Hobbies - Poetry - Anonymous
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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...

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.


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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.


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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.

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