnating Earth, like a celestial phallus bound on birthing destruction, An indifferent, crawling Chronos watches it all impassively, from time to time roaring in star splitting laughter when the cosmic rays of a freshly designated nova punitively hit those puny, humanoid creatures trying to measure their measuring skills against immeasurable, mighty himself, A hungry, famished knot of berserk gone humanity doesn’t give a damn about Earth or Asteroid or Chronos and traps all three inside joined fists and joined mouths and joined hips defying straitjacket and fire and nova to birth, for moments few, a child called passion. And love? she asks. Without it, there would be no passion.

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Written In Stone Some people read clouds. Others read the bottom of coffee cups guessing the future. They claim they read the future and charge you a dollar. Or more. They lie but, hey, they have to make a living after all. Some others, still, read porn magazines though the text there is just a modern artist’s idea of framing the pictures, and since no one reads frames there is no actual reading performed. Who’s to complain, not I, I do it as well from time to time. I mean - read the frames. Yeah, sure. Yet I do read stones. No, not Rolling Stones, those I do as well but them I just listen to, I read stones, real stones - marble, tiles, ragged pebbles thrown haphazardly, stones. You know, like... stones. Did you ever? At times I freeze in front a frozen flow of natural lines and I start seeing demons, other times I see horses, flowers, once I even saw Garfield. He wasn’t as fat but it was him, doubtlessly. Actually, nobody did seem to ever have asked the question - does anyone know if Garfield is male? It cannot be, now, a male could never be as conceited and as lazy as Garfield, not even my neighbor. And he is she. But that’s beside the point. Today I saw you. In stone. Clean your mind, woman, no - I wasn’t reading any frames and the frames’ content I was reading - no, they did not look a bit like you. Nor you like them... hey - who’s conceited now? Told you. Today I saw you. And you looked like you. I even tried to kiss you and then I had to run away since I heard someone dialing 101. I guess cops. Or ambulance. Or the fire brigade. Or her/his lover to ask for details to how they call it. He/she should have dialed 5-6-8-3. Yes, code, find the code and if you don’t then I stop reading stones. Or seeing you in them. Or kissing them. Or wishing they were you. I saw also a dog, no, no cats there - a dog. He was sitting on your head, sure - reading stones allows for strange things, strange people read them after all so you have to make allowances, so this dog, NO! I don’t know what make the dog was - Chihuahua, Big Dane, King Charles, Jonathan or Made in China, does it matter?... what matters was that it was there on your head and you were feeding swans. I am not really sure, swans or alligators, one of the two but your hands - one had four fingers and one two - were throwing crumbs and making strange signs. These were probably alligators, I doubt if swans would have bitten off your fingers tough once a goose tried to bite mine. I was a kid. I remember getting home all tears and a goose hanging on to my finger, my mom was nice to it and fed it corn to get my finger loose, popcorn - mind you. No feet. You, on the stone, no feet and better so or I would have started dreaming what these feet end in and the he/she dialing 101 would have seen worst than just kissing, imagine... I would have made it into youtube. Maybe even Guinness. I miss you. I love you. Tomorrow I will find me another stone. Probably a softer one. One never knows.

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Trite I don’t want to talk about angels, everybody talks about angels. I don’t want to talk about flowers, everybody talks about flowers. I don’t want to talk about butterflies, I talk about butterflies. A lot. I want to talk about you, nobody talks about you. No, no, I don’t mean it disrespectfully, I also know this is not true, well, not entirely but I have to say it this way because this is poetry, and poetry has certain rules which I do my best not to follow, okay? You. The human, the woman, the poet. The one who was once born and once has given birth and once will die and in between molds sand into pebbles with tips of toes and breaks sunrays into rainbows inside dew hanging on spider webs with tips of eyelashes and steals paint from the green of leaves and from the yellow of nuggets and from the white of snow to smear with tips of finger-brushes upon unfurling wings of nascent butterflies... Oops, didn’t I say no butterflies? Sorry, unforgivable, I know, incorrigible as well as I didn’t foresee talking about you. Forgive me, nevertheless? Please don’t, otherwise the rest of this poem goes down the drain. You. The one who dresses, the one who undresses, the one who makes love. To me. Make love... who invented this stupid euphemism? What does it mean ‘make love’? What does one make here, actually? One makes shoes, one makes faces, one makes fun of someone... but make love? What’s wrong with good old ‘copulate’ from good old ‘copulare’ which is nothing else than good old ‘to join’? So more accurate if not for the complaining, pristine ears of eternally virginal spinsters of both sexes who are dying to copulate, ha, yet don’t dare to, ha ha. Side tracking. I know, apologies, side tracking from the main, from you undressing into bare flesh clothing bare flames before, from you creating a sea drowning into its own gales and slamming into my ears during, from you dissipating into glittering diamonds exploding upon my skin after... Hell, why not copulate (sorry, one track mind) why fecundate and not copulate for insects why pollinate and not copulate for flowers?... Oops, didn’t I say no flowers? See, talking about you and I slip into butterflies then later on into flowers... What next? No, I will not say it. No, no way, no way!!! and one more! You. The one who has to age into the indecencies of mammography. The one who has to age into the indecencies of densitometry. The one who has to age into the indecencies of colonoscopy. Which twisted mind invented all these instruments of bodily, mental torture? Probably some sex crazed impotent medical maniac dying to squeeze a teat, to palpate a pelvis, to shove a tube up an ass... Tell me, do they practice colonoscopy also on aging angels?... Oops. Then oops again. Then mamma mia, you did it to me, didn’t you, you creature, you being, you... you... you woman, first butterflies up my eyes, then flowers up my ears, now angels up my ass. Broke my promise not to talk about them what promise will you make me break next? The one about not telling of northern lights flooding out of your eyes to lay a glossy veneer on the trail of toe tips and eyelash tips and finger tips? The one about not telling of valleyfuls of copulating flowers in the wake of copulating butterflies in the wake of copulating, transmogrifying, deflagrating us? The one about not telling the truth about angels? No, not the colonoscopical truth, the truth of their envy of you being subject to so many poems, the truth of their envy of you owning so many smile wrinkles, the truth of their envy of you lighting the morning and feeding the bees and singing in duet with nightingales. The truth of their envy of you being that which they will never be. A human. A woman. A poem.

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Dead Flesh Sharp. Like a self-respecting butcher’s knife the pain, the sensation, the pleasure. I descend from your flesh falling in the embrace of the chilly, wet bed sheet wondering if your pleasure was as sharp, as insistent, or sharper. Probably, you didn’t tell me the ceiling needed painting, so I guess it was. You rolled over to my side... Your bed sheet is wet... Yours? Isn’t? Is too, you answered, one hour later when you woke up. I was dying for a pee, couldn’t risk losing that piece of my humanity you were hanging to so I decided I didn’t need to pee after all. I fell asleep. I woke up. I found you sitting on a chair next to the bed staring at me. I rushed to the bathroom liberating myself from that liquid tyranny then rushed back to the bed, same position. Thank you, you said. For what? For letting me stare at you. Should I try some indecent positions? I asked, a futile question, there was no indecent, forbidden, perverted between us, I tried nevertheless until I heard you suddenly laughing. What do you laugh at? I asked. Your dead flesh, flapping around like a torn sail. Sing me a lullaby, I begged. You just woke up. Sing me a lullaby, I begged again. You sang. I listened to the mysteriously consonant sounds manacled to some mysterious gist I had no clue to yet bathing me in the secret light of something called love. I will not say I love you, I said, so trite. I love you, you said, desecrating the lullaby by interrupting it yet picking up anew at the accurate spot of the interruption. I will not say I love you, I thought, stubbornly, I love you, I found myself saying and finding I didn’t care for trite. Your dead flesh, you said. My dead flesh what? I asked. Your dead flesh is alive, you said descending upon me like a rapacious vulture taking my dead-now-alive flesh inside that flower growing inside your body and torturing me into short ecstasy and long agony. Why short? As short as the prayer inside your adytum. Why long? As long as the residing in the rest of the world. And one day we die and none is left, ecstasy, agony. You put your finger against my lips, I removed it gently. And one day we die and none is left, ecstasy, agony, and the only way we mortal mortals can keep it alive is by entrusting it in the care of immortal immortals. The blue semen oozing from the nip of pen to soak inside the virginity of paper texture, the indecent, lecherous bounce of tips of fingers depredating the innocence from keyboard’s springy, lecherous nipples, the amuck run of billions of grains of magnetic powder inebriatingly melting their arousal into the burning skin of thin, plastic films... I played distractedly with your nipple, feeling a savior breathing life into dead flesh. Your dead flesh, it comes to life, I remarked, unoriginally. You started playing with mine. Do you think flowers enjoy intercourse? you asked. I don’t think, I know. So how come no one else knows? No one knows because we belong to a race of overconfident, conceited pricks called humans, self defined as omnipotent, omniknowledgeable, omniimportant. Self defined. Like a beauty pageant contestant claiming she’s the prettiest. No one knows. I know. I know too, you said, no more dead flesh anywhere to play with, philosophies decaying into the néant of mental oblivion as we, first heedlessly and then dementedly started tearing pieces of heaven from each other’s carnal tenets, sweat clouds starting to form underneath the ceiling to spout upon us moments later the caress of unfurling lilac butterflies and exploding monarch burgeons and pink fireflies floating down on blue snowflakes carrying star seed, to sow upon our naked skin.

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Count How many times I carried your naked body in my arms barefoot in a wheat field infested four leafed clover and five winged dragonflies crushing white poppies between my toes and red lips between my teeth? None. How many times I dressed your naked body with my finger ends bareskin in a nettle bush infested winged chameleons and sabertoothed whelps crushing rose thorns inside my fists and red nipples inside my mouth? None. How many times I dreamt of it? How many drops there in a summer rain?

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Tourist Attractions I told you tales of Albania then, seeing your raised eyebrows I told you tales of America, Anglia... “You could have even told me tales of Tanganyika...” your eyebrows always in the same position. “Tanganyika does not start and end with A,” I countered weakly. “Angola, then.” You clearly wanted to tell me something. You waited for my approval of choice... (Wait! America has the Empire State Building, Anglia has the Big Ben... didn’t know much about what Albania or Angola might have had, maybe Tanganyika...) ...before you went on. “All you had to offer me was a bed...” and when I watched you, slightly crestfallen, you added “...with you in it.”

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Red-Yellow-Green Early morning. Nothing alive except for the red-yellow-green of traffic lights. And me. Going somewhere. Red. If I was a sulker I would have sulked, unfortunately I am not. I close my eyes, a good substitute, that and the dead singer bluesing me on the radio. The red is visible through my eyelids, will I fall asleep before the inevitable yellow, the inevitable green, the inevitable shift of gears and moving of wheels preferring to sleep? What are you doing? Now, right now while red before yellow before green. Asleep? Your nightgown pulling unceremoniously above knees, your nipples soft, inexistent, your hands hugging the green of the pillow and calling it endearing names... why did you decide green was me? Why not blue, flowery, striped? Maybe it is not the pillow you hug? Maybe the white cup with the clover drawing and the thin crack and the hot milk inside waiting to touch your mouth and burn it. The shower? I don’t dare think of the shower afraid I’ll not be able to stop thinking to think of yellow when yellow happens. I don’t move. I guess I think about the shower nevertheless, the yellow penetrating my eyelids and commanding my gear shift hand which refuses to obey. Go away monster, I think rebelliously, infantile like an adult waiting for a sea of honks to invade me from the rear once the yellow dies and green comes to life. Nothing happens. Everyone’s asleep except me and another dead singer on the radio. My mind still in the shower, still in the gutter, still in Elysium, you now at the stage of drying yourself and I follow the towel covering parts of you and more than that those parts of you it uncovers, do I remember correctly the details? Was that freckle there or a bit more to the left? Was your bellybutton really so deep, do you really have only one of them? My mind wants to follow lower than the bellybutton but my mind refuses access. Same mind. Probably wondering if the intrusion would be welcome, knowing it would be, yet, still, shyly hesitating. The green turns yellow again, red again. No honks. Did I fall asleep leaving the city all to itself and its dead singers? The new singer is alive. The nightgown pulls down again over your head, no underwear yet, I wait for the underwear, I wait for the underwear, I wait for the underwear, the motor joins me in singsong we wait for the underwear, we wait for the underwear to be pulled up, to be tied around, to be knotted at the back, to be honked... to be honked? I open my eyes. Green. I make an apologetic sign to the driver behind me, shift gears into the first and move on. One more somebody alive in the city is one too many, I guess it’s time to wake up. I send you a kiss, skipping the underwear and moving straight into the smile that follows the kiss. My eyes return to the wet asphalt. Another promising beginning to a boring day.

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Shoes I am seated, munching my egg and mushrooms sandwich, mind blank, eyes downcast not in shame, in munching, trying to fill the blankness with something... shoes move by, lots of shoes, and interminable flow. Shoes to fill my blankness, what a joke. Black, most of them black, men women dogs don’t wear shoes, yes, I know a comma missing somewhere. Most of the men laced shoes, some brown, a few tennis shoes, not many, men and women. High heels only women. One man. Boots only women. Two men. One woman with gardener’s boots reminding me of my green ones, hers black her feet flapping inside like matchsticks in an empty tea cup. Black leggings. One elderly businessman in a corner polishing his shoes with a napkin. I didn’t polish my shoes in six months now. I count eleven pairs of shoes and he still polishes. The same shoe. A woman comes in. Beautiful, gorgeous, looks straight at me and walks towards me with purpose in her stride. I didn’t know I was that attractive. She approaches and picks a sandwich from behind me. A dream shattered. A woman comes in dragging a huge suitcase, her shoes red, her nose red too, she looks straight at me stepping in two steps, turns around and walks back out. Didn’t know I was that frightening either. A Goth dressed punk follows. Half her hair shaved, half red, pregnant. No, not half, full pregnant. She wears army boots, better, armies would love to have such boots could stop a direct bazooka hit. Probably weighing half a ton, metric. Doesn’t matter so much at these weights, metric, imperial. She doesn’t look at me, thank God. She does look frightening. The businessman still polishes his shoe. The same shoe. A few flat shoes. One flat woman. One fat woman. Three slim girls, one in a mini. Freezing cold in a mini, I swear I could hear goosebumps exploding out through her skin. She bends, moves, pirouettes, a show though I am sure it is not for the show just to keep warm. Her underwear is pink. A man follows in buckskins, yellow, another man in buckskins, brown. A cowboy, just boots no hat. A hooker. Two bobbies. The hooker stiletto heels and net stockings. The bobbies flat army shoes. They should complain, demand punk shoes. That’s safety. A pair of flowery pants carries a woman past me. Can’t see her shoes, her pants are all over the floor, dry mopping, gathering all the crumbs on the way Another hooker, one shoe red one black. Young, beautiful, she smiles at me, front two teeth missing, the rest yellow. A security guard nudges her on. Another one, woman, not hooker, in a fur coat sits at a nearby table. I wonder if the fur is artificial. I feel like spilling her coffee on it to find by her reaction. Triggers memory of an old anti-fur ad: It takes ten beasts to make one fur coat and only one to wear it. The beast with the fur get up leaves, pity, didn’t have time to spill the coffee. A man with black, lacquered shoes crosses and uncrosses his legs several times. A woman in jeans does the same, several tables away. She wears red low heels. Probably secret agents exchanging signs. Maybe terrorists. Maybe anti-terrorists. Maybe coincidence. I stand up to leave, following a nice, tight ass on the way out. She turns and smiles at me. Everybody seems to smile at me today. She is a he. I pass. The businessman still polishes his shoe. The other one. I miss you.

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Insomnia Tell tales of the life in invisible prisons, Invisible walls and statistical reasons Infesting the miles with the razor of wire To quash behind ribs sprouting buds of desire,                               your beauty of seasons. Hide not tales of fingers turned claws every morning To tear at the ribbons your softness adorning, To free sons of flesh from a tyrant’s oppression And wait that my hand in defiling transgression                               paints life in their mourning. While dream’s evil banter demands your attention I plunder your thighs from my other dimension Your fists taking hold of my wildest illusion And blessing with sweat my explosive intrusion                               and stardust immersion. The movie rolls on under mind’s liquid cambers, The image flows slowly from grays into ambers, From ambers to sparkles as rainbow’s glass shatters, Kaleidoscope’s marvel shreds night’s white to tatters                               as sleep to breast clambers. Your nakedness cowers again under covers The peace of fulfillment above your heart hovers, With morning, surprised, you will find on your pillow The color of rose and the rustle of willow,                               the fragrance of lovers.

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Career Started at her toes. A modest beginning, she said. True, but I have high aspirations, I countered. As high as reaching the top? As high as reaching the depths... and as she smiled concurring approval I tore out of way leathers and textiles and nylons climbing furiously towards the top... the depths... sinking hooks into her flesh and piton into her life. Is this the peak of your career? she sang, remote, the music source somewhere undefined beyond the blur of my charred eyelashes as grappling ankles severed my body in two distinctively asymmetrical halves the top raving the bottom molesting the whole of us both and all and everything painting snake despair into the wooden frame of the bed that turned splinters that turned sand that turned ashes covering the street three feet deep and us seven. I succeeded to unclench, gently, several pairs of teeth from my shoulder several pairs of nails from my third to fifth vertebrae several pairs of tongues from several pairs of tongues bleeding satisfaction. You did it to CEO in no time at all, she melted, your CV did not mention contagious polymorphosis. I drew first butterflies on her belly, then smashed cherries against her knuckles, then watched her nipples turn beads as I let ice-cubes prowl around uninvited smearing the grey-green-glowing ash from armpit down to kneepit followed by the leftovers of my finger tips followed by the leftovers of my tongues around thousands of exploding buds throwing cherry pits into the air that transmuted into ripe cherries long before reaching the floor to transfix themselves upon scurrying Augusoma Centauri horns and crawling Mesobuthus Martensii stings. May I apply for the bottom position once more? I asked, picking some of the mobile cherries and throwing them part into my mouth part into hers part into the sun’s corona. She lay her palm on the floor letting some of the death carriers fall asleep on the back of her hand and picking cherries carefully between her teeth crunching some to meet a glorious death in her entrails prison spitting some to meet a less glorious death in mine before answering, days later. Are you sure you are up to it? Down to it, you mean. Are you sure you are down to it? she corrected. I watched that crevasse offering me a place on the other side of the sun once again, I watched the Augusoma Centauri and the Mesobuthus Martensii and the... Enough!... she screamed and no one could explain that crater boring itself end to end through Earth’s heart carrying cherries, horns, stings, CV paper shreds and the unmistakable perfume of lilac love.

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Drawing Life Lift the soles of your feet and I will draw on them planks for you to dance on and grass for you to run through and shoes for me to pull off before carrying you to my lair to lay you on the bed I drew for you. Open your shirt and I will draw garlands to cover your breasts and doves to pull the garlands away and hands to take the place of garlands shaped after my fingers and fingertips and fingerprints so you not be mistaken. Don’t smile and I will draw smiles to chase towards your eyes’ wrinkles and teeth to chase my fingers away and a tongue to meet the one I drew upon my lips once I finished drawing kisses hanging somewhere between us. Let’s draw the woodpecker that will chase us and the dog that will bite at our heels and the frog that will show us the way out of the drawing and into each other’s skin.

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Ice-cream I doze off. My head hits the wall behind me with a loud bang. Then the table in front of me with a louder bang. Then the wall again. I want to write. I am tired. Bang. A few words. Bang. People up and down the stairs to my left. People up and down the slope to my right. Mostly different people. Sometimes the same people. One of them looks like you. A man. I snicker. He should have been a woman. A beautiful woman. A dog barks. He let’s me caress his head and licks my hand. The ice-cream has melted. Bang. I believe I look like a rhino with the bump on my forehead a nice blue-red-black. When the moon betrays the cloud Stealing starlight’s studded shroud, Buying poison from the adder, Paying spiders for the ladder, Letting pain’s devoted crowd Bite in waves forever madder... I shudder. I didn’t even feel the bang seeing the little girl dragging the little puppy dragging the little doll and sending a big smile my way as her mother talks and talks and talks on her cell phone. The transparent elevator mounts not far from me, I avert my eyes as a mini-skirted old woman shows what should not be seen and I follow a long-skirted young woman not showing what should, a youngster tells a less young guy something on a laptop probably selling him a grocery control tool or a hacking tool or an atomic bomb for dummies and I hope to be far enough before the atomic bomb materializes, I yawn loudly. A few more words and my eyelids feel as heavy as my melting ice-cream. No bang. I open my eyes. They started cleaning the table, hinting I should go. I don’t. I grab my cup and its sludge and sip noisily with a straw. They move away. Psychological warfare mastership, that’s me. They turn off the lights in my section. I wait until they turn them on again. We (I) shall overcome. The battery starts showing empty. 10%. Ha, I hardly wrote one stanza. No mains plug around. That’s their warfare, I guess. Bastards. I move to another table dragging the sludge along, mains, victory. When the moon cleaves summer’s night Spreading doubt’s invasive blight, Sowing seeds of melancholy Through my pencil’s fields of folly With assaults of waxing light Volley after raving volley... Two stanzas. Yippee, one day they might even call me a poet. They, not they who cleaned the table but the other they, they. A young guy in a wheelchair rolls along dragging three dogs behind him, they all look proud - human, canines, even the wheelchair itself, a young girl rushes ahead and jumps in his lap, probably his sister... no, correction, his girlfriend or more if to judge from the way they kiss and his hand sneaks under her skirt with the three dogs jumping all over them as well in a tangle of leashes and sporadic applause. A group of Japanese blocks my view for a moment, gesticulating, when they pass the wheel chair and guy and girl and dogs are gone and I have a clear view to a book-shop’s door. Just a door, painted brown, nothing interesting in the door and not even in the shop that carries none of my books. Yes, bastards too, the shop owners, not the books. My sleepiness seems to have vanished. I close my eyes, yes, no bang, no dozing. I open my eyes, does it mean I’m normal, after all? Such disappointment. I count the number of skirts on women - three, I count the number of trousers - twenty one. Disappointment this way too. Let’s see what other disappointments I can point to - my lover is not around, my lover is not around, my lover is not around... yes, probably that rhino horn has grown inwards as much as outwards, probably more, I’d better get my skull scanned, MRId, x-ray’d, etceteraed, time to lose the war in the ice-cream shop and let other customers slush in their ice-cream while I drag my ass and everything appended to it to the door, I should have known the glass was that clean. Luckily it was that strong too so it just adds to the rhino effect and I apologize profusely to no one in particular finally finding my way to the door’s other side on my way away from another day without you. When the moon turns loose the beast And the beast turns me the feast And the feast turns wild carousal With my obdurate espousal Of the fealty - oh, your priest Woman, oh, divine arousal.

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Reversal The sea flows back into the river, Butterflies amass kaleidoscope back into cocoons, Time... time returns into grains of sand and I meet you. Virgin, culling flowers and picking apples and squeezing grapes in your fists waiting for me to rob your robe to flush your flesh to seed my seed. Woman, after sea and butterflies and time still virgin still offering robe and flesh and chalice.

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where...? where are you? did you sink in that puddle on the way from left to right, or maybe from the right to left as you were jumping on one foot and the heel of your shoe gave up and you just sat on the asphalt legs dangling in the puddle? or you chased that butterfly hidden inside your eye and you just couldn’t get to it as much and as fast until finally you hit a wall and you sat on the asphalt letting your bleeding nose paint the butterfly? or, maybe, possibly, eventually, perchance a nice lad invited you to dance bare footed and bare breasted your flirting fluttering skirt catching in dry brambles about to sprout red and blue and yellow spikes about to bare the rest of you and you fell on the asphalt covering yourself the leftovers of cloth? sure, maybe you just climbed a drain pipe to watch hatching titmouse chicks or free a frightened cat or just watch the moon from closer by?

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The Word Is If I talk to you the language of words it won’t be enough, if I talk to you the language of colors you will drown, which one shall it be? Poppies, so you live, fingertips, so you die, hieroglyphs so you keep wondering wandering sleeplessly, aimlessly, drunk with the ignorance of knowledge or is it just knowledge? Maybe I shall try silence. Maybe I shall try absolute silence. Maybe I should just shut up. Shut up! I shut up. Years later. Thank you! For what? Years later, still no answer. It probably does not matter, language is a matter of definition, same as the words, means, tools it consists of. And where there is one single word I guess there are billions of languages to say it in. Translation is so damn simple. Yes, sure, the word is

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Sun, One I left my hand in the sun clenched into a fist locking all of my words and desire inside it letting it burn afraid if I open my fingers the sun will stray all over the galaxy and there will be no tomorrow with your words and desire

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Sun, Two The butterfly died. The sun raged. The sun raved, howled, cried drops of fire onto the moon before turning the sad, contorted crimson of evening and burying the butterfly. Then it buried its face in between your breasts looking for the butterfly.

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Sun, Three I smashed it with my thumb, the sun I looked backwards along my path and couldn’t see clearly without the sun I watched hopefully forward, seeing you sweep splinters of sun upon your stretched skirt, lovingly, then singing it softly back to life looking at me, accusingly I neared you, waited for the sun to shine again and I let you burn me

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Metaphors... Maybe You’re a ballerina. You’re a grass leaf cutting through my skin. You’re a white panther showing off her white ivory of canine pride and I’m prey. I am a rolling drop of wine drying on you. I am the floor absorbing your heels - steel or cloth or flesh and you dance. I am the wound. You are the knife. You are the balm. We walk barefoot on the freshly plowed field and you sink to your ankles and I sink to my knees and you sink to your waist and I sink to my waist and we make love in the paradise of worms and snakes and ants and moles redefining their paradise and ours. I’m a worshiper. I’m an old rubber tire leaning against your naked leg. I’m a shaggy black dog shaking off the fleas accumulated in a life too long readying myself for the dragon. I growl. You are an ice-pick running twice through me. You are the idol shaking off its dyed porcelain brittle clothing and I pray. To flesh. You are the blood. I am the vein. I am the shell.

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Shapelessness In the shapelessness of the Kalahari I found the tense roundness of your hanging breasts, In the sharpness of an angler fish’s tip of tooth I found your little toe, its nail painted pink of rose, In the stillness of fathoms deep shifting tectonic plates Your snapping fingers guide your pirouetting feet, In the slowness of flowing lava I read poetry, written by you, In the shallowness of a tear spread over a forest’s treetops Hordes of winged horses drink colors from rainbow’s mouth, Along the shapelessness of my thoughts You threaded the absolute beads of absolute beauty.

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before, during, after when a finger touches finger and an elbow touches arm as the whiffs of sunset linger behind eyelids trapped in charm and the lilac’s reigning glory crowns your hair in raining blue waiting to molest your bosom with the redolence of dew, when the shiver veers to rumble and the rumble turns to quake as your armor’s buttons tumble pulling satins in their wake and the blaze cremates the bodies writhing madly in the glow like a snakes nest agonizing under lava’s deathly flow, when the silence grips the valley and serenity descends as the whispers brimming galley through beclouded minds transcends and as bodies carved by fire the encroaching sunrise shun we dissolve in pools of glitter filling cracks inside the sun.

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The Walls Of Jericho Never knew the wall of Jericho were so colorful, and I studied my Scriptures. Never knew they were so bountiful either, so bounceful, thrustful, shapeful, so... full. Dropping around a wasp’s pride fluttering between muscled thighs hurrying on an almost desperate rush to achieve destruction clicking underneath hard heels, cracked soles, painted toenails... Never knew there were no trumpets needed, and I studied my Scriptures. The soft texture melting underneath invading archaeological fingers inner layers dissolving under the penetrating gaze of archaeological eyes tiny buckles opening sandals dropping the primal layers under tumbling, vanishing civilization resolving into pointed nipples, impudent curls, woman. Never knew of such treasures, Tutankhamen’s a boy scout’s colored glass, Atahualpa’s a girl’s bone comb and I studied my Scriptures (allowing for the scribes never having heard of emperors and women). Such disrespect, as we kicked the crumbled leftovers under the bed and delved into delicate, accurate, methodological study of yowling cats and dredging rivers of skin and the chaotic state of flesh of before “and then there was light...”

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ladder cross! climb! cut! collect! weave a ladder from the crumbs of seeds and the leftovers of flowers and the dust of dry leaves and snowflakes deformed into drops upon warm palms... cross! climb! cut! further, one more parapet into tomorrow’s unknown rampart then a bastion then a merlon, sliding through a crenel... cross! climb! cut! smile into the darkness of the unknown... why darkness? maybe light, maybe music, maybe the riddle’s final knowledge, weave a ladder, collect your clothes those you unclothed earlier with my hands collect your hair ends those you tore earlier with my fingers collect your flesh shreds those you decanted earlier with my mouth from your body and weave your ladder one mountain further, there where we meet again and again and again until no any more again’s in front of us but so much beauty written on every rung of the ladder.

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Lilac Madness You roll your hips. You roll your hips and you roll your thighs and you roll your ass and you roll your eyes like a virgin seeing it first on the Manneken Pis (and wondering what is all the noise about) and my brain rolls into knots like wet towels dragging the rest of my body through coiling sessions to shame six snakes and one octopus competing. I loose my nose in beer’s abounding foam crunching bubbles between breaking teeth, I crunch nuts inside fists draining the resulting dust into the beer, I gulp the yellow miracle caring not for the slippery drivel sliding alongside my mouth and soaking into my t-shirt “Waiter, the bill!” I shout leaving before he hears me dragging you along a trail asphalt before and magma after upon stairs marble before and marbles after onto a bed covers before and tatters after, lilac’s single cracking bud turns from drizzle into flood and before the melting summer grabs your reason in its wake lilac’s madness rapes your blood. You roll your hips. You roll your hips leaving pieces of red cloth hanging on rushing car fenders biting at drivers’ sanity biting at my insanity, your shoes lose their heels in between the cracks of the pavement as you sidestep shards of broken bottles and dance in between the zebra crossing black stripes and the passers-by and the clumsy bicycle riders falling over pots of flowers and dogs favoring the fallen pots before pissing on the fallen bicycle riders. I chase the cars the dogs chase me trying to recuperate the pieces of cloth from car fenders before you turn naked in front of the world and a sheikh offers me a camel for your flesh or a gypsy his fiddle or a beggar his collection of empty soda cans and one shoe then I chase you before you chase me and when we finish chasing each other there is no more cloth to your skin and there is no more breath to my mouth and you feed me your flesh and your breath and your sweat and your yowl turning mephitic hunger into the attar of a valleyful of crushed roses. lilac’s skin turns old and cripple, fades its jaunt with cackling ripple, yet before the one way passage we will mate in fleeting glory and with lust defile your nipple.

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Inversion How old were you when you did not yet know me? Older or younger than now? How many times did you count summers in one summer and lilac flowers in one nosegay of lilac flowers, only, and some bees bothering no one except the purists of you and summer birds? Did you count the summers to me not knowing of me? Or the autumns? Not knowing of my autumn. I know you listened to birds at all times, even when there were no birds, even when there were not even pictures of birds even when you slept. No, you did not tell me, I know, you did not have to tell. You also counted the linden trees and the time to next blossoming season... see, told you, you did not have to tell me. I simply know. Like I know of the first time you made love like I know of the first time we made love... no, you did not tell me. I know. How old are you when you make love to me? Older or younger than you first made love to me, older or younger than when I first made love to you, older or younger than when I make love to you, older or younger than when you learned of making love and thought of making love and afraid of and dreamed of and forgot of? Your toeprints on sand, of course sand does not carry toeprints, your toeprints on my flesh, of course flesh does not carry toeprints, of course sand carries toeprints of course flesh carries toeprints when the under of your skirt reflects in the sand turning it glass and the under of your skin reflects in the under of my skin turning it wound turning it cluster desire raw, bleeding, exploding into seeds exploding into flowers exploding into lilac monoterpenoids and male androstadienone exploding killing vanquishing subjugating enslaving and all I remember when waking up is joined hips and mutual addiction, thralldom, and dipsomania. How old were you when we made love for the third time? How old was I when we made love for the fifteenth time? How old will you be when we make love for the hundred and sixth time, how old do we get as we lose our grey and we lose our wrinkles and we crawl back into adolescence, puberty, will we be charged with statutory rape as we creep all the way back into ovum still making love beyond the rules of life and love and lust, are ova allowed to make love? I comb your hair. You sigh, content. You even don’t complain when I pull too hard at a knot. I comb your hair. You undress me, claiming I could get a cold in these wet clothes. You are naked already, long ago. You volunteer to comb the hair on my chest before climbing on it, calling it your private Everest, first claiming the apex, then the crux, then the climax, then the vortex before leaving me for Morpheus curled, my combed hair your mattress, your curled hair my shirt fluttering leftovers of me pollinating that lilac eternally blossoming in your insides.

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The Things You Are Not You are not white, you are lilac-white. I know, I’ve investigated all those places you’re supposed to have kept white, private, sunless. I even touched them, watched them explode into countless tiny bumps turning sand-paper and raking against my skin leaving red splotches before turning silk again, flesh. You are not young, you are child. I’ve seen you collecting shells in your shamelessly lifted skirt. dancing in your pajamas, shaking with emotion next to your wax heroes... Bruce, Marlon, James almost jumping into their limp arms before squeezing your flesh inside mine. Not apologetic, radiant. You are not woman, you are virgin. What else shall you be called when you dream in pink with dragons and you read in pink with ribbons and you undress in pink with shivers when you abandon the real world to the real you underneath and you recover your hymen humming softly each time, again, ready for tomorrow’s pink with dragons and pink with ribbons and pink after shivers. You are not flesh, nor lover. You are words. Poem.

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Decay... or Decadence? I feel flower, on the wrong side of blossom, I feel candle, half my wick gone up in smoke half my muscle lying at my feet, thickening that pedestal I don’t need, I feel dog, one bite left in me, probably never able to deliver it, practically waving my right to... ...the shower door opens, you emerge dripping, shivering, no goosebumps... ostrichbumps, your curls glittering... “...but I am not curly...” I feel king, I blossom into you, I burn around you, I bite... “...you were saying...?” Was I?

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Desire's Zombie Chris Rea on the radio. Is it Chris Rea? Sounds like to me. Maybe not. A woman walks the dog. I shift gears, a man walks Toy, no, it looks like Toy, most dogs look to me like Toy, even a Rottweiler, I think kicking back a tear that threatens to blur my view. A bus. Owns the road. This world needs a cleansing rain, if I was God I would rain buses, with their drivers. License to kill. Ray Charles. Of that I am sure, even if he sounds a bit unsure first claiming that it’s alright and then asking me if it’s alright. Chris Rea. CR. Ray Charles. RC. Croix Rouge. Red Cross. I sink for a few moments into the Cabbalistic mystics of gematria (ChRomium, Costa Rica, Christiano Ronaldo, Richard Cory, Robinson Crusoe, Roma Città aperta) before shifting gear from low mph to medium mph to high mph, still looks like a crawl and I join the millions torturing each morning the highway asphalt. I try to memorize the poem, writing in such heavy traffic would be suicidal, I’m not yet Richard Cory. She bought me a portable recorder but I left it home (0:1 to visitors, damn). I hardly had one minute of high mph that I have to go back to medium, works on the highway, millions of dollars of machinery going to waste no one works there, a long year ahead of us of ecological fumes and high taxes and earthquakes my exit and a small Fiat Panda insists overtaking me on the right, woman driver... oops... youngster driver on his quest for thrilling death I leave him two miles behind pulling bad Goofy out of my sack, overtake the police the fire engine the ambulance the train (no, not on the road) take my exit. AC DC. That’s the way to start the day. Bang! Alternate Current. Direct Current. ACtinium. Ante Christum. Anti Christ. Apple Cider. District of Columbia, leonarD Cohen, haha, Damn Car (in front of me) smoking my view, smoking the street, smoking the city, the continent, the world, I turn my engine off in disgusted protest and lose the power steering and almost hit a pole. Finally. Parking. The sweet smell of concrete, underground garage, elevator oil, airconditional legionella pneumophila, step home. Beeps. Clunks. Coughs. Chats. Conferences. Clicks. Hmms. Tics. Tacs. Zzzs. The distance from heaven to hell is like the distance from tan(90°) to tan(-90°). Infinity to minus infinity. Same point. Distance Zero. DZ. Deutsche Zentral genossenschaftsbank (hope I got this one right), DZongkha (no, don’t speak it), Dead Zone (yes, some people I wish there), Denuded Zone (the hell with semiconductors, suddenly I miss you). DeZire. Hey, who carez about spelling at zuch moments? Desire’s Zombie. Me.

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Biography You know, sometimes I see you dancing and I don’t know which name to call you - willow, whip, water?... funny, all starting with w... ribbon, found one not with w, ribbon, whisper, whirlpool... okay, I’m probably w doomed, let’s skip this one. Sometimes I see you searching for an expression hesitating between laughing, crying, wondering the little girl in you pulling at each and, undecided, hiding her embarrassment behind the closed eyes of a kiss, hoping mine are closed too. They are. I watched you making love, many times. Sometimes to me, sometimes to others, in another life... okay, if you insist, to me... I watched you making love, many times. I watched galloping bisons, crumbling sky-scrappers, butterflies testing their wings a first time. I watched you making love. Many times. Trampled over, buried under, caressed by. Wondering why I stayed alive, knowing. Today I will not write you a poem. Today I will write you a short biography.

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Friday 13th The traffic flows. All the big jams are in the other direction, damn, am I not important enough?... I feel unjustly dishonored, snubbed, publicly humiliated, oh, thank God, a jam, a small one but better than nothing... we wave to each other from open windows big smiles, horns blare in gratitude, a butterfly crosses impudently the road drawing angry revs from cars dying to smash it... The coffee machine works. That’s a bad sign, even if all I drink is hot chocolate, it’s not supposed to work. I feel like filling in an official complaint when I push the button just in time to find out someone left his (it was a hers) full cup there and the brown overflows to the machine, overflows the floor, down the stairs, fills in the decorative pond, the gold fishes delectate on the sugar, the fire brigade is called in, happiness. Computer on. Error message. Oh, blessed be He, off... on... blue screen, not even cursor, nirvana, impatiently looking forward to the spiritual experience of calling the call-center that someone decided to outlocate to India and someone picks up the phone talks to me in wonderfully melodious Hindglish and I understand none and nothing the screen changes to red, then to off, then to glorious smoke (my neighbor’s PC, he got connected to Bulgaria) then I get connected to Bulgaria as well, then Costa Rica, then Nicaragua, then I cut the phone, turn off and on again and a Messianic beep with Jewish undertones and Moslem overtone tells me it’s alive!... it’s alive!... (I almost get fired running through the corridors screaming it’s alive! it’s alive!) and the fat windows cleaner winks at me (from outside). 6 out of 49. Lotto. 1000000 Euros, plus minus some zeros, today’s the day I get rich. I will buy a new tooth brush, three new shirts, a pair of trousers second hand but in good condition, I’ll get myself the maxi option at McDonald, with mayonnaise, rich man’s dreams... the pregnant lady in the geometrical precise center of the TV starts calling out the numbers and after five I’m a miserable heap of despair even if the sixth is a bull’s hit she hates my guts and I didn’t even father her fat ugly unborn child she destroyed my life forever gone the tooth brush, the shirts, the second hand trousers (were supposed to be blue), the maxi, the with mayonnaise, I’m about to cut the tree in the garden and let it fall on me... beep! What’s that? beep! Kiss me stupid! says Billy... uumm... Dean... uumm... Kim... uumm... she! hiding on the other side of the screen and I decide to postpone my tree plans for next Friday 13th, whenever it might be. Everybody deserves an 11th chance, or is it the 12th already?... even I.

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tales of you did I tell you? your toe, the skin dry, cracked, signs of once upon calluses signs of recent blisters toeprints barely discernible the heel slightly leathery your ankle delicate, doll like, some tiny veins visible the calf shapely the knee round the thigh a mix of muscle, flesh and tendon hiding the drama of fiery passion under thin layers of cellulite and tiny hair roots turning animalic steel once I approach the door to your... your belly, flat, some fat making it soft some scars making it feminine a flurry of dimples pimples freckles birthmarks petechiae maculae hiding unsuccessfully under a fluffy layer of soft, colorless hairs surrounding your belly-button ascending your hips your buttocks descending the valley of secret, unwritten poetry and the door to your... your back, the bony vertebrae creaking, cracking, whining with each move displacing the natural order under the unnatural handling my palms choose to offer the ends of ribs starting soemwhere where your breasts choose to bristle running along sides where shivers choose to reside cutting like rapier ends into the restless palms that once belonged to my arms and now look for those ancient, forbidden paths leading to the door to your... did I tell you that age made you as beautiful as La Gioconda before Leonardo and La Juliet before William and La Venus before Alexandros?

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Amuck I sink my fingers into your hair pull your head back and bite, hungry, a famished dog, an angry reptile, a horde of ravenous termites basic instinct taking over demolishing reason, infesting muscles, teeth crunching teeth, the howl... I comb your hair, softly, forehead through scalp through nape, neck, shoulders, softly, again, again, I lick your wounded lip, I lick your wounded breast, your thigh... ...are you back?... you ask, cuddling into my chest and counting my ribs and the bites, scratches, blue spots along them... ...are you?... I ask, accepting you into my skin, flesh, heart.

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another day the beast wakes up in the east, caressing urbanely the belly of lizards while boiling the shadows in cauldrons of wizards, its manner subdued, even prude. the day like a screaming old jay marks ruts through tranquility’s somnolent valleys with larks waking up in zephyr carried galleys and chirrup invades the glades. a she morning’s fresh potpourri, a she that is you writes her rhyme on my chest then chases the beast and its flowers way west, I watch her depart with my heart. hey you, the one whom I knew, return to the tree growing tall at my feet curl naked and pert on my poetry sheet, forget day and beast, and feast. then smile, I don’t mind your guile, I don’t mind your innocence, folly or lust, I don’t mind the tinkle, the wrinkle, the dust, just bring back your breast to my nest. the beast falls asleep in the mist, the lizards, the wizards retreat to the cracks, the larks float to earth among zephyrs and flax, my wishes unwrap in your lap.

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Independence I don’t undress you you undress yourself I don't make love to you you make love to yourself my body your tool of pleasure and torture before insanity after insanity after resignation before the smile summing it all up in a few wrinkles I don’t dress you you dress yourself fighting off my clawing fingers digging into your cotton like bur hooks like hawk talons like assailant grapple I don’t undress you I tear your cottons I invade you I veil you caresses I don’t tell your story you sigh

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legends you dress yourself aroma of linden flower, you comb your hair backwards with my fingers naked, sitting on my knees an telling me the story of Penelope and of Cinderella and of Isolda chasing a ladybug on my chest then chasing it on foot as it flies away your bouncing breasts driving insane a few misguided hummingbirds then you return to sit on my knee, naked you paint rainbows with five fingers in the air then on my cheek I cannot see the result but I see the blush in yours the sudden rain awakens your nipples and drives the hummingbirds to the shelter of your dangling hair you change one knee for the other then you join them together spread your thighs around them and sit facing me and you fall asleep on my chest, my wet hairs your cushion my index finger guiding one hanging baby bat to hang from your left shoulder like a tattoo of heaven on a madonna’s left shoulder-blade

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The Kaleidoscope In My Mind, And Other A million years, give and take a few, is all it takes to write a poem. I tried a few shortcuts, didn’t have a million years, had no choice. It shows. Imperfect. Hope forgiveness is one of your traits, allowing for imperfections, for weaknesses, for mistakes, for a comma forgotten. An exclamation mark. A kiss. Tried also listening to music instead of writing a poem. Not bad as an approximation, almost. You light candles. You try to move your hands above them, whisper what you imagine you are supposed to say, you try to prepare food the way you think you should, you listen to music. In your heart. You write poetry. You find the approximation enchanting, mine, yours, ours, almost life. Maybe better than life? We walk side by side. I try to catch your hand, miss, you try to catch my hand, miss, a dog runs between us barking happily, followed by a duck, a few cats, no elephant. I wouldn’t mind, I wouldn’t be surprised. This is the way of poems and we don’t have a million years so we find the other’s hand and make love there, on the street. I will drink sweet wine, I say. I will drink beer, you say. Why? I say. I will paint a flower on your cheek I say. I will smear the ink, you say. Why? I say. The dog runs back happily. An elephant follows. I knew. Why? you say. Why what? I say. Why life? you say. Because of poetry, I say and you pirouette in a cloud of dust allowing the world to see your thighs and me to see your heart. We embrace, the tree between us, hands stretched to the limit, fingertips touching. Life is beautiful with you, I say. You don’t say, you hook fingers into mine, crush the tree to a rose and let the thorns spike our chests. Now we are one you say, watching the blood stream between our bodies, as the dog chases the butterfly on the tip of its tail and the moon allows you to wear its crown at least until we part. Never.

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Of You I saw you dressed. I saw you dressed undressed dressed I saw you in between, both ways, all stages. You even created some new in-betweens, specially for me, thank you. No, not enough of them, it’s never enough but thanks, nevertheless. I know you tried. I know you keep trying. No, I don’t prefer you undressed, I prefer you beautiful, you are, all stages, any stages... sure, I don’t mind, dress. Wait! Did I say... dress? I saw you beautiful. I saw you beautiful beautiful beautiful I saw you in between, many ways, a variety of stages. Yawning noisily, dancing divinely, chewing majestically and swallowing sloppily, limping, pirouetting, chasing cats and guiding grasshoppers across the street. I touched you, sometimes while yawning, sometimes while guiding always while sleeping. You, not I. Yes, you touched me too while sleeping, I, not you. Beautiful has no definition, though one I know of is you. Yes, even dressed. I saw you. I see you. I saw you, I see you, I make love to you. I make love to you even when I don’t see you, stages irrelevant. Yesterday you flew around the linden tree’s top, dropping flowers around me, the day before you did the same, it was a blossoming cherry tree and even before that you flew, the other way around, collecting nectar and pollen from the rosy apple flower painting my face clown, painting my body naked and my clothes burnt and making love to me, four days ago and more and again. Then painting me dressed to paint me naked just to make love to me again, yeah, excuses. You don’t need any. Just tell me. Swirl around me, be the river. Blossom around me, be the orchard. Touch me, be the wind.

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Somewhere Along The Way Somewhere along the way I stopped writing poetry and I started writing poems. I took the stranglehold off the glib, pseudo-intelligent and moved it over to the elaborately persuasive, invasive, compulsive dragging within the mesh lifetimes of art and eternities of lost opportunity of beauty, songs now lost, now forgotten, now never written. Your bare shoulders flutter on both sides of your bare spine under you bare neck overseeing your hanging breasts and lower hanging nipples above my avid mouth and I try to return to the poetry of writing while gulping the poetry of flesh, Where are your fingers while not around the pen while not between my ribs while not evicting from you the remains of soap and the remains of me? Maybe it is time to choose a table top instead of a bed, maybe it is time to offer a fist instead of a palm, hairs dangling from between locked knuckles telling of passion as inarticulate as a Shakespearean sonnet and grains of salt telling of sweat burned by fires loaned from hell and spread through a dormant paradise with compounded interest until usury results and paradise absconds dragging with it fig leaves and false modesty and usurping hesitation. Of course I can rhyme like a god who’s been crawling On broken church tiles among worshipers brawling, With fingers of fire on his ribs’ naked lyre Playing Eros’ crude hymns among craving limbs sprawling. At your side, at times. Behind you, at times. Inside you, at times, every times, any times, selected times, indecent times, sinful times, delicious beautiful blessed times, all times. Run! a butterfly, there! and you run like an amok stricken puppy chasing the butterflies I draw on sand wings open, close, open, close, wipe, draw, wipe, draw, further and further until you fall into the sea and the sea falls into your eyes and you fly with the butterfly. Smell! there, a linden tree, above! and you climb the smooth windows towards boughs you smell and I see and we draw your palms suction cups your mouth suction cup your soles suction cups you jump the next window upwards then next window sidewards and I follow the trail of your lilac essence leading me to your thighs’ crossroads leading you to the top of the linden tree where you open arms shaped into wings and fly away with my heart and the rest of my poetry. Please, bring it back... Make love to me! Who calls to whom when we die to survive? I finish combing your hair, you finish collecting broken shells on three shores and I finish combing your hair again spraying it with broken shells and all the waves that died at your feet. There, a sun! I point to the sun. There, a moon! I point to the moon. There, other lovers! I point to other lovers and you say What other lovers? Three puppies run away from their owner to pee on our ankles possessively chasing us all the way into the sea, we bark, they laugh, we all howl, a pelican chased by a seagull hides underneath your wet skirts I join him and he prefers to run away while I peel your textiles and wash your ankles and your armpits then carry you to my lair where we mate and then make love. I rave through the throes of untinged inanition Abiding the touch of impleting perdition, Effulgent desire spitting rivers of ire Finds den in the sanctum of thighs and cognition.

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Heat Wave So what if you wear a skirt? So what if your legs lean up on the table edge and your skirt dangles down to the floor and I drop a book just close by, you don’t really think I do it on purpose, do you? You don’t really think I follow the back of your knee and the inner of your thigh and the soft, white rim that penetrates your flesh’s roundness leaving something to my eyes something to my imagination and something to my despairing lust... do you really think I think this way? Do you really think I am able to think at all? Oh, sorry, it is hot, you asked for the ventilator, didn’t you, the oscillating one? You did not? Oh, it is so hot... I was sure you did, it was probably the cat, meowing, yes, ha-ha. No, I did not mean it to blow your skirt further up, first beyond your knees, then up your thighs then over your head, you understand my prude rush to go and grab your skirt and pull it down tucking it for security between your legs, sorry, my fingers just missed the mark in the rush of the moment I was over-zealously tucking didn’t pay attention I tucked slightly too high pushing too hard misunderstanding the resistance to my tucking efforts... forgive me? Tell me, don’t you think it might be better to remove your skirt altogether? This will solve the book problem, the regard problem, even the tucking problem, there will be nothing to tuck, ha-ha, isn’t it hilarious? I promise even to turn around. No, this mirror is not reflecting, I mean it is reflecting but I wear polarized eyeglasses and I see nothing reflected, hey, where are you? lift your left hand, did you?... see?... I see nothing. No, don’t put it on the back of the chair... huh? No, I did not see until a second ago, I guess it is a technological miracle, I see now, I see now, since I saw already mind if I turn around? You sweat, damn heat, let me cool your skin a bit, ok? I’m just helpful, my nature, here, here, your forehead, nice and chilly, no? you neck, give me the shirt, it prevents air from your body, nice, yes, sure, the bra as well, such horror, preventing air from your breasts, mmm... like the cool towel around your nipples, nice, no? No, I look just not to make any mistake, not just to... look, you know, yes, I do not mind being even more helpful comes with generations of helpfulness, sure, pull them down from the hips, down your thighs, beyond your knees, ankles... I will hang them to dry on the back of the chair... why? my shirt? my trousers? my?... are you sure? Are you really... sure? It might get a bit too hot, you know? okay, okay... are you really really sure?... oh, really really really... mmmmmmmmm... Hey, what was that? a tsunami? I ask, gasping for air and watching my various parts spread all over the floor. She stretches to twice her length then coils languorously three times around me, licking every inch of her passage... mmmmmmmmm... delicious...

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Backwards I stopped counting the years backwards. Too few left, depressing. I started counting falling leaves, instead. They’ll never end to my knowledge before the end of my knowledge. A preferable entertainment. Why don’t you count mosquitoes, or cockroaches? she asks, they’ll never end too, and she stretches languorously over me allowing me a taste of falling nipples. Will the falling nipples end? I ask. Will the taste end? I ask, after it ends, and she lifts the sun above the sea with a laughter and an encore. Leaving me guessing. I walk to the bathroom backwards, return backwards as she takes her turn. Are you trying to turn time? she asks. A little, I am trying to see more of you than naturally expected, and this time she lifts the sun to some number o’clock, doesn’t matter which. She offers me another encore when back, I refuse. Some numbers better be left in unitary digits per day, I insist, though she wins and I gladly lose the argument. I stopped counting the years, backwards. I stopped counting years, altogether. I stopped counting. I moved into collecting sun jumps instead, a better hobby with toes fighting off the wet sand to cuddle and fall asleep inside a crumbling sand castle.

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Like Writing Flesh, Like Writhing Flesh When I write I don’t think. I write. Sure, there are words there, rules, grammar, exceptions and punctuations, even some peeks inside encyclopedic articles or dictionaries. So what? I don’t think. I write. Who needs to think when all that is needed is a tube filled with ink grappled by a robotic machine composed of flesh and phalanges and the rest is pure automation. Like an Ouija board. Only that one is farce. This one is reality. Emotion. Love. Passion. Fire. Poetry. Who needs to think? I tear your clothes, is it poetry too? I cut them to ribbons then tie them to artificial flowers then cover your nakedness with colorful knots and tips of fingers arranging and rearranging the knots so they feel better and I see better and we glue better shared nakedness and poetry yet to be written. You tear my clothes, this is poetry. You cut them to ribbons then knead them to dough mixing my cloth with my flesh then my sweat then my remnants of glimmering traces trailing all the way from you to me and back and you feed me the concoction adding crumbs of fallen plaster and splinters of splintered bedknobs and your suffragette nipples demanding equality of opportunity with your tongue and snarled hair and swollen desire. When I finish writing I never finish writing. I dig a hole to fill it petals of white roses and snowflakes guarded from three winters ago and thorns burnt to ashes inside a matchbox painted red hearts and I carry you, lilac between your dangling toes and wheat plaited with your hanging hair and bees harvesting nectar at your corner of lip as I lay you inside the brimming hole together with me and with you and with us and with poetry watching the overflowing petals and snowflakes and ashes flow between tree roots and down snake burrows and all the way into butterfly wings wishing for birth. I ask you to write alongside me the opposing calligraphy of mirrored bodies, the new words born of breaking all pens and spilling all inkwells and tearing all pages as we inquire the vicissitudes of ripping skin and reaping sighs and ripening words.

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writing under the influence I read verses others wrote to other the complexities of expression exploding against my intellect until I excommunicate intellect and instill emotion and the complexities of expression infuse, penetrate, finally gain sense in their colorful, immeasurable way now I can sit down and write the poetry that you do not have to understand, just let glide between descending eyelashes and fresh mascara along with the splinters of glass and the melting snowflakes collected along the way treetops, what are treetops? you ask and I do not remember having written about treetops telling me you see your wish and fill the lines between my lines with odoriferous remnants of forgiving forgetfulness twined with rose garlands and lilac ashes you don’t ask what is love you know I do not know what I write about and you are clement in refusing to shame my ignorance preferring instead to point me to a point of sky where stars are not yet born and ask me to fill it with words, which I find easy another day has flung its coat upon the western guards, my cheek inhales the bluish tint amongst the inkwell shards with mustangs trotting in the mud transuding through my lips and scraps of dream remindful of the lust beneath your hips...

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ogre soft, I wish I knew to write it like you. like you write like you are. soft. like pollen like honey like your breast nipple excluded milk included. you dance and your toetips trace hieroglyphs in the sand telling of fire setting in the west and fire rising in the left of your chest, you sing and your vowels echo from shop windows when you hide behind the glass the consonants, the fluttering skirt and the unanswered questions of your flesh, you dream and you smile like a dropping snowflake like billowing silk like sand after melting before freezing into glass. thankfully there is no wind today, I say, why? you say, because I would have to tie a string around your waist and drag you behind me somewhere between lampposts’ tops and larks’ bellies, I say, and everyone would peek under my skirt, you say, but only I would know, I say, know what? you say. I smear butter on your soles then I smear butter on your palms, on your lips, are you preparing me for sacrifice? you ask, I sprinkle salt on your soles then I sprinkle salt on your palms, on your lips, are you preparing me for sacrifice? you ask, I undress you and make love to the rest of you only to watch the green flames consume your soles, your palms, your lips before you commence kneading the ash leftovers into my skin feeding the ogre who lives on the blood of words and the softness of longing.

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Psychicicity I said Good morning, my love. She said Good morning, my love. I said Good morning my love, my love, my love, my love. She said Good morning my love, my love, my love, my love. I said You echo me. She said You pre-echo me. Great, at least I wasn’t talking to a wall. You are not talking to a wall. Oops, a psychic, hopefully she doesn’t read the rest of my mind. I know what’s on your mind. Well, maybe it wasn’t as bad as that, I guess, she didn’t run away screaming. Why should I? Gulp! is much too insignificant an onomatopoeia for my throat’s behavior. Why should I wear that skirt? Oof, I let my breath out slowly, my convulsing throat back to normal, wiping my brow on her breasts then descending to her belly. She giggled, it was ticklish. The skirt was yesterday’s discussion. I said Do you want butter on your toast? She said Do you want butter on your toast? Or marmalade? Or marmalade? I eyed her suspiciously, she was either making fun of me or not paying attention. Mama made marmalade? Okay, the worst of them all, an echoing psychic rhyming poet lover. Are you an echoing psychic rhyming poet lover? I asked, in my mind, not aloud. Yes. I started shivering... Butter and marmalade, yummy yummy. Oof, once more, and she could echo herself all she wanted. I rushed to her side of the table, made her stand up pulled down her panties and kissed there where it counts, pulled them back up, kissed again, pushed the chair underneath her and rushed to my side of the table piling three layers of marmalade in between three layers of butter and adding olives, eggs, goat cheese... no, not on the toast, on her plate. Something wrong, my love? Yes, I love you. I thought it, I didn’t say it, didn’t fit the question. No, I love you. I said it. She smiled, the butter, the marmalade, the crumbs dripping to her chin and in a cleavage that gave me a religious thankfulness moment. You smile strangely. I licked her chin clean and took her hand. I thought I am frisky... She said I am frisky. I thought I want you, now... She said I want you, now. I thought I want to tear that cloth, that underwear... She said I want to tear that cloth, that underwear... He he, she wasn’t any echoing psychic rhyming poet lover, I had no underwear underneath that cloth... ...to wear, to tear that underwear... okay, maybe rhyming poet... mmmmm... mmmmm... okay, maybe echoing rhyming poet... and milliseconds before I was about to tumble on my back I found her tumbling atop of me... okay, maybe echoing psychic rhyming poet... lover. lover, I echoed. I guess there is none better, I thought, our clapping bellies creating an echoing psychedelic rhyming poetry of their own.

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Question Mark There’s enough animal left in me to be called human with a question mark. To crave your thighs around my neck, a flesh necklace weighing much like a corpse crushing much like a python smelling like woman. To howl above the one hundred decibels thick wall of sound of Rock and Stones blasting from monster loudspeakers and be heard beyond the one hundred decibels blasting from the depths of your throat and all the disjointed joints of your body. To accept the singular reality of shared death and its aftermath of life with as sole memory a liquefied mixture of sweat, saliva, semen and blood. Refusal, to disentangle tentacles, to tear open wounds crystallized against wounds, to pull teeth out of knuckles and gasp for oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen and lilac perfume. A cloud crosses the moon, the big yellow eye blinks closed for a moment then opens again letting bat shadows flutter across its scarred surface together with falling leaves. It’s soon autumn, I say, finding my humanity again. I wonder if I am sorry for either. Your hair is glued to my thighs, I start unsnarling it softly shooting excuses your way just to allow me to never end combing it - dead moths, dry leaves, fleas, broken pins, dandruff, drops of dew carrying buried pearls and swallows begging to pad their nests with its silk and luster. You wait, patient. Knowing soon the question mark will strike my humanity anew and the animal leftovers will take over once again paving the road to yet another unrecorded death and yet another unrecorded miracle of revival. And beauty.

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Assumptions Assuming you were a virgin. Assuming I were a virgin? Yes. What do you mean “assuming”, what do you think I was once? No, I mean assuming you were a virgin now. Were now? Were is then, are is now. No? No. We are in the conditional, assuming is similar to if, therefore if you were now is okay. Then why not assuming you are a virgin? Because are is hard and were is unclear. You don’t have to use rude language. Or you mean it is unclear if I was a virgin? You must be out of your mind. I certainly started getting out of my patience my fingers doing opening and closing movements, I should have pushed them in my pocket for safety but didn’t wear any pockets at the time. Okay, assuming you are a virgin, okay? Finally you get it, she consoled me, raising eyes to the ceiling, funny time she found for checking the plastering quality. But I’ll let you use were, you’re kind of cute when you do, and she giggled. It my turn to check the ceiling’s plaster, but for definitely different reasons. Okay, assuming you were a virgin and your breasts would not drop but be firm, virgin style, and your belly would not be soft but be firm, virgin style, and your thighs would not be cellulited but be firm, virgin style... She lay back on the bed, turning her back to me, Okay, when you’ve done insulting me, call me again. I think I even heard a sob, so I turned her around gently, Wait, love, the compliments are about to come... It sure didn’t sound like it... She sniffed, pulling her nose and looking for a hanky in my pockets and since - as earlier mentioned - I did not wear any pockets at the time she found something else to cling to, desperately. I was desperate to get her off the clinging but did not wish to offend her yet again, I had to be brave to the end now. And assuming you were in Vienna waltzing the night away at the Zuckerbaecker Ball... Huh?... with twenty handsome hussars Huh?... ok, cuirassiers... Huh?... ok, dragoons... Huh?... ok, bradpitts... Mmm... competing for your beauty and your favors and your next dance... ...you mean all those body parts you mentioned earlier on would be firm, yes?... I preferred to continue my line of reasoning, though I did not like all of a sudden the reduced clinging... ...And I was a young, low servant, low of class, low of money, low... How low? ...very low... So low? ...and I would have come to you, giving you a poem and declaring my endless love, my bursting heart, my dream of sharing with you a life of passion, of flowers, of butterflies... ...how low did you say?... what would your answer have been my love? The clinging was gone. I didn’t think she fell asleep, not by the way she kept interrupting. Her breathing regular, eyes flitting under eyelids no doubt examining hussars, cuirassiers, her mouth smiling from time to time and at one moment moaning contentedly... did she reach the bradpitts?... well, I opened the Pandora, now I had to deal with it. Me and my big mouth. Lie down! Huh?... It looked like it was my turn to huh’ing. Assuming I were not a virgin... Assuming? Assuming my breasts drop, my belly’s soft, my thighs cellulited... A...a...a...assuming... I had to be careful with the intonation. Assuming you were not a hussar, cuirassier, dragoon, you looked like a bradpitt if not for your tits, belly, thighs... Hmmm... assuming! I raised slightly my voice and intonation, carefully choosing the exclamation mark. She got up, on her knees, pushed a finger against my breastbone and made me fall on my back ...yet assuming I loved you... Loved??? The three question marks pealed like church bells. No, assuming I loved you NOW!... it was payback time, so I shut up... and thinking of hussars... grrr... cuirassiers... grrrrrr... dragoons... grrrrrrrrr... no, not bradpitts... thank god for small favors... I saddled you... sounded slightly better, she did... and started riding you... sounded much better, she did... and now assuming all assumptions about breasts, belly, thighs have to be tested, mutually... sounded perfect, she, did... You mean asummmmm... Yes, asummmmm... Some poetry lacks words. I’m afraid I reached this stage in my recount.

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Boiling I’m going to boil my brain, she said. I guess she meant she was going into the sun. Or maybe she was going to sit in front of the microwave. Or maybe she was going to become a radar technician? an x-ray technician? an astronaut? Which nut wants to become an astronaut? Do you want to become an astronaut? Maybe rather an astronut, he-he?... No answer. Who else boils their brain? Maybe she meant brains? Hey, what did you mean? No answer. I started worrying, maybe she was in the boiling process already. Lover, careful, don’t boil the body too... argh... I mean leave something... argh... (is argh the right onomatopoeia, I wonder?...) I mean don’t boil the whole of it, I mean the body... argh... I mean the brain... breasts... arr... brains... I mean think of all the shoes you leave behind. Write a poem about boiling, don’t do it for real. No answer. “...and there was no shadow and the asphalt melted around my shoes and I had to walk between the stinking cars and I tore my skirt on a nail forgotten on a tree together with a wash line and one sock no I did not take the sock yes I took the nail and I am sweating between my breasts and between my toes and between my thighs...” Okay, she didn’t boil. Not her brains, for sure now. She mentioned thighs, no? But I wasn’t fully unworried yet. Love, I mean, love, is all your... arr... body... arr... ok? “...and I’m going to grab your xxxx (censored) and bite your yyy (censored) and I’m going to zzzz (censored) you and the dog barked and the cat jumped from the tree...” Okay, she didn’t boil. Maybe her hearing did. None of her flesh. Now I was certain. Love, I’m so glad none of you boiled. “Huh?” She opened the door carefully, the baseball bat ready in her hand. I disregarded that, went all over her minutely, did not find any unidentified damage, all was previously inflicted by me, then I licked her all over too knowing the tip of the tongue to be more sensitive, all seemed right, then I checked various specific points with a magnifying glass... hey, your tits look bigger, and I kept changing the zoom... Perfect. Love, none of you boiled. Say aah. She said. Sing a song. She sang. What’s this, a tooth-pick? Ha-ha, I took the baseball bat away then smeared yoghurt all over her then let her make her threat true. The censored one.

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Contrasts You write softly, I don’t say I wish to write like you I say I wish to think like you, softly. You open your mouth to the sky and it fills down I open it and it fills gravel, no, none edible but you find strawberries at times inside the down, I find olive pits. Not even olives. I refrain from wondering who spit them. Does it get later into ink? I guess so. You lay a blanket of soap bubbles on the bed welcoming my nails and screws, You chase butterflies where I find only mosquitoes, when I regard my wrist-watch you regard the falling of sand, counting the grains to next time and liberating imprisoned fireflies... aha, now I know why your eyes glitter. Your womanhood... soft, my... I won’t say it... hard, well, mercifully so. I think. Watch, music, you say and I don’t know where to watch, Watch, lust, I say and you know exactly where to watch. Let’s meet, there where you comb my eyebrows and I comb your breasts, where you comb my eyelashes and I comb your hips, where I stop combing you and suddenly you slash through down, through bubble soap and you meet me on the gravel and olive pits and nails and I cower and you tower and we bite. Your poems always end savagely, you say sheathing the nails. I watch in the mirror the red ruts criss-crossing my chest, cannot see my back, I feel it, and watch you opening your mouth to let down melt into it and I open my mouth and gravel snaps my teeth and I have no answer and I stop looking for an answer and I care not for an answer as I lie on my back letting you comb my chest and lick pain away from red dripping ruts.

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Before The Threshold Your head on my shoulder. We pass under the bridge and garlands start dropping around us. You lift your head, in wonder, Don’t, I say as the garlands start withering and you haste to lay it back on my shoulder and the garlands start flowering. I will get a stiff neck, you laugh. I cup your breast. Now you can, I say. You lift your head, carefully, and blue birds start picking garlands and dropping them around your neck. We pass the bridge and look back, the only garlands those around your neck, the only birds those carrying your robe’s train. Dream? you ask. Yes, tell no one, I answer carrying you over the threshold.

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Lady Gugu You have a spelling mistake, she said. No, I don’t. You do. I don’t, you called them gugu, didn’t you? First email... a gugu laid an egg in my flowers pot... her eyes shining... Second email... the gugu laid a second egg... shine changing to tears, dancing... Third email... the gugu mother broods, maybe it is the father? a pirouette, she falls against the bed frame and rushes limping to the window afraid she might have scared away the mother, father, whatever... no way, a lion would not have scared away the mother, father, whatever... Fourth email... where are they? Fifth email... where are they? foot stamping impatiently. Sixth email... they are here!... two!... Of course two, what did you expect - seven? They are pigeons not cats. I think I heard her shriek all the way from there to here, though I’m not really sure. Maybe it was a passing airplane. I know I saw her, that’s a certainty. They are so wet, and ugly and wonderful. Red nose running against the window pane, eyes running, mouth running... In a few seconds she retrograded to child, to even before she knew she were what they called a girl kind of child - making faces to the poor hatchlings, rapping softly with her fingernails, googooing to them, then guguing, maybe a change of language would help, trying to communicate with them... for God’s sake - trying to communicate with pigeon chicks... Luckily she did not scare away the pigeon parent, sex unclear, who finished the job of procreating and took over the job of feeding. She started taking pictures of them, sending over... ...see, this is small pigeon shit... see, this is bigger pigeon shit... see, I have enough pigeon shit to export to the Chincha Islands. I did not want to correct her, specifying that selling shit is limited to other bird species and bats. Pigeon shit is just pigeon shit, and if it had a market Piazza San Marco would have become a gold digger’s pilgrimage of choice. But as long as images of the small piggy’s (she called them gugu’s) kept pouring in I let her have her dreams. Pictures poured in. My disk started nearing overflow, I would soon have to buy an additional one. Probably two terabytes. Another shriek, this time I was sure it was not an airplane. They flew. With pappy gugu. They are back. They are beautiful. I am in love. I knew she was slightly exaggerating there, I mean I knew she was in love with me. She said it. She even said only me. Could be... Disaster. Sudden. Distress. Immeasurable, as a tearful email crawled in... ...the little gugu’s got suddenly frightened, they flew away without their parents, they are lost, the parents are here calling them, searching for them all over the city, they will die of hunger, cats, cars, chefs (French), my heart is breaking... It was, of that I was sure. Breaking. It scared me. She joined the search party, not thinking where or how, just to be out there, part of the gugu family, part of the family of life, race species sex a non-issue, blistering at the end of the day, crawling back tired, thirsty, hungry... Sudden happiness, even partial... ...papa gugu just flew in with one baby, he is feeding it now... they flew out together, I am following... she even forgot the ritualistic muaaaaahhhhh as she followed. Hey, what are you, Lassie? But my email fell on deaf eyes, she was already following God knows where, God knows until when, hey, there might be cut-throats around!... I found them. Now, this was what I would call a miracle. Papa and mama gugu found a sheltering place in the field, they will be ok. I recognized the babies by the fluff on their heads. They gugu’ed to me and I gugu’ed back. I kinda believed that. Now I am happy again. Let’s make love. I wish I was there then. I really wish I was there then.

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Presence That moment in the day, when you are not there. Define it! I cannot define the inexistent. She smiled. You can be a philosopher about it. You mean the quiet? No birds? You mean the colors, black and white? Not even gray. You mean words? Words? Yes, words, like dictionary, not like poetry. And even this lacking. What could a dictionary be lacking? Words. Words like when you are there, like softonomics, artomation, kissmet... Expressions. Expressions like when you are there, like the number of the breast... I could hear her giggling... a penny for your tights... she started laughing... absence makes the horny grow fonder... she was getting hysterical, I had to stop before risking a heart attack, so I didn’t quite spell it when I said ...and I won’t tell you what put a cork in it turns to... she moved from getting to got. It took three days. Quiet. Not the she not there but the she there quiet. Some hiccups. You’re putting me on, she finally managed. Now, this is an expression that should be used, in its unblemished form, even with you around... DON’T! I had to shout as her face was starting to deform again, or I would have had to wait another three days. She DON’Ted. I know of no such words, or expressions. Sure. I guess you are with you less than you are with me. Is this part of your philosophy? This is part of me. Kisses are not philosophical. Some expressions took new meaning. She made sure of it.

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