Castle In The Sky... Castle in the sky? Nonsense, I said. Did you think about the complications? The heavy stones, iron doors, timber bridges the moss in the cracks and the frogs in the pools and the oil in the lamps so heavy, how could they float?... what would hold them together up there where there is no ground, no rock, no hooks and cranes and ropes, no flowers and strawberries and squirrels? The sewage, did you think of the complications around building a sewage system linked to a drainage system and getting it all down somehow, would it be through wobbling tin pipes or un-castlelike plastic pipes or just spilling buckets and bowls out of grated windows uncaring for passers-by underneath?... not to mention getting good water up there to start with, to make soap bubbles and bath your toes and have your nipples peek from underneath its surface?... And the shopping?... how would the prince and princess and variety of servants reach Macy's, and Tiffany's, and McDonald's, would it be climbing knots on ropes or more convenient rope ladders with the entire plebeian nation peeking under the ladies' dresses?... or maybe by some rope elevators, winched up and down by revolving camels for hours, enough for us to undress and dress and make love tens of times?... I was just started, I was on my way to two thousand and two more examples... Look! you pointed your nose and your finger and I looked. I'll be damned... It was there. The castle in the sky. I closed my eyes and counted to fifty-seven then looked again. It was there. The castle in the sky. I closed my eyes and touched you undressed you then dressed you then and before made love to you fifty-seven times then opened my eyes. It was there. The castle in the sky. How?... What?... When?... Quiet! you lay your finger on my mouth, and I knew you were telling me to stop believing and start believing. I stopped. I started. And the shopping? And the love... and as the glass garments were breaking away from your body we made love another fifty-seven times around each rung and each knot and each camel hump until we got there. And the sewage? And the love... and as jasmine-scented glass drops poured into the world I pulled you by the toes and pulled you by the nipples and lay you on the lake and we made love fifty-seven times until the water boiled its way into pink clouds and blue tears and stained glass. And the stones, doors, bridges, moss, frogs, oil? And the love... and as glass petals tangled in your wild tresses I dragged you upon the strawberries and among the squirrels where we made love fifty-seven times letting the squirrels bite the lobes of your ears before stealing the mounds of strawberries from my mouth, those I carried away from the haven of your loins and the ordeal of your mouth. Fifty-seven times three... Four!... four, is two hundred twenty-eight, I wondered aloud at my prowess, playing your nipple into stiff obedience. Do you believe in castles in the sky? you asked, playing other aspects into stiff obedience. I looked at all the glass around me, how could I not. How can I not? I answered, making sure I did not discriminate the other nipple. Then you believe in eternity, you continued, and had nothing to not discriminate. I saw the connection as hazy as your eyes, during. I used both hands now, equality at its utmost. I do, I said. There are no numbers in eternity, you finalized your statement, using both hands in a show of unexpected solid solidarity. Even your mouth insisted in joining, knowing it needed no permission. Two hundred and twenty-nine, I counted, then stopped counting.

• back to list   • back   • next

Craftsmanship... I see you on the swing, swinging, the wood embracing the rounded corners of your slumped form the smoothness of warm milk, built of master oak polished with finest of wet sandpaper followed by the roughness of calloused palms and finally letting its last, almost inexistent asperity, be slain by the caress of naked skin, yours, you swing, the glass butterfly on your shoulder drinking drops of sweat and starting to melt from the inside out, splashing from shoulder to breast the way a multicolored, liquid kaleidoscope would before freezing around your nipple... who of two carries the passion, who of two will fall first asleep, if ever? I see you on the rocking chair, rocking, was it the same masterful hand with its oak and sandpaper and calluses who designed it or did it grow this way somewhere in the forest and all that masterful hand had to do was cut carefully the roots and bring it over to your abode to place middle of your floor where it demanded your skin or death, you rock, another glass butterfly, refusing the wisdom and landing on your cheek where it probes first the tear then the lips then the tongue and it glides towards your neck losing its colors one by one along its trail, and after the colors fade from its wings losing its wings, and after losing its wings finding your nipple to die there in the sweetness of overripe strawberries and the hearts of snowbells. I see you on the raft, undulating, the unrelenting masterful hand having tied thousands of nut shells with tiny strings braided from miles of hair strands you cut and shed along life and collected between souvenir pages and in secret hideouts and stowed away by generations of punctilious mice, now stolen, abducted, bought at three times their weight in gold by those hands braiding tying, sewing, and watching your lean nakedness dance with shadows of moon, you undulate, and thousands of glass butterflies ride drops of rain to crush into your skin, to lacerate it into tiny blood wells for them to drink and sink and start flowing inside your veins to flower between the split ends of your hairs inside the tiny cracks of your teeth then flutter outside through the nipples' secret passages to be squished by my clenching fingers into the absolute red of love.

• back to list   • back   • next

Icare... You ran into the wind, wild, naked, seven kites tied to seven strands of hair dragging after you, seventy seven ribbons in seventy seven colors tied to seventy seven hairs dangling from your eyelashes, from your eyebrows, from your... don't say it! you shrieked in laughter as you thrusted your nipples, your breasts, your ribs forward challenging angels to a duel of flight... pick me up! you shouted skywards and the kites pulled you to the clouds and the ribbons fluttered to the ground and I lost you in color. You fell, in a field far away from humanity's day, how did you know my lair? I collected your dispersed parts from the flower heads and sewed you painstakingly together making sure I don't mix limbs, and ribs, and lips, then painted you in thin layers of tinted glass holding you rigid, beautiful, alive when I blew my breath into yours... don't move, I said, your beauty, your life so fragile, if you move the glass will break and you will fall apart again, your beauty, your life... you smiled happily, understanding, looking around for your kites, ribbons... and not fly again? and not make love to you again? You sat up, the tinted glass splintering, shrieking flinders piercing my flesh, my eyes, stitches bursting, let's make love, once more, and we rolled between shards, and needles, and bristles and our sweat mingled with our blood, with our essence... I helped, you left me no choice, harnessed the kites to your strands of hair, tied the ribbons to the single hairs, the meek and the rebellious and the don't say it!... I watched you soaring, wondering if the wind will hold, if the stitches will hold if the angels will love your breasts the way I did. I wait. Maybe one day I paint you again color.

• back to list   • back   • next

Baubles... Imagining the snow... imagining?... seeing the snow. Imagining you next to me... imagining?... Palms, fingers in your lap relaxed, eyes closed waiting, breasts... doing what? I wondered sending idling thumb and forefinger to act against a randomly chosen button squashing, didn't know these were miniature glass baubles as the first exploded to dust thumb and forefinger stopping a moment then wandering slowly on to a second, third... there was a flutter under your eyelids, they stayed closed, a fourth and a round piece of rosy skin showed itself cupped by a piece of pink silk, five, six... I lost patience and my fingers pushed unceremoniously between rosy and pink looking for the rebelling red quashing the rebellion as intolerantly as squashing the bauble, was it the breast, moaning its finally appreciation or a mouth that suddenly found the air necessary to protest the childish insufficiency of manus militaris and demanding the gladius, the ballista, the catapult, the palm, the fist groping and tearing your chest towards mine as teeth clashed in sparks of splintering enamel followed by tongues desperate in their hunger, kiss. Your hand moved shyly towards my trousers... no, I wasn't aware of any baubles there, nothing rosy or pink worth looking at or looking for yet you, you seemed to think differently, a subdued sense of investigation slowly ascending, indomitably reaching a mindless sense of febrility with the sudden, ear-splitting tearing noise sounding like the solid, awakening promise of a steel bauble rolling its metallic body through a cacophony of endless echoes in the cavity of my suddenly emptied lungs. "What is that?" you panted, pointing, long after you collected your parts from around the cabin's rugs, and corners, and ashtrays and lay some of these in disarray on the seat, some on me. Your head lifted up from my belly's cushion and you leaned on it on one elbow, your breasts dangling in strange diagonal fashion. I couldn't even wince in pain, let alone answer. You pointed to a crack on the driver's window, a chipped piece missing from the steering wheel, a gash in the upholstery. "Did I do that?" I asked, not less puzzled, my eyes and brain still defocused. "Hey, don't you go macho on me," you bit the tip of my nose, "we did it." You got up on your knees, opened your purse and picked the lipstick. "One..." you marked a circle around the crack, "two..." around the chipped area, "three..." around the gash. "What are you doing?" I asked, the scene competing with some science fiction scenarios in my mind. "Marking the scene of the crime," you answered, intently watching your swollen left nipple and drawing a circle around it, then, after a slight hesitation drawing a second circle around the first. You drew one more around your right nipple and one, that I thought final, elsewhere. "You are crazy," I remarked, matter of factly. You did not answer, marking another circle around your mouth and two circles on my body. One of these around my mouth. I felt I had just reached the maturity for that ever first cigarette. I coughed my lungs all over the cabin after the first puff, bringing the dangerously low oxygen levels even lower, then I snuffed the burning end between thumb and forefinger feeding the need for some terrible, present pain in preparation for the even more terrible, future one to come. Then I crushed your lips, paying no heed to the cigarette still dangling there. You looked around in satisfaction, no new indices to the newly committed crime, though you got on your knees again, breasts dangling (vertically this time) and marked a third circle around your left nipple. "Hurts?" I asked. "Not enough," you answered. I left you behind, humming. The engine underneath you humming. The hummingbird hovering against your window for the last one hour clearly baffled. I knew what it was after, I tasted it. * "Mr?..." asked the blond, plastic smile of the receptionist. "Mr sure, not Mrs last time I investigated," I answered, irked at her professional loss of memory. "You have a burn on your upper lip," she volunteered with renewed professional interest and professional indifference, watching my mouth. I knew she was watching the red lipstick mark around it, what the hell, to each eccentric his fetish. I pulled tighter the rope holding my pants, tore the key from her hand and wobbled over to the huge Christmas tree. I targeted a red, round bauble, cupped my palm around it and closed it to a fist. The soft popping sound was hollow, nothing like an explosion, like a scream. I started laughing hysterically and she kept her thumb close to the panic button until I was safely locked behind the elevator doors. I laughed my way all the way into bed. I cried my night all the night into day. There was glass dust in my palm, drops of blood, and smeared leftovers of lipstick.

• back to list   • back   • next

Time Machine... It snows. Snow. No one knows but you. My time machine, pulling me back again and anew to the same moment in time, to the same spot in space whenever, wherever from. White. Then it is a time-space machine, you object, wishing to state your superiority in matters of chronometry and astronometry and anatometry... anatomy, you object once more before I start measuring your anatomy in its intimacy and you accept my definition in its supremacy... just until you finish... you try to be specific and then you drown in pleasures and forget your specification. I never intend to finish, I don’t say. No need. No need, you agree before closing your eyes and after closing your eyes before opening your shirt and after closing it with my fingers trapped inside measuring the distance nipple to nipple and back. How many times did I measure it, in flesh? How many times did I measure it in time machine? How many times did I die? As many as I? The quiet, white as well. Your eyes asymmetrical, now open, the right one magnified through a blob the size of a grape and you concede to aestheticism’s gods’ demand allowing the blob’s twin to grow on your left eye as well and timing their fall with the Aurora Borealis spawning curtain there, in the star studded darkness of blue and voiceless pain. The icicles pierce the back of my palm, melting as they reach for the front of it, asking for the price of flesh and madness of desire and suicidal onslaught at the border of finger and nipple, at the border of beauty. The machine pulls back, your breast groping for the nothingness of my once upon fingers my fingers breaking at joints as they stretch away from palms trying to stay behind at acceptable price of dismemberment... White backs into grey and I wait for the next encounter having stolen the Aurora Borealis, the pain. Take my virginity again.

• back to list   • back   • next

Raining Nails... Raining nails, always, when I close my eyes. I open them to stop the downpour and I watch the glittering ends of glass buried in my flesh, waiting for the fermenting puss to burst into the richness of wild flowers and human trill, to tell of the wonder of your beauty in my pain. I see you descending from your chariot and I close my eyes. I wait for the rain to pour down once more, for your hand to start culling the flowers.

• back to list   • back   • next

glass???... since when does glass cover our nakedness at night, warms us, rolls us inside its slow softness as it melts around us not to cut not to burn just to reflect our bodies joining in that ecstasy that only our bodies know to join in and melt the glass around us to warm us, to show lust, love, legend, letters linking like lustful, loving, legendary letters? and if, in momentary ignorance, it explodes into sharp knives and nails and splinters how does it always cut the skin into bleeding flowers and hungry, bleeding butterflies, and words which ignorance would not allow such beauty? where does glass go to sleep at night, after visiting our separated flesh our joined flesh our separated flesh, dragging behind the colored stains of love making and the blinding glitter of teeth clashing and the lonesome, imprisoned vowels of that one moment of exultation when vowels were the only meaningful words in a world suddenly basking in meaning and diamond dust?

• back to list   • back   • next

One Afterlife... You danced on my palm, a goddess made intricate glass filigree dressed intricate glass gossamer painting stars with cobweb fingertips and a sun blinded me for a moment and I stumbled dropping you into billions of sparks... I howled, my pain reaching the other gods all deaf and dumb in their private, indifferent stupor, then cursed them and kneeled there where I stumbled collecting the spark dust painstakingly starting to glue the grains together, again, on my palm. How does one build dust into goddess? I started with the heart, and when it started bleeding I moved to the lips. They were still smiling, once I got them glued into one singing, lacerated piece. One life won’t suffice to reach your breasts, neither your legs... Do you give me all of one afterlife?

• back to list   • back   • next

Transition... I squeezed you in my fist, so hard that you had no time to melt and you turned sand. Thin, oozing between my fingers until there was nothing left but a sand pool at my feet. I turned on the radio, maximum volume trying to soak you in music and noise and memories of music and noise and smells and burns trying to mold you anew but you kept oozing away through my fingers the sand even thinner, whiffs of wind starting to dissipate it every which way there was a rainbow, every way. Didn’t know of so many rainbows until mine bleached away. I guess neither did you until mine bleached away to show others. There is no resurrection, there is maybe of men not of rainbows. I opened the trove. Like in legends, heroes always have one last trove sword or ring or curse mine words. I let go, the rage the tsunami the moon falling into the sun the sand stayed sand. The trove failed, the sword, the ring, the curse, the words. Gravitation died following the rainbow into rainbows’ hell and the sand started dispelling into the emptiness of space and of no rainbows. The legend was over, reality was the only reality left. I let the net spill from my fingertips, threads my wait knots my emptiness barren eyelets my heretic’s prayer fishing for sand the thinness of flour... poetry, the only justification to madness. The sand hesitated, froze. The rainbow between my fingertips first in grays, then again in color, gravitation restating its command the sand starting to form into you. There are still many defects, you say, pointing to holes of a variety of sizes, some on your face, some on your breasts, and I patiently fill these with whispers, with acceptance of never making love again knowing the perfection of your alabaster being my ultimate goal before, much before we reach the doors letting us pass through, over, there where no rules apply anymore and once again we crush each other into the deformities of lust denied, fulfilled, and hearts torn, knotted.

• back to list   • back   • next

Letters... We walked through the glass forest, hand in hand. When do we make love? I asked, impatient. We have all the time in the world. This is not the world, I answered looking around, not frightened, at the curious tree shapes. This is a world. Where? I don’t know. How did we get here? I don’t know. When? I don’t know, time is irrelevant here. Then all the time in the world is irrelevant too, I specified, my mathematical mind still surgeon-knife incisive. Hey, glad to have something still as incisive, I let laughter invade my thoughts. Funny, some of the trees look like letters, I added. We looked around, trying to follow each other’s regard. Some trees looked like I’s, which was easy, some going into more complex shapes, like R’s or Q’s, and some looking strangely familiar but I couldn’t nail them. Chinese, Indian, Georgian?... They ALL look like letters, you said. Well, you were wrong, though I did not recognize many some were clearly a meaningless jumble. Cannot be, there is no human language using these symbols, not even ancient Egyptian. Or Mayan, I added after a short pause. Alien. What? Alien. You don’t think love is restricted to humans. Do you? Love? What has love to do with it? All I said, however, was ‘Oh... and what is this world, anyway?’, trying to sound intelligent, missing the mark, big. I tried to remove my hand from your hold, to gesticulate a bit, it was impossible, your fingers a vice around my phalanges, almost crushing them. I knew this was no dream, by now I knew at least that much. This is a world covered by letter-trees, each letter ever in a love poem has its tree here, many of them alien. Many more than human, actually. And how came this world into being? No idea, but it was poets who built it. That sounded as farfetched as my winning the lottery, while alive. Was I dead? Where? Told you, don’t know. Maybe in their minds. So now we are ethereal pieces of imagination, ha... I tried sarcastically, and the vice turned its screw a quarter extra turn, I heard the beginnings of a crack... No, no ethereality in that terrible clutch. Who, what for? I tried, relaxing at the relaxing pressure. Big loves. So? Why isn’t it overpopulated. Shared big loves, you added. So? I insisted, trying to find all of one of my poem’s letters in the trees, failing miserably. Speaking about several needles in one huge haystack... All of us had several big loves, many shared. Biggest loves of a lifetime. Shared. Only they get access here. This time the vice tightened with a tenderness I couldn’t imagine you possessed. And the others? Don’t know – heaven, hell, limbo... wherever. So this is not heaven. Neither hell. Nor limbo. This is forever. And we are allowed to love, lust, fornicate, poetize... The only world where it is allowed, you laughed and I wanted so hard to penetrate your body that I almost choked on my saliva. Can we die here? How, we are dead already? Again the laughter. We may, though, lose our place here and drift to one of the other. How? If we stop touching each other. This is the only condition. But, then, how do we wash, eat, go to the bathroom?... Always making sure we touch each other. Catholic marriage. Worse, Siamese twins. Even Siamese twins can be operated apart. Not when connected at the heart. I kissed you. I kissed you, I raped your mouth and tore your clothes and raped you body and when I was over I did it once more and then once more, never, even for the slightest, not touching you. I love you, I said, then did it again. I know, you said, raping my mouth, and my body again and again and again. A stream of butterflies poured out of your mouth, before you had the time to cover up for your yawn. Butterflies here? I wondered. I thought this place was only for lovers. Poets lovers. They bring some of their beauty along... and you pointed to a nearby unicorn grazing on blue clover. Yours? Mine. The blue too, and you did not offer any explanation, allowing me to carry you over and mount the muscled spine. Where? Home, and the steed opened four pairs of wings and took to the sky. Timeless later. Tell me, how do you know all of this? I asked, momentarily releasing your mouth. I read the brochure, you answered, smiling. Oh, damn, damn, damn anti-climax, damn disappointment... You mean someone manages this place and advertises its offers and gets paid for the effort and... I was on the verge of crying, of dying in a deathless place. I mean I never stopped reading your poetry, everything it says, and everything it doesn’t, everything you never had time to write though you wanted and everything you refused to write though you had the time. You grabbed my mouth once more raping it, raping my body, raping my mind.

• back to list   • back   • next

Too late... ...for touching me once more. I know, sorry and damn I be, but too late. You writhe in your agony cursing me for not having forced rape on you, cursing geography and poetry and death, loving me like you’ve never loved before like you’ve never believed love could rip a heart before. My back stiff, is it a plank there underneath me? Why should I care, dead meat doesn’t care? Yet no one knows of dead meat’s last dreams. No, not the rites, meaningless mumble and mumbo-jumbo and munching mouths feeding themselves on free biscuits for the occasion, meat does not care for last rites. Meat cares for last dreams. We meet, for a last time. Your thirst, lust, pain drilling log sized holes through your mind where my dreams settle down neatly and I sing to you before making love to you before letting you rape me in punishment, in love, in desperation, before I desert the holes to get back to my plank and rites. We are the only to know. We are the only to have been given the prize. Who else could have pined a lifetime and loved to live and lived to die? The glass never breaks.

• back to list   • back   • next

Beads... you handed me a glass bead after letting the warmth of your palm soak into it, it’s not for eating, you said. I took it in my mouth, crunched it between my teeth, swallowed it. you picked another bead, rolled it around your mouth for several hours, licked it one last time and handed it to me, it’s not for eating, you said. I took it in my mouth, rolled it for hours myself licking it, sucking it, cleaning it from tastes of you and leftovers of your breakfast and promises of your dinner, crunched it between my teeth, swallowed it feeling glass chunks cutting ruts through my insides, does it hurt? you asked, I did not answer. you warmed the third bead between your palms, then rolled it in your mouth for days, let it slide down between your breasts down your navel and finally let it disappear for weeks inside your haven, inside your heaven, inside you... pick it yourself? you asked, it is not for eating, you said. I let my fingers fumble around endlessly, pretending not to find pretending not to hear you cries for mercy, pretending indifference, pretending sanity, finally released it from the furnace to enter my hunger smelling it, tasting it, looking for the essence of angel and finding the lust of woman, I rolled it and rolled it and rolled it without counting neither time nor suns and finally crunched it to shards, to sand, to powder between teeth and let it slide down my bleeding ruts seeding there pain indescribable, passion immeasurable, thorns before roses, after roses, inside roses, I guess it hurts like hell, you said closing your thighs, closing your buttons, sliding shoes to your toes and letting the door handle greet your hand. I watched that door handle for a long time, you do not know the half of it, I said, hearing the click and waiting for the memory seeds to germinate and rip me apart.

• back to list   • back   • next

No Answer Needed... You tailored my white armor, you painted my horse white and my ink blue... your eyes, are they still blue? Your steel, is it still down soft when you gather your body naked inside your clothes and take me in, inside your clothes, inside you? There is always place for me, isn’t there, provided I leave the horse out, and the armor and the sword and all I take in is tinted glass fingers and tinted glass words and tinted glass lips... your lips, are they still burning with the tints of that first kiss? Your colors still there, always there, how could they not be there? Tied to my wrist, tied to my lance, to my pen, pouring into the calligraphy of my expression and in the exclamation marks ending my thoughts of you, how can endless thoughts end, I don’t wonder? Your skin... does it still crack open between smile-wrinkles to allow thorns in and roses out?

• back to list   • back   • next

Chains... As thin as cobweb, as long as thousands of miles as powerful as steel cables three foot thick, as invisible as... ...memories?... memories? memories are visible, on paper, in words, in verse... ...unwritten memories?... I leaned back, pondering. Yes, unwritten glass memories. Always thought glass to be brittle. Always knew flesh to be eternal. Steel, glass, flesh... which one? I did not have to ponder. You.

• back to list   • back   • next

The Glass Door... Do you remember the grasshopper? The one I saved at ridiculous risks and perils mid of the busy highway? For whatever reason it jumped to my mind, today. Hey, a grasshopper is supposed to jump, no? Maybe it was a glasshopper, maybe the king of grasshoppers, maybe a gypsy turned grasshopper maybe because it helps me remember you? Maybe because I cannot forget? What about the first eye touch? No, not skin, not breath, not sound, just eye and eye, embracing, merging, screaming in an own mute language of love mating stronger than any love making penetrating through the thick layers of air, and glass and miles growing in the back of me and eternal knowledge. Eternal knowledge of eternity even as the thick layers of time start shoving their heavy, growing bulk on top of air, and glass, and miles. Remember? Even if you forget, remember? The glass door. No, you cannot remember it. It was never there, we’ll face it one day. Maybe not glass. Maybe not door, we’ll face it. If I get there first I will get me a popcorn stand, yes, I will give it up once I spot you. What will you do if you get there first, get yourself a pair of dark, impenetrable eyeglasses to prevent all passers to get blind, to straggle behind, to worship you? To take them off once I get there to blind me, to keep me behind, to worship you? I don’t mind blindness. Once you grab my hand...touching you, this is all the universe I will ever need.

• back to list   • back   • next

Transients... my fist, smashing through the cabin’s tin roof missing your head penetrating your shirt, your bra, taking hold of your breast, clamping, squeezing, waiting... waiting for what?... for the nipple, clamping, squeezing, waiting... waiting for what?... for time to pass, sensations to fade. will they fade? if I wait long enough, a millennium, two. you’ll be dead by then. that’s why they’ll fade. long dead... with emphasis on long. that’s when they’ll fade. you kept turning the steering wheel, smiling, cursing, braking and accelerating, do you think I can go on driving like that? like what? like with your hand fondling my breast mid of a busy city road? do you want the rest of me there too? no answer. your mouth a thin, grim line, I could see it, though my eyes inexistent and the rest of my body molecules in your imagination. do you want the rest of me there too? I repeated, male macho me needing the reassurance of frail you. you tore the hand from your breast, savagely, pulled it all the way to the chair cushion stuck it at the bottom of your belly and squeezed it with your thighs, viciously. if I had a body I would have screamed in agony. you are there, inside, all of you, all the time. the car swerved left, then right, you slalomed around a dog then around an ancient then around a ball, slammed the brakes, screeched, tires burning. damn you! you pulled all of me in, through the roof, the rest of my flesh materializing at your touch your teeth severing my lips, my tongue... you are kissing my memory... past and future... you make love to me once more... past and future... I materialized with no clothes, your clothes de-materialized and we rolled around the cabin floor like all the hounds of hell took possession of our bodies and all the lilac of heaven bathed yours. I wanted to say I love you but you bit my lips again, savagely, sewing them to each other, to yours... don’t say it, once it is said it is gone. and once it is not said? it is eternal. we made love until flowers grew into peaches and rain rolled all the way to the Mississippi and crane sedges rolled south then north again. too little, I gasped. eternal, you said, pointing to the hole in the roof. I de-materialized again, wanted to keep my hand around your nipple but you slapped it away, sealed the hole overhead and shot forward through a cloud of backward-shooting gravel, and melancholy. some of me stayed with you. stashed in your memory. and your body.

• back to list   • back   • next

Sun... I open the door again, pull myself in again, sit down again, drag the door closed behind me with a thud again. When was the last time, years ago? Yesterday? Probably yesterday and the in-between was just a years-lasting dream, the way dreams do. So how come you’ve got a new one so fast? Car, I mean. Probably also hair-do, and nail polish, and shoes if I would dare look at you rather than at the invisible windshield some undefined distance ahead of me. I bet that if I stretched a finger I could touch it, if I stretched it sideways I could touch you, if I slid it between the buttons of the shirt you are probably wearing... “You didn’t change,” you say, being complimentary. I did put some pounds around my waist and they were certainly showing. “You neither,” I respond, surprised at hearing my voice while trying to focus on a piece of dirt on the windshield. “You didn’t even look at me.” “I did. I do. I see you all the time. You did not change. At all.” “Look!” I turn my head, my neck vertebrae screeching as they jerk around, dragging the eyes from that piece of dirt and forcing them to re-focus on the piece of sun. “You did not change. At all.” “Liar.” I take you in, with my eyes, with my nose, with my uncontrollable shiver. You did not. How could you have changed from yesterday to today, when every single night in between I touched you, I made love to you, I smelled you before and after and in between, in between the before and after, in between your biting lips and crushing thighs, in between yesterday and today. “I remember your smell,” I say. I hope you take it as a compliment, stupid as it may be. “I remember your taste,” you respond with a sense of your own, a mischievous smile spreading on your lips. How could we be there, just a breath away and still not touch, how many horses holding us back, how many nylon ropes binding the hands to our sides and cutting into flesh and heart? “Do you want to touch me?” “Yes.” You start the car, and start moving away. You drive aimlessly, watching fixedly ahead, sometimes cursing another inattentive driver, sometimes cursing you own inattention, sometimes humming alongside a radio tune... “...they should rehearse more...” you laugh, when you find yourself out of tune with them, never once looking at me. I know. Once my neck did the ninety degrees swivel it refuses to undo it. Muscles disobeying brain. maybe the other way around. Maybe both ways around. “What are you thinking about now?” “Now?” “Now, at this very moment.” “That you are beautiful.” I did not mean to see that huge blob of rain smearing the mascara all the way down to your chin and on to your white shirt, almost there where your nipples suddenly shoot out turning a mellow hill to a mellow hill with a telegraph pole on it. I start laughing, and it is the first time you look at me since we started driving, “It was a joke?” Not complaining, knowing, yet curious. I tell you about the hill, the telephone pole, and the crystal tune threatens to shatter the reinforced glass cage we are in. You pull gently to the side of the road, open the top two buttons of your shirt... “Kiss me!” It is not a request. It is not a whisper, an invitation, a wish, it is Caesar watching the winning gladiator leaning on top of the prostrated one and his thumb turning all the way down. I, the winning gladiator, you, Caesar and the doomed gladiator and my lover all in one, my hand shoots inside your brassiere taking hold of the breast pulling it towards me and together with it the whole of you and our mouths clash like tigers raging ferociously in a battle for life and death, I kiss you... do I kiss you or do you kiss me or we die? “Make love to me!” You drop me, somewhere. Probably close to my hotel. Probably nowhere. After you, everything is nothing, nowhere, none. Another bag of memories. Rather the same, just fuller. How does one carry a bag of sun? I should know, I do it for so long, in and out of life, in and out of the bag, sometimes sharing the bag. The sun. Then carrying it again. All the years from yesterday to today. Now all the years from today to tomorrow. I enter the door, enter the bed, enter the bag. Naked. I count the nail fingerprints in my skin the teeth fingerprints in my lips, the perfume fingerprints in my nostrils, tongue, fingertips, chest, loins, brain... nails of woman, teeth of woman, perfume, oh, perfume, oh, perfume of woman. And I fall into the sun.

• back to list   • back   • next

Murano... You are transparent to me. Like the glass you are made of, like wind, like the storm in you when, at times, you implode sucking in all of you, all of me, all of life as it should have been. As it was not. I sink my hand deep, deeper inside you, the melted glass tracing rainbows as it ascends my hand up to elbow, up to shoulder, a glass glove, Murano, created by the greatest of Venetian artists, the craft theirs, the colors mine, the passion... yours. I pull my hand back, flexing my fingers in admiration, the hole left in you filling up slowly with salt ...salt is transparent too... you say, as foxes, wolves, skunks and leopards peel off your eyes to spread your glow upon the world, and the magic.

• back to list   • back   • next

Making Love A Thousand Times... We made love a thousand times, remember? Every time you blinked, your eyelash hiding us from the crowd and you dared cuddle into me tear my clothes, tear my skin and wash me with rain and glass dust. Every time you yawned, taking us whole in, skin and flesh and bones and clothes and you dared close your fangs around my rigid want and spit bits and pieces of it into your drooling want together with the glass beads rolling from my eyes. Every time you pulled the petal ending not with not, every time, all time, covering us with the naked stems, with our naked bodies and dared fall asleep knowing when you wake up you will still find me inside you, broken, fragmented, like tinted glass, like heart. We made love, a thousand times. I want to make love. One. Time.

• back to list   • back   • next

Literary Insufficiencies... I kept laughing. Stop it or I’ll drop a house on you, she said. I kept laughing. She dropped a house on me. No, not figuratively, literally. It’s not that it stopped my laughing, it’s that the sheer weight of it turned my belly paper thin and flat so it couldn’t jump any more with its contracting spasms. It’s only when I stopped laughing, some time after the dust settled, that I could evaluate my situation. She sat on a fallen chimney brick, on my chest, her legs both sides of my neck. It was either that she wore pink panties or that she wore none at all. I couldn’t check, my hands imprisoned alongside my body, my neck probably snapped, I was a mess. A horny mess as she would have said. She did not say anything. Then she said something. “Goodness, what shall I do with you?” I guess there were 400 bones in my body at that moment, about twice the normal. That, disregarding the multiple fractured ones. Make love to me? I suggested in my unoriginal way, trying to stick my tongue out. There was nothing sexually implied in the move, just normal male defiance. 401, I corrected my count, defiance turning deference as the tongue refused to depart, probably the hyoid busted as well. I was glad some bones were not actually bones, if you know what I mean, certainly not at the time she did it. Luckily you did not pick your hem up, before, I said and exploded in laughter again. C’mon, if to die, than at least mid of healthy laughter. She understood my subtle hint. Yes, as subtle as rain mid of the Sahara desert, she said, making moves to open her shirt. No!!! I screamed, well aware of the dead weight ironing me from the hips down. Okay, also from my hips up but it was from the hips down that I was worried about. You are funny, she said, starting to unbutton, first you write an improbable story, then you try to make it sound possible, and finally you even try to embed in it impossible sexual allusions of the most implausible kind. That took care of my alliteration drive, but not of the situation. The second button opened, I started to suffer, she did not seem to mind. Of course I do mind... third button... but only you can resolve the issue. You are the poet. I am, after all, just a figment of your imagination. Button... Figment? What figment, I didn’t even know the word. I knew fish. I knew filament and fragment and floccinaucinihilipilification and f... (sorry). Never knew of figments until now. Figs, maybe? She was about to stand up. No!!!!!! I screamed twice as hard, something pushing away from the door (it was the door that fell on my lower part of body) and trying to hole itself backwards in the asphalt melting in the back of me... No~~~ (I use ~ as the punctuation for wailing, didn’t find anything else). I think it penetrated her skull, finally. Not that she was any more merciful. Promise to misbehave? Promise~~~ Promise to repair your bones? Promise~~~ ALL of them? (terrible emphasis on ALL). Must I?~~~ She was about to stand up above me... Promise!!!~~~ She stood up, and before any damage happened to the door (ha, funny me) bent down, picked the house by its balls (a mannerslessness of speech) and pulled it away from me. The door was damaged beyond repair. The rest seemed to be okay. I started checking my various parts, carefully... And now... now is my time to...? She nodded, her mercilessness even deeper than my mannerlessness. Mis~be~have!!!~~~ Oh, my, God... did you see the plethora of ~ ? Oh, my, God, didn’t even know I knew plethora... I repaired all my bones in just one single paragraph. This one. Then I pulled her to the ground ripped away her skirt, ripped away her shirt sent her legs sunrise and sunset... yes, the right way around... and let my tongue burn a trail of liquid fire all the way from her loins up to her mouth all of me falling into her agonizing insides everywhere, deeper, endlessly, abysmally... oh, god of all literary insufficiencies, where is your capital ~ ? * We were a mess. We are a mess, she stated the obvious. Would you want it any other way? I asked, worrying her body with demands already satisfied, my finger contemplating the undefined border between reality and imagination. This is the well defined reality, she moaned, taking the finger to her mouth, sucking it clean, then shooing it back to its wandering ways. Thank you, she added. Thank you for what? I wondered, wandering. For literary insufficiencies, she smiled, making sure I did not wander too far away from well defined borders.

• back to list   • back   • next

Scream... Scream. I hear it, I hear you. Scream. The dead of quiet at the heart of the cyclone raving and roving and you there screaming, for me, only I can hear. The scream. The quiet. I touch you again. Like every day. Again, today. Like yesterday like the day before yesterday and the one before that. Like every day. I touch you again. Today. You know. You smile. You touch me you scream you smile. You smile. I gather glass snow and build you castles of glass snow then gather glass words and build you words of glass words then gather glass flowers and water them waiting for the bloom and the butterflies and the winter to tie them in a colorful nosegay leaving underneath the bands some of my fingers and some of my lips and some of my discarded clothing and then send the fading rainbow your way held proudly in chameleon’s claw and my heart’s ribbon. Look for the fingers, the lips, the discarded clothing, look for the colors, they are there. Inside your scream. Inside my dream. Don’t close your eyes when you make love to me. Neither when you scream. Keep them open, I want you to see me while you draw my wings and you cut my chain and I rain my all I have on the world, except for the colors. I want you to see me when I rain all my colors on you.

• back to list   • back   • next

Young... Past her mid-life. Past her child bearing and her prime skin and her painless joints, past her Colgate teeth and her Barbie eyelashes young lying on my bed, legs wide spread and calling don’t want to die a virgin and calling fuck me! And what she wants to call is tie ribbons from the moon to the clearing and let me swing sunrise to sunset with butterflies chasing my fluttering toes and silk hanging on to the tips of my nipples and you carve the tree and sculpt the stone and lay your bed of yellow feathers to lay my body of white milk and shoo away ribbons and butterflies and silk to leave me drunk in your elixir and covered in your leaves and caresses. I carefully close her legs take her in my arms and start teaching her the words she wants to call and we have a lifetime and one has always a lifetime till death and one is never too young to learn and she smiles because she knows the words but did not know we had the time for anything except fuck me! Then she slides away from my arms lies on the bed, legs wide spread and calls don’t want to die a virgin and calls fuck me! and winks and this time I hear her ribbons and her butterflies and her silk and as I enter her queendom she pulls down my ear and whispers of dragons eating the stars to spit the dew and poppies opening upon the plains of my eyes and the virginity she just lost in a forest of colors.

• back to list   • back   • next

Relativity... I writhe in the agony of nerves grinding between misplaced vertebrae and crumbling cartilage yet, a momentary smile invades my mind knowing that I’ve known worse. The pain of losing you.

• back to list   • back   • next

Thin... Thin. Like thinner. Like thinnest. Like molecules of memory disintegrating to their basic sub-sub-atomic components to stretch all the way from here there. Thin. As strong as a steel cable leashing two continents together and not letting go. Like glass. We could break it with a breath... if we wished. Sometimes I lie on my back. Then I lie on my belly. Then again on my back. Sometimes I don’t lie on my belly at all. Sometimes I don’t dream. Sometimes you are with me, on my back on my belly in my no dream, on my knees, underneath my fingers, between my fingers. Some. All. Sometimes. Alltimes. I stopped counting the grains, it’s irrelevant, no one knows when the count reaches zero, one knows only that one starts feeling the slight whiffs as they start passing closer and closer to the body and there is less and less of them as if willing to show life, might, pride in the impotence of their relentless, endful fall. But when I lie on my back, or on my belly or in my no dream, I roll in my mind again and again those molecules of memory back into their size, shape, color, fragrance and I know that for as long as the grains still keep falling I have a whole universe of wondrous sparkle to wallow in.

• back to list   • back   • next

Glass?... Glass? What glass, when I uncover the skin and its hanging fruits of white flesh quiver like little pools of water filling my palms, and then I dip my mouth in the pools and roll onto my tongue the red, soft cherries metamorphosing within seconds to red, hard pebbles playing a hymn of adulation upon my teeth like hammers upon a glass xylophone. See?... Glass... Told you... Glass? What glass, when the ankles rebelliously part ways each searching its destiny following earth’s magnetic lines one looking for white butterflies way north gleaning thorns and roses between toes the other following cranes migrating south dipping on the way each of five toes in three of seven volcanoes and my role is reduced to playing the axis around which thighs tremble like a compass’s magnetic glass needle. See?... Glass... Told you... Glass? What glass, when I cup mounds of flesh symmetrically cutting your body in those asymmetrical halves one starting at curls following neck down to belly one starting at toes following knees up to curls my fingers probing the multiple centers of all symmetries and asymmetries and while my brain screams at mathematical blasphemy the rest of my body screams profanities at my interfering brain trying to focus on the music of marbles of divinity dripping, accompanied by sighs of lust on the glass bed sheet. See?... Glass... Told you... Is there a way to make you just shut up and listen to the glass? I turn you over, then turn you over again, then turn you over again successlessly trying to satiate my insatiable desire to absorb you with eyes and skin and ears and whichever senses respond to my unholy, plundering call for depredation of holy, marvelous places, gloating over your squirming shape as I lick off the lines of your palm until it remains as polished and as smooth as a petal of glass. See?... Glass... Did I tell you?... Finally. You started sinking, the ecstasy mire starting to envelope your mind, I decided to give up my natural inclination to cruelty my insanity for a moment under control, I lifted my head, slightly, watched your begging eyes... yes, you may... and swiftly, before any of us could face a change of mind I delivered that gratifying coup de grâce. My tongue touched the middle of your body. Glass started pouring out, hot, molten, enveloping, cocooning me in those feminine fragrances sweeter than death. See? Told you. Glass.

• back to list   • back   • next

paper flesh... my color was pale. my eyes pale, my lips pale, my paper flesh pale like the heart of a candle’s extinguished flame. your color was fire. blue and red and fire your flesh flesh the heart of a volcano’s gaping mouth. “touch me,” I begged. “you will burn,” you said. “touch me,” I begged. “you will burn,” you said. “touch me, touch me, touch me,” I begged and you touched and I burned turning a blackened, wrinkled clump of carbonized paper flesh. you gathered my leftovers in your fists, squeezing, crumbling, turning me dust then turning me ashes then you started kneading the dark mass in your lap crying into it spitting into it bleeding into it as you turned the mass into mash and the mash into paper pate your finger blisters popping and the salty drops mixing with all the rest, you even threw your broken nails in then you stood up, lifted your skirt and dumped the pate into the mold, closed it, waited. there were thumps, and screeches and explosions, some hissing vapor tried to escape you tore your clothes and wrapped it tightly all around nothing should escape, not even one drop. you waited. naked. shivering. naked. waited. the thumping stopped. the threshing, screeching, vibrations, explosions... stopped. quiet. you leaned your ear against the mold, untied the rags, opened the clamps, lifted the lid, it lay there, inert, almost finished. I. flesh. dead. I wasn’t yet rigid. you readjusted the nose a bit, it was too squashed to your taste, pulled one ear, shorter than the other one, you moved lower, reaching the areas beneath the belly counting, all there but you counted again just to make sure, not much to count though still malleable so you massaged it slightly modeling the masculinity to your taste... taste?... you smiled lightly counting one last time then moving to the feet where one toe was missing. you disconnected the sticky knot and released it. perfect. you even slashed a scar in an intimate region, using your nail, to make it look more realistic. you kissed my eye. nothing happened. you frowned. you kissed it again and then the other one. nothing. you kissed my lips then you kissed my fingers one by one then my toes two by two, you punched me in the heart. you even bit... there... apologizing after. inert. nothing. “wake up, you bastard, wake up,” you screamed my way, “what do I have to do, piss on you?” but dead flesh, even if flesh flesh, is dead. it doesn’t even hear. you turned the mold over, dumping the form on the bed, then made sure it faces the right way around and started molesting it impertinently, insistently. dead flesh flesh is nothing but impotent in face of impertinence and parts of it stirred as you squealed your delight and made love to me. I opened my eyes. * “where am I?” “heaven.” “can I stay there?” “both there and here. you’re welcome.” “so I do not have to go out?” you squiggled, getting into a more comfortable position. “no, you don’t.” I stayed in. days, years. from time to time I was feeding you cherries, three. from time to time you were feeding me cherries, two. once we had a single cherry and we squished it between our mouths and teeth and shared its flesh then our tongues fought over the seed, you winning. then you gave it to me. then I gave it to you and you spat it and it grew into a cherry tree, growing over us and bathing us in cherries. “let’s make love,” I begged for the thousandth time, “and what is it we do?” you answered for the nine hundred ninety-ninth time (one time you were asleep and only mumbled something) and we made love once again our flesh flesh and flesh flesh becoming flesh, never leaving heaven. “if I leave, will I find heaven again?” I asked. “you can leave but you can never leave,” you answered enigmatically, “let’s make love,” you asked, the first time in nine hundred ninety-nine times celebrating one thousand. “and what is it we do?” I mimicked your earlier response. “let’s make love,” you asked, for the second time. “did we change roles?” I asked, after, not willing to risk the mood. you did not answer, there was no need, words were just a waste of that diminishing resource called time. ”I love you,” I said, only because I did not remember saying it earlier on. not that you did not know.

• back to list   • back   • next

Tree, With Parentheses... It’s tall, the tree. I can hear you there, among the branches chomping and munching and chewing and cursing (ladylike, when you break a tooth) between the cherries and the berries and the pineapples (you don’t need a knife) and coconuts (you don’t need a knife) and boiled potatoes (you need a knife, for self protection, strange potatoes on a tree), I look upwards trying to get a glimpse of you and if not of you at least of the you under your skirts, from time to time gratified by the white of a thigh (I use binoculars) or the white of a piece of cotton... not so sure it is cotton, some shadows there, transparent cotton? maybe lace? maybe none?... You do drop a berry from time to time, jumping like a monkey to another branch and you do drop a coconut, only rarely missing... fifty something lumps on my skull almost as many as the rungs missing to the first non missing rung, there, where I should be able to jump because I am a frog and you a princess and I missed the rungs when you were a frog too. I tried, hit my head against a branch, almost broke my neck. Now, you bite the berries and drop the coconuts on me, those you don’t eat. Some carrying your teeth marks, your lipstick, your perfume, notes carved with fingernails the maddening wine of your femininity (hey, no, not a coconut, c’mon, maybe, at most, an apple?) and I bang my head against them hoping to break, drink, live. I tried, sneakily, to kiss your teeth marks, doesn’t work, stayed frog. I lean on the trunk, there, where the rungs are missing, take Tamino’s flute and try to summon some spirits (actually trying to spirit you down) but all I get is a hail of pineapples (guess you finished all the coconuts) one grates on my big toe, one grazes my nose, one graces my mouth (it carries your bite, did you aim it?), then I try Pied Piper’s and all I get is some bats (well, they are some sort of rats, no) also dropping berries on me and... well... droppings (what do you mean guano?). Last, Pan’s maybe? Nice try, only bleating sounds, some goats approaching me and lifting their hind leg, dog-wise and I hear you laughing your head off up there and I hope you fall and I catch you and we both fall into the guano and do... but all I get is some nuts, crushed between your teeth I guess where else, there where the coconuts that should have been, at most, apples? (hey, finished the pineapples too? didn’t know about your nuts... oops... sorry). I give up, sit against the trunk and fall asleep, dreaming of taking up tuba playing. Oh, almighty... il profumo... le parfum... das parfüm... el perfume that envelops me as your toes followed by your ankles followed by your knees followed by your thighs followed by your loins followed by your belly followed by your breasts followed by your neck followed by your chin end in your lips when you slide against my mouth feeding me your sweat, dust, dirt, wine, lust, salt, milk, blood, dew, ending in that liqueur known only to frogs kissed by princesses. “You will, nevertheless, remain frog,” you say turning our clothes to shreds and our bodies to pyre. I wake up, the tuba next to me, a monkey... you?... throwing now bananas my way, peeled bananas (do you eat the peels?) the dream fresh in my mind... fresh?... dream?... I hear a chuckle up there as something resembling a bare ass jumps from branch to branch dropping a chewed cherry into my mouth... the taste... the smell... il profumo... le parfum... das parfüm... el perfume... I watch the shreds around me, the third degrees on my skin, lick my lips clean from liqueur, from dew, blood, milk, salt, lust, wine, dirt, dust, sweat get on my feet, unashamed anymore with my nakedness and start blowing into the tuba. Who knows, maybe this will do the trick.

• back to list   • back   • next

Missing Italics... Coming. Why? To meet you. Why? To touch you. Why? To touch you again. Why? She watched me mentally. I watched her mentally. I did not answer immediately, had to work out the right answer, this was not that simple a matter. Because I touched you only one time. If I touch you again it will be two times, one hundred percent more, it has value, one hundred percent, no? Thus, if you come once again, after, a third time, it will be only fifty percent more and after one hundred times it will be the one-hundred-and-oneth time. only one percent more. After a million times the one-million-and-oneth time will be zero point one pro mil more, insignificant. The more we meet the more insignificant it becomes. She watched me mentally. I watched her mentally. It was the wrong way to get it done, it wasn't math that would get me anywhere with her and a change of tactics was necessary. Because there is only one thread between us. Thin, fragile, like electric bulb glass, like champagne goblet crystal, like trinitite the thickness of spider web silk. Thin, isn’t it? Thin, true. Fragile?... hand me the hammer, please. She meant the carpenter’s hammer. I handed it over, she lifted it, hit the thread, the hammer disintegrated. Hand me the hammer, please. She meant the hammer they used to build the railroad when they won the west, I handed it over, rather dragged it over. It took her some effort to lift it then she hit the thread, the hammer disintegrated. Hand me the hammer, please. She meant Thor’s hammer. I saved myself and Thor the embarrassment, I knew it would disintegrate. She watched me mentally. I watched her mentally. Another change of tactics? Because there is just one flower between us. Lonely, lost, wilting, we are responsible for it, no? Yes, one. True, we planted it. One. She opened the window. Oh, goodness... the vista of colors and smells and shapes, and butterflies and chameleons and unicorns and dragons... All I remember is one, I baulked. You remember right, one seed. And this, there? I pointed to a bald patch, dry, deserted. That’s one seed of pain. Dying into colors too, and as she kept looking at it it started turning rainbows. She watched me mentally. I watched her mentally. It was a dead end. I had to come. I wanted to come. I had no choice. Poetry, I said. I knew, I got her. Trapped, bound, shackled. She froze, her lips paling to honey her nipples paling to pollen. Poetry? What about poetry, she asked. Poetry, I pushed on relentlessly my advantage, cruelly, my heart breaking. Poetry, I wrote you one million poems, there will never be the one-million-and-oneth, never. Unless I come. Your turn. I saw the math breaking into fractal insanity, the thread starting to curve downwards, the bald patch starting to crack... my heart was breaking my heart was breaking my heart was breaking, she opened her mouth to speak, eyes downcast... oh, damn me, damn me, damn me... Stop! I screamed. I lie! I screamed. Her eyes opened anew, math intact, thread taut, patch blooming, her lips wine once again her nipples poppies once again as I started my million-and-oneth. Okay, I will try again, at two million. Maybe at two-million-and-oneth you will say it? Maybe at one-billion-and-oneth? Maybe at... Yes.

• back to list   • back   • next

Time Things... Time Sharpening its scythe on my bones in its relentless, timeless manner, here and there nicking a piece of bone, of cartilage when, apologetically, it slips into my mind reads and then strikes with momentary, blind fury against the sharp sword it finds there called love. Funny, I always thought of time to be asexual, impartial, equalitarian. Could time, actually, be an envious she? Ferocious, obnoxious, striking down, comatose at soft spoken those with tattered old gloves holding tattered old loves and trying with art to mend an old heart and droves over droves of old, perishing doves? Let it be, whatever. I guess it finally is. Asexual. And it does strike, with fury, at its own impotence to think to feel my way.

• back to list   • back   • next

Death, It Is Also A Subject, No?... preludio death, at your side... heavenly. no, heavenly is the wrong word when one doesn’t believe in hell, heaven, zombies, reincarnation and the rest of the foibles, death at your side is... it is... okay, why don’t I just go on talking while you look for the right word, deal? atto primo, hospital we were chasing each other on our wheel chairs, yours smooth mine squeaking so you’d know I was after you as we roamed through the white corridors cutting inattentive toes crashing through glass doors those that would open and those that would not your wild hair flailing back splinters of glass glinting in the neon lights like diamonds at Tiffany’s my wheels crushing the big shards into smaller splinters and my huge transistor radio blasting mean rock between the walls until they got fed up with us, ninetagers, and our rowdiness and send the guards after us truncheons, dogs, pepper spray and thudding boots... follow me! you screamed dropping catheters, infusion bags, plasma bottles and diet-coke cans in your wake and I followed suit along the wet trail chuckling wildly at the sound of trailing curses... another corridor, a few stairs bong-bong-bong we didn’t fall the last stretch, perfect timing the ambulance rear doors open, level with the floor, you were already in the driver’s seat when I crashed in after you, click, rear doors closed, locked, click, side doors locked, ignition, kiss me! you screamed crashing out through the gate not waiting for it to open as legally and logically expected. atto secondo, ambulance it took them some time to get organized, not everything is Hollywood flick efficiency. by that time we were lost in the city and then out of it, windows fully open allowing you to shout obscenities to all those cars crawling alongside at legal speed, overtaking them with screeching fury, almost on two wheels, your blond, long hair fluttering like all the colors of rainbow and freedom and freedom and freedom... freedom! you screamed, then looked at me, freedom, you whispered as I leaned my head on your shoulder and you put a withering hand around my neck, the hospital’s yellow plastic bracelet dangling, a reminder of reality in a moment of ecstasy. six months of meticulous preparations - decoy, timing, bribery (those guards were not really that slow) and it was still touch and go. finally, it was go. your roots are white, I said. I am ninety two, what would you expect, blonde? you laughed. kiss me, you whispered. first stop the car, I didn’t reach that far to miss the real fun, I answered. you sure you can? you asked, stopping the car on a deserted side road, a few wild trees gazing at us, intruders, with green benevolence. you sure you ready? you added, pointing in the general direction of my mid body, I am, you concluded, pointing in the general direction of your head which my wishful thinking translated as pointing to your mouth. if I can not then I will, I answered proudly pointing to a pocket bulging with stolen pharma boxes of all kinds I could imagine - Viagra, Cialis, Levitra, Aspirin... Aspirin? yes, so you can not claim a headache, you know... the advantage of having left the teeth to their own, orphaned fate was that all that was left was flesh and our mouth stuck to each other with Magdeburgian force while the rest of flimsy clothing deserted our bodies and we lived the moment like the youngest of breed horses after a month’s abstinence on Mars... ...there’s no air on Mars... as if I cared, as if you cared as our groans and whelps scattered the crows a mile around and dropped the leaves two miles around and... shut up!... and I shut up caressing you, caressing you, caressing you. I didn’t even have to use them, I pointed to my pocket, proud again, young again, man again, not piece of meat again. they are coming. the helicopter was making rounds overhead for some time now and the sound of remote sirens joined the din, we were dressed, smiling, ready. ready, Thelma? well, I was really the wrong age, the wrong sex, the wrong... what the hell?... ready, Louise! and you started the monster up with one deft turn of key one hand on the steering wheel one hand holding mine and started galloping up the hill at break-neck speed the four wheel drive leaving any blaring siren hanging far behind as it started gulping the distance to the top in ever increasing madness... yahoooooooooooo!... it died half a mile before we reached the top. out of gas. they shackled us, took us to the station and released us on grounds of... well, what grounds should one have for locking up ninety plusers? they just cut your driving license to tiny slices then burnt it in front of your tearing eyes. as if it mattered, as I knew when you side winked my way. the hospital refused to have us back in and we refused to be back in with them around us so finally gave us a few pounds of medication dropped any charges provided that we dropped any demands and insincerely wished us well as they ushered us out of the door. we wished everybody sincerely well and left for home. we locked the door behind us. atto terzo, bed sometimes I used the stuff in that bulging pocket. sometimes I didn’t. sometimes you were on top of me sometimes I was on top of you sometimes it was just indefinable. sometimes, rarely, we just didn’t do it. sitting cross legged at both ends of bed (and hoping we could get up later) mouths wide open and tossing pills to each other. some hit the target, most didn’t and we painfully collected them from the floor and tried again. lover? yes, love. read to me. I knew it was going to come, I just didn’t know when. which one, love? Tennyson, Wordsworth, Cummings... no, not Cummings, makes me think of similar sounding words and actions... and you exploded in laughter at my disgusted look... ...Dickinson, Whitman, Parker, Byron... You, lover. you made the you sound as if it started with a capital. I, love? You, lover. unmistakable this time. capital. I rummaged through the pile, picked one at random, opened it at random and started reading. first you listened. then you crawled next to me. then you crawled in my lap. then you crawled all over me and I dropped the book and joined in the crawling immersing ourselves into absolute, devastating lust, lecherousness, salacity, prurience, and the only obstacle between us and myocardial infarction... death. finale did you find the right word? ok, reality doesn’t matter, belief or no doesn’t matter, hell, zombies... what matters is meaning. so let’s leave it as is. heavenly. yes, definitely. heavenly.

• back to list   • back   • next

Icicles And All... icicles, hanging down from your nipples as you crawled above me and dropped them into my mouth, one, then the other, then the first again... same taste, I did not complain. you complain, you said, what about another icicle? I did not dare agree, you agreed for me and had to crouch above me dropping another icicle in my mouth. another taste, I did not complain. you complain, you said, giving up on icicles and offering me a pair of frozen lips instead, a muscular snake behind them insisting on cleaning my teeth and a couple of blades, or where these ice picks?... turning my mouth with all its attached solid or else appendages into the bleeding texture of an unfrozen smoothie. different, I did not complain. you complain, you said, laying my body on a bed of fine glass-flour mixed with fine ice-flour and starting to knead yourself into it icicles and all. I shut up, looked the safest to do. you complain, you said rolling a pink ribbon around and around and around us and lighting it at one end. fuse? I asked. you did not answer. I did not know the ribbon passed through our hearts until I lay spread all over the galaxy. my dust mixed with yours. looks like whatever you do I end up in heaven, I did not complain. heaven comes in many shapes, you finally conceded to more English than previously inferred, I am not yet done with you. I couldn’t agree more. I did not complain.

• back to list   • back   • next

Count... How many times did I make love to you? Funny that you don’t know, you were always there. How many poems dropped between my fingers missing the nib of the pen on their way to nowhere? Funny that you know, you were never there. How many dreams lie buried in a blob of molten glass? Funny that none of us knows, we both counted them so many times... Was that a speck of dust blurring our vision each time we reached the count of endless? How many heavens lie buried in the once humming cabin of a long ago scrapped truck? Funny that both of us know we both counted them so many times... Was that a speck of dust blurring our vision each time we reached the count of one?

• back to list   • back   • next

Flashback... A momentary flashback. My tips of fingers shearing away at touch leaving bleeding phalanx tips to crawl stubbornly on, your scream shearing with life from down the depths of your loins and out to the world through the orb of my left eye... The rest was before. Lovers, husbands, children in this order or other or various. The rest of the rest was after. Lovers, husbands, well... maybe not children. No, grandchildren don’t count, they did not rip your body apart. And in between, after the before and before the after, was I. The one to have taken your virginity. The only one. I felt your virtual fingers playing with my virtual hair, pulling, punishing me for something unknown? You are right, you finally said, virtually, except for one detail. You did not take anything... and as I was about to protest one of those virtual fingers welded my lips closed with its fiery touch. I gave it to you.

• back to list   • back   • next

Yes Ma'am... I let you sit on my fingers, you let me leave my fingers where you sat just making sure the palm side was up and your skirt out of the way demurely letting the generous folds cover your thighs, my hand, us. and modestly, you insisted. and modestly, I acquiesced. I sat on your fingers chasing them till they were there where I intended to sit and unfortunately I had no skirt to move out of the way nor any generous folds to cover my shamelessness and prurience. and mine, you insisted. and yours, I acquiesced. we sat on, in, around each other’s lap, fingers busy defending conquered territory with claw, nail, muscle any reminiscence of skirt or cloth or fold long gone from body and mind leftovers of modesty brutishly crushed under unforgiving lust’s heel. we too, you insisted. we too, I acquiesced not really penetrating the fathoms of your insistence not really caring to penetrate any fathoms except existential ones. time to make love again, you insisted. time to make love again, I acquiesced allowing myself be inurned by femininity’s demolishing fragrances and its army of mandibular lackeys.

• back to list   • back   • next

Holidays... Not Christmas, not Easter, Independence, not even Valentine’s. Rather To. To day. Better known as today. Same like Every day, better known as everyday. When I think of you. Starting with dressing you, then undressing you, then dressing you again and in between the undressing you to the dressing you again many things happening, interesting things, sometimes interest taking first and third seat with the in-between filled with the blessed unconsciousness of roar. Tell me, do all your poems have to do with sex? you moan, sitting in that previously mentioned third seat. No, many have to do with lust, I answer playing with your nipples, then with your curls and having you seated eventually back on the first seat I move us both violently through the second, once again, ending on the third, panting for life. I like your redundant sequence, you smile crushing beads of glass between your teeth as you start playing with my nipples, then with my curls and I have no idea about the rest as unconsciousness seems to last forever. Nothing lasts forever, you say. Nothing except last lust, I smartass back, the following one-two-three proving me right. I wonder, where do those endless glass beads come from?

• back to list   • back   • next

Teenager... Teenager. I hear a virtual snort, myself to myself. Ha, teenager, how many decennia ago? And I don’t know if to laugh back or kick him (ie me) in the head. Yes! teenager, maybe even teenager minus, child, infant, sour milk leftovers still hanging at lip corners and unfaked innocence misting my eyes as shivering fingers open the few buttons pull aside the liberated shirt curtains unclasp the lacy armor and I gaze, transfixed, at the snowing white, at the bleeding red... how long did I before touching, before dying? Your first? she asks, knowing better. My first, I answer, knowing better. My first, in that one dimension that counts where trembling is two fold and burning is four fold and pleasure ten thousand fold and counting. You’re a teenager, she says and I don’t snort even virtually, maybe even teenager minus, child, infant, sour milk leftovers at your lip corners true innocence misting your eyes... how? she wonders guiding my mouth to the nipple and hugging the nape of my neck one instant before breaking. I did not cry, though I wanted to. It would have meant liberating that nipple. I did not even breathe. I prayed against that breast hoping the moment never ends, hoping she breaks my neck before the moment ends, hoping I wake up from the dream and find myself teenager, my real first. My last. Time swooshed by, a tsunami relishing its successful effort to pull me back into reality, raving its miserable failure to pull me back from that breast.

• back to list   • back   • next

the road... another step forward, forward to what? to where? the road in back tumbles in clinking sounds of glass breaking, fathoms below, the road on sides... is there any road on sides? next step forward and sneaking a glance backwards confirms the suspicion - nothing, nowhere, gone. I know there was something there earlier on, I was not floating, I remember though... what do I remember? was it real? dream? another step. clink. shatter. clink. maybe even music in another language, in another galaxy, for other forms of living. I see you. somewhere to my side, slightly behind which means also slightly forward, in other terms, in terms of life time laughter left chunks of dreams unfulfilled hopes. you wave. I wave back. why do we keep waving to each other, sending glass kisses, glass butterflies, glass flowers?... maybe because glass everything is the only form of life still allowed, still alive, still burning like all hells’ mothers and fathers and sons and daughters and rest of family and pets and furniture and it still not reaching our hell? hell? why the hell should hell’s fire be the reference when ours is countless fold hotter, why shouldn’t we say hell as hot as our fire? with hells’ mothers and fathers and the rest pre and post and progeny? hi, you wave and I almost stumble on the road’s side, almost about to discover if there is or there is not. hi, I wave back and you do not see as you start leaping through an invisible hopscotch maze and I take another step and twist my ankle as all I see is your mane of hair and the bare spine it wildly clothes. how do I see it when you’re supposed to be in back of me? reflections? magic? the reality of the impossible in this impossible world? I look at my fingertips. no fingertips to look at as they burnt long ago inside your mysteries. I look at them as they were before and as they are no more and I do not miss them. I miss the mysteries. I envy them as they stayed behind, in the mysteries, in the once upon, in the shattered glass that tumbled away long ago. hi, I wave sending a glass butterfly and I watch you chasing it for as long as the narrow road allows, then you send it back and I smell your body on its wings. the sun sets. I sleep on one foot only. one does not know if the road will crumble underneath the other. sure maybe it will crumble underneath this one, fifty-fifty chance. all I have left is fifty-fifty chance. better than sixty-forty. even better than ninety-ten. sure, even at ninetynine-one I will still send you butterflies. I will still yearn for your smell. for your woman.

• back to list   • back   • next

The Wall... Thicker. One more over night, one more layer invisible, barely measurable, undeniable. One layer thicker. Impenetrable to anything but light, not even to sound. More today than yesterday, more yesterday than the day before, more... how many layers? Impenetrable. To fist, to hammer, to bulldozer... maybe an H-bomb? Maybe. Of course I see you. I gave up hammering, don’t have enough money for an H-bomb. Not even for a bazooka. I just watch. You climb the stairs, you cut flowers, you shower, I wish you would shower longer, you cut bread, you write, you joke and smile. Sometimes just smile. I wish you would smile longer. You climb the stairs again, finally wearing that loose short skirt and I peek underneath irrelevant that I’ve seen you naked so many times I peek, for the intimacy of the moment, for the blush. Mine. Tomorrow thicker. Another over night. Another glass layer. Maybe two H-bombs? How come you never see me? I try to attract attention any which way possible standing on my head walking on stilts tried a circus act, broke my hand, you didn’t even come to write a poem on my cast. You did though send an army of fireflies (how the hell did they pass the wall?) one day to show me the first of lilac’s opening flowers to wake me up on the first crane flying back in the damn beasts even tried to pull me up, above the wall, they failed. Did you know? You happened, by chance, to be on the other side, looking elseway, when they dropped me back to my side of the floor apologetically, then they returned your way and disappeared inside your sleeve. You pirouetted, the skirt lifting to your waist, your flesh glinting for moments few until the cloth dropped again and you walked away. You knew. I know you knew because you threw a lilac stem my way and it landed at my feet. Why the hell everything can pass the damn wall except me? I asked of no one in particular picking the lilac between my teeth and starting to bang my head impotently against the wall. No, it did not pass through. Tomorrow another layer. Three H-bombs? Well, as long as you keep mounting those stairs wearing that loose, short, fluttering skirt...

• back to list   • back   • next

hey,... hey, bird, lend me your wing and I’ll paint its tip silver, command the horizon that sunset be coming, behest your small talons my heartbeats to pilfer and hear falling stars that on rooftops be drumming. hey, flower, lend me your petal, I’ll trim through it yellow, I'll trim through it summer with fingertips nipping, your roots rip my chest into animal bellow as thorns cut my veins, aphrodisiac sipping. hey, fairytale, lend me the words that have written your magic with letters of gold inside simmering passion, the letters that seeded rare beauty in tragic and poured melting lilac in countenance ashen. hey, woman, lend me the breast that is ruling my bearing, decant resurrection’s mescal through that nipple that feeds me raw fire in moments despairing and leaves me a mindless, euphoric old cripple.

• back to list   • back   • next

Memory... Hotel. Small. Hand in hand, up the stairs, I rush trying to jump two, three at a time... you hold me back. Slow... Why? I want to start later. Why? If we start later we end later. I wait, not really sure of the meaning. Our last. I am impatient, on fire. Our last. I know. The later we finish the less we will have to remember. Took me some time. Got it, finally. I kiss you, delaying it longer, hands wandering all over you, all over inside you, crushing you... Careful, unless you happen to be of necrophiliac inclinations, you smile, pulling away from me. Dragging. I said later. I did not say never. Hotel. Small. Hand in hand, down the stairs. There’s nothing to rush into anymore, memories don’t need rushing into just sliding slowly into - like into butter, like into the sea, like into a woman. It started, you know? What? The memories. You know, hands wandering all over me, all over inside me, crushing me. I guess I wouldn’t mind dying. I guess you wouldn’t mind necrophilia. We leave pieces of lip in each other’s mouth. Something to chew for some time, a taste to live in. To live for. A long memory to come.

• back to list   • back   • next

Pickled Dreams... What the hell does he see in me? No, not me asking, she. I would ask differently, I would ask What the hell does she see in me? With no answer of course, if not nothing. Yet she asks What the hell does he see in me? And I try to answer, certain to fail, certain to try, certain of the certainty of knowledge. Virginity? At this now age, past births, endless love making? Virginity. Age the demands of life, births the mystery of life, love making the necessity of life yet she as young as my mind decides overruling her hymen as intact as my mouth reaches for overruling love making a fata morgana of the deserts of life she passes through as I know overruling, she the virgin of my pickled dreams overruling. Beauty? At this now age, wrinkles invading, hair graying? Beauty. Age the rite of passing, wrinkles the count of smiles, grey the canvas of fantasies her age sacrificed to the time machine of my words her wrinkles minced into the fodder of passion by my counting words her grey slaughtered into the rainbow of my dyeing words my dying words my pickled dreams of her eternal beauty. Love? First love? Furious love? Fanatical love? At this age, burned sheets, hands, bodies, lovers, water measured in oceans, reach measured in world slices, tomorrow measured in decenniums? Maybe measured in nevers? Love. First love. Furious love. Fanatical love. Age meaningless. Sheets, hands, bodies, lovers, water, reach, tomorrow meaningless. My pickled dreams everything and that one, glassy grain of reality which keeps grating between my teeth.

• back to list   • back   • next

Outerworldly Comics... Why? Because when you exhale you unblock my nose, you unblock the city sewers, you unblock the volcano’s dried throat into a Trinidad Scorpion Butch spill certain to burn a planet, a galaxy, a human. You mean like some kind of Superman? I mean like you. Why? Because when you touch toenails explode into gyrating nickel screws, tires explode into floating rubber bubbles, ice poles explode into 200 proof Everclear and to hell with azeotropes as the sun explodes and the milky way implodes and the human sings. You mean like some kind of Human Torch? I mean like you. Why? Because when you blink you peel my skin, you peel graffiti off walls, you peel colors off rainbows with razor eyelashes into bucketfuls of xanthophores and erythrophores and iridophores and melanophores and leucophores and cyanophores to paint red in white stars and blue in black holes and pink in this human’s iris. You mean like some kind of Wonder Woman? I mean like you. You have an outerworldly imagination, you know? You have an outerworldly beauty, you know? When the poem ends, so does the magic, you know? Mine. Not yours, you know. Why? Me, why me? You know? I will never know. You do.

• back to list   • back   • next

Tools Of Trade... Derision, A weapon of deadly precision, A weapon of mass murder And nothing blossoms further, ever!? Deception, Perdition’s immoral inception, Unscrupulous intrusion Infesting with delusion, hate!? Defilement, Invoked in the wake of beguilement, The raping of past moments With vulgar worded comments, period!? Deprival, The rot in the heart of survival, A crave facing denial, A verdict with no trial, guilty!? Desecration, The embers of dying creation From fire gone to fizzle Beneath a cursing drizzle, death!? And yet, when my senses to nether-land fade And visions of you through my dreamland parade, Your tools and your trade cutting ribbons of skin I cry into moments to heaven akin.

• back to list   • back   • next

missumissumissumissu... once upon a time... one of those once-upon-a-time’s that start once upon a time yet never end. not even after time. not even later time. not even there where no time is the only time and nothing else matters. missu. remember? of course you do. i type with one finger, the other leafing through layers of yellowed memories, yellowed with time passing, not with memories passing. or even fading. then i change fingers, one typing. the other tracing your body’s lines, the under of your breasts the over of your nipples the around of whatever i could find under your skirt. or deeper. missu. remember when we stopped making love? you don’t, we never did. remember when we started making love again? you don’t, we never stopped. remember when we forgot? so easy, we never forgot thus we never remembered. there was no need. derelict the paths of forgetfulness. blooming the paths away seeded with crumbs of kiss you left in my palms and shards of skin you hung on my lips and splinters of tear you filled my pockets with, cutting underneath fingernails every time i sink fists in between memories. missu.

• back to list   • back   • next

Incorrectness... It is incorrect to claim that every good thing comes to an end. Good things never come to an end. They die. With the body. Not before. She looked at me, pondering. Isn’t it the same? For a terrific lover you are a terrible philosopher, I said. Death is not the end. Something follows death. Something like memory? Something like eternity. I stopped talking. I kept writing poems. She kept loving me. Eternally.

• back to list   • back   • next

between lives... and yet we know it was. and yet we know it is, and yet we know it will never be, it will never be again. it will never die. living inside our skin, scratching it from the inside trying to tear holes towards the sun, towards the other, towards you if I towards me if you the dream beyond the knowledge the only knowledge that counts in the dream. We open eyes. We eat, shit, fuck, cough, snore and the rest of obscenities, The corrugated rudeness of life taking over With the typical sensitivity of a discarded shoe. We close eyes. our fingernails meet. our fingernails cut through miles years vows sinking into flesh lips nipples and as we shudder into the aftermath of dying glory we accept the beauty of it all.

• back to list   • back   • next

Rock'n'Roll... I listen to that unique masterpiece of rock music the Stones and their Like a Rainbow with that majestic out of tune string orchestration and that her dressed in blue and then dressed in gold and all I can think of is that you dressed in skin with nothing between us except an endlessly tall and endlessly wide glass wall endlessly transparent endlessly impenetrable and endless time on our hands to find the stone the hammer the battering ram smash open a crude door and dress one in the other inside the other all over the other decaying in the out of tune orchestration of grunts and yelps and murmurs replacing the strings with the Animals pleading their Bring it Home to them scratching a rail-track into my flesh

• back to list   • back   • next

Transcedental... I see you, eyes big, big, eyes blue, blue, fists tight. I see you, before others took your virginity, before I took your virginity, before you were virgin. I wish I could crush you in a vise embrace, knowing you would shatter like glass gold thin, skin thin, air thin in a feather embrace. I cannot. I could not. You pain, at thoughts. You smile, at memories. I see both and while all see woman I see child, I see love, I see queen.

• back to list   • back   • next

My Two Bits Philosophy... ...then flower moved back into bud, and flame into coal, and glass into sand... Impossible, she said. Ask why, I said. Chemistry, she said. Ask why, I said. Why? she said. Because flower would rather wilt to dust and flame burn to smoke and glass shatter to crumbs than giving up life for have not lived. She clearly had something more on her mind. I waited. And love? There was tremendous expectation in the seemingly innocent question, I could not lie to her. Love? Love is a spelling mistake for life. This concludes my two bits philosophy. She squeezed into my lap until she fit comfortably (comfortably for her not for me) and closed her eyes. Sleeping? I asked. Pondering, she answered. Pondering what? I asked. Those two bits. Pondering their size. They must be gigantic.

• back to list   • back   • next

sliding... the bolt slides, smoothly. the zipper slides, smoothly. body slides in body lubricated by ravaging fires plundering exploding lungs of oxygen and constricting throats of voice and minds of the knowledge of inevitability. hands try to slide, Siamese chunks of flesh preferring dismemberment until, bleedingly, tearing apart. I slide in the ogre’s belly, I but an insect inside a belly as big as a zeppelin’s refusing any help to my bleeding palm, heart, eyes. the ogre slides noisily in the air and shutters slide close all through brain enclosures segregating fanatically, narrow-mindedly this memory from all other. bigotry at its ugliest, most intolerant, most protective. the rest sliding into meaninglessness one memory of life.

• back to list   • back