moratorium... you sit on the rocking chair, rocking, naked... of course naked, have I ever seen you but naked but depleted of human’s unnecessary contributions and retributions to beauty, your beauty? your legs crossed, your fingers crossed, your eyes probably crossed too under those endless eyelashes fringing the flesh shutters imprisoning the blue. I wonder, why would your legs be crossed – is it invitation or denial, your fingers - are these wishes or dreams, eyes... maybe touring all over for me and now transgressing each the other’s boundary in distrust of the not finding me fact reported to a central brain watch-dog?... you rise barefoot soles slapping marble tiles knees here and there creaking hair swishing behind you, a butterfly flapping against your right shoulder, moon rays drawing your shadow in flowing, noiseless brush sweeps then erasing it as fast, you touch your breast... no, it’s not me and for a moment you stop and bend in pain wishing it was, wishing it was the one inflicting the pain spreading from your nipple to your lips to your loins to naked insides waiting for me to dress them. you drink the water, you return to the chair, you rock, and the only caress to your skin the air sliding back and forth back and forth back and forth upon it, like sand paper, like cutting glass.

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Acrobatics... How do you do it? I asked, admiring not so much the acrobatics as the sights your skirts revealed as they hung around your head. You were hanging upside down from the rock, the views far down blurred in ever rolling mists, mysterious, alluring. I nailed my shoes to the rock, you answered, your voice muffled by the cascading textiles, I’ll never fall, I promised myself. Interesting, I commented, still riveted by the sights up here, not down there. Such a waste, considering you wear no underwear, how will you make love this way? Quiet. You were obviously debating with yourself. Who are you? you asked. You know better than ask stupid questions, the only one you allowed to see you this way. Your lover. We never made love. Hey, I always make love to you. You never think of me. Hey, I never stop thinking of you. So what do you do letting me hang like that? Hey, you never asked. I pulled you up, I tore your clothes, I loved you. Now you’re my lover. Now put me back in my shoes. I did it the other way around, I put the shoes back on you. Why? Because there is always a chance the nails may tear away from the rock. One may think you suddenly love me. I never stopped. Because of the sex? Because of the first. I spent the rest of my life balancing glass marbles one atop another atop your nipple. Pity. What pity? That the rest is not longer. I did not mind. As long as given was already something.

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Bus... Alone at the bus station. The last station, one bus one passenger. Several buses passed, I refused to climb. Some even insisted, I threatened them with puncturing two wheels so they rushed away. A noisy group arrives, each got his own bus. Yes, men all of them. Maybe women are segregated? I wait for you. I sit on the bench and refuse to leave until you arrive. Even if you return there where I cannot. Call it whatever you want - fuck, make love, rape, caress, touch, invade... A woman arrives. Not you. She leaves in her bus. No segregation. You arrive. You arrive, you cut my clothes away, you ram me into the bench’s planks and you fuck, make love, rape, caress, touch, invade me. The bench breaks, splinters pierce my flesh, mercifully. You drag me to another bench and you fuck, make love, rape, caress, touch, invade me. Enough? I drag myself to another bench. There are many benches around. The bus can wait. Or go to hell. Alone.

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Panties... She finished dressing, everything except the panties. Then started the car, shot forward and while on the highway opened the window and let the panties fly away. I did not comment. “Panties are strictly for sex,” she offered the unasked for explanation. “And in between?” “Pantyhose will do.” “Isn’t it irritating?” “Stimulating, you mean,” she laughed, the pedal sinking deeper. She watched the road. I watched her. Mosquitoes and gnats and a variety of UFOs kept splashing upon the windshield the wipers just smearing the sticky goo, unable to remove it. “Sticky,” she stated the obvious. I let my hand slide under her skirt, further up, reaching, touching... “Sticky,” she repeated, this time a smile spreading on her face together with a slight spreading of her legs. She drove the car. I drove her spirits, both of us had a job to do, we did it conscientiously, full dedication, if only factory's worker would show the same consciousness the economy would not have been where it was. Silence. Splash. Wipe. Silence. I pulled the hand away from the heavenly haven and smelled her evaporating pleasure. She did not complain. I became aware of Splash, Splash, Splash with no Wipe in between, no speed reduction either. Got the hint, the hand returned and so did Wipe and at least partial vision. “How many panties lately?” I asked. No answer. “Busy counting?” No answer. “You mean the last five days?” “I mean the last five years.” “Zero.” My hand almost pulled out, then self preservation took control and my fingers curled. I wondered if it was the motor purring next to me. “You’re joking... aren’t you?” “Do I look like one to joke with the fate of the world, sex included?” No, she didn’t. Some things were sacred. She slowed down and pulled over. The key was waiting for us, the door clicked shut, the lock clicked shut. I panted heavily, managing to drop the heavy suitcase on the bed. “What do you carry here, the family gold bullion?” She snapped it open and let the lid fall. Color. Butterflies. Flowers. Hearts, bunnies, verses... tens... more like hundreds of panties silk, lace, satin, mesh, nylon... She smiled, seeing me first pale then blush then burn... yes, it promised to be a long, long session... * “... a brawl involving several dozens drivers on the NW Highway, police made several arrests. A hysterical police spokeswoman mentioned something like fighting over a... pair of panties...” I woke up in a pool of sweat, “I hope it is a nightmare, I hope it is a nightmare...” I kept mumbling to myself, wishing I had my praying beads with me. “What’s the matter, love?” she yawned turning towards me and landing a lazy nipple in my mouth while her hand started crawling towards the suitcase. It probably was not. Lazy? Who said lazy?...

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Castles... Again?... Is this real? she asked, touching, I thought it was only poetry. She knocked lightly with her knuckles, with the tips of her nails, she even tried knocking with her teeth. Glass? Yes. Glass is brittle, why not plastic. Plastic? Not poetic, plastic does not break. Exactly. Exactly, I emphasized, hitting a flower and watching it disintegrate into millions of pieces. It is real. If we are not careful, it breaks. It dies. Do you always build castles, of glass? I laughed. I know, boring. All the time castles and glass and us in it... I did not say it. You don’t have to say it. I know. I say it. And I don’t care. Reality, this is what I care about. Castles. And glass. I took her by the hand, not that I knew the place better even if I created it, just that somehow I felt responsible for it for guiding her through it... for her. And if I walk on the second floor you can peek under my skirt? Yes. And if I shower, you can watch me? Yes. And if I want to use the john? I can watch you too. I want some privacy. I will cover my eyes with my palms. You will peek between your fingers. Correct. I don’t mind. I know. Is this the bedroom? A bedroom. There are many bedrooms here, didn’t even count. Opportunistic approach - you need one, you find one or reach one before the need expires. I chuckled. She stepped inside carefully, testing the floor for solidity, after all she couldn’t see it, then she hurried in her heels clicking like castanets worn on professional fingers. She jumped on the bed, guessing its position by the light reflection deformations and started hopping up and down on it. Want to make love? No. Huh? Or rather Ha!? I make it all the time. What do you think this poem is, an ode to jellyfish? I mean physical love, you moron. I mean physical love, you beauty. How do you think I survived all those years? I mean physical love, you moron, here, now, on this bed. I just don’t know if I want it in... public. She glanced around, hardly any visible obstacle between here and... eternity? Are there many others here? No, just us two. What do you mean, there should be billions, trillions... I made it just for us two. And even if there were million trillions I don’t give a... hmm, have to be careful with this one, I don’t know if I can use the D word here without getting transported to the other department. Never tried it yet. Maybe I could use the F word instead? I knocked on the wall, testing its solidity, knowing it would not count when matters... mattered. Or the S word? What about ‘don’t give a penny’s worth’? she offered. It didn’t mean much in a penniless world but it was worth a try. I don’t give a penny’s worth, I said, waiting for cataclysm or something. Nothing happened. A sudden attack of carelessness invaded me, I don’t give a damn! I shouted and she grabbed my mouth before the ’a’ hit my vocal chords biting my lips sewn biting my tongue rent biting my teeth dust... I just found you. Don’t want to lose you so soon. Maybe later? Maybe never. I hit the hi-fi button choosing meaninglessly Paul and Art’s Live in Hyde Park’s Chuck’s Maybellene and I hit her... then I hit her... then I hit her again glass buttons exploding... oh, glass butterflies... glass skirts exploding... oh, glass snowbells... glass satins exploding... oh, glass rainbows... my fist grabbing a long, sharp shard and hitting the pillows, the mattress, listening to hissing air leaving the comfort of protective walls... I want to make love to you on the floor, crush your back to the rough, hard, mean surface of sharp clumps of glass and as you bite close my eyes I bite open your body and seed inside you eternal memory. I pulled out. I pulled away. She rested on the floor, bleeding. You bleed, she said, watching my heart. I dressed her with the glass butterflies, glass snowbells, glass rainbows, then dressed myself in the dry ink of past words, let her hook her elbow into mine and left the bedroom. Will someone clean after us? No need. Impossible. There are endless bedrooms here. Memories cannot be cleaned. You lied, she said. ??? About not wanting to make love. Physical love. I lied, I admitted. I did not lie though about something else. ??? Glass. The reality of glass. We kept treading on the smooth, invisible surface, bits of glass crunching form time to time under our soles, cutting.

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Castles Again... Again?... Bedroom eighty-three. How many years? Earth years? Whichever years. She kept on dressing, knowing I liked undressing her. It’s irrelevant. Maybe for you. I’m a woman. She looked critically at her clothes, mainly her stockings. I saw nothing wrong with her stockings, I wasn’t a woman. And if I said I needed to go shopping? It did not surprise me. I wrote for her a shopping center - shoes parlor, clothes parlor, even an ice-cream parlor. The din real, the people real - children, grannies, hot-dog stands, end-of-season sales in the high percents, invalids, beggars... she smiled. BIG. Oh, you can write it off, now I know I can’t. Or won’t. I wrote it off. I didn’t write anything instead of it. Don’t you write us making love? Again? Take me to bedroom eighty-four, then we’ll discuss it. There was nothing to discuss. I recovered between her breasts - wet, stinking, sticky. Write yourself a shower, will you? I had to write it a bit longer, she insisted on joining me. You know, this is not poetry, this is shit. No one will buy it. I gaped, horrified, looking around for a fiery sword, a fifty ton crane, an atomic bomb... she said the S word in a place with no S words. You said the S word, I whispered. Don’t worry, I used an inoffensive font, she laughed shrilly, dragging me in again, my hysteria complete. I know, I said once I could, later, and I don’t give a... I looked carefully around, then whispered... a shit... No sword, no crane, no bomb. I used the same font, I whispered further. I was ready for bathroom eighty-five, I was ready to try some other words there, maybe other fonts as well. Life, manner of speaking, was beautiful.

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eternity... I wrote once smiles, I write now glass what’s the difference? she asked none, both are beautiful both are brittle then why? she asked further because I’m flesh, brittle, I answered yes, glass is beautiful, she said, picking the hammer I kept writing glass even glass rain is eternal

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Seventeen Times Seventeen... The season. The childhood season, once again. Your season. Lights. You. Do you walk? Do you drive, do you ride a sled drawn by flying oxen, or moose, or reindeer? Maybe even flying kangaroos? Or you just sit in the snow, your ass soaking wet and your mouth hanging wide open with bees (yes, all is possible with you, even in winter) buzzing around your lips and your eyes alight with thousands of electrical bulbs climbing, dropping, cascading over trees, roofs, windows, pathways...? Your blue, blinking. The year-round sky home to thousands of colorful, glittering stars and for once the Milky Way wavers in envy, maybe in anger... for once? for once always? I watch you from afar. No, from the other afar, beyond the other side of the street. If you had laser eyes you could see me. I have. Laser eyes. Of the mind. I shoo away the bees. Mentally. They are mental, anyway. Also the kangaroos, just in case. I watch your skies with my mental field-glasses wishing they had cloth penetration power, wishing they had thermal transmission power, wishing they had sensory amalgamating power, wishing I made love to you. Wishing... yeah, wishing, the cousin of wishing-would, wishing-could, wishing-should, the horrible stainless-steel words standing in for horrible stainless-steel locks. Seventeen locks to each word seventeen keys to each lock each key melted to ore, burnt to ashes, spread over oceans to end midway between waves and bottom specks in the bellies of dolphins or the bellies of sharks or the hearts of pearls. My hand on your breast, would, could, should seventeen times seventeen.

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Plagiary... Let’s die, first. Then, let’s talk about it. When you closed around me like a fist suckling drops of life into the womb of humanity before you turned sane again licking me clean, like a tigress caring for a pup astray back into the safety of deadly nails. Elvis croons about a blue, blue blue blue Christmas. Bing croons too, about a white one. With Marjorie Reynolds. I don’t croon. I crave. For a pink one. Pink, like your tip of tongue, like your tip of breast, like panties leftovers torn away from a pink fist taking me in, again. Let’s die, again.

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Marbles... Holes the size of baseballs, my hand turned sieve the marbles drop out of it and start rolling down the stairs... glass, porcelain, crystal bouncing, flying down attic ladders, underground escalators, schools, public toilets, public libraries, public temples of prayer, sewers. I catch some before indifferent shoes crunch them to shards, to dust, to powder only to see them roll out of my hands again, then again, the last one... I tape it to my hand, I tape my hand to my heart, I tape my heart to my body, I tape my body to... what do I tape my body to? memories? I wait. One day the marble will bloom into a marbles shrub with marble flowers and little marble seeds. No, I don’t want speeches or nosegays, just throw some marbles in after me, glass, porcelain, crystal...

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Conjugating To Be... Teenagers. Not again. Finally. We didn’t even stop to count the wrinkles, the miles under our soles the sunrises. Or the balance seen versus will see. Sunrises. We were teenagers. Finally. We ran away. Sneaking away from the world of adults into a ball of rolling glass behind glass doors, glass windows glass floors glass ceilings, brittle. Hiding from the adults, stopping to finally count up wrinkles running again hiding from the adults, stopping to finally count up minutes, sunrises, to count snowflakes, shivers running again hiding from the adults, starting to finally count down inches turning mils, buttons turning broken nacre hanging on to torn threads. Then counting down. Further. Unfortunately. Minutes, again. Sunrises, again. Not the same, other. Hatefully other, few, few and failing. Dying, all the while the elephant called life approaching and we waited, knowing it will barge upon our glass hideout, smash it. Cutting us. Deadly. In love. Not again. Finally We didn’t care about wrinkles, about miles, soles, about the flesh in the hourglass. Or the balance top bulb versus bottom bulb, before versus after. Flesh. We were in love. Finally. We ran away. We let the rolling glass decide our where’s with us busy discovering the what’s and the how’s and the how much’s and in which few ways boys are different from girls and in which many different ways flesh can burn and in which singular ways all differences can be used for creative dying. I didn’t know mouth, before. I didn’t know nipple, before. I didn’t know virgin, before. I didn’t know animal, before. I didn’t know life after death after life, before. Who said it? Thought it? Created orchards and butterflies and autumns leaves the way of a God? We ripped the cloth, ripped the flesh, ripped the soul, time knocked on the window. The elephant called life barged upon our glass hideout smashing it. Cutting us. Deadly. I wake up. Eyes swollen. Muscles knotted. Mouth putrid. Fingernails bleeding. Lips bleeding. Thoughts bleeding. Dreamed about you. Not finally. Again.

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Boy... I read again. I read a long time ago, now I read again. Those words I wrote that long time ago before I read them first time before I understood what it was I was writing. A boy. Was this the way you saw me when you read them after I wrote them before I understood them before I read them the first time much before I read them again? A boy culling flowers and seeding stars and trying to impress you with words. Raw. Crude. Uncouth. Like burning timber, exploding, sparks, blaze, forest fire. Meaning it. Like a man. Growing up, just for you. Did you smile, then? I hope you did. Would you smile now? I hope you would. Did you believe then? I know you did. Would you believe now? I know you do. The pages keep turning, by themselves, I don’t have to make any effort, they are part of the magic my eyes read the last line, the page turns, my eyes glitter, the page turns back until the glitter turns haze and I see no more to glitter. I don’t think I could write the same now. No. I didn’t lose the touch, no, I didn’t lose the heart. I lost the innocence. I forgot being a boy and writing forevers. Now I write almost always nevers, sometimes maybes. Yet sometimes I forget I forgot and I am a boy and you are the queen and we make love on a freshly plowed field and you ride me in most unqueenly manner reading to me all words I once wrote and I am surprised. Nothing has changed. Except, maybe, the key to the castle. I wonder - why do you send your hand to the pocket of that discarded, queenly dress?

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Layers... No more glass castles, I said. No more glass castles? she said. I looked at my flesh, rows and rows of ruts plowing beyond skin, beyond bone, beyond... what is left beyond bone? Memories? Memories to pass, memories to not come?... I looked at my palms. So many the life-lines paralleling or crossing the old one that none could be recognized anymore for its value, if it ever had value. I looked at my lips, I look at my lips, I will always look at my lips the smoothness of virginity awaiting the grooves of incisors to never lacerate, the caves of canines to never pierce. I looked at you. The need. The wait. The wish OK, glass castles I said. You did not say, you smiled. I accepted the sun, I accepted the rainbow, I accepted the rain and picked the shards awaiting in indifferent patience and placed the next layer, smoothed it with my palm, the next layer... No blood on my lips, yet. Maybe when the castle is finished? I picked the shards and placed the next layer, smoothed it with my palm, the next layer...

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Ribbit... Once upon a time there was a prince and a princess. This poem is not about them. So about whom? About us. And I am not a princess. It was a statement, a complaining one. You are. You just said... You know I am very accurate in my statements. You are not a princess, you are my princess. She got it, if to judge from the mmmmm and the irreverent actions accompanying it. And you are not a prince, you are my prince. I didn’t like her taking over, it was my poem after all. No I am a frog. She had some healthy ideas about this statement. And now? Okay, I was trapped. Now I am a prince. I wish I was a frog, though. She pulled a long face. I don’t give a damn about the result of the transformation but I liked the way it happened, now it cannot happen anymore. She proved me wrong. You proved me wrong. She proved me wrong again, though there was no need... actually there was a need. A desperate need. Make love to me, frog. Ribbit, ribbit. Translate... I need to pee first, I need to pee first. It’s very efficient the frog language, and she sprinted towards the bathroom, ribbiting as well. I beat her to it, but I was a gentleman, I let her do it first. Stop jumping on one leg, do you want to join? I would if there was place. Women have a habit to take it all. I kept jumping until I stopped jumping else I would have had to mop the floor. Coming? It was not a voice from under the covers, it was a song. Someone had to pull the water. Someone had to turn off the light. Someone had to close the door. Someone had to light the fire inside her body just to have something to extinguish. I wished I was a frog, less responsibility, I wished I was a frog, another go at transformation, I wished... stop mumbling, or I turn you to stone. This was a myth. So was the frog. This was a legend. What’s the difference? I could have opened my laptop and start looking for the definitions on the net but I was slightly afraid of the stone thing. There was a way back from frog, I was not sure there was a way back from stone... I tore the cover to ribbons I turned her body to fire I extinguished the fire the windows exploded around us followed by cats meowing in the neighborhood... mmmmm... this was the good news. mmmmm... still good news. Soft snore. Regular breathing. Great news. I started washing away the leftovers of me, the glass pieces, I couldn’t wash the blue spots, I covered them with petals, I took a chair next to the bed and just stared. She did not wake up. The lamb trusting the wolf. I wondered if the word was rather love. Probably beyond. Ribbit, ribbit, I tried. I think I have to do something about it. She didn’t even sound sleepy. She did.

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I Don’t Dream Of You Anymore... I don’t dream of you anymore. Why should I, I’m with you, most of the time. Or, rather you with me on the passenger seat in the supermarket trolley lying down on the sofa in front of the TV riding my shoulders while I cut live lilac branches and pull down cherry laden boughs, behind the... Most? Behind... aaah... eeeh... what?... the rude interruption cut off my line of thought and expression and muddied my mind with perfumes known, missed. Most? the invisible entity repeated its monosyllabic oratory and a fist carrying an arctic wind squeezed my heart into irrational vibrations. M-most... I stuttered, catching up with my lost self, there are the personal, private, intimate moments like when I shower... Alone? like when I pee... Alone? like when I make... Love? Luckily I was interrupted before I finished the sentence myself and avoided the... Alone? Damn, I didn’t avoid it, the embarrassment and the unmistakable giggle somewhere between my ears made me blush. Made me crave. Made me rave. Miss me? Miss you??? The triple question mark audible even inside my mind, it was my turn to ask her embarrassing questions. Sorry... She was. She knew. I walked the empty corridors of my deserted glass castle, I removed my shoes not to frighten myself with emptiness. Looking for... what? Hedgehogs? Scared rabbits? Imprints of her bare soles when she was roaming the halls and the cellars and the bedrooms while I was dragging a kite too big and heavy for me? It took off, remember? Remember. I heard soft footsteps, first behind me then ahead of me, she wasn’t there, of course not. Though... a pair of lips brushed mine. I went right through a wall, breaking it, cutting myself. Careful. So stop kissing me. Don’t you dare! I went through another wall, same. Then through another one. She didn’t care. I didn’t either, as long as she kept kissing and there were walls... I reached the last wall. If I break this one I fall into nothingness, you know. Then turn around. I left destruction, everywhere. It didn’t matter, my mind was going to repair it back to its proud, earlier self. Found myself a corner, sat down, fell asleep. I didn’t dream of you, I said, waking up. Liar. She knew. I was as transparent as my castle walls. And as broken. * I am leaving, said the sensation. We didn’t even make love this time. I am leaving. You left already. I am leaving. Will you return? A hedgehog scuttled by, then fell asleep against my foot. Time to start the repair, it is getting chilly.

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before after... we lay, side by side, tubes and needles and monitors and various torturing instruments designed to extend mortal’s agony and hospitals’ bank accounts encasing us like a spider’s web. where the hell is that spider and his scythe shaped mandibles?... bite! you bastard. his? I heard the wheezing whisper to my left... smartass to the end, huh, woman? how the hell did we end up together in that ante-chamber of next and forever and maybe? lots of hell lately, wheezed the same voice, still to my left, this time sneaking in some kind of cackle, I guess supposed to be a chuckle. of course we ended up together, side by side, even if this was not anymore my glass castle it was still my imagination and my poem and my death, no one was going to steal any of these away from me, and I cackled slash chuckled myself. quiet. say something, I prodded, trying to turn my head left and hearing something plop out of my mouth. quiet. say something, woman, I tried again with my last half operating lung. you called me smartass. proof that I love you, only someone you love you call smartass and then make this side by side arrangement. quiet. I knew it won’t last long, she had to say something, delectable smartasses always have to say something even if they had less lung than me by now. you’re an idiot. finally. a statement I liked. there was more coming, I knew. if you’re so smart and with no ass extension and if this is your imagination and poem and death you could at least have put us in the same bed and given us some more lung and less tubes and needles and monitors. we could have even fucked. I wish I had your talent. don’t forget, after all I am part of this entire arrangement. hell, yes, another one, yes, she was right. I thought she would have preferred a respectable setting. respectable? the shrieking laughter worried me, it might have been my poem but I might still lose her before... before what? it was a wheeze, sure. it was also a plea, an orison, a claim, a command. hell, yeah, she was right, she was the smart and I was the ass I thought and started tearing out of our bodies the needles, the tubes, I let the monitors crash to the floor and armor plated the door and steel meshed the windows and covered the floor with red roses and invaded the air with monarch butterflies... better? I hope that, sometime soon, you are going to use the word fuck... ...before we die, yes, I know, and the two beds were one and our flesh turned fire and our ravenous bodies monster ogres feeding on each other’s life and lust and love. is this what you meant? I asked. she helped me extract myself from herself, licking me clean, humming stars spangled banner forever and finally cuddling upon my quarter lung sighing, like a puppy’s tail having found its puppy. I wondered if we were supposed to die of a heart attack, then decided against it. good, she murmured, all wheeze gone, all crumbling flesh gone, limber. there’s pounding on the door, she added. I thought it was my heart, I answered wittily, knowing that not even an atom bomb would knock down that door before I agreed to it. is this what you meant? I repeated, remembering that I received no answer. again that quiet, heralding the ominous answer... almost. I waited. I knew there was going to be continuation, I knew what the continuation was going to be having run it in my head for hours now, still, I wanted to hear her saying it, asking it, commanding it. could you... we, repeat that... ahm... word? fuck, you mean? ahm... meaning yes. I repeated it, we repeated it until the bed springs turned limp and the flesh turned meat and death fell asleep, exhausted, despairing. do you love me? she asked. I didn’t answer. I did not want to break magic with fact.

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The Memory Of Glass... I’m your girl, you said. You were something like sixty, less or more. I’m your boy, I said. I was something like sixty too, less or much more. You have a great body, you said, though I was sixty, less or much more. You must be joking, I said. Your body is divine, I said, though you were ageless. You are joking, you said. Let me show you, I said, starting to unclasp anything that was clasping you inside reaching to the innermost layers and fearing there would be no more layers and I would be blinded so I stopped. Why did you stop? you asked, starting to unclasp me. I fear blindness, breathlessness, death before making love to you, I said. Why did you stop? I asked. Fear you will turn stone? I asked. Waiting for glass, you said, finishing. You did not turn stone. Waiting for glass, you repeated. I finished. Blind, breathless, dead. I knew. You called me back to life, speaking through my mouth with your tongue, never knew it possible. You are beautiful, I said, pushing your tongue away and finding renewed usage for mine. Keep you tongue for my life, again, I said, with my tongue speaking through your mouth. Waiting for glass, you repeated, pushing my tongue away and finding renewed usage for yours. Keep your tongue for flames, again, you said. I seeded in the grass painted slivers of glass I cut ruts long and thin across your ribbons of skin I filled dozens of jars and a thousand cups of brass with sin... I dragged you through the grass I wringed your body until your sin filled first my mind then my ocean and the ruts across your body filled with inebriating snowbells then I started singing Elvis’ blue blue blue blue Christmas, but it’s not yet Christmas, you said though you wanted to rather talk about swallows slicing the skies into twelve seasons and about weaving lost sun rays into a scarf to tie to my wrist and about the diamonds that grew inside our desperate palms-hold, it’s always blue blue blue blue blue Christmas, I said as the palms-hold broke letting diamond dust join the slivers of glass inside your eyes, your skin, and at your mouth’s corners. I’m your girl, you said, though you were ageless. I’m your boy, I said, though I was ageful with oceans of miss you’s never said, never said enough, and tongues reached back to their originally designed mouths and clasps clasped again at ends of tatters and doors kept slamming between us until all there remained was a wall of doors. You looked at the cut on your nipple, and the memory of glass, you said, and the memory of glass.

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Mental... Tired. Oh, tired. Oh, so tired. You drag your mental feet from mind corner to mind corner, sometimes missing the corner and hitting the wall, the ruts deep mud filling the ruts and your feet sloshing, sometimes mud overflows to your physical eyes and runs down your cheeks you claim it is mascara, you know better. You pick the broom from that dark mental room you hoped to forget about and start sweeping about. You cannot sweep the mud, so you don’t even try, you just sweep the glass dust, some bigger shards clinking along as you move the pile from left to right then back then strew it with an angry move just to have something to do again, tired, you do not mind the glass and from time to time you guide the sweep towards the eyes and listen to the glass clinking far down on the stone tiles, almost like music. You sit on the floor, you spread your skirts about so that your flesh feels the penetrating chill maybe a shard bites the thigh to blood maybe a shard bites the leaning palms to blood and you wait for my mental hand to spread your thighs and reach for the loss found again, to pull away the shards and the dust and to wipe the blood and drive you from tiredness to sudden frenzy as it scorches your insides with memories and later wipes you clean with your own clothes. Or whatever is left of them. Tired. Though for a moment you escape and the smile that drips from your lips leaves smoking craters behind you.

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Losing You... Losing you, easy. Centuries together, in mind, fatigue setting in, habit, day’s routine multiplied by hundreds of years engulfing like a rustless plastic cocoon resistant to time, decay... a friend, inexistent. Centuries away, in body, passion finding suicidal paths for a self-preservation that dies with each passing hour the flesh worn, further wearing out into final rigidity, desert settling down in veins and cactii flowers turn tumbleweed and all that will be left is the silica of glass... unborn orphans dissipated with tinted vitrage siblings shattered imemorable times ago. Losing you, impossible. Minds cemented into mindless fusion. Bodies cemented into ethereal memory. Centuries trailing us, eternity just ahead.

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Corporal Theory Of Relativity... Kama Sutra, a first grader’s collection of bed-time stories and fairytales weak of spirit when next to your words... Eros, a toddler building castles in wet sand with a broken plastic spoon when next to your imagination... Venus, a lump of dough boneless and muscleless and shapeless thrown in a sac when next to your body...

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let me tell about... ...your breasts, green apple sized, between flower and lover’s bite not heavy enough to dangle not big enough to fill a mouthful, together, you could still fit in a toe, soft like a chick’s down impertinent like a cobra’s strike maddening like resurrection denied, ...your nipples, luckily not green apple sized, not even grape sized, space between thumb and index sized gap between teeth rows sized distance between hanging breast above to tip of nose underneath sized sculpted in brick the red of dying fire the density of depleted uranium the lethality of enriched uranium depleted of neutron poison the temptation of blood to shark’s hungry senses, ...your thighs, just rightly sized to tear me to pieces and spread the resulting junk around the equator waiting for me to fall together again hours days years later just to tear me to pieces again and spread me again around the equator while your insides delight on whichever leftovers you chose to suckle and keep and assimilate before you writhe into a five dimensional crumpled ball of comatose bliss, ...your lips, at your ogre end sized to camouflage those horrifying, deceitfully white incisors readying to battle my cotton my buttons morsels of my uncovering flesh after the promise of lips blinds the last scraps of reason and your muscular Trojan horse sneaks beyond my own shivering gates to tease my tongue into dance my mind into convulsions my loins into the death wish of a moth, ...your flesh, the canopy to your passion, hanging on bones too brittle to carry the eruption of need you use me to support it with everything that is muscle in me hurt in me ignorance and desire and eternity in me and for a moment too short I am your scaffolding your flesh the drape engulfing my rusted nakedness and as the universe solidifies back into its one moment before the big-bang we know, the only ever living creatures to know of that moment when I bit into your apple.

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Zebra Crossing... ...over me, right to left, tail dangling, got worse with a giraffe, right to left as well tail dangling, I prayed it was the last knowing it was not as I watched an elephant near, then cross over me right to left, tail dangling then a herd of elephants approaching from the left this time, tails dangling... ...nightmare? I wasn’t aware I was screaming until I woke up, screaming, finding you crossing over me right to left then left to right then toe to head and diagonally and vertically tail... I did a supreme effort to stop screaming my confusion diminishing, no, didn’t look like tail at all, wrong position, wrong shape, wrong quantity dangling teasing... ...incubus? reverberated a question anew, subtly mocking, I guess. I finally stopped screaming, started grinning... ...daydream, I answered the first question. ...succubus, I answered the second question. * No, definitely no tail, I stated, finishing my investigation. No, definitely no tail, you stated, finishing your investigation.

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Time's... Do you remember the first time? She looked at me, cross-eyed. At this distance she had no choice but be cross-eyed. You mean the last time. I mean the first time. I mean the last time. It was the last time, until this time. This time is going to be the last time. It is an assumption. Noses almost touching. Positive or negative? Last is always negative. Not if last until next last takes over the lasthood. Also impertinent. Noses touching. Eyes crossing further. I wondered what I looked like with crossed eyes, my right looking at her right my left at her left. My right palm raised, somewhere in front of her left breast, not yet touching, not the way it should be. There is a lot of glass between our mouths, I said, crossing it will be painful, bloody. The way it was last time. First time. Same time. Always time. Painful, bloody? Hurting, bleeding, passionate, alive. There is also a lot of glass between your palm and my breast. So she saw it hovering there, uncertain. And barbed wire. And bounding mines. And alligators, and tarantulas, and blowpipes laden curare tipped darts. No atomic bombs? Yes. One. Needs a fuse, though. I waited for a sign. It didn’t follow the words, the warnings. It might be worth the alligators, the ripping flesh, being blown to pieces, I said. Might? The sign. The mouth crossed the glass. The palm crossed the wire, crossed the mines, alligators, tarantulas, curare tipped darts... she bit in my lips the same time her nipple bit into my palm her thigh bit into my thigh her womanly perfume bit into my senses and I started bleeding all over her knowing the price to pay, the trophy at the end of the pain road, she was drowning... I drown, she said, not meaning my blood. Time to die, I said, meaning the atom bomb. We woke up, on the other side of hell, on the other side of infinity. Is it what’s called heaven? she asked. It is what’s called you, I answered. She snuggled against me, her body wearing a wet blanket covering her outsides, her insides, smearing into me all that is woman, all that means. Means what? Everything. She snuggled, further, deeper, a bit more and she would pass on the inside side of my skin. Now, it was the first time, and it took me some moments to comprehend the message. Is this the last time? I didn’t want to know. I was looking for assurances. I swept the glass dust. I pulled out the barbs, the teeth, wiped the atoms, neutrons, memories... You will never be able to wipe the memories. She did not know. I was going to guard it all in my personal sanctuary. Sanctuaries have a direct link to eternity. That other time. Unending.

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Door... We were lovers. We are friends. Not that we are not lovers anymore. We assumed life. Life with its tricks, callousness, groceries shopping, lavatories overflowing, tooth aches, politics, laws, rude awakenings, drudgery, skirmishes, fatigue. Open door! Close door! Butterflies. Fingertips touching, taking hold, lips touching, taking hold, teeth gnawing, biting, tongues licking, soothing. Skins meshing, gripping, welding Butterflies. On your bared nipple, one. Hanging down from your ear, one. Fluttering, not daring, one, waiting for me to liberate... you laugh. Leaving pollen dots on your eyebrow, one. Butterflies. Our world, the other world, our world. A sun gyrating around Earth, our, a shower of stars inside your eyes, our, a finger editing your nipple, mine. A poem. You. Open door! Close door! Life. The door always there, whenever needed. Life, groceries, laws. From time to time you close your eyes and you peek behind the door, just a moment’s need to get you through the day, back to life. The door always there. The garden tended. Whenever needed.

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That Season Again... I drive behind a truck, my windshield slowly filling microminiature drops probably thousands, or is it trillions?... more than stars... one wipe and it is clean again filling up again, maybe I should have left them there reflections of white and red and halogen breaking into rainbows the rainbows dragging down victims to gravitation a splash of mud and wiping becomes mandatory and a new generation of sparks is born as the car to my right honks and the one behind me turns on its high beams and the one above me... no, this is a police chopper hurrying home for a late breakfast. All these stars, sparks, liquid rainbows and a little girl sits next to me pointing at one, then at another chiming with her blue eyes her smile a rainbow of the other kind and telling me of the woman she is now but the girl she will always be collecting lights from tops of roofs and frozen snowflakes and my windshield. Where is my snow? she asks... her snow, as if by birthright and I do my best to paint flake mounds climbing around her feet and flake stains melting on her cheeks and balls of flakes gathered in her tiny fists ready for a fight or a broken window or an ever growing snow man with its frozen carrot and glowing coals and she accepts my present the way she accepts the little girl she once was and the woman she now is and the empty seat next to me where she is not but ever will be. It is that season, again. We tumble under the blanketing white and while she dresses my nakedness with her body I tell her stupid dragon tales cuddled in between its smoking wings as we rise above the smoking chimneys and the white boot-sole imprints and the deserted stork nests and we make love again... “...I never made love between a dragon’s wings...” and I look for storks carrying babies, knowing it’s too early for this “...look, a falling snowball...” she shrieks, delighted, “make a wish” and I make a wish inside her mouth and inside her body watching her sparkle like a thousand snow-covered pine trees with fireflies... “fireflies in winter?...” at the end of each needle like a thousand rolling blobs of sweat next to the furnace where we finally lie down to catch our breath covered with each other and a single dragon wing. The truck is not there anymore, don’t know even when it moved away, or stayed behind. It is another car spraying my windshield, I lower the wipers' speed. The dragon is gone. The little girl is gone. The woman is gone. Are you sure? I am not sure... who asked it. But suddenly I feel better. I start slaloming around the highway looking for a truck. I need a lot of sparkles, I have a lot of hearts to satisfy.

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Maybe... Maybe. Maybe I will touch your breast again. Maybe. Maybe never. Probably never. Maybe. Maybe I will hang my memories on a nail-head and tie a pink ribbon around the middle with a barely discernible word called dream threaded through it that only my fingertips can read and believe. Dreams never come true. Maybe? Sometime? Probably. Never. Maybe. Maybe it did not happen at all. Maybe your breast was never at eye height, maybe the humming engine was the sound of falling stars maybe the glint was not in your eyes maybe the fire was just a match lighting a cigarette, a candle, a rare stamp. Probably. Though I will never understand my calcined eyelashes. And the never healing scabs at the tips of my fingers.

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Oxen... Life, hordes of oxen pulling away, persistently, wayless mindless rageless. Rage, was bred out of life. As it keeps pulling asunder handholds, steel chains, lives. Ha, life pulling asunder lives. Not even an oxymoron. Pulling apart. Us. Ending somewhere. Maybe you in Tasmania. Maybe I in Greenland. Maybe the other way around. Maybe no way around. I wish Earth was round. Then maybe my oxen would meet your oxen, there, on the other side where people hang upside down if Earth was round. Maybe on Venus, if our oxen had wings. Maybe in Limbo. Big L or small l? Maybe before. Our oxen grazing in mixed bunches, leftovers of me luring leftovers of you into a waltz of leftovers which can end only one way with those leftovers rolling on the trodden pasture beating the ground to dust as we rip bite claw crumbs of life off each other before oblivion engulfs us and we mingle to one shapeless mound, panting ecstasy. We don’t even mind the oxen tails whipping our skin again, and again.

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Warfare... Send me your body. Slide it in an envelope. Sit it on an airplane. Cram it inside an intercontinental ballistic missile mightier than any kilotons or megatons or teratons of atomic warfare. Your kilotons, megatons, teratons of lust. Of liveliness. Of life. Hey, you do exaggerate, slightly... I could hear her thoughts, neither disputing nor displeased at the disproportion. I guess she took it as a compliment, blushing. Shamelessly. Yes, I do, I answered her thoughts, not willing to contradict her. No, I do not, I thought, when she wasn’t listening.

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Spelling... The sparkle has gone. The spark, lingers. Hungry, patient, a deceivingly slouching predator shabby of hide and steely of muscle loitering stalking tensing... Eyeblink. Was it when the eyelash clicked close? Or when it didn’t yet click open? Before the snarl or after leap pounce kill! I peel off shapeless glass blobs slowly freezing into renewed immobility, the fiery holocaust shrinking reluctantly back into a lingering spark that licks its wounds and curls, anew, its tongue carrying traces of blood from the healed lacerations adorning my flesh and glass splinters. The sparkle may have gone. The spark. Wallows. Eternally. In that irrevocable dimension of dementia spelled at times also p-a-s-s-i-o-n.

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The First Kind... I watch the night sky. A lot. Looking for new stars, star clusters. Not that I know anything of the old ones, not that I know anything of life not that I can say anything that has not been said before. I wish I was a philosopher, not an engineer, not a human comma in the long sentence that started with the creation of the universe and will end with the end of it. Factual or religious. I think about you. A lot. Looking for the stars you created, you created a lot. Stars, life, memories. What happens when lover turns friend? What happens when friend is as precious as the stars friend created, more, much more? What happens when body, the whole of it, turns heart, the whole of it and no, this is no alien, no monster, merely human? Folly, misery, happiness, nostalgia, weakness, love...Yes, love, of any kind. Even of the first kind. Counting grains of sand is meaningless. I count. Counting autumn leaves is meaningless. I count. Counting stains of happiness, is meaningful. I count. On the white canvas of a limited forever, there are a few, countable and I cluster them in my mind by color, shape, thickness, even resistance to the abrasive powers of damn master time, I even try to cut them out and rearrange. Futile. Of course. Human. Certainly. Lover turns friend. Love never dies. Love of the first kind. I find them, all those stars you created. Easily. The sky is cluttered with them, it rains with them, it’s even astronomically possible. After all I define my astronomy. After all smiles are eternal. Love too. Of the first kind.

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Count... I’ve combed your hair, counting the times. I’ve touched your heart under your shirt’s cotton underneath your bra’s lace times I stopped counting. I made love to you. Countless times. I flash a sexy smile your way and I am Bogie and you Ingrid Bergman and I am Trevor Howard and you Celia Johnson and I am Bourvil and you Michèle Morgan... no, not all of them movies you’ve seen, all of them movies I’ve lived. Movies I live. Again. Then again. The countless impossibilities. The counted moments. The singular moments. The singular moment. Gone. Eternal. Like the night just lost in following morning. Like the sun. Close your eyes, don’t worry, it is just for a few instants, see the stars? Then you see everything you seeded in my eyes, count them though you can’t. You cannot count an ever expanding universe. You cannot count heart. You can though count touches. Count! Yes, I know, hard to follow, too many, damn hard to count so many too many.

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Time Machine... Look, a flower, I said, trying to take her mind off for a moment. Off what? she said. Look, a butterfly, I said, trying to take her mind off for a moment. Off what? she said. Look, a memory, I said, trying to take her mind off for a moment. Oh... she said. She lowered the needle on the record, then lifted it and moved it slightly forward, frowning, then lifted it and moved it way backward, smiling, then... Strange, she said, a time machine, and I can play with it at will, she said, moving the needle forward again. I took her mind off, for a moment. Then I crawled back to my lair and lowered the needle on the record, the only other original. Oh... I said.

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One... Why should I remember if I cannot forget? The boyish breasts the girlish nipples the feline bestowing thighs ending in womanly offerings dispensing perfumes I never knew existed before and forever will know after. Eyes coyly imploring watching hypnotized the wish of a lifetime blossoming into flower, Tongue coiling in greed suckling hungrily drops of screaming life and nectars of desire, Hair fluttering wildly sparkling like hanging stars with beads of consumed lust and boiling sweat. The before. The while. The after. The forever first. Why should I remember if I cannot forget? Many orchards we slept under many springs we counted passing many smiles we smiled, ached, wrote, painted. One, we don’t remember. We didn’t forget. We live.

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Who Said It?... I wrote other poems. This is probably a better suitable one. I think. About Christmas. Your Christmas, I think, sure. As usual. Who else? Not our. Your. So what? Great! You look behind, the sledge leaving traces to other years, places. Before some of the bulbs broke down. Before the snow got slightly grey, the pines slightly bent, the soles of your feet slightly cold... nothing that couldn’t be repaired with a pair of socks a few economical-long-life-low-energy bulbs, some layers of latex, a beam tied tightly tightly tigthly with ribbons ribbons ribbons, almost cracking. Ribbons... did I say ribbons? Like ribbons in your hair, at your wrists, around your ankles. Around my eyes waiting for the wafts of perfume to guess your approach breath touch. Touch! Who said it? You remove your glove fingers sinking in the snow gushing backwards the horses rushing onwards, unaware, it was nicer with the filament bulbs, somehow. You remove your hat watching it join the glove rolling way behind until the sleigh turns the corner and you lose sight... you never lose sight. They are always there, the filament bulbs, the white snow, the hat on the inner side of the eyelids after you lower them, on the inner side of pages. You remove your socks, laughing wildly, wiggle out of your panty hose you almost remove your coat. You stop. You return to smile. You return to Christmas, your Christmas. Girl. The camera films the reflections in your eyes the flickering colors there inside the bells, there inside, the bubbling fermentation, inside. As you are busy creating wine and pouring it into pitchers and sculpting strangely shaped flakes and sticking them to windows, one to your nose that I lick away before you know I was there, I was never there. You wonder... who pulled back the glove up your hand and the hat down your head and the pantyhose, and the socks, and the white rose in winter. White rose, fine. White rose in winter? Hmm. Girl. Red nose. Pinching fingertips. Wet shoes, inside. Beauty. Once. Beauty. Now. Beautiful. Now. Just a white rose and a red thorn and blood unseen, inside your glove. I’m alive, in color, you say. So much color in white...

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Shards... The bells’ tinkle died, long ago. Same as the colored bulbs’ sparkle oxen-pulled sledges fresh snow balling to my height and my childhood. Died, long ago. We sat hand in hand, I aged thirteen you aged... what age?... I wondering at what you were hiding underneath your skirt you wondering what kisses would taste like and both strangers to love. Be it even first. Until I met you again, many decenniums later to ask about that first love and find it. Alongside with what you were hiding underneath your skirt and your first kiss and first love. Maybe. Surely mine. Carelessly dropping the hammer from my hand and the glass-cards castle shattered into another kind of tinkle and sparkle and bare feet leaving a thin trail of blood all the way from then. My eyes close. Bells tinkle, dead did I say? Bulbs sparkle, dead did I say? I chase visions of a first kiss and a bared nipple as I hang on to that long dead oxen-pulled sledge and childhood and my fingers pull shards from bleeding soles knowing that a castle it may never be again yet the kaleidoscope is drowning me in its beauty.

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Twined of a Kind... It’s long since I wrote you a rhyme, quite some time now, As troubling as it may be for me or you, Horrendous and more would be to assume that I lost my tip of plume, that I do not carry still the light you seeded in my sight that your nipple doesn’t burn with every turn I turn in bed. I played with snowflakes once a game of fame and shame and wild acclaim and told them of my secret dream reclaim obtain your body’s flame, then fell asleep. I open my fist mist effloresces from life-lines remembering your skin I let it settle nettle my flesh like a flagellating whip held between delicate fingers that later smear ointments into gashes and lashes metamorphose into shivers of ecstasy. The butterfly shy upon your inner thigh and essence, The rainbow aglow upon your breast’s snow and sweat, The rose grows your body’s fading throes its roots. I pull the laces tight, my belt, I button up my shirt I watch you glide with zephyr grace inside your rumpled skirt And when the open door slides back to cut me from your breath The floor absorbs my crumbling shape and lulls me back to death.

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Forever... Never Again... We will never again Ride broom handles with wooden swords in our hands and death wish in our shrieks until scratches inflicted got infected and sword splinters bit under fingernails when me made peace and went to piss together in the muddy creek my pants torn, your skirt dirty, our eyes shining with nescient innocence. We will never. We will never again Ride mustangs until rocks turn dust and manes turn grey and mountains turn molehills never to reach the sunset, never to lose it, rhyme turning banjo and banjo turning rhyme and bare knees colliding with neighing hide overtaking neighing hide then the other way around then the other way around and pouring words maintaining our ride into an infinity we knew will end. When we do reach the sunset. We will never. We will never again Ride the stinking diesel cabin with its screeching wipers and noisy gear fuel fumes intoxicating our lungs while thoughts of about to come intoxicated our minds all the way there stealing kisses stealing bites stealing hand touches when the risk of leaving the steering wheel seemed mitigable by the empty road ahead and its fairly remote turn and misty minds caring not but for the moment ahead making all risks equal and worthy of death. We will never. We will never again ride the flesh, each other’s then both’s then none’s and ours and again and anew writing our past in cuts of skin and our future in scarred lips the bonfire of wooden swords and mustang manes and diesel buckets enshrouding the moment with our bodies imprisoned inside until our fists opened, turned to palms, twining in the tenderness of melting glass. We will never. The brooms carry spatters of blood tainted sweat And rot with the likes of despondent regret, Yet nights, now and then, dolor pierces my heart I guess it’s a splinter maturing to dart. The mustangs have long joined the kingdom of dust, The stirrups are wearing the mourning in rust, We reached neither sunset, nor word mantled lea Yet stayed ever anchored at hip, and at knee. The windshield is cloven, the headlights are torn, A pitiful howl lies asleep in the horn, Forlorn clucks the truck down its memory lane Remembering sweetness of wishes insane. The flesh... still aflame, between wrinkles and scars Remembers that moment, when bathed in stars It died for a first... and a last... nevermore, Away flies the raven... forever... no more. Forever. Never. Again.

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definition... glass, oh, glass, brittle. catching up with you. woman, oh, woman. once steel. now steel. maybe brittle yet – steel. still there with you. which? both, I guess. like glass when you break and catch the sun on a splintered rib turning it into blinding rainbow brush to paint butterflies between linden boughs, like glass when you open the gates to ungenessis turning the tide of time's crawling bulk and yourself into grains of sand, to measure it, like glass when you contort into shapes unbecoming turning me into flesh devoid of will and mind before holding my hand while I try to sing glory, like glass. cutting. at touch. like steel. and I wonder at the unclearness of dissimilarity letting you prove once anew that steel like glass like feather are another definition of caress of woman of you. * you smile? you probably do. the glass thaws, the steel thaws, all that is left is burning feather the stank horrible the passion insane the pain metamorphosing for a lone moment into orgasmic ecstasy to carry you through... until the next smile.

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Again... OK, making love to you, again. It’s that time of the year. Hmm... again?... did we ever stop? On the street, in the garden, on a bench, under an umbrella on the john, seat up, seat down, seat wood or plastic or broken... they shouldn’t’ve made it so flimsy, shouldn’t’ve they?... in the car on the car beside the car behind the car under the car with oil and mud and dead mosquitoes dropping on our naked skin rolling in broken glass and rusty nails and thorns clipped off a dead cactus forgotten on a dump downtown... It snows. I watched your eyes, impossible to watch your eyes as they were raised towards the alighting flakes some melting inside those blue lakes... you did not blink them away you didn’t even smile, you hiccupped. Hiccupped? I pulled you behind me, dragged you rather and the five feet high snow seemed to melt around us as we advanced closing behind us as we advanced turning to thousands of tiny flickering lamps as we advanced I stopped, you stopped, we stopped. The clothes melted to the icy floor, we weren’t cold, we were fiery hot. Hey, stalactites, I wondered as those rosy nipples erected downwards from above me. Hey, stalagmites, I wondered as those rosy nipples erected upwards from underneath me. Hey, a stalactite... you said as I loomed above you. Hey, a stalagmite... you said as you loomed above me. Hey, shut up! I said, irrelevant who was on top of whoever was under and biting my way into your flesh like a hungry, carnivorous tiger... as if there were any other kind. I heard them first. Tinkling bells. Your hair ends touching each other and sounds of silver sounds of crystal sounds of icicles filling our imprisoning ice cavern, little white flowers dislodging from the shimmer of the ceiling and starting to rain upon you, first your toes then your belly button then your neck, mouth, nose... hey, it’s only nipples that I see I didn’t complain, until they disappeared as well, hey, it’s also nipples that I do not see any more I did complain. Brush it off them, you suggested. Are you sure? I hesitated, knowing more or less what would follow, fearing the less versus the more, my palm approached... I brushed it off them. * Finally “they” decided to call it a miracle. Detractors proposed anything from a minor earthquake through a major supersonic boom and all the way to a North Korean failed plot to invade the country. A few isolated voices suggested an UFO, later found out to be a very identifiable Jumbo object. Supporters pointed to the church steeple just slid yet did not fall, praise the Lord, to a few cracked walls yet no victims, praise the Lord, to the snowflakes that for a moment turned blue before turning white again, praise the Lord. They won, the supporters. We listened to them canting Hosannas as we emerged from the wrecked lair, hardly more than a fig leaf to our fig-leafable parts... they were so busy canting that none saw us as we sneaked into your truck and used a few old rags to replace the fig leaf simile. You look ridiculous in my old underwear. You look wonderful in your old underwear. We were still panting, one hour after. Fingers twined, fingers clasped, fingers broken. Was it us? I asked, pointing to the leaking crack in the water tower, icicles forming already. The miracle, you answered, and I pondered on it quite a number of hours. Yes, the miracle, I repeated to my plane seat neighbor, watching him change seat in haste bordering on panic. The miracle. I love you, I shouted after him and gave him the finger. I was fined fifty bucks on arrival. You must be joking, I laughed at them, having had accepted prison, for life.

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Of Love. And Sin. ... I stretched there before you counting the blisters under your left heel, three and testing the curvature of the sole of your foot, both. I couldn’t inspect the toenails so I did not know the color of the nail polish but I did smell the whiffs of femininity between the whiffs of acetone. Yet did not look up, did not want to see the origin of love and sin. I clothed you and smelled every square inch of skin and absorbed every cubic inch of sweat and molded myself snugly against your hips and around your ankles and between the folds of the source of humanity waiting for you to sit down then to roll from side to side and finally to walk for miles, rubbing me thin with oceans of love and waves of sin. I was a bench, when you sat. I was an ice cube when you drank. I was a window pane, your nose pressed against me when watching autumn and your breath painting me with the cave drawings residing in your lungs. I was a bed, when you made love to others and dandled you into the bliss of sleep after pushing slivers of wood under your fingernails before and creaking during... never complaining as long as you sang to me lullabies of love and sin.

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Sunrise... Crumbs, of mind and body still kicking and squirming furiously mid of the putrefaction and desolation, Your hand softly following the seam of my trousers’ inner leg from ankle upwards toward the knee, past the knee the pilgrimage ending within the shrine of the crotch where devout fingers grope for leftovers of life and incineration follows. The rule of law abdicates. Logic disintegrates into debility. Iconoclasm questions life and ends in conclusions of futility while your skirt’s hem pulls up to your hips with the rest of you galloping into a sea of nepenthe until oblivion reigns. What happened? you ask, resurrecting. You unsaddle, timidly, almost piously rearranging the folds of your garments around your body and failing to do so you let your hair tickle my nostrils as you fall asleep. I watch a sunrise that wouldn’t have been born without.

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Sometimes... Sometimes I don’t close my eyes. Because I want to see you in the leaves, because I want to see you in the moths in the streetlamps in the floating dust in the boughs in the cars in the shoes I discard in the individual letters that build words in the bees in the tiles in the clouds. In the bench. On the bench. By the bench, Before I lie down on it and the narrow planks mark my face and my shoulder cramps and you are not there but still, I feel your breath when you pick my head and lay it in your lap and I smell your woman. Sometimes I open my eyes. Not to see you but to forget that I saw you smiling chewing kissing kissing kissing breathing into my throat licking biting humming a poem I never heard never will hear again coughing spitting the leftovers of me left over in your mouth between your teeth underneath your tongue gums palate. Sometimes I don’t know. Sometimes I make love to you. Sometimes I know. Always. When you are an ugly bruise and I a horrible wound yet we don’t let go and we don’t let free and we traverse each other’s desert with a caravan of water and tired camels and plant shrubs of roses in between each other’s fingers seeding the seeds of butterflies and the roots of passion and the fever of lust unending unleashed until it consumes us, skin and bones and marrow and all. I don’t know if I wake up sometimes. I find myself curled up on your thighs and you cover me with the shreds of your skirt and you say it does not matter before you touch my forehead and plant there another memory. Of you. Sometimes. Oh, sometimes I remember.

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rituals... when your thighs start closing, when the gate to that laboratory of life makes a valiant, inefficient and doomed to fail attempt to hide its whereabouts behind fluttering curls and damaged (sorry) folds while my eyes chase it wildly followed by invasive fingers, and mouth, and... the building blush following newly defined gravitation lines from your cheeks downwards. when your thighs open and the sudden downpour of that mixture of teeth and fingernails is a feather’s caress compared to the vise of muscled vice tearing the unpaired limb from my body and chewing it until nothing’s left bare disintegrating scraps of meat fit only to feed the cats meowing their desperation three floors down. when your thighs close again and cartloads of prurience recede into cartloads of prudishness, again, and you say I love you and promise to kill me again and again and again...

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Rain... It’s raining. Remember when we did not make love in the rain? I did not forget. How could I, how can I when all I ache for is the hair plastered to your scalp and the summery dress plastered to your curves and the transparency of panties plastered to your visible insides which I grope for and grab and grip to remove with one savage movement watching the rain cleanse you, before I dirty you, once again. Remember the scene, was it mid a daffodils field it did not happen? Scattered petals stick to your skin and crushed stems roll around your ankles witnesses to the debauchery that took place just moments ago in that delightful composition where you are the flower and I am the ogre and we are the art and the rest does not matter as we paint ourselves all over the canvas anew stains of doubtful origin mixing with the green of grass and the blue flooding your eyes. I don’t remember. There is nothing to remember, there is no time to forget once your hungry breast turns beast feeding on my giving mouth and my flesh begs forgiveness off your imploring fingernail before time convulses perilously close to demise before I start peeling the torn petals I seeded inside you before I halve you with my running finger unaware, unashamed, unavailing, “Remember the first time we made love in the rain?” you ask and I wake up to the reality of maybe.

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Rain, two... Of course I asked already the question, the same question, exactly, probably the same spelling the same punctuation the same rhyme scheme, rhythm scheme, the same innuendo... ha... innuendo my ass as the whore said to the bishop stepping through his discarded attire with flashing, green toenails... the same intention, malintention, lustintention, loveintention, love... do you believe in eternal intention and love love? I awake from slumber’s prison shaking cobwebs from my mind, Plucking drops of lilac’s perfume from the wrath of years maligned, The eroded line of reason stammers through a moment’s fear As, again, my finger lingers on that haunting, fading smear. Was it when I combed the thistles from your mane of knotted hair While my spine creaked a capella with the cabin’s wooden chair, Was it when you drank my vigor like a marshland’s hungry leech Clawing nails between the sessions from my body’s crumbling beech, When you rode the coiling muscle through the agony of lust Culling life’s emerging blossom from my years’ forgotten dust, When you baptized my numb finger in that lush, primeval swamp And accepted my submission with a victor’s sneering pomp, Or, when sharing mouth and language, tongue and whisper, tooth and blood The caress obliterating your assenting vestal bud You forgave my desecration with a heart impaled by love Laying it inside my fisthold like a fragile, bleeding dove, When I grabbed you by the glory of Medusa’s writhing coils Your incinerated sanctum my crusader’s law and spoils, When you dragged me through the thistle, thorn and bark invaded field Long before my ropy essence in your sanctum’s shrine was sealed, On the bed, the ruffled carpet, between nails and broken glass, With the stank of dying candles and the weary clank of brass, Still, the question bounces crudely like a dying storm’s refrain... Will we ever, ever ever, ever make love in the rain? Of course, I ask the question, again. Of course, the best questions are those left unanswered, I know. Until the answer. I know.

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It’s that time of year, again. ... You’re not young, anymore. You’re over thirty, I think though judging by your bedroom ill-manners I wouldn’t give you a day over twenty nine, ok, maybe one day, two if you insist but not three, agreed? You don’t hang on to a sleigh, anymore. Like a couple years back with frosted hands and running nose and cheeks to make a mid-summer sunset pale and skatesless shoes gliding until heels... stilettos?... ok, stilettos grind to commas and finally break leaving just a bleeding layer between snow and flesh and that exhilarating feeling of life. You don’t stomp through fresh snow, anymore. Looking for those deep spots where your hat’s pompon disappears under snow’s surface and you risk getting buried alive turning all snow around you to a lake if one would just wait long enough... one never did, yes, remember the fire? the blaze? the hunger in your chest there, where I once touched? You don’t make love to me, anymore. You did, once, upon a time while watching the magic of colored bulbs or listening to the tinkle of crystalline bells or inhaling the frozen steam from my mouth and mixing it with leftovers of cinnamon and almonds and raisins to feed me such love that I keeled over with seizures of pleasure. I close my eyes. I wait. I wait. I wait. I wait. You always liked to make me wait, didn’t you? Cinnamon. Is it really cinnamon or the flittering edges of a dying memory or... or what?... says the voice and flittering edges of fingertips slide in between my fingers and flittering edges of lips transcend into my reality before transcending close to my mouth and flittering snowflakes melt on the edges of my eyelashes... hey, don’t cry!... who cries? it’s the damn snowflakes and frozen hands slide inside my shirt to pinch my nipples as stilettos crush my feet and with a wild gesture I tear off the pompon and the rest of whatever is not natural you and whatever is left reminds me of those bedroom ill-manners that betray your age and leaves me exposed to all and any kind of legal pursuits type statutory rape or class A misdemeanor or class B felony or who the hell cares when various parts of us lie knotted in a variety of maritime knots and you start feeding me cinnamon and almonds and raisins and all those colored bulbs and crystalline tinkles that are the real you. My mouth tastes like a salt mine. I do not open my eyes. I do not dare.

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Molding... I mold your nipple, away from the whiteness of a breast created by a God too shy to complete his masterpiece, I squeeze softly between thumb and forefinger, I tap, pull, twist, push, pinch the tip of my tongue adding much needed malleability between your sighs and curses and yelps of encouragement and finally I pull away to watch my supreme creation with an amazement God should have felt if he had finished the job. What are you thinking of? you ask, buttoning your shirt. Of beauty, I answer. Of you.

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of Time. of God. of You. and of Poetry. ... Look, a flower, I said, trying to take her mind off for a moment. Off what? she said. Look, a butterfly, I said, trying to take her mind off for a moment. Off what? she said. Look, a memory, I said, trying to take her mind off for a moment. Oh... she said. She lowered the needle on the record, then lifted it and moved it slightly forward, frowning, then lifted it and moved it way backward, smiling, then... Strange, she said, a time machine, and I can play with it at will, she said, moving the needle forward again. I took her mind off, for a moment. Then I crawled back to my lair and lowered the needle on the record, the only other original. Oh... I said.

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Are you thirsty?... ...for words that will make blood rush through your veins like a screaming viper battering your heart’s walls into disintegrating flesh-bricks and your lungs into the torn cobwebs of a cellar invaded by man-eating bats? ...for innuendoes that will suck you into the pillow in the wake of boiling sweat and fill your mouth with bees fighting for their honey while your eyes hunt desperately for the key in the lock to break and trap the nugatory world out and you in? ...for whispers mine... the senescent child, the sweet abomination born of dreams you never told yourself you owned to ravage hidden mind pastures you refused to lay claim to and torture you into desires not even Penelope dared weave into the shroud? * Why should I always undress you? Undress me! Let your fingers sift between my shirt’s buttons then pop one open, then another, then another, break the next turn around!... you command and before I have time to completely obey you break the last two, your hand slides down to my belt while your teeth grapple my shoulder and I cannot move as your hand misses its stopping point and slides further down your teeth threatening to tear off a chunk of my muscle I cannot bend, I cannot escape, I cannot breathe... oops!... you hiss, your teeth still firmly lodged in and your hand releases its grope and returns upway to its original destination one yank, one tag and the serpentine leather deserts my waist together with the aberration called trousers and associated unnecessities and your hand slides down again turn around!... you command again remembering to release the bite and I face the red blister of your mouth turn around!... I command and you obey, releasing your prey and I skip the niceties of unbuttoning and unzipping and unclasping using Alexander the Great’s sword as inspiration to my hand and Albertus Magnus’ a tergo to my mind and with one movement you are bare and bent and bemoaning my fist mercilessly groping your breast and your waist painfully banging against the table rim and neighing horses the only approximation fit to describe the end of the war. * You light a cigarette. I stopped smoking. I’ll light a cigarette for you. I never smoked. We rest in the land that never was for hours, days, years. From time to time warring anew, from time to time cleaning each other, from time to time mixing our glasses and licking our wounds and biting so that we create a target to licking. You have one, without biting. You too. I bite. You bite. I lick. You lick. Bites and others. We war. We mix. We boil, broil, bandy, bloom. You bloom. Thank you. Your head in the nook between my ear and my shoulder. My head in the nook between your breast and your breast. Your head in the nook between my thigh and my belly. My head in the nook between you thigh and your tibia. We tried all positions, tasted all tastes, investigated every pore of every lea of skin, internal, external, imaginary... I have to leave. Must you? I have to leave. You leave. You left. From time to time I send you words before beating my head against the table top until I fall asleep. Until next time. Until next time. Until next time.

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Imagining... I imagine you, leaning back on a wooden chair legs pulled up chin on knees fingers twined around ankles, eyes closed... did I mention you are naked? Peeking? I’m trying to, you don’t seem to mind. I imagine us, I on the wooden chair you saddling me face to face chest to chest mouth to mouth belly to belly... sorry, you seem to have a question. Naked? Certainly, how else would we fit so nicely to... into!... into each other. I imagine you, alone on that wooden chair legs pulled up chin on knees fingers twined around ankles, eyes closed... no, not naked, not anymore. And you? My heart breaking, just imagining you.

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yet... where burning love abounded wild roses roam today and layered upon wicked thorns old petals wilt and sway, the nightingales deserted the plains of whispered vows while fallen leaves at cobweb ends dance lonely from the boughs, pale blue soaked in the rainbow that bridged those hearts anear competing with the sky, the sea, the eye beneath the tear, yet... times, at break of morning a smile touches a lip and stubborn love paints pink the east while sighs through heartlands rip.

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Is It?... Is it the last winter? Snowflakes shoot down, violently, like hails of bullets from an ancient Maxim machine gun gust after gust after gust cutting me to infinite slices of humanity that hang on, desperately, to the guiding fiber of the single memory. Do you see it? Between the colored bulbs, hanging from beams supporting roofs, the tinkling bells, hanging from horses dragging sledges, the petrified garlands hanging from doors supporting illusions of happiness. Do you see it? Do you smell it? The divine stank of diesel fumes filling the infinitesimality of the truck cabin lying smack dead center of the infinity of the leftover universe and the two creatures therein facing virginity’s end in the pink entrails of mouths and the pink roughness of nipples and the pink insides of bodies. That tiny puddle of blood, left behind, was mine. Don’t claim any differently, though, you may be right. Is it? Remember? The first story you ever loved of me. Is it? Not a question, no. Is it? A poem. The last poem I ever write you. Is it? Not a question, no. There’s no riddle in the riddle, only knowledge. Hey, the snow is back to its soft self hanging its sparkling symmetries to my eyebrows to your eyelashes building a bridge between the tips of our noses upon which kings and queens and dragons traveled back and forth still travel carrying thoughts wishes words almost unsaid... tears? who said tears, snowflakes I said, snow flakes. Someone turns off the lights, in the entire world, there is no sparkle with no lights, right? There is no memory at the end of winter, right? Wrong. Then wrong again. Then wrong again for whichever other question you may ask. There is a sparkle, bubbling inside you, and little by little it starts drooling down from the corners of lips, yours. There is a memory, bubbling inside me, and little by little it starts writing itself into a smile, mine, for you. Winter. Is it the last? Is it the last smile to be written in the only season that ever counts? Maybe. Probably. Possibly. The Star of Bethlehem born above Bethlehem? Wrong again, as said. The Star of Betlehem born inside that divinely stinking truck cabin where virginity was lost and your eyes were the only stars before, after, forever.

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It Is... It is. The last. Winter. It is the last title dot dot dot I will ever attach to a memory dot dot dot where each dot is an ad infinitum on its own and the words following just a smear on the face of an universe that never knew better than that smear. Dot dot dot. Not a Morse code, no code at all just an amorphous mass changing shape each time it comes to life and we - its progenitors. Maybe not proud, but certainly relentless... at least until now. I could fill another page, I could fill another thousand pages, I could reminisce that truck cabin until the dinosaurs rule the Earth anew. I could. I won’t. The smile dies, killed by life. The winter dies, killed by end. The was does not get resurrected into is, it dies. Into was not. Strange. Good bye, beautiful. See you never. Again. Dot. Dot. Dot.

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what?... my heart is bleeding. my eyes are bleeding, my fingers are bleeding and carrying the traces across the page letter after letter line after line an endless stream that only i see and only you know. loved you love you will love you and poetry is the only tool to say it... even though this is hardly poetry. it is more of an unending... what?... eulogy? paean? dirge? elegy? tribute?... a mix of all and yet nothing of all because there is no word, no synonym to the storm in mind and pain in chest. i thought there were no more poems in me, i was wrong. there is always a poem with me, you, and you will never stop pouring since there may have been others but yet there were none. you, there will always be you. how does one end a poem with no end? i don’t know. i don’t want to know. i love you.

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It... Look at It, I say. It? you say, from beyond the ocean, the moon, the galaxy. It, I say, unsurmountable distance from to unsurmountable gap from until unsurmountable events past and just one touch, ever, single, the seed. Say, It was a random chunk of glowing coal would have been peed-on by time long ago into black, crumbling oblivion, I guess, no? Probably not. Say, It was a trick party eternal candle would have been peed-on by time long ago into shapeless, melted wax, I guess, no? Probably not. Probably what, then? Probably, well, probably an undefined fist of boiling magma and pee on it as much as she would wish to time finally had to give up. Undefined. Inextinguishable. With time still licking its wounded pride and pee orifice brooding revenge. It. Call it whichever name. Will never be as popular as Kipling’s If. Will never hang on somebody’s wall, will never be copied into a notebook, will never be learned by heart like Kipling’s If. Will never be Kipling’s If. Will always stay It. Our. It. Sure, in the end time wins. She always wins. If she cannot pee the fire into extinction she will first pee all surrounding life off, then the fire. Yeah, big deal. We know. We accept, but by then it does not matter. What matters is that reality, distance, gap, events nothing could extinguish the fire. Not even our knowledge of never again.

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The End... I have known you bitter. I have known you angry, vicious, vengeful. I have known you bitch. Shark. Viper. It all passed me by like the softest of breezes. I didn’t know you rude. I know you rude. It hit me like a brick wall. The glass shattered. Can it be repaired? It could. It will always remain shattered. It cannot. The chapter is closed. Period. End.                     THE END

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