The tower of Babel.
Pascal’s triangle.
Liber Abaci. Fractals. Elvis. Woman. You. Wonders. Unique.

I remember touching the back of your hand with mine
when I marshaled you between the aisles in the supermarket successfully
and you marshalled my thoughts in between your thighs unsuccessfully
and I still wonder if you knew it.

I sat down to write a poem and you made a move with your head à la Miss Piggy
and I exploded into a million fingers
all dying to crawl inside your hair and massage your scalp
thinking what the hell does poetry mean at all and does it mean anything at all
with your breast filling my palm and Babel reduced to rubble.

I tried to tell you in one of the many languages I do not know
then tried to tell you in one of the many languages you do not know
then tried math, music, even tried mental acupuncture
and once you finished laughing your head off and mine too
you told me all I wanted to tell you in between those moments
when my flesh was between your teeth and my mind chasing rainbows in the gutter.

I caressed your hair
it wasn’t mine,

I caressed your resting arm
it wasn’t mine,

I caressed your body
and the skin enveloping it and the red surrounding your nipples
and the crossroad your thighs led to
caring not that it was not mine

when I grabbed handfuls of you
and licked all the crumb leftovers
leaving nothing to God or imagination or anyone else,

not even the rhymes
you moaned in.

I clutched at your hair, at your resting arm, at your body
at the skin enveloping it all and the nipples and the crossroad your thighs led to
letting the train run me over
and mash me into pieces of flesh
hanging all around you
like tiny light bulbs
around their Christmas tree.

Before Adam,
before light, before chaos
there was order, absolute.
Maybe the size of the moon,
maybe the size of a marble, of an atom,
no cosmic radiation
no inter-stellar dust, not even nothing...
how could there be nothing without something?
Before time, before size, before energy, before Before,
just a blob of... what? Of everything.
Trillions of trillions of trillions of tons before ton was defined
of everything in that one blob.
Before BANG!

And yet, you were there.
In that statistical dispersion of that statistical combination
resulting in statistical dinosaurs followed by anti-statistical humans
you were there,
defined already without anyone knowing for billions of years...
yes, time was defined by that time, sic erat scriptum.

Your precise outline.
Your precise texture of skin and shape of calf
and length of eyelash and moment in the almost infinity when our roads crossed.
The moment after the Before.
No, the other Before, the one after the earlier Before.
Followed by After. THE After.

Now, the Now that is part of the After,
I sit in my car watching a park-meter
and a passing dog
and a public trashcan
and write a poem about making love to you.
After the chaos. After the light, and Adam and the dinosaurs
whichever came first or last, who cares?
I sit here and watch you undressing.
I sit here and watch you dressing.
I sit here and watch you undressing dressing undressing countless times
and each time I gather your clothes
or hand you your clothes
and between gathering and handing I let you travel my spine
and my inner thigh
and my mouth
listening to your fingertips digging trenches
followed by your teeth biting away roots
followed by your opening flesh escalading the crumbling Berlin wall
and impaling itself on the thorn
of your rose.

There is time,
until next chaos
and you fill it with perfumes...

oh, your bodily perfumes...

They took away my LP flip-over.
They took away my mini-skirt and those divine garters ending just below the white of flesh,
they took away my hand drawn Disneys and my transistor radio and my slows.
My Paul Anka. My Partridge Family. My musicals.
My national tomatoes.
My chatter free travel.
Chunks of me. My Brave Old World, my basic components.
Disintegration.

Convenience.
Pantyhose, tomatoes anytime, call anywhere. Tasteless. Needless.

I flip my LP, rebelliously.
I watch the Jungle Book and look at yellowing old pictures,
the shop had thankfully not fixated them enough.
I close my eyes.
Looking for an innocence lost,
never to be found. Except maybe in that final act of my finite life.
This, at least, they did not take away.

This is chaos, I say.
This is hell, she says
and I hate it when she is wrong.

This is Picasso, I say,
this is Bruegel, she says
and we are both right. This is Modigliani. We are both rightly wrong.
Crazy poet, I know.
Pieter, I try to correct her and Pablo she tries to correct me
as we both try to compensate for our ignorance
watching Reclining Nude
then Reclining Nude With Left Arm Resting On Forehead
then Reclining Nude With Loose Hair
then Reclining Nude With Arms Folded Behind Her Head
then and by the time I am out of then’s then she reclines then
and I am out of other words as well
and any grammar literacy seems to get loose in my mind
alongside jewish Amedeo and self proclaimed jewish lover
who keeps reclining in the various reclination (copyrighted) poses
first to last then last to first then last new to laster newer
and by the time she freezes
in that reclination (still copyrighted) he never dared paint
with details visible he never dared ask for
and I do not mean toenails
my chaos and hell are one
and neither Pablo nor Pieter, well, maybe slightly Pieter, could bring to life
on those flat worlds of theirs. Deeper than the Chomolungma on a sunny day.

Yes, copyrighted, the status not the act.

I did not have paint, canvas, easel, lighting, talent and rest of ingredients,
I had bytes, camera, tripod, flash, lust and rest of ingredients
and I had her and Amedeo didn’t
thus after creating my own exhibits for my private exhibition
and proving exhibitionism to be the one art forgotten by the kinds of
Georg Hegel or is it Wilhelm or is it Friedrich
and Ricciotta Canudo or is it Ricky or is it Ritchie
I owned to my decision
and obliterated the entirety of my creation
(ok, feeling quite god-like, I admit)
and owned to her body
(ok, feeling very human-like, I admit)
and chaos and or hell and or right and or wrong
never felt better.

Oh, and she felt divinely, oh, very humanly and and divinely so.
Yes, I know. Missing [sic] thus so what?

How could I rhyme my way through life
if not by using wife, or strife,
or tying love
with glove, above,
oh, hell, what’s wrong with knife or shove?

A critic’s chauvinistic mind
I know, would flail my sweet behind
with Oxford wit
and gutter shit
alongside guffaws brined in spit.

Well, listen dear bovine select
with your superior intellect
could you compose
two words of prose
that won’t your mind’s defect disclose?

Oh, an uplifting thought just crossed my mind, see...

when you reach your hundredth bliss
you’ll wake up wet to morning’s kiss
and know in store
are hundred more
to drag through pampers, piss and gore.

yesterday i bought three bananas.
they were cheap because they were rotten.
i came home and sat on them.
wanted to feel how a full baby feels when he fills.
he not fool. he not file. he full. he bananas.

tra-la-la-la-la (ole in spain)

my dog bit me. my wife too.
she bit and beat. my pc bits and bytes.
he also boots. he does not bark.
he hates the dog. the dog peed on his hard disk.
i have a bat. his name is bambi. the dog’s name.

ole-ole-ole (tra-la-la-la in usa)

there are a lot of italians in italy.
more than in rome. rome has only one pope
but i ate three pizzas. one two three
baby i love thee.
i love tea too. and two too is tootoo.

pronto-pronto-pronto (allo in the rest of the world).

one, two, three,
one, two, three, four,
one, two, three, four five,
one, two, three, four, five, six,
ix, ix, ix...

seventeen,
sixteen,
fifteen,
fourteen,
een, een, een...

billion,
on, on, on...
trillion,
on, on, on...
quadrillion,
quack, quack, quack...

and the universe explodes,
odes, odes, odes...

pronto-pronto-pronto (allo in the rest of the world).

(archaeological exhibit, date uncertain, following assumed election of the first ever feminist president in the USA, excavation site NY, 3075)

By the grace of Divinity, this year 2011 and a half,
we have a woperson president of the USA,
who decreed illegal any use, abuse, misuse,
of the words man or men or any of their forwards or backwards derivatives
in the English language when not associated with
man, men, or any of their derivatives. Persondatory replaceable by
person, persons and none of their derivatives. Punishable by
imprisonpersonsnt. Wopersons will be locked without money in
the malls of Personhattan, persons will be locked in peepshow cabins without quarters.

Hallelujah! Apersons!

Roperson Polanski was exiled because he refused the persondatory change of
nosrepe, and war declared on Ropersonia for same reason.
To prevent phonetical misunderstandings, the first day of the week is from now on
Moonday. Governpersonst offices will be open extended hours to
permit the extra time to pronounce the longer words. Extra pay
allocated to court typists, per extra digit; abusive use of relevant
words will be punished.

This directive applies to mammals only, talking parrots need not
be re-educated.

Signed, Empersonanuela Zilberperson, secretary of state and re-education.

(short biography: Empersonanuela, a famous Ropersontic Roperson author, actrice - played Dulcinea in Person of LaPersoncha, and citruses - nosrepely persondarines - grower, joined the liberation movement in 2009, was one year ambassadress in Birpersonia, and since half a year ago secretary of state)

When my chick has started barking,
And I mean a chicken chick,
I kept swallowing three Prozac’s
Every hour all that week.

It was thirty seven hours
Till my wife got off the roof,
Then she ran (she still is running)
Followed by the mocking woof...

Then my dog... the sneaky charmer,
Love proposed... well, doggy style,
Now he’s chasing my poor woman
(She’s still leading by a mile...)

Then I find to my amazement
That on top of playing ball,
This... what?... chicken?... chick?... the IT thing
Knows to fetch, to sit, to roll.

One by one - my cat was bitten,
And the postman’s scared like hell,
I don’t mind my shoes she’s chewing
’Cause she rounds the sheep quite well.

’Bout a month or something later
My sweet wife - half starved, half lame,
After crossing countries, oceans,
West she ran... now East she came...

At her heel my dog, crest(?)fallen...
Wow... the chicken came a running,
Proudly bringing bones and snuggling,
Do you know what was most stunning?

At her... tail? three chicks, small, tiny,
Then two puppies daddy necking,
And the chicks started a squealing,
And the puppies worms a pecking...

My poor dog could not imagine,
Now he’s papa - tail to bone,
And my wifey.... well, in horror
Now from East to West she’s gone.

Both my goats her quest have joined now,
Cuz, you see, this chicken cheat,
Followed foreign language studies,
As of late she starts to bleat.

NBC said - "thanks, you’re crazy..."
CNN... I told my story,
They just asked - "is there a blood bath?..."
I said - "no...", they said "so sorry..."

Well, to end my true (swear!) story -
FBI brought back one goat,
Seven ducks, a cow, two piglets,
(and the wife, oops... just forgot...)

Now they’re laughing down to Texas,
And the sheriff’s mighty sad,
"These good folks" he says with sorrow
"Ain’t no dangerous... just mad."

*

Do we care?... each eve at sunset
After I have voiced my proems,
To the pigs and cows and horses
Missis chicken reads my poems.

Wife (she’s taking cackle lessons)
Claims a lesson to this story
(Though I swear I hardly get it) -
"Chickenshit’s no path to glory..."

I and my lover
We love each other
      ...and her mother.

She has a brother
Bald as his father
      ...and her mother.

We want a boy,
We’ll name him Joy
      ...her mother’s choi.
(should have been ’choice’ but then it wouldn’t rhyme)

Also a moose
(Adopted, called Bruce)
      ...like her mother’s goose.

When late in the night
The bats start to fight
      ...her mother’s delight,

We snug in the bed,
We cover our head
      ...her mother we dread,

And I start to mmmmm...
And she starts to hmmmm...
      ...and her mother... ahmmmm...

As we start to juice...
The bats and the moose
      ...and her mother’s goose

In bed stick their nose,
They snuggle up close,
      ...and her mother’s toes...

written for some kind of assignment asking the use of just a few unusual words from a full ABC list of unusual words... well, I used them ALL of course, in ABC order :)

at the ardent flow of slogans
as my brethren marched their brogans
through caluminating speeches
from the mountains to the beaches
derisorily I snickered
at the essence as they bickered
through some fictive acts of malice
which they claimed with guile that alice
(her humility undoubtful)
has impinged more than a mouthful
through jocose and nasty comments
("...called us kelpies certain moments
lambent phrases dirt conceiving
mellifluously deceiving
when the noumenon one spotted,
otiose her word, and rotted ...")...
hey (I said) you pilous creatures
if the quiddity of teachers
is too recondite a matter
and setaceous a patter,
if truism your brains is hurting
unremitting as it’s spurting
and veracious a statement
wrought will be through reinstatement,
your xerophilous existence
has a yeanling’s low subsistence
your zenith you’ll never reach
(ends my speech).

They appeared out of nowhere
hordes of them,
swarms of them,
flocks, throngs, squadrons, crowds,
mobs of ostriches
all-pink and dotted-pink and striped-pink
admiring, lash batting, bottom pinching,
pouring through my windows, smashing down my doors,
attacking the endless arrays of pencils on my table
and swallowing them... sideways...
ouch, I feared imagine them exiting sideways too...
cackling and barking and meowing my beautiful words
those I went through years of pains writing,
after tearing to pieces my notes and my buttons
and missing my eyes yet focusing on my nose
then on my ear lobes
then on bowling balls I started throwing their way
all those thousands of vicious beaks looking for a snippet of the prize
while I cowered in the corner
trembling like a leech... wait, like lice?... a leaf maybe?...
spraying their way my cheap eau de cologne
and then throwing my collection of unwashed socks...
in vain...
on they came...

Wake up, wake up, you shook me awake, tenderly,
your three pronged foot looking for fleas on my chest,
I screamed and ran away all the way to the wall
where I collapsed with a big lump on my head.

I finally woke up. For real. The nightmare was over.
I remembered nostalgically those first, terrible days,
horrible dreams chasing my sanity,
the pills, the drugs, the strait jacket,
then finally the reality of love dawning upon me
in the warmth of our shared dwelling,
our life.
I touched the big egg underneath my shirt
thanking you for trusting me with your most cherished of possessions.
Love has never been bigger...

I found you, when you were little, insignificant,
your pretty eyes sparkling with egg yolk,
even your parents rejected you
and tried to drown themselves... in vain, they failed.

I cradled you with infinite tenderness to my chest
while you insistently pecked at my left eye,
luckily I was wearing a ski mask at the time
a diving mask being too expensive
and anyway it was supposed to snow in a few months coming.

My dog left me.
My cat left me.
My lumbago left me.
Then in descending order the limping rat, the gold fish, my wife.
And yet, I still would not give up on you.

I chewed raw fish and regurgitated straight into your ever demanding beak,
moved on to sushi, three types of
and when you were big enough to stay hungry
I even learned to use chopsticks,
my deserting wife’s deserted knitting needles.
The floor was a mess, my heart was soaring, you were blossoming.

Oh, that fateful, ill-fated, fatidic day.
I had just finished lighting the one-year candle mid of the fish soup.
You pulled away from me
tore one of the gold fishes from my original Matisse, Red Fish and a Sculpture
(The Museum of Modern Art, New York, owns a reproduction, he he)
and banged your head against the triple-layer window pane.
Second time around you were through it
shitting all over my petunias, my neighbor’s Lexus LFA open rooftop
and masking an ad for craftspeople in a most embarrassing way.

I fell on my knees, crying all of three days and three nights...
“Fly, fly my baby, fly! Fly Fletcher Lynd!
Beware of hawks, SAMs, IBPDMSs, ICBMs and humans generally!
Fly, baby, fly!”
I fell to the floor (I was already on my knees) and spasmed away into nothingness.

When I woke up, they started returning into my life, in ascending order
my wife, the gold fish, the limping rat,
my lumbago,
my cat,
my dog.

I still pay for my neighbor’s Lexus LFA open rooftop
I believe my son will have to continue and my grandson after him,
maybe my grandgrandson will not have to.
But if you ask... Yes! I would have done it all again,
maybe with the exception of the fish soup.
I hate fish soup.

Spring.

The birds are singing
my nose is running
it’s stunning.

A couple blackbirds in duet
perform a masterful couplet
thus proving void grasshopper’s claim
to best-in-class eternal fame
while my two cats – one black, one grey
drag Due Gatti way astray
from early March till later May
and in the morning’s early breeze
I sneeze.

Oh, mighty gods of fevers hay
watch as my droplets proudly spray
and carry messages beyond
and frog and toad and croak and pond
with talent
multipolyvalent
the circum feren cial song
five notches wide and growing strong
my nasal lore
contained no more.

I’m stunned,
shunned
by people carrying umbrellas
to ward-off nose-a-running fellas
like me,
with pills and spray
that don’t allay
(administered in lethal dose
according to the diagnose)
the misery upside my nose
which started when I smelled a rose...
because.

The rattle
of battle,
the mooing of cattle,
the nightingale’s chirp,
my nose’s loud dirp
(should be drip but doesn’t rhyme)
the roar of the lions
when watching Orion’s
diminishing glow,
my hee and my hoe,
all merge and adjust to my symphony’s lust plus the horrible gust
that smite off all light in a rite of delight
and leave me alone
to atone
for my moan.

OK, now back to the mountains of hankies
(no pankies)
and screaming masses
that my noble gasses
disperse.

When they see me coming there’s no need for drumming,
they pick up the children, the chickens, the goats
and leave old me sneezing in verse and in quotes.

Just when nonsense started making sense
it stopped making sense again.

Just like a rotten apple without flies,
nonsense.
Though it makes sense
in a senseless kind of way,
almost sensual.
Do you think "censor" comes from "sense - or"?
Kind of "make sense or you lose your license".
Or better said lice’n’se
where the se is two fifths sense or even two two fifths.
See what I mean?
Nonsense. Except to a math genius rich in eye queue. Ha-ha, it was a joke.

Yesterday public opinion decided to strike the previous sentence.
It is part of another (political) poem
while nevertheless (I had to re-write this word five times)
while nevertheless it carries to the foreground
the unabashed (have no idea what this means) idea
that sentence, or rather "sentence"
has nothing to do with se’n’tence
but rather with se’n’tience
also known as sentience
proposing the époustouflante (I think this one is French, see the accent?) idea
that it actually originates from negating
nonsense into sense.

Makes sense?

Yesterday I dreamt that Elvis was not singing a medley of Little’s
(Sister Darling Egypt)
which makes as much sense
as when I dreamt that he was not singing a medley of Long’s
(Black Limousine Legged Girl Tall Sally)
and it all made nonsense to me
when I woke up in the bus three stations later.
And the beating I got from the street gang
and the broken nose
and the cost of the hospital
for the thug who broke his fist on my nose and my metal wallet.
Do you know that about eighty of his titles include variations on the L word?
And none of my poems
because love rhymes with above and critics hate it They hate me too.
Even if I use the S word instead The one that rhymes with Ex. Annex.
No, annex has no biological function,
nothing to do with excretion,
that’s pure of the purest anomalies slash pretenses slash machinations nonsense
(finally, back on track).

Did you know that ex is the most complex and misunderstood
and largely used syllable in the English language?
Do you know how many words there are including ex,
inclusive names like Alex and Mexico and Texaco?...
I don’t know, I thought you might.
And then there are those hidden, metamorphosed ones
that once were and are not anymore.
Like shiksa that was once shexa,
or like the recently (last century) uncovered
supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
that was originally aspirin, or in reality expirin.
And to top them all there is the famous IRS, originally named EX.
Yes, true. EXmoney, EX income, EXcruciating pain.
Then "they" (the conspirators) decided it was too revealing
and chose the subtly subliminal IRS,
you know,
I for I, like you, you know, but I, you understand?
Then comes this gross grammatical error,
queen of an and alph and abets,
R for are
when everybody knows that I M am and not I R are
but the gayls – the new politically correct for guys and gals –
showed their subliminal contempt to us choosing are.
And the, coarsest of course,
S for ass, what else?
Irreverently so and irrelevantly which ass,
the one with four legs and a tail
or the one between its hind legs and its tail.
I have, as a matter of fact, a very evoluted evolutionary theory about ass
but I will leave it for a future inspired and/or expired
(political correctness obliges)
poem.
BTW, did you know that the word breathless was originally ex?
Originating from exexex which is an onomatopoeia for being out of breath

apoplexy another crucial ex word

or for breathing laboriously.
But then some higher intelligence of the language academy
decided it might remind people too much of sex
and the resulting sexsexsex
and invented the bland breathless.

Blah! Nonsense!

XXX.
See above.
Porn.
Kisses.
I slither down a slippery road of words and accusations
which are mostly untrue and only partially true and impartially untrue.
Sorry Shake’n’spear, couldn’t make it as long as yours
but I made up in beauty
what I lack in length.
Shucks. Originally shux. Didn’t mean anything obscene. It’s all in your mind, readers.

I never smoked.

Never conscientiously, at least,
disregarding this first time last time
when aged five I crushed some dry leaves into a torn piece of newspaper
and rolled it and glued it with flour glue
then hid in my neighbor’s shed
trying in vain to light it with matches,
I almost caused a fire, it was their winter wood shed.
I gave up. Forever. This is my cigarettes history.

I never drank.

Qualifying this,
I never drank industrially,
I always had a beer with my steak
since age five.
My parents found it funny,
I found it tasty
and for the one time a year when we had the money to go
to the summer-garden restaurant
multiplied in probability by the one time a year when they had meat
I don’t think you could call it irresponsible their side
or mine.
Wine was something you get drunk from,
or transparent hard liquors,
or colored hard liquors,
not beer...
It stayed once a year.
Sometimes twice. Even today.
I don’t think you can call it a drinking habit or a drinking problem.
Or anything else on the same subject.
See, this is my present drinking history.

Neither did I ever fornicate
and don’t you please believe everything you read in my poetry.
I mean bordellos and back alleys and cetera.

Sure, an exclusive lover is not fornication, is it?
A lover is a fellow human you love, care, respect and wish the best,
take showers with
mix tooth brushes with
and exchange healthy body essences with.
Healthy mind you, one on one, no pun intended.
Once a year. Keeping it healthy both mind and body. My history.

He looks at me and makes another mark in his notebook.
Hard drugs? he implores.
I had to give him something to hang his explanation on,
something to explain the unexplainable,

the unjustifiable, the death warrant.
Asbestos? Heredity? Radiation? Pollution? he continues enumerating his hopes,
and I keep shaking my head in sad negation.
No, none of these. Sorry to disappoint, so sorry.

I guess it doesn’t really make a difference to me,
maybe to him, not to me.
I never had cancer before,
one has to start sometime in one’s life, doesn’t one?

If I have to choose what I send to a contest
or if I have to taylor my poem to the judge’s habits
or – horror of horrors – if I have to write something specifically for them,

if I cannot just grab the first found
and slam it up their link and down their throat
and matters not if they like it or prize it or not

then I’m no poet
and they are no poem readers.

I listen to Vladimir.
Vysotsky that is, Vladimir Vysotsky. Did you? Ever?
You should try.

I listen to Vladimir,
I don’t understand a single word he’s saying
yet I understand everything he’s saying.
Who needs more than just voice intonations when an absolute performer
performs. Statement, not question.

How does one squeeze so much art in such short a life span?
Question, not statement. I wonder.

The record skips, a second time now.
Probably a KGB induced flaw, why not, their trade mark.
Matters not.
Worthy more with its flaws.
His flaws too, unfortunately. Nothing to do with the KGB
though everything to do with his soul, his art, his absoluteness,
his absolute art.

Probably the Van Gogh of poetry and song.
The way Van Gogh was the Vysotsky of painting. Twins.
All he ever wanted to do was to tell stories, in poem, in song,
all he ever did was tell stories
and oh, did he tell them right...

Sin.
Meaning what except beauty, ecstasy, passion
and life? Yes, life.

Sin,
the kind of sin I have in mind
dressed in knotted tree trunks
and rolling rocks
and railways bent out of shape into the shape
of your curving tri-dimensional surfaces.

Absolution.
Who the hell wants absolution?
Who the hell needs absolution
when hell is the only fire worth mentioning
once sin starts
and before it ends
and after it ends starting again?

We fall in step, one-two, one-two
who with who or rather who with whom?
It may be you with me, running satellite circles around me clockwise
or I rotating counter clockwise next to you
relativistic effects negligible
mind numbing effects not neglectable
flesh effects calamitous
and I wonder if you wonder the same.

Hey, here’s the hotel, you declare like you were the queen of Sheba
many years after thelarche
and I Solomon many years after circumcision
and we were about to progenate a wonder nation
of blue-black eyed black-fair skinned progenies
just by closing the electronic-keyed door behind us
kicking the shoes under the metal-framed bed
and touching the tips of our index fingers.

We closed the electronic-keyed door behind us,
kicked the shoes under the metal-framed bed
and touched the tips of our index fingers and tips of big toes and tips of noses
and tips of knees
and tips of nipples
and tips of belly-buttons
and tips of curls and tops and depths
after shedding all memory of garment from mind
and all shreds of hesitation from skin
and as you waited for me to liberate you from railways shackles
and mill rocks
and tree trunks pillories
I waited for you to imprison me in said shackles and mills and pillories
and allow me to shrivel in between your femurs
and mandible to maxilla
and snarling extremities bouncing not far above pectoral muscles.
Or not far beneath, depends... you declare like it was the Declaration of Independence
before Thomas McKean
and my moans the same after John Hancock
and in between the world was created
only you know why, and you probably don’t.

I rest my sins on your bare belly, counting freckles and pickles and crocodiles.
You rest your sins on my bare belly counting zeroes, just ensuring there is no end.
We do not rest from our sins too long, eager to try other versions
maybe with chocolate mousse
or fresh strawberries
or supporting pillows
et coitera [sic] [yes, sic and not sick, mind your puritan soul].

SIN. Such Is Nature.

I have to leave, sorry,
had enough of freckles and crocodiles,
I think it is about time I start paying attention anew to those extremities,
either above or underneath your pectoral muscles,
I’ll let you decide,
after all you’re the queen of Sheba
and I am whatever you want me to be.

Humanity’s conscience
hasn’t been born,
yet. Though there were several attempts made,

ended prematurely,
inconclusively,
unfortunately.

Like the ten lines
chiseled inexpertly in black granite
telling more than ten million lines could ever tell and would ever tell
ever after,
the shortest ever book of law
written by an inexistent God’s hand...
maybe an inexistent God?

ha, would have found its way into Guinness
if Guinness would have been born,
then.

Or the following billions following the one singleton following the single idea
of love universal,
oh, how naïve he, they, the idea
when he ended his short life
calling out to a God inexistent,

wishing him into existence
through pierced limbs.

Or, then, the insignificant millions, in between,
metamorphosing by the intermediary of industrial might into
toothless, hairless, baggageless soft smoke rising to freedom
through the endless trail of dark chimneys

only to deny their God
his existence. And only then to spread the stench through adjoining, desolate fields.

Humanity’s conscience hasn’t been born yet.
It probably never will.

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.

hITLER, süßes schwein,
guttness gracious mine,
was your schwanz
gar und ganz
one und halbes inches klein?

gÖRING, fettes kind,
if you’d let off wind
was the sieg
of der krieg
kinderspiel, or so man find.

gOEBBELS, dünnes scheiß,
freund of other mice,
arschloch kuß
war dein gruß
yarning boneless lies with lice.

Pig Heil! shouts out loud
the adoring crowd
goose’n’feet
march’n’shit
raking gold from chimney’s cloud.

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...

Sure, not all of them.
Yet, some illustrious ones.

Jesus, became religion years after he died.
Wolfgang, became religion years after he died.
William, became religion years after he died.
Vincent, became religion years after he died.

I, still have time.
Though I’m too old to die now.

I don’t know why,
you can ask and I can answer but I don’t know why.
You’re just a woman. No?
Isn’t it true?
So I don’t know why.
Maybe?
Maybe, because you are?
Maybe, because you are Woman? Maybe because you are? Woman?
To me, my mind, my body, my undefined?

Sometime, somewhere, somehow and somexyz
you clicked into my mechanism,
like a breechblock to a rifle, like a cogwheel to a gear, like a broadax to a log
deep, smug, content.
I tried to shake you off,
it was like trying to shake off a biting Piranha,
I tried to forget you,
it was like trying to forget to breathe,
I tried to make you hate me,
it was like trying to make a mother hate her baby.
I stopped trying.
I even tried to stop writing poetry. Yeah, like trying to stop a river dam from crumbling.
Ha, even metaphors
suffice not.
And I try plenty, see? See above?

Sure, horrible poetry, I know. Metaphors, same like stealing.
Same like zero imagination and dead-end streets.
So what? Not any less fitting, correct, true.
Not going to gain any contests with it, not even trying. Maybe trying to tell you.
Maybe trying to tell me. Even if I know.
Sure, blah blah, but OMG what a Woman, this is what I am trying to tell you.
This is what I know.

OK, you had enough of this nonsense? Maybe.
I’ll never have enough. Of you.

I counted three thousand. Stars.
Then I stopped.
It took too long.
I could have counted three thousand more
but it would have gotten me into morning.
And anyway, I probably counted some twice.
And counting twice three thousand would have led to twice the errors.
Hey, twice can be for more and for less. Hmm. Twice twice. Ha.

I tried it two nights in a row. Twice, you may say.
Then decided to try to undress you following a similar twice logic
and checked for possible analogies and parallels in obviously unrelated events.
It took too long, check.
Tried to remove pieces of clothing twice, though already removed, check.
I made some horrible mistakes, different, sorry and apologies, check.
Tried it two nights in a row.
Second night could not go into a twice trying
since after the first time there was nothing left for you to wear again
and anyway
you dragged me towards you
and did some undress experimenting of your own, once,
and the result is history. Yes, once of course. No check.
Breaking any dreams I may have entertained for an honorary PhD
in the field of analogy and parallels of twice’s.
Not sorry, sorry. Sorry only to have wasted all that time previous night.
Funny, no sorry thoughts about the stars.
Maybe I’ll try again, this time with apples.
PhD, here I come!

I failed.
Firstly, some of your apples were not apples,
though they were, two, not twice.
Secondly, not twicely, many other apples kept falling from the trees
and I couldn’t keep count,
not with me hopping left and right to prevent Newtonian trauma
not with you hopping right and left
trying to bounce your apples off me, wench,
and claiming to have found two more apples, on me this time. Wench! Twice!
Thank God these are not.
Thirdly, anything I counted you made into jam
so I couldn’t check my count without eating it
and who can eat so much apple,
not to mention the inaccurate mathematical transformation jam to discrete apples,
I failed. No PhD for me. Not unless you mean PhysicalDesire
of which I own plenty.
So I let you play with my apples, the not really apple ones,
then I played with your apples, the not really apple ones,
then as we shared in the playing
I started counting stars
and you started counting torn buttons
and when our numbers did not match
we decided it did not matter, my PhD.
What mattered was exactly what stopped everything else from mattering.

I’ll try philosophy next.
Once dressed. Once undressed.
Better still – once undressed, once undressed too.
Twice.

Raindrops on the windshield,

exploding into perfect discs
before they start crawling, slaves to gravitation and fluid dynamics
toward the car hood
to mix with leaf crumble and insect quash
and dust long gone mud.

Your body.

The Beatles on the radio,

umbrellas parading above heads of passers by
mostly black, some colored,
some would be thieves inspecting all cars behind mine, before mine,
skipping mine
and carrying no umbrellas but a bag heavy with their tools of trade,
a bird drinks from a puddle,
ACDC on the radio Hell’s Bells.

Your body.

Strange houses, water dripping from balconies,

one pink, one yellow, one crumbling supported by beams and scaffolds,
some broken windows planked over,
a pizzeria and a pizzeria owner standing outside
waiting for his one in a week client,
statistically speaking,
I wonder if he buys fresh tomatoes each day,
a whore pulling up her torn leggings.

Your body.

The miracle of destruction of my body,

my sanity, my dwindling intellect
sliding into my lap from the rear-viewing mirror
and leaving traces of lipstick and mascara hanging in the air
to support the climbing ivy and nesting birds and drooling clamor
deserting my desires
to claim your attention and your body
and leave me in perfect incoherent stupor
for the next traffic warden to happen by and stick a ticket under my wiper,
the seventh today.

Empty.

Empty like... emptiness.
Like the void surrounding that perfectly spherical marble
containing the trillions of trillions of trillions of tons
of universe
before it exploded in same, above mentioned, universe.

Like the thoughts in a dead body’s head.
Like the vacant look on my father’s face when we buried mom
and forever after.
Like the story in a book composed of covers only,
like the inside of o,
like the chair of God,
like the future of my poetry.

Empty.

I juggle balls in my mind,
call them empty one, empty two, empty three
and so on until empty seventeen.
Have to stop at seventeen since this was my first almost love.
My first almost non emptiness
thinking back, if I remember correctly.
The next one was probably the following year,
the next one the year after,
and so on,
always almost. Empty.
Some were even more than almost,
some even maybe not empty.
And yet, all I can think about is empty,
like emptiness,
like the future of my poetry
and all the rest in between.

Touch me.
Make me forget.
The only moment of... meaningful.

I took some liberties with your body,
like I always do
with poetry.

I proposed first the perfect rhyming of palm to breast,

then proposed as second the slightly more complex rhyme
between thumb and index to nipple
followed by the forced yet nevertheless beautiful hip to hip...

you agreed, forced yet paradoxically also much closer to perfection...
and then I continued of course into the secret schemes
located between navel and knees both individual and across individuals
open to personal indiscretions
and prompt retributions in kind
yet not to public scrutiny,

understandably so.

No quotes, sorry.

You proposed some convoluted combinations of your own,
type
rock’n’roll to hard’n’hole
or kiss’n’burn to twist’n’turn
and even grip’n’groan to strip’n’moan
as if I could follow the thin streak of dirt halving your mind
into lurid and lecherous
even if I wanted to.
Of course I wanted to.

I paused a moment with the poetry and liberties associated
to measure the softness of the softest
while you measured the hardness of the hardest
but you got bored quite fast
and I followed
so we decided in an élan of mutual understanding
to move on to experimental rhymeless rhyming
with view to writing a book on the subject and becoming stinking rich.
We didn’t reach even the stinking part of the goal.
What with those billions of butterflies following you everywhere
and those billions of flowers sprouting in front of you everywhere
and those billions of glass marbles raining upon you from everywhere...
ouch... it hurts... let’s make it soap bubbles, ok?...
we stopped midway to the goal
and with a scream of “what the hell”
I wrote my entire poetic history inside your body
followed by some dazzling words outside
followed by a silence sister only to before the Big Bang.
“Hey, I like your poetic liberties,” you whispered into my eye,
taking some liberties yourself.
The details are relevant,
but I promised you to keep it all under wraps until you copyright the sequence.
Meanwhile
I ache for you to libertinize yourself again.
After all
you are a poet too, no?

Write me a smile, you said
and I obeyed.

With a smile full of flashing white teeth
or fangs dripping blood
or toothless gums frantically claiming nine clumps of broken denture and one missing
or a mouth that lost the taste of sweet and bitter
since that time ago when it lost the taste of yours.

I hide in the garden
on the cot next to the dog, and stray cats, and fleas
and watch black shadows on white blinds
while you undress
then you dress
then all the in-between that is left to my abounding imagination
all the while allowing the dog to lick me
and the cats to scratch me
and the fleas to bite me
as nothing matters while there is this gap
window to cot
you to me
us to none.

Write me a smile, you said.

I wrote thousands
I write thousands.
Some I didn’t write. Still counts.
Some I didn’t finish. Never mind. Never will. Still counts.
Some I will.
Some I sent.
Some I will never send never write never nothing
except mean every word of those unwritten,
unsaid. Unsmiled.

It’s a long time ago that you asked.
Not eons but close.
Now I try to smoothen chaos into incoherence
where I stand some chance
to reach through again.
Smile or not.
Dog, cats, fleas or not.
You or you or no one else.

Write me a smile, you say.
And I obey.

The sleigh’s runners
crushed the rose,

petalian blood stains cowered at the bottom of deep ruts
and melting snow froze
encasing death

like white amber,

oh, the short eternity of one single winter.

You did not look back.
Neither did the horses,
the driver
the wolves howling in the distance
or the wind sweeping concentric circles around my feet.
Neither did your thought,
it never looked my way,
it wasn’t there
to look.

The rest of the petals kept dripping through the fingers of my closed fist
or were these the thorns mining nests inside my palms
thirsty as they were
for a human’s blood,

hot,

mine, none other’s?

It disappeared,
maybe down the horizon
maybe around the next bend
maybe it never was there
to start with.
Belying myself
the red blotches in the snow telling me
that I was belying myself,

it was there, to start with,
to end with,
it ended.

I gathered the rest of the strewn bouquet,
the lilac in winter and the lily in winter and the jasmine in winter
where did I find all these wonders mid of the winter?... you never asked.
Maybe never cared,
maybe cared
maybe never wanted to care but cared
maybe I will never know. I will never know.
I gathered the rest of the strewn bouquet
and dumped it in the nearest garbage can I found on my way to somewhere.

Goodbying.
What was. What never could be. What died.

I walked over to a snow covered bench and sat down,
the snow melting into my clothes
crows sitting on my shoulder
wolves howling under my feet
a dead cricket blaming me for its death.

I imagined the summer that will never come
and my heart broke,

bloodless life seeping away with my breath
and with you,
down that horizon,
past that bend,

gone.

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.

The killer,
the second biggest killer of all time,
no, not Jerry Lee,

this one does not play the piano
and has no blonde wavy hair
and does not hit with his heels for another wild sound on the claviature,

he does not even sit on a chair,

he does not even exist.

Habit.

Called also boredom, routine, monotony, banality... any need to go on?
The killer of family, relationship, ecstasy,
the killer of love.
The killer.

The unwelcome guest butting between clasped hands and clasped bodies
when you stop sharing the breath
when you stop sharing the blanket
when you stop sleeping naked and you stop sharing the warmth,

when the only shared piece of life is a desk
and you sit,
side by side,
each hitting devotedly
their own keyboard.

The second biggest killer of all time.
The first, you ask?
Why, you know him of course,

time,
time, of course.

equals tte...
meaningless,

same like

the I sans the you
meaning meaningless
too

as perfectly rhyming
as meaningless a scenario,
ugly,
indecent,
though the world got used to sans serif it is still ugly
each letter an abomination
and meaningless in its uniqueness
until some meaning-well bastard like myself
combines them into words
then combines the words into sentences
then tries his doubtful art into rhymes
and still all meaningless and ugly
like the sans serif

whatever others may say. About sans serif. About my rhyme.

Maybe because I grew on calligraphy.
Maybe because of my ugly handwriting.
Maybe because I love you.
Certainly because I read a piece of news which made me cry
with the ugliness of humans versus the beauty of humans
and the meaninglessness of existence
if such conflict exists.

Don’t tell me there is no good without bad.
Some bad should be exterminated, no, not sorry to say it,
will not apologize.
Good sans Bad is Good.

Did not mean to write a vignette,
did not write a vignette,
just felt like an abomination for willing to exterminate an abomination,
so I had to write something meaningless.

To forget.
To dampen the pain.
And to say that I love you,
again.

Like crawling through sand,
like a snake
or like a rivulet about to be soaked in
or like the frayed leftovers of a being, maybe once human,
dragged nonchalantly by a hungry vulture.

Simulations of without you.
Simulations of after you.

Refusing the right to be born,

if knowing you were not to be begot
or if facing the certainty you’d never listen to my poetry
or if touching you would have been an obsolete dream
carried by a carrion invaded mind
and sick reality.

Simulations of wishes.
Simulations of wishful thinking.

Promise me to not meet again.
I will promise you to die.

Simulations of promises.

Time.
Just a healer.
Time.
Just a killer.
Time, just a driver to God’s eighteen-wheeler

destined

to crush my defenses
and smother my senses
and pluck all, but past, from my table of tenses.

God.
An allusion.
God.
A confusion.
God, one more prop in a Time-staged illusion

destined

to cause me to wonder
and force me to blunder
while tracing the source of my heart’s restless thunder.

You.
Maze eternal.
You.
Fay and vernal.
You, straddling mid of divine and infernal

destined

to feed me your nipple
and double and triple
if God’s, or if Time’s, or if Poetry’s ripple.

Time
is a healer.
Time.
is a killer.
Time is the windmill and God is the miller

trying, succeeding

to rip my defenses
and clutter my senses
and keep just the past in my table of tenses.

God’s
the delusion.
God’s
the confusion.
God is the promise while Time’s the occlusion

trying, succeeding

my body to sunder,
my spirit to plunder
yet failing to stifle my heart’s restless thunder.

You
the eternal.
You
ever vernal.
You the divine and yet You the infernal

trying, succeeding

to feed me your nipple
and maim me and cripple
and fuse Time and God to my Poetry’s ripple.

my body,

the one surrounding my heart
and spreading asymmetrically every which way,
the physical
not the spiritual, neither the metaphysical and certainly not the celestial
where I did not yet reach
yet soon will,

the one inhabiting the inside of my sweat
way under the clothes
way under the air, way under the pollution,
way too much in cahoots with decay and emerging death wishes
collecting into chaotic poetry,

my body, the one that abused my youth and loved my loves
and crawls inside the pain blanket
composed of creaking joints and cracking vertebrae and cawing trachea,

my body,
traitor.

You took from me my spine.

You took from me my spine,
my shoulders, knees, neck, skin,
my shape, my eyesight, my dance,
my breath,
my dogs
my friends
my parents,
you took from me my right to chew
and my right to caress a wanting breast
and my right to unbend.

Ha! And in addition to all this
you took from me my right to piss.

Next time around when we meet, age,
don’t expect for me to vote for you again, no way.

I’m being plagiated by others,
so why should I feel bad about plagiating myself?
I’m probably worth plagiating,
hopefully others make some money from my brain’s fruit.
Not bad from an old newcomer to the world of words.
Thus I try myself as well.

With variations, of course.
Metaphors, oxymorons, alliterations...
better I handle and re-mold them than some oxen, morons and alliterates.
Yes, I know, the right word is illiterates,
to me sounds as good, I don’t see reason to ask for forgiveness.
Use your imagination, if you have any.

Open parentheses.
Of course – plagiarism, plagiarize – I prefer the short terms used above.
At least in this rant.
Mind it?
Close parentheses.

OK, back to the subject matter – I love my ideas.
I love the combinations, the actors, the landscapes
and I keep re-arranging them the way one re-arranges chess pieces
while playing – never two the same, always the same beauty, different thought lines,
sometimes losing. Probably lousy metaphor, I agree,
I keep real metaphors for real poems,
rants are second class citizens, I allow tears in the clothing and riffraff in the streets.
Which I do not allow in real poems.
There goes Savile Row, you know.
Mil Spec. Hi Fi. Deutsche Grammophon. Bill, or whoever wrote his stuff.

So keep your mouths, pens shut.
Even well-meaning ones, though I don’t believe in well-meaning,
bastards.
Let me play in my personal sandbox,
there are four boards limiting it
but a few billions of grains to re then re then re-arrange.
Lego has a lesson or two to learn,
I think.

*

“Such an ego,” those reading my poem say,
so few of them.
“Such a loss, those not reading the rest of my poetry,” I say,
so many of them.
“Such a pity, such a waste,” God the inexistent says,
and I have problems reaching the bottom of his bottomless line of thought.
“Punctuation is essential,” my literature teacher said, once upon a time.
“I’ll do my best,” I said, once upon the same time.

*

Last might I wasted a few hours of sleep, worrying to death a few words in my head
until I finally got out of bed to jot them down on paper
lest in the morning they be forgotten.
I wonder if this is what afore mentioned God meant by “waste”. I hope not.

My problem is
I cannot end a poem, a relationship.

My problem is
I never ended poems, relationships.

My problem is
I will soon die and I will not be able
to end my poems, relationships.

Is this a problem really?
Probably not.

I lay there panting life in life out,
feeling king, queen, Goliath, whatever.

She pulled the pillow against the bedhead
leaned against it
and started filing the leftovers of her fingernails,
the rest stayed buried in my flesh.
Say, she said, do you have any idea how ticks do it?
I was still trying to live. I watched her with a bovine expression.
Do it what?
Copulate.
At least she didn’t use make love.
Next day I vacuumed the fingernail dust, visited an exorcist

and changed the lock. She, another one of course, chose Tosca.
I love opera, she said, and sang a few lines from Vissi d’arte.

It was more like screaming
but I forgave and forgot, she had Lollobrigida’s body
and Rapunzel’s hair
and no other male seemed to care
obviously too busy with visual attributes to be too concerned with auditory ones.
I simply love Verdi, she continued
and I should have been warned but was not.
During the show she looked enraptured,
her hand looking for desperate refuge in my lap
and I had to hide the obvious under the programme I carried
as her hand continued inside my zipper,
I did not mind so much until she ohh’ed in my ear ohh, Jakob...
with the tiny discrepancy of me being Joseph.
I sent her ahead of me to my apartment,
giving her the key to my previous lock.
When I arrived, three days later, no one was waiting for me.

She, another, and skipping a few other anothers, was the real deal.
About time.

Eyes like night teeth like snow hair like waterfall
breath like blooming orange orchards
mind like Einstein and Wordsworth and Freud
voice like breeze through lilac
breasts like apples
fingertips like anthers...
I was drunk with happiness anticipation,
she knocked on the door, softly.
Come in, I found myself chirping, my voice turned adolescent.

She floated in, like a leaf falling from a tree.
This is my father.
This is my mother.
This is my older sister, these are my younger brothers,
this is my maternal grandmother
this is my paternal grand grandfather,
these are my three aunts, seven uncles, twenty three cousins,
my aunt’s aunt
my grand grandfather brother and wife
my sister’s ex
my...
little by little I was being pushed towards the window,
I let down the fire escape and escaped as if there was fire.
They could keep the apartment.
I decided to move to Alaska.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring.
A polar bear would do.

A shoe named George was murdered today.

No one in the clothing world protested, demonstrated, inquired.
Shoes are the lowest class, everyone knows,
the plebeians, the slaves, is there anything lower than slaves
and it does not matter if high heeled, low heeled or no heeled?
The origins of the classification are obscure,
seemingly to do with the fact that they were made of dead life
and the fact that so were many luxury coats
and that many of today’s shoes are of rather veggie or lab-stuff origin
the coats stay high class and the shoes low class.
Difficult to break a class system, huh?

A shoe named George was murdered today
and so was his wife, a shoe named George as well
since by convention the male shoe name refers to the family as a whole.
Family, ha, shoes are sterile the way of mules
carrying all the load all their lives
and finally leaving this world with no offspring to carry the flame on.
The blatant inequalities of life, horrible.
Trousers are fertile, stockings are fertile, even hats are fertile,
shoes are sterile, barren, childless
no one to mourn their death
or shed a plastic tear
or tell their story to next, ignorant generations.

A shoe named George was murdered today,
a couple. Incinerated, buried, forgotten.
A shoe named Richard took its place
and none will ever be the wiser.

A hat named Maude was in love with a sombrero named Guilllermo,
“yes, triple l” boasted Guilllermo “enough to define me above damn humans”
and Maude would look at him in mute admiration
stating, innocently, the obvious – “but you will always be above humans, my love”.
A love as pure as NaCl, as H2O, as H2S (smelly but pure, nevertheless),
as CnH12On (sugars, haha), as pure as Cummingtonite (hey, I did not invent it,
it is a real magnesium-iron-silicate-hydroxide thing).

They made love each night, all night long,
and the head of Mrs. Ortega would each morning mention to the head of Mr. Ortega
“doesn’t matter how we hang them each evening,
we always find your sombrero inside my hat, as if they were making love,”
and they would both laugh good naturedly and pinch each other’s cheek lovingly;
not that they did not try to solve the mystery by using ICameras,
IR sensors, UV sensors and even hiring a PI
(no, not a 3.14 but rather a PrivateInvestigator).
Finally they gave up and blamed it on the cat.

“Are you with hat?” asked Guilllermo one night,
seeing Maude slightly distended.
“Sooon...” she whispered, emulating the three l’s in the three o’s,
“sooon we will the parents of our first baby hats,”
and Guilllermo wrapped his ribbon around her with a triple knot
(another mystery for Mrs. and Mr. Ortega)
and held her tightly until next morning.

Mrs. and Mr. Ortega decided to call the local priest to exorcise their hats,
watching one morning five small hat(chling)s carried by five colorful butterflies
flying into the sunrise.

*

She looked at me, strangely.
“I’ve never heard such a stupid story,” she said.
I looked back, a large toe sticking out from a hole on her right side,
desire devouring me as I lay inertly there, on the floor.
“I never knew you to be race-ist,” I muttered,
“you really think that only socks have souls, desires...
and what is with that big hole on your right side?”
“And how do you think we are going to make love tonight?” she blushed,
and if I wasn’t a red sock already
I guess I would have blushed up into flames myself as well.

That night she dropped on me
and for the first time in my life I did not complain about her smell,
she smelled like... a field of blooming roses.
“How will we name them?” she asked, pulling away from my insistent penetration.
“You mean the holes or the socklings,” I answered mischievously
and we laughed and we laughed and we laughed.

Next morning she left for work
and I hated that toe taking possession of what was rightfully mine.

floats down, timidly,

like sooth deserting the mighty, invincible army
of chimneys
with their tall, thin, thick, brick, tin, square, round encasing
carrying red rags torn from the countless, dead Santas
that ventured down their bellies,

like dust calling off its static allegiance
to surfaces and nooks and cracks and sculptures and figurines
following the gravitational call of its fat, round lover
beckoning to perdition
of another kind,

like snowflakes
lost to the eyes of clouds
to find their way to the eyes of me
where they disintegrate beauty into saltless tears
and follow a predestined trail to my mouth
where a sneaky tip of tongue
snatches them in,

death
befriends me like Delilah of Sorek, like Jael of Heber, like Judith of Merari,
death
so sweetly innocent.

The last straight stretch,
that overly used and abused metaphor,
straight... ha... what straight stretch?...

a stretch filled with turns and twists and serpentines
and potholes mid of the road
and traps and deadends and nails and swamps
with the only sign of life the one carried by mosquitoes
and scorpions
and crocodiles,

if at least it was dogs, even wild dogs
but no, it had to be crocodiles
and the ten biblical plagues with short Hebrew names
like dam or arbeh or shhin
replaced by ten times ten modern plagues with long Latin names
like blepharospasm and myelopathy and incontinentia which has nothing to do with continental drift
and I’ll stop enumerating before I add suicidium to the list.

The last straight stretch.
The joke. Ha!
Underestimated God’s sense of humor
until I saw my first crocodile eye to eye
and I started laughing and kept laughing
until my nose fell off.
It didn’t?
It will, I promise you,
at this pace it will.
Just don’t yet have the relevant Latin term for it.

I think of you.

You, death, not you she.

The one patiently waiting to share with me all of my eternity
even if not all of my present
and none of my dreams,
strange creature you are, death.

You are not jealous of my present single love, lover.
And you don’t expect me to be jealous of yours, of course,
all the billions of them
sharing your bed
sharing your body
making love to you eternally
and still, you are not satiated... yet.
There should be a special book written about you, dear necromantic,
someone wrote already a book called “bible”
too many characters share the spotlight there, you need your own, dedicated masterpiece,
should be called “the book of eternal love” or something like that, I think so.

Multigamous bitch, you are,
death,
and still you expect and demand of me my monogamous future
and smile smugly in knowledge of the fact
that you have it.

How did we become such loyal lovers, my love?
Or are rather to become in a not so distant future
ours and ours alone. Or even better said mine and a billionth of you, alone.
See you soon, love.
I’m not dying to see you
but I guess I will die to see you.
Strange paradox
especially since it is composed of pure reality
and words. Dead words, of course.

I’m ripe.

Yes, ripe bordering on rotting
but as long as no fruit fly is yet flying reconnoitering circles around me
I guess I can claim I am on this side of rot,
not yet that side.

Lost my BIO grading quite some time ago,
artificially pushing the border ripe-rotten a few miles further down the one-way road
by stuffing my insides with the chemistry of anti-pain
and anti-creak
and anti-obsolescence of sleep, sex, smile, satisfaction, sagacity
sunset
sunrise.

Did graduate into BIOnic range though,
my body a compound of precious metals, a grave robber’s fantasy
of gold and silver and platinum and chrome-vanadium and titanium
and not yet diamondium
since it is for people on this side of rot to wear it on their fingers
rather than in their bodies
and I am not yet on that side,
still on this side,
not for long.

I’m ripe.
Ready for the scythe this or that side of the border
ready to be plucked this rather than that side of the border
ready to drag you up a rock into a cave on a bed of brambles
and screw you into insanity this
not that
side of the border.

I penetrated into your life

like a stave
like an icepick
like a stiletto
like a pile

into butter
into mush
into strawberry
into silk

You curled around my life

your butter
your mush
your strawberry
your silk

like a drill’s chuck
like a spikeless iron maiden
like a piece of shrink tube
like a hose clamp

like a crocodile’s jaws
like a constrictor’s muscle
like an octopus’ tentacle
like a flytrap’s lobes

around stave
around icepick
around stiletto
around pile

*

OMG, how many encyclopedia volumes did you have to read for this text?
OMG, none. The only thing I read was my scars.

At six you are an idiot.
A charming idiot with nothing on his mind
except climbing trees, throwing stones,
chasing girls (with the intention of pulling their hair, of course),
sneaking his dog in bed
and admiring breathlessly his teacher god.
As said, an idiot. Harmless.

At thirteen you are still an idiot,
less so but still so.
Ripped between a puppy curiosity
and a meaningless puppy love
and a meaningful departure into the unknown,
the pride of the nerd
the shyness of the non-dancer
the mindlessness of goat head against goat head,
the life lessons refused
ready for an eternity that will always stay eternity.
As said, an idiot but less so. Harmless.

At eighteen, the knowledge of invincibility.
Idiocy at its highest.
You will never die.
Your love eternal.
Your muscles steel, your flesh fire,
your dreams the certainty of tomorrow’s reality.
Loop back to you will never die.
Then loop back some more.
Idiocy at its highest yet still one step to go upwards
before the chasm,
reality.
With harmlessness wearing at the edges.

At thirty.
The first cracks in your spine.
The first plateau. The last plateau
though the screams are mainly physical. A bit of psychical, not much.
Idiocy
plateaus as well.
Bliss or curse? Not clear, will never be. Harmlessness undefined.

Forty eight. Reality.
Kicks you in the face like a nail-shod mule.
Your work dies. Your dog dies. Your mother dies.
Your idiocy dies
and suddenly you know that the best that could ever happen to you
is that you die before everything else dies.
Yet with idiocy dead in your soul
there is nothing to pull the bliss over your eyes, to protect you.
You know.
Everything else will die
before you.
Harmlessness dies.

Seventy.
Idiocy long dead. Harmlessness long dead.
Deaths along your path pile up. Death. Death. Death.
You stop counting.
You accept the pain. You accept the death of eternity, of invincibility, about time you do.
You know you’ll never watch all the movies you wish to refresh,
you’ll never listen to all the music you forgot in its sleeves,
you wake up every morning and say Shit, I woke up again?
Which death will I have to face today? Friend, foe, idol, stranger?
You watch fearfully the cumulated hours lining before you
and reaching into the coming night
and ask – how many of these left? One? Maybe more?

Eighty. Not yet there. With idiocy dead you fear eighty.
But you discover the actor in you
and you play the day, each day.
No more birthday celebrations, though,
they remind you too much of those who don’t celebrate them anymore.
No more birthday presents.
Futile.
No more birthday dates.
Anytime soon.
Harmless again, soon.

You. I.E. I.

Hey, death, are you there?
I am here.
Oh, for a moment I thought you were there, I mean elsewhere, wishful thinking.
I am here, you have nothing to worry,
I am always here.
Hey, don’t you have business elsewhere, you know, on Earth,
in the universe?
As far as you are concerned, I am yours and yours only.
Yeah, real dedication...
Yeah, that’s me, dedication. You can trust me.
Hey, I may believe you but it does not mean that I have to trust you, OK?
Don’t push it.
OK, you’re the boss.
Yeah, sure...

Hey, death, do you remember me?
Always. Better than an elephant.
I see. I did not know that death had a sense of humor. It’s news to me.
Has. And don’t underestimate me, I have a great sense of humor.
Just look around.
I looked around, as if I had to,
I always had this attitude that I try very hard to accommodate my discussion partners.
No exception with death, guess it is a genetic thing.
Yes, I see, great sense of humor,
all this pain wherever it is expected less, wherever it is hurting more.
I could almost sense his/her/its bowing in appreciation to my appreciation,
his/her/its transparent veils brushing close to my cheek and leaving a stinging sensation.
Do you mind? I asked
and moved backwards a few steps.
You think that you can move away from me,
hi hi hi?
We say ha ha ha.
I know, just wanted to show you my rhyming poetic side.

Hey, death, do you love me?
Sure, love you to me. Again that thanatoid sense of humor.
You mean love me to death.
Forever. Short as it may be. Along with the rest of trillion trillions.
Trillion trillions?
Of course – humans, animals, plants, microbes, planets...
You mean you in love with all these? And here I thought I was your one and only.
I was failing at sounding sarcastic, try as I may.
I did not say in love. I said I love them, you, all.
Aha, long live the little, trillion trillionth little difference.
Thanks for understanding.
Clearly, he/she/it has no sense of sarcasm.
And you, do you love me?
I almost chocked on my ice-cream.
No. Not even a trillion trillionth of love.
Not even puppy love.
Wait some more, I heard his/her/its chocking on himself/herself/itself laughter,
soon you’ll love me olddy love,
and he/she/itself made a sweeping move with the scythe or sickle or hatchet
or whatever it is death does sweeping moves with
joined by a loud hi hi hi which followed soon after.
And what poetic excuse do you have now, for hi hi hi?
Well, olddy rhymes with hi hi hi.
Wrong, wrong accent, doesn’t match.
Does it matter in love situations?
No, not in this kind of love.
Tell me, do you sharpen your tool from time to time?
I don’t want a blunt one on my neck.
All the time sometimes.
Yeah, just like death to provide you with a direct answer.
Fuck you, death.
Yeah, I wish.

Hey, death...
Hey, Death!
Hey, death, I insisted having told him/her/it already the way things stood between us,
do you have any family?
The question seemed to have taken him/her/it aback.
There was a lull in his/her/its talking back fluency.
For a few moments all I could hear was the grindstone
softly caressing the sharp end of the whatever tool lay there in invisible wait.
Sure, came the answer after a break not commensurable with the previous breaks.
I mean, it looked like the answer needed some cogitation
before getting its final expressed form.
God, he/she/it said,
and I could hear certain defiance there.
Makes sense, I guess if I asked God he/she/it would have said the same, huh huh huh?
Nice family, you two.
You mean you don’t think of God as a he?
He/she/it was trying to divert the conversation from the main path, it was quite clear.
No, death, I don’t think of God as anything
because I don’t think God exists.
I think you are just some wizened, shaggy, withered, shrunken, cadaverous,
gaunt and genderless and sexless and ugly bitch, figuratively speaking,
that was never born and will never die, ha ha ha,
and thus takes its revenge on everything else that is everything you are not,
figuratively and literally and metaphorically speaking.
Go to hell, death!

I could hear the shrieking breath,
I could hear the swoosh,
I could hear the sob.
I wish I could. There is no hell, either.
Finally,
I had death in a corner and the only revenge it could ever come with
was in that swoosh finalizing its sweep
my way.

Swoosh!

The last day all you have left is one day,
actually less, once you get there.

And even then, mostly you don’t know unless if it was pre-planned
by this ingenious creature called man
with his variety of electrical/mechanical/chemical tools.
BAM! Some would envy BAM! Most do not.

There were so many days so many days ago
when you screamed your first scream but you don’t remember,
better that you don’t remember, right?
You start remembering later
but you never count... yet,
the half-time life of human so much less defined
than the half-life time of a radioactive pile
and anyway so far away that it is meaningless.
Until you reach it or more or less the whereabouts of it
yet the other half-life time is also kind of far away, though closer.
Then you reach this one as well
and somehow the intervals get shorter
and suddenly you find yourself counting
and suddenly you remember that pseudo riddle
of the one who had to get from here to there
and when he gets half way he gets to half of what is left
and then half of this half
and so on to infinity so he never gets there, right? Wrong!
A geometric series with a ratio of ½
and though its length is infinite
the sum total is very much finite.
Mathematically proven!
So the one who had to get from here to there gets there.
So the one who has to get from here to death gets there.
You die! BAM!
Mathematically proven.

...ok, so I try to persuade some poets to buy a book I spit blood on anthologizing their material in, and I write a long funny email, and part of this email is a “poem”. So, since I hate wasting my poetical inspiration, especially of the rhyming kind, and since this book is anyway called Chaos...

In case you wonder if it’s love
That made us write the words above
Then rest assured, in fact it is -
It’s love, it’s heart, it’s prize, it’s bliss.

Thus please forgive this bit of cheek
We never claimed to be as meek
As to prevent the stinging graze
Of truth set forth in churlish ways.

We made this book, for you, the “Best”
At no one’s wish, neither behest
And colored books carry a cost
Above all books, or maybe most,

And we did hope, and still we do
That with the help of likes of you
We’ll cover some of our cost
And if not all at least the most.

Oops...

Repeating rhyme! Oh, fateful sin
Though it was... well... ahm... foreseen,
Let’s finish here this diatribe
And this small (?) peeve let’s circumscribe.

We wish you peace (and petrichor)
Your humble team (and editor).

Life is a river.

Following doggedly, obstinately
just one path, one direction, one destination.

Down.
And death.

Fatalists call it fate.
Scientists call it entropy.
Poets call it meaninglessness.

Guess which of all these is what I am.

*

Yes,
that day
chaos dies.

She has eyes
under her eyebrows. Two.

These eyes are rough, ragged
like sandpaper number 30, maybe number 60
but certainly under number 120.

She has legs
between her shoes and her body. Two too.

There is a knee on each
and she did not shave them recently, the legs,
or maybe did with a garden hoe.

She has toes at the lower end of her legs,
I believe both. I believe five each.

She calls the big toe by my name
when she washes it, separately from the others
to prevent envy.

Then there are nails at the end of the toes
painted with blue ink. Five each. Not each toe, each leg, ha ha.

Maybe the blue ink stains are poems
but I couldn’t read them
she is so shy.

I love her like the red curve
in the rainbow I saw thirteen years ago, give or take one year.

I was still in love with my previous love
but the love of that love was not like the love of this love
since now I define love with love and then I did not use love, if you understand (I don’t).

I love her like green tea with three spoonfuls of sugar, a bit of mint,
a slice and half of lemon cut exactly thirteen minutes earlier and at 65 degrees, Celsius.

This is how much I love her.
I could measure it also in cocoa with milk or in frozen water
but no one would understand. So let’s stick to tea.

I love her like she loves me between 11 am and 3 pm,
each first Sunday of the month. December excepted.

I love her even more
if more would be possible,
maybe on another planet, Pluto maybe, because it’s small, relativity you know.

And she loves me because of my beautiful poetry
about her, her body, her shoes.

I will never disappoint her.
My next poem will be about the new shoes she bought yesterday, at 50% off.
If she loved me until now, she will love me even more after. Oh, the wonder of her.

I, has reached the summum of
nothing.
I, has gone to the moon and back
never,
has walked the tangled path of poetic madness and mad poetry
and stayed bewildered at the simplicity of achieving
anonymity,
has created a new language of
misunderstanding and disunderstanding and ununderstanding,
has birthed dreams written on soap baubles
and kept them alive for the whole of a thousand
milliseconds.

I, has never died
previously.

I, has seen the world fall apart many times
and wonders at recovery’s resilience.

I, has doubted and doubts heaven and hell
but bears witness to the second
though none exists. As neither does I.

...or maybe ay ay ay for personal consent
or aye aye aye for parliamentary consent
or ai ai ai for personal pain (Romanian)
or oy oy oy for generic pain (Yiddish)
or ihay ihay ihay for a donkey’s mating call.
Or an eye for an eye for an eye.
Or even Ay Ay Ay the way ancient Egyptians probably hailed their penultimate pharaoh.
All of above derivatives or engenderers of I I I.

Or maybe it’s the composer’s (ROFL) meaning and intent to point out
I
I am
I am not.
Possibility. One of trillions. Other triplets being Intuition Initiative Improvisation
or
Imbecility Idiocy Inanity
or
Indigestion Indoctrination Indisposition
Innocence Infatuation Infelicity
Infamy Ignominy Improbity
Intimacy Interplay Intercourse
...more? I’ve had enough as well, meaningless or meaningful as these may be
for the remainder of trillions minus six.

I like this incoherence inconsistency inconsonance in my writes
it points to greatness comparable to Picasso’s Einstein’s Don Quichotte’s
and similar geniuses slash prodigies slash nuts
and while I wait for my bowl of soup to boil (hunger goes with genius etc.)
I I I (this here is just I stuttering) will keep dreaming of a world in triplicate
where the original can be disposed of
and the copies are too washed out to live in.

Abstract enough? Obtuse enough? I am glad to hear. I too. I too.

I wonder about this wonder
the way other millions or billions may wonder
provided they have a basic understanding of biology and statistics.

Once upon a time the wonder was non existent
the chances being considered around one in four
taking into account copulation yes-no success and male-female choice.
The specific I being pre-determined, no further questions asked.

Now, in these knowing-better times, the question is asked – why I,
with the rhyme in the question being purely coincidental.

OK, creationists still do not ask any question
God’s finger being the one to blame or bless for whatever happens in the womb,
sounds almost indecent though to them it is not.
Mathematicians have all the answers though they have none
since statistics care for the masses but not for the individual
and all the Bernoulli’s and Boltzmans and Poissons and so on and so forth
cannot explain the I writing these lines.
Biologists hide behind acidity and swim ability and timing of ovulation
and can well explain the process but not the decision –
I, why I and not the dead millions of would-have-been Is?
Determinists... well, taken that we will never own sufficient knowledge and tools
to model everything in the macro universe and micro universe
are almost as obscure as creationists and yet more objectively acceptable –
IF we possessed the knowledge and/or the tools the I would be predictable
as well as everything else. What a bore that would be.
Don’t worry, it will never happen.
The wonder of I will remain
the way the wonder of so-what-if-I will keep haunting our lives
until that day when the not I takes over
and we stop wondering
and leave the wonder and the shit to others.

And if you, as opposed to I, will read carefully between the lines
you will most certainly discern a certain non-philosophy
as opposed to a certain yes-boredom
which was the main drive behind me writing these lines you were just reading between.
Trust me, it is less stupid than you might think
but feel free to interpret and wonder.
After all for you, you are I.

Strange, don’t you think
the way that literally overnight, on the cosmic scale of things,
one metamorphoses from one race to another,
from butterfly to cocoon
from David to Block-Of-Marble-Before
from Youthful to Youthless (not to use the infinitely more suitable Obsolete),
from once the one with the bounce in his walk
and the zing in his talk
his six pack of rock
and the nail in his feel free to choose your own rhyme here
to now the one with the ouch in his walk
harrumph in his talk
with fat on the rock
and a noodle’s his feel free to choose your own rhyme here,
from once the one unbending the U of a horseshoe into the I of a trainrail
to now hardly bending to tie his shoes and getting preferential seating on trains,
strange this racial metamorphosis, don’t you think?
I. Another race. Alien. On Earth. From Earth.

Contagious raciality it is, mind you, you better keep away
’cause I’ve got it from my new, very unpleasant neighbors
who moved uncalled for into my neighborhood
and it is for the first time in my life that the oppressing shadow of racism
started sprouting in my spirit, too late to retreat, to repent, to use garlic,
oh God forgive me for I have sinned...
neighbors carrying fancy Teuton – Anglo-Saxon – Greek – Latin – Cyrillic - Etc names
some of which you’ll probably recognize and then maybe forgive me too
(in addition to God)
like Alzheimerstein and Senilius and Dementiades and Sclerosion and Arthritisum
and Hypertensmith
and Diabetina
and Osteoporopovici
Von Prostatenberg
McKidneystone
and others of the same tribe
all sons and daughters of Chronicsease the damned
multiplicity of name singularity of evil unity of purpose
all of them damned as well
and now not only damned but also my neighbors and I part of them... tfu, tfu, tfu.

Someone slightly more racist (in context) than me told me that the secret to fight them
subdue them
kick them in the balls
is to work hard at developing new... neurons?!?!?! (pay attention to the punctuation)
and since beggars are no choosers I took her advice literally
and started developing every kind of neuron possible
using the enlightening guidance of my own troubled spirit
encyclopedia Britannica
instagram
the grocery shop owner at the end of my street odd numbered side
three gurus one of which aged ninety eight and married for a sixth time
fortune cookies
second hand fortune cookies
various bible translations
a podiatrist
an orthopedist
an astronaut (retired)
an elephant (secret recipe)
and many other sources.
I started studying languages, seven,
climbing church bell-towers, six,
throwing oranges at city council meetings, many,
reading books reflected in a mirror
eating entire onions in pairs...
I believe that I would need several pages to expound my experience in this matter,
certainly more than 250 lines.

I am sure I’ve got a lot of extra neutrons by now.
Also neutrinos.
I hope I got also a lot of extra neurons. At least connections. At least disentanglements.
I will let you know once I get some good news about my new neighbors.
Like that they burned. Or fell under a tractor. Or choked on an unpeeled pineapple.
All of which would have been contributed by my additional neurons
blessed be they.

And if my new neighbors, God forbid, win?!?!?! (same punctuation) you ask?
Then at least you, my dear reader, would know by now what I tried and did not help
so that you should pick up the effort wherever I left it hanging
and keep the search for the graal, one day you or one of your followers will find it,

will it be the making of love under an elevator moving down,
the counting of grains of salt filling an empty can of beer one by one,
the believing of a politician’s promises?...

the universe is infinite,
the graal is one,
the answer lies out there waiting to be discovered,
I trust you, my followers.

Now back to tying my shoes, I started three hours and fourteen minutes ago.

I buried two parents. Two.
Maybe a debatable number for some, a natural number for me,
an unfortunate, terrible number when talking about death.
Not just a number, a piece of life, of me, a marker on my own way
there. Soon to arrive. And stop counting.
Three.

I buried three barbers. Another road mark
counting time, another way of counting time.
I buried at least fifteen singers I idolized
twenty screen stars I idolized
three screen stars, female, I was in love with
six dogs.
Good friends, few.
Friends, colleagues, many.
Family I remember, many, family I forgot, many,
radio presenters few,
great politicians few,
shitty politicians many some unfortunately still alive,
teachers.
Some trees felled either by me or by hired hand
some wall decorations emptied before selling the walls and the history
some pictures yellowed with time, eaten away
though who cares once I join them
the pictures
the dogs
the parents.

Soon I’ll become part of this poem too
and someone else will funeralize about me, or of me, or for me
or not
and who cares at all,
surely not me
once there.

Today I buried an acquaintance,
another one.

Who’s next?

I am not crazy. I assure you.
Irrelevant what my poetry says.
I am still as sharp as a needle and as tuned as a fiddle,
irrelevant the nonsense that my fingers hammer into the keyboard,
it’s my way of saying... I am not crazy, ha-ha,
what better way than making you believe I am?
Like in the detective stories – what better alibi than no alibi?
Of course it does not prove anything in this direction
yet neither does it prove anything in the opposite direction.
Thus – up to you to accept or contest,
not that I care either way.

Truth being said I am kind of blue for a variety of reasons,
unfortunately this does not lead to so called crazy
and not even to crazy enough to force me to write some more meaningful poetry
you know
the kind that does not look and read like an essay or a rant
broken into stanzas
then further on broken into lines
so that it does look like poetry but lacks the heart.
See, told you, I am lucid enough to admit
yet not crazy enough to change,
at least not right away.
Maybe tomorrow.
Maybe never.
Maybe I don’t know when.
Maybe I do know but don’t want to tell, you know, the prima-donna complex, ha-ha,
a complex which I certainly don’t own. Fact.

I suppose I could write

of stars painting with sparks the night asleep inside her eyes
of suns chasing ascending gods from oceans to the skies
of fingers crawling up the slopes of her awaking breast
to die upon the fire’s hell ablaze upon its crest...

I could write, I suppose.
I don’t.

I could also write

the forest, teeming streaking life
is sun’s adoring wife
and angel wings
drip sparkling strings
to soothe creation’s strife...

thus reviving the reviled life-wife-strife trio
along with the frowned upon angels angle...
I could, I suppose.
I don’t.

Reasons unknown,
or maybe known but discarded under a thick, smelly carpet.
So I keep to my crazy stint, if any, direction, if any, meaninglessness, not really.
I will find myself one day, for sure,
until then please let me enjoy the “they’re coming to take me away, ha-ha...”
bout of (doubtful) happiness.

When you were born
I was born. Some years earlier.

The difference X years in numbers
and close to infinity in percents,
making love was not even a question.

Many years later the numerical difference still X
but the percential (inexistent word, sorry) difference diminished considerably,
maybe still outrageously big for you to consider love making
but not outrageously big for me to consider same
so I outrageously considered.
Outrageous!

Now let’s assume a world
where you and I live a thousand years
and the rest of humanity should care for the rest of humanity,
several centuries in the future
we’re still X years apart
but the difference in percents keeps dwindling year after year into insignificance
so towards the millennium none of us harbors whatever reticence anymore
and we let go wildly
into the artistic world of
love making and copulation and fucking and mating and intercourse and venery
and all other synonyms of same or more or different
like rabbits like snails like fish like spiders and I do not mind you eating me, after,
until we reach the millennium
sated
and lie down embracing,
thankful for millennium mathematics
and its indulgent consideration.

...you see
there was this witch, ugly,
like a summer day mid of the deepest winter
like a blue flower in a black and white world
like a drop of dew at high noon in the heart of a desert...

Huh? was all she said
looking strangely at me.

...you see
there was this witch, clothed most horribly,
wearing a dress woven from rainbow and cotton and spring water
wearing a necklace of glowing coal shards strung together on a ray of sun
wearing sandals of palm leaves ground to the thickness of their green...

Huh? was all she said
looking even stranger at me.

...you see
there was this witch, ruggedly cawing,
when all you heard was the silvery tinkle of spiderweb thin crystal chimes
when all you heard was butterfly wings spreading pollen globulets
when all you heard was dolphin poetry translated to human ear...

Huh? was all she said.
Huh? she repeated later, uncertain if to disengage her hand from mine or not.
OK, so – assuming I get to your meaning – where do I fit in your world?
She emphasized the I, the muscles in her fingers tense
ready to tear
ready to flee.
I did not answer right away,
I was struggling for the right answer
for the only answer.

...you see,
there is this woman, ugly,
like a summer day mid of the deepest winter...

She tore my clothes
she tore my flesh
she drank me for seven days and seven nights.

I see, was all she said.

The child
is old.

Not so long ago he was still young old
still playing hopscotch
climbing trees
running one hundred meters in less than ten seconds,

now even this is gone
old old is the new adjective,
yeap,
life
shit
sorry for crudeness, apologies for crudeness, not really.

Strange how an interface to the world called skin
took over from a main computer to the world called I
servant turning master
revolution
like leaves taking over from tree
or paint taking over from painting
or words taking over from poem,

an ignorant new owner of the entity starting to lose vital negotiations
first some
then a lot
then all.
Hopscotch suddenly out of the question.
Climbing trees suddenly out of the question.
Running, out of the question. Not suddenly. But definitely. Irrelevant the seconds.
You
out of the question.
You
taking yourself
out of the question. Not suddenly either. Definitely either.

Question itself turns exclamation, soon.
Exclamation turns period, soon.
Period turns stain, not even historical stain, just stain, soon.
In couple years the stain turns fossil
with even those other billions of years old fossils carrying more interest
than this one.

Yeap,
life
shit
sorry for crudeness, apologies for crudeness, apologies for repeat, not really,
this is what an old old child does
repeat.
Until he doesn’t repeat.

I woke up middle of the night
a radar, my hands, waving frantically ahead of me
lest I hit a wall and flatten my nose
too late in life for a Roman nose, haha,
too late in life for anything, haha,

I probably should title this poem ‘haha’, haha.
Yeah, IQ200, I know, showing – doesn’t it?

I had my pee, my drink of water, then again...
no, not the pee, not yet there, just my drink.
Then again. See above. God, I am thirsty at 3:41 am
probably those pickles at 11:12 pm
accompanying salted peanuts
herring
pepperonis
thoughts of years left thoughts of pickles left thoughts of you left right and everywhere.

Didn’t feel like getting back in bed
more like sitting down and letting my hands misdecide which keys to hit
with my ears searching for eventual intruders
robbers
murderers
unicorns capricorns goats.
None found. Got up for another drink, another pee, sorry, back to words
and meaninglessness my new aspiration conspiration expiration inspiration.
Constipation obstipation extirpation, no haha and no idea why.

Turn off the light
turn on the light and let the needle drop on the LP forgotten on the turntable
forgetting that the volume was set to maximum from earlier on
appreciating the sudden enthusiastic vehement and thunderous applause
(originally written aplalause, 4:07 am, you know)
from my neighbor two walls over
(the apartment adjoining mine empty, I swear not because of me)
and then in a sudden attack of explosive disorder I decided to castigate him
and turned the sound off.
I listened attentively to sounds of protest... none...
I hoped I did not cause him a heart attack due to disappointment and lack of sonic beauty.
I resisted yet another kind of impulse, to go and check on him,
after all he had this gigantic Rottweiler that did not seem to appreciate my presence
and my pet hedgehog’s presence
(who followed me everywhere, except to the Turkish consulate).

4:23 am. I yawned as loudly as possible. Still no reaction.
My hedgehog barked. Maybe it was the Rottweiler, not clear.
I saved my nonsense, turned off the light and let my hands do the radar thing,
see above, Romans – here I don’t come.
I did step though on a Lego block which I lost earlier on
while building the Empire State Building, still at the corner stone.
I did not curse because of my hedgehog’s sensitivities
and, anyway, I was happy I found it.
I could finally (later on) finish the corner of the cornerstone.
I guess I was in love.
Don’t ask what does this declaration do at this specific point in time and rhyme,
or lack of it.
I know I lost it, it, you know which it and don’t, please, force me into explanations.
Tomorrow/today’s another day
and maybe I’ll have an explanation.
Right now I have a thirst
a yawn
a sleep
a hedgehog.

Good night everybody who just reached this line
i.e. nobody.
Thank God, better nobody while surrounded by brick walls
than nobody while surrounded by upholstered walls.
Shit!
Forgot the hands.
Remember the Roman thing?...

Dear death,

Please forgive my not using capitals for your name,
I don't respect you, thus this small token of disrespect.
I say forgive me just because I am polite, not because I mean it.
I actually like the idea of decapitating you, haha.
Don’t frown, oh, please don't frown,
It doesn't become you, you petty thief,
You are always in such a good mood, why should you frown all of a sudden
Because of some paper written words
By a paper poet
Snubbing his nose at you?
After all, you know you always win this game,
Dirty and sold up front, true,
But what do you care, you were always a dirty player.

I keep wondering if you finished your college cum laude,
Bet you cheated there as well,
And I am a bit surprised how did your master allow you to graduate?
Are you so good that you succeeded to cheat him as well
And while he was happily reading your fantasized reports
You snubbed him the way I snub you and did it your way?
Hey, I didn't mean to sound funny but I did,
Do you hum it the way ol' blue eyes Frankie did it?

Ha, I found your secret, you know?
You simply read too many fashion magazines
And decided elegance is your way.
You wish to look always fresh
The newest look, the latest cry,
And you found a way, you dress yourself in human bodies...
Always fresh a human body, always refreshingly different,
You stalk your victim, learn its ways, learn how to poison it
And then you sneak into its body
Like the parasite you are
Taking over little by little its functions, its life, its glow,
And for eternal moments you revel in your exploits in front of your anonymous
Renegade celestial audience,
Till finally you all get bored,
And you drop the body emptied of its essence into decay
And move to your new dress, your next body.

Oh, what an exhilarating life you must be living,
Though funny to talk to you about life,
The joy of eternal change, eternally renewable fashion,
And as you walk on the coffin shaped podium
Beaming at the glorious words people and priests and composers sing to you
You bow in that beautiful Narcissistic way of yours,
Add a few more thousands of tears to your unique collection
And you move on.

Sometimes you are impatient,
How unbecoming for a divine creature such as you,
I guess, after all, you are only death,
You have your flaws, no creation is perfect
As the creator knows.
I know, in my own petty way I am a creator myself.
Then, at your moments of crazed indecision
You go by the thousands,
Trying body after body looking for the flavor of the day
Dressing and discarding whatever is not à la mode
The beauty of the corpses littering your wake food for your desires of grandeur
And you don't calm down until you tried them all
When
Tired and disgusted you go to sleep in that dreamless land of yours.

Et voilà,
You remembered to visit me again,
Hey, thought you have forgotten me already.
But I didn't forget you, I remember the several times you visited me
In different guises
And please excuse me my disapproving of your taste in garments
I know it will drive you mad and I am glad for it.
When you take babies, lovers, mothers, men of virtue,
And you hang them in your closet for future use
Waiting for them to ripen to your size for a long time,
Rows and rows of them,
Some forgotten, some discarded after a second thought,
Some never to be used even, just the heedlessness of your spoiled brat ways...

And I cannot but think, actually remind myself -
death is a despicable bastard, a spoiled brat,
And the only thing it doesn't like is people looking it straight in the eyes.
There were many, I know, we humans are a stubborn race, you know.
Well, add one more to the list.

By the way, no need to write back,
I know where to find you when I need you.

Me.