The Many Colors Of White White roses lacing stem to stem An ankle white beneath the hem A wedding gown A waning frown A crown. Astride the stem the white of thorn And dreams of colors white unborn Where thistles grow An endless flow A glow. The thorn has pierced the white of breast The white of blood is sinking west We share the how The then and now The vow.

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In The Beginning I tried to steal the rubies... playful flames biting at my fingertips, it hurt... “It hurts...” I complained. “Of course it hurts, silly, these are not rubies, they are strawberries...” “Oh...” I was cautious this time, just nibbled lightly, my ensuing howl a mix of ecstasy and pain as the sugar melting down my throat seared deep canyons on its way to my entrails, Smoke started escaping my nose, mouth, I looked like a dragon... “You look like a dragon...” she laughed, “you never touched a nipple before?” “Nipple?” “Yes, nipple... hey, are you sure you are human?” I guess I wasn’t so sure anymore feeling my blood suddenly shrieking as it made a fast U-turn invading my head. I was sure my head looked like a giant beet with ears. “And now you look like a giant... hmm, ruby...” she was being gentle. “With ears?” She pegged my ears to my head. “With heart.” She pulled my head down, down, down, I was scared. “Don’t be... silly.” “Don’t be silly or Don’t be, silly?” It hurt when she spanked like that. “Someone has to teach you life,” I heard from somewhere far away, far from my eyes, my mouth... “Will you teach me also love?” I asked, my fear an agonizing reptile shedding its skins into ecstasy. “Will you teach me love?” she asked as the ball of fire enveloped us ravenously digesting all of past, fear, innocence, modesty, crave, and cladding us in a thin liquid film of intimacy, life, love. “I never knew,” I said. “I never knew,” she said.

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Inimitable Beauty I’d like my life’s allotment to be Painting the rushing traces in the air as you dance And your fingernails slice my undulating lines Imperfection at its utmost Inimitable in its beauty. And when for moments short you rest And the iridescence starts floating hesitatingly down to earth To rush underneath your slowly alighting silks Soaking the inks into my lungs And your inimitable beauty. I touch your ankle and you wake up Pulling the shades of your glowing bareness innocently away My refreshed brushing strokes frenzy showing only Glimpses of misery in my folly Yet none of inimitable beauty. As waving thread-thin veils unknot anew Billowing idly like lithe insistently evasive jingling echoes and nuances My fingers take the place of brushes following your motion Hoping in a moment of inattention To touch your inimitable beauty.

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PhonoGenesis prologue The last whisper. A click. Silence. Terrible Silence. Drilling holes through my eardrums with mute sledgehammers and slithering in between the accommodating layers of grey tissue marking its territory with clusters of eggs conquering hatching slithering laying hatching... Blank. And it was Night. epilogue The thin insistent ringing. How did it penetrate there where human bedlam didn’t and loudspeaker watts and engine decibels and cannon thunderclaps didn’t? I laid the receiver against my ear and a tired tinkle called me silly and the entire comforting parasite layer of Silence squirmed and died into nothingness and Caruso exploded from inside my ear into a transcendental first-off performance of You Are My Sunshine. And it was Day. * “Wait,” she said, “this is an incomplete story, There is a prologue and there is an epilogue, There is nothing in between.” “You are wrong,” I answered, “and you are right,” I answered. “There is nothing in between.”

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Points Of Contact Let our only points of contact be The tips of our big toes The apex of our bellies The tips of... sorry, I am taller, flatter... the tips of your breasts touching the hollows between my third and fourth ribs, The tips of fingers, Of noses... A strand of reddish hair insolently betraying the perfect symmetry and fluttering all over my forehead... Single points of contact, Molecular size, Do you feel me? When did the invasion begin? Who was the invader, who the victim when toes twined and fingers twined and lips tongues teeth twined and nipples became the first casualties of war beaten to pulp by two hammering chests As ship shoved into harbor and thigh knotted to hip knotted to thigh knotted to hip and blisters triumphantly swept the fields exploding between toes and fingers and glistening patches of skin?... I started pulling away... “no!...” you almost screamed when the only points of contact left were The tips of our big toes The apex of our bellies The tips of your breasts touching the hollows between my third and fourth ribs, The tips of fingers, Of noses... oh, and did I mention...?

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Against My Skin Beneath my shirt, No, not beneath my skin, Against my skin, Open just one button And lay your ear against my skin. Listen. No, no... the shiver was your cold earring... It is the grapes I want you to hear, Ripening under the sun of your breath Splaying inside the vise of your cheek Fermenting intoxicatingly under the tip of your tongue as it lies to sleep against my skin...

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'xperimental I wish I was the one who rhymes my wife into your life, I am, I wish I was the one who rhymes my dove into your love, I am, Yet all I am ‘s a poet rhyming birds into your words, I wish I was, And all I am ‘s a lover rhyming lust into your dust, I wish I was. You are right and you are wrong And you’re silly all along In between and in among Hear my song. You are, You are, You are, You are. There’s rolling wheels And barren hills And snapping teeth And rushing feet Yet in the rhyme of growling strife it’s life, it’s wife I hear you call, And in the rhyme of heave and shove it’s love, it’s dove your whispers roll, And mustang herds rhyme words with birds when ruby leaves begin to fall Till crumbling rust turns magic dust and rhymes with lust, with us, with all. I am the one to call you wife and rhyme it life, I wish I was, I am the one to call you dove and rhyme it love, I wish I was, I wish I was the one to sing you birds and rhyme your words, I am, I wish I was the one to crave you lust and rhyme your dust, I am. You are wrong and you are right Silly boy all day and night Stay a while let me recite My delight. You are, You are, You are, You are. There’s bedlam’s craze And morning’s maze And worry’s touch At times too much Yet rhyming strife through wife and life bestow the joy to tip your dart, And rhyming shove through dove and love are moments coy before we part, Then rhyming herds through birds and words are trotting way into your art While rhyming rust through lust and dust forever stay inside my heart.

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Scrooge Your beauty I wish I could lock in a jar With daffodil seeds On a tangerine star. My beauty Or I? Tell me why... Your glitter to reap In uncountable sheaves And dab in its tints All of summertime’s leaves. My glitter? Oh my, Tell me why... Your hues in the red And in green and in white Your eye and your lip In an endless delight. My hues? And my eye? Tell me why... Why? Your beauty your glitter Your hues and your eye Forever engrafting The charm in my sky.

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Sounds softly, as you put your foot down, listen... shhh... do you hear the splosh of mud splattering then the soft clap as you lift a heavy mountainboot and air invades the short lived vacuum imploding into the hastily closing heel trace? do you hear the frog trying to identify its hunting grounds invader and cursing the unidentified enemy with a world bare of flies and mosquitoes and crickets and rest of delicacies? listen... shhh... do you hear the shadow falling all the way down from the moon and slithering its way ahead of you wishing itself your poisons and your barbs and your snapping fangs paving your track ahead with white roses dust and a thread unweaving itself endlessly from a red ribbon’s heart? shhh... do your hear my voice timidly tapping on your shoulder and telling you of sights I see and monsters I devour and riddles I uncipher beyond the mud and the frogs and the shadows? do you hear the words? the story?

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Scroop The scrooping sound as your freshly polished fingernails pulled the nylons all the way to mid thigh then the garters all the way to the end of nylons followed by black lacquered high heels to your feet then smoothed down your black silk over silken brassiere then on over silken panties till reaching down to mid leg and as you straightened up particles of my teeth exploded grating in my mouth and I had to do the ungentlemanly thing and start spitting them out one by one... What? you asked, cock smiling, cock lefting, cock eyed, cock sured, cock ettish... misspelling in my mind all the right words all the wrong way just to pour unique power into the unique apparition of this unique woman. And if I told you, I answered, that I met Goddess, Aphrodite, Calliope and fell in love with each, would you gouge my eyes out three times? Yes, you answered, inspecting your fingernails, pose unchanged. Thank you, I answered, yet if I told you that I met you and thought you are Goddess and Aphrodite and Calliope in one and fell in love with you would you still gouge my eyes out once? Yes, unwavering, curious as to the third question, we always asked in threes, we always answered in threes. Thank you, I answered. And if I told you that I have no wish for Goddess or Aphrodite or Calliope and all I wish is for my skin to pave the way under your heels and shed my eyes for the eternity of watching your profile and for my mind to clog into incomparable hymns of praise to... you would you consider me certifiably insane and lock me away from your life? You did not answer immediately, considering the options, weighing the intensity of my regard, running once more your fingernail tips down your dress then up your nylons dragging as if innocently the hem to maddening altitudes... my teeth about to start popping again... If, you said, then I would consider you insane, insanely in love. I was disappointed. Is that all? I asked, disappointment showing. And terribly silly, you added the magical word and I stripped my skin to pave your way and shed my eyes to watch your profile forever and leftovers of my mind clogged into hymns of praise to you. You were not yet finished, I did not know you surprised me smearing your perfectly painted lipstick all over your mouth and mine and adding with that unmistakable scrooping sound in your voice... And I love you. And I love you. And I love you.

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Unexplainable Labyrinths I am an Elvis guy. Crazy about the Stones too and some other articulate noise creators which my mom, God rest her soul, would run out of the room screaming once I pumped up the volume, much before the expression was invented... Slade, Three Dog Night, Jerry Lee... To this day. Yet, today, I picked up for unwarranted reasons a... Bizet elpee, yes, the black 33 and one third more rotations kind, the classic kind, rolled the unfashionable lump of plastic expertly in my hands and let the needle drop in the in-between groove just ahead of Je crois entendre encore out of Les pêcheurs de perles. I love you. It was like gates to a temple opened and thousands of white maned black hoofed horses stormed out all over me, all around and above and underneath yet none touched me even to a scratch except for the savage wind and the wild neighing and the unmistakable sour smell of horse sweat and the one soft hand dressed in the sleeve of pouring music which descended to scoop my naked curled figure pulled me up behind her on the last and only bay stallion and stormed on with the rest of the herd into a world just getting born. Your hand. I love you.

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Moments, Two boneless words roll down and shatter, crystal blobs of blue ink splatter on a bed of crumpled matter. whose words? matters? I take the piece of paper and tear it to tiny pieces, then tinier tiniest, dust, then scoop the mound in palms closing against each other, shake the mixture violently and carefully bring it against my ear. what are you doing? someone asks. listening to her... I answer and all I hear is the rustle of dust rubbing against dust as it constantly shifts position inside my cupped palms while my body keeps rolling and rolling. I like the smell of linden trees, I say waiting for confirmation, I miss you, I say, waiting for confirmation, I love you, I say, waiting for confirmation. splinters through the morning scatter, broken letters gaily chatter on my rigid iris platter.

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Sillyously Look up at me, Then down at me, Then look up at me again. Is making love an art? No, don’t answer with your mouth full with my mouth, It is impolite, Also uncivilized and disgusting, No, I don’t mind being munched alive by a green eyed monster... I know I asked a question... did I say I was looking for an answer? And so we laughed. And so we loved. Like kids, Like lovers, Like fairytales... Give me back my top lip, Now my bottom lip, Hey, don’t take back the top one, hey, my tongue... Is kissing an act of love? I see, you prefer showing rather than telling, And I am supposed to be the judge? I cannot judge, I am biased, remember? You will have to tell, or, maybe show me more, I prefer an objective judgment... Let me be subjective about my objectivity, Don’t worry, I will tell you when I gathered sufficient data... And so we laughed. And so we loved. Like kids, Like lovers, Like fairytales... I have some difficulty breathing, Yeah, I guess it has to do with those fingers of yours At the end of your hands... Hands, those things growing out of your shoulders And ending in palms and ending in fingers clutching And squeezing my trunk to broomstick thickness. Is choking an act of love as well? Oh, you still cannot talk I see, oh, am I squeezing you too? Oh... What do you mean an act of kindness? And so we laughed. And so we loved. Like kids, Like lovers, Like fairytales...

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A Penny’s Worth, Philosophies Of Love One drop of rain Following a scenario written uncountable trillions of years ago, before years, before time, Tracing the sequentially unbroken solid thread of events through the upheavals of time explosion and space creation and matter condensation and dinosaurs and glacial era and Michelangelo and industrial revolution and you, Its single solitary moment of glory swiftly flashing by on its one-way road as finally, swollen to unbearable obesity with hydrogen and oxygen and dust and pride it takes the cosmically infinitesimal plunge of the few miserable miles from the edge of the cloud all the way down to the hollow underneath my left eye just as the wind rips away the umbrella from my hand. Surprised... it sizzles and blows away in a mist of boiling vapors... * She looked at me, listening, uncertain if to smile or to awe, sipping on her eternal ice tea easy on ice. “That’s a hundred, one foot thick volumes on the philosophy of fatality squeezed into an x number of words, I still have to count the x...” She regarded me, strangely. “There is a bit of incongruence though, in your recount. Not necessarily disproving your theory.” Again that strange, questioning regard. “What am I doing there with the upheavals and Michelangelo and the industrial revolution?” I looked at her, transposing myself for a moment to the mind of the waiter approaching for a refill and gawking impertinently at her cleavage... I’ve seen prettier, shapelier, greeneyedier... ignorant, I thought, pulling away in disgust from his mind and leaving there a sneeze which followed him all the way back to the kitchen. I looked at her again, uncaring if she sees the burning pits down my eyes... “None prettier, shapelier, greeneyedier,...” I quoted, re-phrasing the words a bit, rubescence conquering her cheeks, “...unique. Some of the great moments of the universe history are absolute.” “And I am one of them?” she smiled coyly. “And you are one of them.” I did not smile. I knew. I embarrassed her, I could not help it. The same universal laws applied to me as well. “Tell me” she said looking attentively into my eyes, I think I saw flickering reflections of sparks in the thin humidity caressing hers. “Do you believe in angel?” “I know devil.” “Do you believe angel could fall in love with me?” “I know devil would spit in hell for you.” “Would it be part of the same universal evolution theory?” “It would not.” “You are contradicting yourself.” “If there would be no exception there would be no rule.” I waited. For the exception. She hesitated. Then she touched my hand. It was soft, so human. I felt the fires deep inside my eyes slowly extinguishing as they spilled into my veins, bones, skin... the chilling touch of sweat invading my opening pores and its salty tang as it slid along my eye, to my mouth, cooling the tips of her fingers moments before they would start blistering. “You look... different, somehow,” she said, the touch changing to gentle fingers squeeze. Then she laughed loudly, beautifully... “You look as if you are about to spit or something...” and her laughter rolled on. “I just did,” I answered, daring to touch her hand in my turn. * A second drop of rain followed the first one, Testing its luck... will I boil away as well?... It touched the hollow underneath my eye, waited defiantly one full second then rolled on to my mouth, chin, down to earth. The scenario could pick up there where it was interrupted, no one ever to know. Except for me.

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Dawn Dawn your child, Fruit of your womb and my delight watching her grow Red ribbons dangling from her ankles and knees and elbows and soft earlobes needle thin pierced, White roses times dotted red where a thorn pricked her finger garlanding her forehead and each of the curls reaching down to earth and out to wind and up to sun, Melodies dressing flirting dancing around her body swirling toe to waist to fingertip ends... Dawn has gone west, Setting beyond the unreachable edge The spell laden petal ashes blowing out of your garden The breeze of your rustling dress forgetting to caress my cheek and I lie next to the freshly dug mound of steaming soil watching east, Wondering, my eyelids growing heavier, disobedient, What will come first The final blink or... Dawn. Did I already follow?... beyond?... The strident fanfare waking me up from wherever I drifted to And clowns and camels and frolicking kids running impetuously all round me and all over me had to roll away from the elephants’ triumphing stampede And I dared look up and Dawn was rising again pulling the world’s kites towards her taking after you... your smile your mouth your spark... I sat myself cross legged worrying not of camels and elephants inhaling the richness of ashes and all I could think of was that breeze of rustling dress now again caressing my cheek.

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'Little Green Apples' Listening to Little Green Apples first time it is with Andy, gazing fixedly at the other side of the table I lean my elbows on empty of notebook and ice tea ‘easy on ice’ glass and you. Then I move on to Frankie blu’ eyes and the Little Green Apples of his personal harvest, the pedal trying vainly to cut through the floor the seat next to me empty of Foo Foo soda and hat box and you. I find another one, Glen Campbell this time, the one of Phoenix and Wichita and Galveston, he has an ’Apples run as well, and I lie rolled inside several layers of soaked bed sheet tatters next to no sleepy nipple and no pillows mountain and no you. There are no more versions, at least I have none other. I get on the stage, pick up the mike, and in the most out of key out of tune out of song voice I try to sing to you... and if it ain’t loving me then all I have to say... before you get on stage, pull the mike to your lips and in the most nightingale of fashions you trill to the world God didn’t make little green apples... my horizon full with green meadow and red flame and white petals canvas sprinkled with brown sugar clumps. And you.

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The Braile Of Silences The Brail of silences, I listened, weighed, interpreted building my own dictionary on the fly by trial and error, my sensory interceptors keen yet inexperienced, my passion devastating. Passion for knowledge? or for me? she asked. Passion to know you, I answered. Knowledge of my love? or of me? she asked. Knowledge to love you, I answered. And you wish to learn it from my silences? she asked. I wish to learn it, I answered. It was the end of my plans, of my dreams of fame and glory and Pulitzer prized Dictionary of Silences followed by the Presidential Medal of Honor for outstanding contribution to the love impaired (let’s just call them crazy). She shattered them all, plans, dreams. She started singing. OK, so it was only humming. OK, so it was meaningless humming, not even music, just... well... hum. It shattered my resolve closed my book and closed my eyes too as there was no silence anymore anywhere, only the hum of life. I guess I was not of much help with your learning, she apologized. Quite the contrary, I answered. Tell me, she asked. Oh, just listen to your teaching, I answered, listen... I failed abysmally in my singing, but she did not laugh. She listened for a few moments... plagiarist... she smiled and started leading. I don’t think we were an assorted duet, and neither were Hero and Leander, but we certainly sang of the same love we were in. The silence faded completely away. I knew.

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Of Rumors No, you did not hang the moon from a hook in the sky What a preposterous idea... illiterates... You did not even draw the halo around it... True, you did paint the glimmer on fireflies wings, Yes, you also shaped the drops of morning rain and blew green in opening buds and the red of red roses is the red of your blood, just a few droplets mixing with the sap... Rumor has it moreover that you may have been involved with introducing spring between winter and summer and even igniting the sun. Hey, I am not so sure about the first one but the second may be rumor to some, I have proof to it. But no, you did not hang the moon from a hook in the sky, This is preposterous.

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Man Of LaMancha Man of LaMancha His lance’s sharp end glistening with his horse’s piss His sword an amass of crumbled rust in its sheath better left undrawn His shield the peel of tinfoil A helmet still dripping barber’s foam A manner proud and aching muscles a one moment’s steel and a skin burnt and taut with trust in Cause and in his beautiful Dulcinea... Oh, dolce Dulcinea, sweet, gentle, tender Dulcinea... Loud mouthing petitioners and tipsters and thick bodied rogues with groping hands aware of virtues hiding under her skirts and constantly ascertaining their existence, Answering them with a shove and a wet kiss or curse and a heartfelt smack generously returned in corners or dusky chambers or dust rich hay under munching horses’ mouths... Man of LaMancha, so sweet your death knowing your queen’s unblemished skin bathes in roses powder and her heart remembers your gallantry and her body forever your temple and your accompanying bliss into the other side. So many the dragons, even in your death...

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Submission Go ahead, she said. I did not undress her. I pulled back the bed’s thin covers smoothed the white sheet underneath and nudged her gently with my hand, motioning her to stretch down. It’s uncomfortable, she pointed to the shoes still on her feet, her tight jeans, her rustling blouse. I kneeled down removing the shoes and socks, kissing her toe, pulled down her jeans and folded them over a chair’s back then unbuttoned her shirt and hung it neatly in the closet closing the door, kissing her shoulder. You are strange tonight, she said as I did not remove the rest and pushed her, almost without touching, onto the cool bed sheet pulling the covers up to her neck. I switched off the light, undressed myself and slid underneath the same covers on the other side of the bed, careful not to touch her. Here I am, willing to be your slave for the night and do the worst of your bidding and all you do is lay me down to sleep? I lay on my back, my desire a dragon’s mouth, my mind a glacier’s heart. I will tell you of my bidding tomorrow morning, I answered and fell asleep in a flash. I woke up to find her staring at me. Her eyes puffed up as someone who had very little sleep or none at all, her eyes humid, her lipstick intact. Tell me, it is tomorrow morning, she said, your last chance. Please... was she pleading?... don’t blow it up. I sat up keeping my body’s bottom half covered, looked straight ahead of me then turned my eyes to face her, my vision blurred and unstable, my hands an uncontrollable mess. Will you submit to my bidding, as you said? I asked. I said so, didn’t I? she answered a bit irritated and made as if to move towards me. No, I said, and she froze, anger starting to show on her face. What’s the matter, did you turn a weirdo or something? She pulled suddenly at her brassiere and threw it to the floor. My eyes did not leave her eyes. OK, your bidding, she part hissed part whispered. My bidding to your submission, I answered, the one I wish more than waking up tomorrow unbroken the one I wish more than waking up tomorrow alive. I stared back at her. I wish to wake up tomorrow next to you. I drilled deep into her regard. And all the tomorrows after.

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I'll Take The Crumbs I’ll take the snapshots. I’ll take the stories with their varied level of detail, The words written for events unrelated and people unknown The one way address to my expressions and experimental poems and italicized times misunderstood emphasized wishes... Are wishes hopes? The unanswered questions. I’ll take the sounds, the breaking connection with beeps and stuttering silences and deafening background noise causing me to repeat stupidly what?... what?... sorry... the jokes exchanged with strangers, friends, shopkeepers, the delightful munching sounds, then the yawning sounds. The sorry, please leave a message, the unanswered incessant ringing till it rings no more. It never rings no more. I’ll take the pictures in my mind playing them on the blank wall in front of me or on the transparent windshield supposed to be transparent on paper cuts and flying kites and underneath thick planes’ bellies flying others your way and bringing over whiffs of me to you never reaching you. Whiffs of you to me always reaching me. I’ll take the moments, so few, the moments, so few, oh, the moments, so few, unforgettable, meanly bitchingly lovingly hanging on to me with fangs and claws and steel cords... the hand squeeze and thigh squeeze and nose touch and shoe drop and meeting tears and separating tears and sipping from the same glass and biting the same chunk of bread and watching eyes and watching stars and sharing shivers and bites and senses and bed sheets and shavers and brushes and dreams and fantasies and love and love and love and love and vows and bird songs watching us hugging on a secluded street bank. I will take the crumbs, all of them, more, a world, I will not give them up for treasures or fortunes. I will give them up, the world, For you.

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Like First Walking by your side, Touching elbows from time to time, Sleeves rustle loaded with static Soft heels hardly make a noise Elbows touch again... they rest, We stop. The touching point moves down to fingers, interlacing, not yet fully locked, hesitating in their dare. We know for so long, yet you still hesitate each time, you say, still looking ahead though glancing in an aside to me, You know every detail of me... we made love so many times... You force me to turn around and face you hugging my waist and pressing against me, head on my shoulder. It’s soft, almost inhuman, surrealistic. I know nothing of you, I say, I discover you anew every time I walk by your side, You are the girl I just learned to know and I do not yet dare touch, are you a virgin? You know better than laugh at my silly question, silence, my hands hanging limp at my sides. That’s sweet of you to ask, you say, no mockery in your voice, hug me, and I obey, my hands sliding underneath your shirt feeling the warmth of your flesh for the first time. I wonder, how will your kiss taste like?

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The Man Butterfly hordes escape the tangled bush of your hair, Fire touches their wings turning the air into a blazing curtain as they shoot skywards charging into torrential rain and detonating the water pellets to kaleidoscopic mist steeped in sunset’s death agony. Glass marbles roll down the ladder from your open mouth to shoulder, Viciously flaunting their perfect curvature as the swirling colorful spirals poisoning their hearts invade the galaxies’ reflecting sparkle bathing in cobweb thin ingénue robes floating upon lakes rising up to meet them halfway to the dying sparkle of stars. Liquid aquarelle pastels flow down from your stretched fingertips, Starting at porous wrist joints transparent to the fragrance of melted candle wax seeping down your palm’s life line your fingers tips and finally picked up by an army of hummingbirds hunting each drop before it hits ground and abandoning it on the apex of a grass blade till all the green in the world vibrates inside the embrace of red yellow blue chartreuse violet... I paused, My recite not yet over, but needing my breath, expecting the coming verses to keep growing... was there an end? “Tell me,” she used the short break to ask without interrupting, “This is the poet thinking of me. What does the man think of me?” I kissed the corner of her asking mouth, not upset, just concerned, The way it looked, I had still a lot of work ahead of me, as much was clear. But whatever the work, first I had to answer her and laze was not written in my horoscope for this life. I took a deep breath... “My love,” I said, Butterfly hordes escape the tangled bush...

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Rant Take the curse of a-b-ove Rhymes with l-o-v... with love Some esteemed talented chums (Rhymes with b-u-m... with bums) Self anointed (oil and curry) Have decided in a hurry The distinguished couple suck Fit to pity and to burry Under layers three of muck. D-e-a-r brothers dear Lend me e-a-r, your ear, Sisters sweet, your ears two too (Does this sound some weird to you?) Sing your heart’s abounding magic, T-r-a-g-i-c tragic Is the life of those who think Their link to God stratagic (Have some fun like me, wink, wink). Lovers of the world unite Under one and single kite Flying proud to skies above Rhyme it love, love, love, love, love, Let those mouthed loud maesters Rich in talent and in pesters R-u-n at mouth and run To His court, to rule as jesters While the you’s and I’s have fun.

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Vista The wheat has grown all around me Its rich gold raw and tasty as it crunches between my teeth No one knows, No trace, no track, no path, The wheat has grown all around me. The sun has frozen almost at my zenith Pouring drops of incandescent hell into my unblinking eyes My bones cold, No mercy, no warmth, no night, The sun has frozen almost at my zenith. A swirl of skirts and feet and bare skin Lands over my head inundating me in feminine fragrances And merciless squeals Kisses, bites, beauty, A swirl of skirts and feet and bare skin. Her head on my bare belly my head under her skirt We fall asleep under the gyrating shadow of the great condor Watching love getting born And blush subsides, and heartbeat slows, and hands clench, Her head on my bare belly my head under her skirt.

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Claims Not your body, No, not even your eyes, your ear lobes, your mess of curls following indignantly their suns in my sky fluttering incessantly and redefining Kepler’s rules to each its own and sun and flutter and rule... No, not the corrugated layers of your nipples ranting, roaming, roving, rebelling, their fruit blushing between my thumb and forefinger as they stretch, yawn, shiver lightly ranting and roaming and roving and rebelling and reveling. Maybe the longitudinal scorched lanes traversing my body tip of toe to tip of ear trailing the corrosive tip of your tongue in its recurring travels as it marks its territory with narrow and ragged strips? I watch you reclining over me in a moment of cruel respite and one drop of spittle acid leaves the tip of your tongue missing by a few millimeters the side of my mouth and I feel like mutinying when the following one hits bulls-eye straight down my throat and I squirm in ecstasy... No, not the lanes either. I run a full inventory in my mind, like Harpagon counting his pennies and nickels for the eleventh time crossing out memories under a blanket, clicking kneecaps, crimson ribbons and burning incense, pulling up shoes on colorful short socks and crossed eyes and soap bubbles and crunching teeth and a shared soda glass and the one different country song and a blaring loudspeaker’s damnation... It takes me hours, days, finally I know. My one claim to you above all others and life is... your heart.

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Disarticulations, One or Echoes Look above your shoulder, The left one, Behind you... more to the left... a bit more... more... stop, right there! That’s me. Sharing the air you breathe and the shoes you wear and the words you exchange with the gas station attendant. No, you are not crazy, The echo in your life is real, it’s me... it’s me... it’s me...

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Disarticulations, Two or Hues Of Blue The blue in your veins is not ink, not even mine, not blood nor sorrowful copper either. For once I cannot claim ownership and not even intent. It is a piece of clear sky so absorbed in the purity of its own reflection in that glass of water that it forgot to pull out when your lips touched the smooth rim and thirstily gulped it down. It was about to scream and thresh and claw in a vain attempt to escape the acidic mire which unwittingly became its temporal adobe and certain of ensuing annihilation... mother!... it cried, save me, mother!... and while the whole of sky’s kingdom watched horrified, silently impotent, it drained into your bodily ducts and furious streams, dying... what is this piece of sun, mother?... it asked voicelessly as it entered your heart’s chambers and found its haven and never wished to return home... Try to match the blue to that realm of sky marked by a missing round stain hued grey, and you will find it is so alike that it may well be a piece of sky which is streaming through your veins.

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Disarticulations, Three or Self Portrait My shell a bit overripe, Taut patches of skin covering up for the loose, Fingers ending in surgeon sharp adzes carving thousands of tiny hills on the white flesh squirming underneath me and craving torment, A skyline allowing indulgence around its corners though muscles underneath armpit ready to break warriors necks and thighs set to push that twelve wheeler out of way... no, not uphill, that would be a bit overdoing it. The fruit underneath soft, succulent, teeming with impatient nodes hosting the electrical impetuosity of the forge, Acidulous flavors cutting right into visiting incisors roots once these decide to taste the reality of life and passion and release the light-shy beasts roaming blood flooded channels and joints in need of lubrication upon a world ignorant of their ravenous thirst and famine and... softness. The mind... is it the mind of a teenager laden with the vanity of youth and the wisdom of lore or the mind of a fool escaped from the well-wishers’ debilitating warm nest on the run through blinding blizzard and cutting icicles and sensations of life unburied, uncovered, deadly, beautiful?... Or both, or none? I, wondering, will my self portrait ever mean a thing without cutting my ear or putting a bullet through my head? I, wondering, do you love me?

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Disarticulations, Four or Rearticulations, One Do you do you love me too Do you love me do you do? Thoughts, heavier than rain drops, Sliding down along sharp grass blades, asymmetrically cut slices dropping on each side buried under an avalanche of rain drops and puny dust rocks and bugs scuttling for life and solar winds crushing all being into mirage obedience. Body, following thoughts, Skin, orbs, muscles, ligaments, miles of entrails and super miles of bleeding highways and roads and paths dropping the man-height precipice towards acclaiming earth and impaling itself upon the myriad of sharp grass blades gloriously celebrating previous war and victory. Fingertips, yours, delicate, fragile, frail, Pulling out one and each grass saber patiently, reprovingly, the tigress in you licking clean every wound dressing the cuts with dry white rose petals and fresh red rose petals and bitter green rose leaves chewed to smooth salve, dropping occasionally a blob of fire deep, painful, healing, and finally resurrecting me with a finger touching your lip corner to mine. Love you too oh too oh do Do oh do oh love you too.

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Pastels Of You don’t lift your foot in the desert or geysers will spring to life and yucca and ocotillo and milkweed will sweep the ground and nothing will be left of the desert except for night’s disparate aroma of jasmine where you lie down to sleep and your skin touches the soil.

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Pastels Of You, Two He was a perfectionist. and on the eighth day He knew It is incomplete yet with Adam gallivanting and Eve bitching about her garderobe and Cain raising his hand upon his brother He had enough and skipped a few millenniums in the future blocking away the world to deafening sounds of Stones, and Elvis, and McLachlan, and Verdi, and... something good did come out of my mess, He hummed along, playing with the time machine and putting the final touches to his latest creation, imperfecting it, as far from divinity and a bit less, as close to humanity and a bit more. He was not selfish, then He allowed me to meet You.

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Pastels Of You, Three Forget, she commanded, and I forgot not remembering what. Nine were the muses. Ten, I insisted. Nine. Ten... and I started calling them by name, recollecting from memories long asleep buried under innumerable layers of adulthood... one... four... eight, nine... none more and creasing my forehead advanced me no further. See? I told you... there was a trace of sadness in her voice as she picked up her suitcase to leave. Wait, I called when she was too far to matter and when she turned to look I put the flame to the sheaf of papers in my hand. No!... the melodious lament played its terrible pain straight into my auditive system and she pursed her lips extinguishing the flame. How did you know? she asked later, wearing a crown of saguaro flowers, the only ones I found in my rush. I commanded you to forget. I closed my fist, then uncurled my index finger pointing it to my head... you commanded me here... I said, but not here... I continued, pointing to my heart. She closed her fist, then uncurled her index finger pointing it to her head. I commanded you from here... she said, but not from here... she continued, pointing to her heart.

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Pastels Of You, Four You sang, oh, the music... and the nightingale was dissonantly shrill and Pan undistinguishable from the creaking of dry wood. I neared your skin, oh, the fragrance... and jasmine exuded wafts of rotten leaves and blossoming lilac carried the many odors of Anigros. Then I saw you, oh, the beauty... and sunset was just the time of day for cattle to stop grazing and Helen no more than a pretentious pimple-faced nubile maiden.

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Pastels Of You, Five Cup your hands around the flame Your skin pellucid to a red glow protected from gales and high seas robbers and suicidal moths... like me. The thick wax cries slowly its sorrows, elongated solid tears waiting for the next touch of flame, same as the gales, the robbers, the moths. You uncup your hands beckoning me swiftly in and allowing me to be the first to touch your skin and kiss away the burns and rush into the flame.

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Final Encounter I wish I knew to write the words to end all words The songs to end all music The touch to put to shame all memories past and future and wishes unreachable. Lend me your words, those words you yearn to bathe in The songs you snuggle in The touch... teach me the touch to freeze your breath for a thousand beats and never wish to breathe again... I will wait for you With the dry bathrobe in my hands The pink slippers at the bed’s side with their fluffy monster heads A rose afloat in a glass of sweet liqueur And a pen to draw green leaves on the path you should walk on leading you to the tomorrow written in my chest. I will wait with the words chosen, And the songs selected, And the touch that only you will know for only you will see the green leaves leading you to us.

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Passion Gems in collection: smiles Polished jaspers fill your pockets, Tourmaline those blinking sockets, And beneath that copper zany Gently nosed and mighty brainy Coral gates shoot blazing rockets. Down your skin drags liquid amber Quartz and dust as vainly clamber When those garnets roar desire Gaping ruby mouths on fire As your muscles bolt and camber. Lover sweet of gems uncanny Let me rest my naked fanny Fore your intellect expires And bejewels your desires And I have to call my nanny. Lover sweet of citrine speckle Popularly known as freckle There’s one last, a giant boulder Left of chest beneath your shoulder Diamond named... now! rant and heckle...

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Ends Don’t... undress. Again? Again. Just sit across from me and read a book. Any book? Your choice, as long as you smile when you’re happy cry when sad tsk tsk when you disapprove of the hero. You sat across from me, reading, Smiling, crying, tsk tsk’ing, You didn’t even complain when I blew your nose in my handkerchief, crying and about to turn the last page. Undress... please... Now? Will you make it a good end? I promise. You never turned the last page. I kept my promise.

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Pastels Of You, Six Inhaling the smells of visions, Apparitions alighting around me and exploding with soft plop sounds into flakes, soapy, smooth, gliding between fingers at war with traces of rosy skin and gruesome punishing delights, The fragrance in the odors licking its way intimately down my respiratory system and slamming shut all evasion gates behind it. For a thousand years, after I die, weed seeds above my grave will explode into perfumes of you.

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Knight To tie to the tip of my lance your colors, A multicolored sock sacrificed for the occasion Your left tennis shoe lace A bra’s shoulder strap, white, Your panties’ elastic band The W cut out from your t-shirt A few sunset hairs nipped at the root and braided into a flailing whip A tears-humid paper hanky Your gift, an out of season flower dry by now, full of memories... Each end of day mounting my night to battle terrible demons gaping at me from each of mind’s dark nooks, Conqueror, Vanquishing, galloping by proudly carrying the glory of your colors back to my castle where I untie them and fold them and guard them till next battle asks for them... Your multicolored sock, Your shoe lace, The strap and band and W cut out, The braid, The hanky, A flower, And so many fluttering memories of you...

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Lovers' Talk in collection: smiles It rang four times, then some clicks and grunts and a line opening into silence... “Did I wake you up?” I heard something like a huuuhuuummm which was meant to mean yes grumbled by something between leopard and human... female human. “Shall I go away?” Again the same huuuhuuummm, this time meant for a no. How did I know? I knew, don’t ask. I was glad I saved her life... stuck as she was between seven pillows beneath and about same number of blankets above, Thank God I rang, I told myself. ...and Go...uss... she slurred, saving on vowels and consonants and mouth motions and meaning to say and Goddess as she would never admit to lessen femininity in front of masculinity. Which was perfect with me. Adoring her. I heard some more clicks and clacks and thumps and being short of relevant onomatopoetic words I will refrain from expanding... I satisfied myself with closing my eyes and following her imaginary trail into her slippers, to the bathroom, to the kitchen, cracking the door open, back to bed and back under the seven above and the seven underneath... wishing myself to smother right there beside her. I tried to make conversation. She tried to stifle yawns, failing almost every time though, with that smile in that yawn she could yawn me straight to heaven, as I told her. She tried to call me silly and failing to, as... of course, by interposed yawn it changed into see...eee which, nevertheless, my mental dictionary translated it easily into what it was meant to be. “I love you,” I said, giving up on the intellectual and animal pleasure of hearing her words and hearing her voice for the transcendental pleasure of knowing her asleep. wa wow woo too... she yawned back falling asleep before the phone fell off her hand. I knew what she said. And after carefully closing my side of the connection I started dancing Singing In The Rain, don’t ask why, this I don’t know.

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Of You I like to think of you in terms of joy, demure, and coy, Of lace in my embrace upon a skin insanely thin As nights inhale delights when fingers mine for sighs divine And long forbidden craves bone’s prison break and pleasures rake. I like to think of you in terms of taste devoid of haste, Of creams, vanilla dreams, and sugar rich late summer’s peach, To grieve each passing eve the fading scars of fallen stars While robins peck the seeds with brazen beaks from flaming cheeks. I like to think of you, My life imbrue With dreams so few...

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Canopy Of Poppies in collection: smiles I looked above me the immense canopy of red poppies hovering horizon to horizon nothing else in sight no tree, no mountain, no bird, just that endless expanse of red skies swaying majestically in an unseen wind resplendent in its undisturbed homogeneity and conquering my senses provocative, entrancing, enravishing, tickling my nostrils till that anti climactic sneeze which I could not hold in any longer... sorry... I muttered, my cheeks rubescent into the hues of the wild poppies. stop playing silly, you admonished me looking at my figure hanging head down from the ceiling get down here next to me... and you pulled your hair away from my face as I unhooked my knees from the lamp and fell on the bed next to you. it wasn’t a mirage, I whispered, I saw heaven and it was an endless field blanketed with red poppies... you pitied me. you lay down on top of me your hands hugging your hair filling my face... oh, my beautiful canopy of poppies, back into your kingdom I come...

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The Power Of The day, Grey. Voices, Indifferent, not even mean, Taking decisions based on colored data sheet boxes And text book words used in sterile environments protected against human contamination, or is humanity the word? goals, objectives, profits, margins... what about marginality? market share and the benefit of the shareholders and the glory of the company and its chairman or woman or person... Ha, bastards, Fat, fatter, fattest, Honey coated fish-hooks sliding down throats Families unknowingly led the one way street to social slaughterhouses there to lose their right to decency and self respect and basic needs while little Caesars and mini tycoons and acolytes dance with their import shoes on import marble floors and the herd leftovers applaud Amen... Fists clench, pompous bastards, the power of greed... A phone. Another voice... hello... another dimension opens and an inbred ideology about to explode melts away like mist inside a furnace under a barrage of smiles and poetry and rhyming words and skyscrapers mean nought and stock exchange is another kind of porn and the only honey of any meaning is the one pouring all the way through the phone lines and ending inside my ear and accumulating its golden pond in the first chamber of my heart. And the other chambers soon to follow. Hello... I answer, and nothing matters except sentences which start with I and end with you. I slump in my chair, close my eyes, and follow the fireflies. My last coherent thought... the power of illusion, obsession?... no... the power of woman.

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Collision Arrival. Flame, fuel, collision... the deflagration licks the outer layers of our bodies eating through velours and cottons and silks lambent upon skins... beneath or above?... as the sharp smell of burning hair-ends and exploding tiny blood vessels and orbs roiling tears into hissing vapor fills the room’s air threatening to smother our lungs and usurp our choking throats... Matters not who the flame, who the fuel... the heat wave blasts into four surrounding walls relieving for moments short the single entity struggling its final spasms in a tangle of feet and hands and mouths and craned necks its pains undefined in its pleasures awaiting the blast’s return as all walls spit back the terrible vengeance of a screaming tide and the one point of impact drills its dagger through clenched bodies rapturously piercing hearts as fingers engraft anew nails into boiling flesh. The flame subsides, fuel flow slows, quiet... stinging burn spots glue parcels of skin large enough to write the declaration of independence on signatories excluded and reason returns to parched domains among smoldering brain residue and abating hot ash when we start recovering from typhoon’s fury and painfully pull out nails sunken lunulae deep and fangs gums deep wondering when did fires peel the wallpaper and burst the window panes and roast those portions of skin unprotected by other’s collapsing body. No flame. No fuel. No?... and roaring delirium cuts us down afresh like a castle of disjointed bones...

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Heat Wave I sit in front of the fan, Industrially smoothened plastic blades shooting chunks of air my way as sodium chloride saturated rivers of perspiration dragging along microbacteria and expelled enzymes and follicle refuse follow ragged earthbound gravitation lines along my skin slaves to a logic of their own negotiating thin trails around pimples, crawling down curling hairs, soaking into pieces of cotton glued to flesh and its imperfections, The war raging inanely around my body between the miniature hurricanes and the clogged water lines and the ever present white furnace in the sky. I wish you near me, Fighting my fire with you, The wind channel fragmenting your carefully calculated hairdo into a Medusean wriggling snakes garden and your hands splitting into fingers at their ends penetrating the impenetrable kingdom of my clothes underneath my shirt, inside my trousers’ waist line, beneath the last of my clothing layers, groping for the melting pieces of flesh and sliding between the folds saturated with exploding sweat necklaces And as one hand offers the nectar’s salt to your lips the other pulls, tears, rips away at cloth and leather and imprisoning metallic clasps and forces out of me a wounded animal’s scream as you throw me onto the hard floor and our sweat mingles making indecent squishing sounds as our breath mingles and our bleeding cuts and our flesh, and deep throat grunts join floorboards grunts chanting a hymn to resplendent vanquishing glory. Tattered garment vestiges flap about loosely on our sleeping tangle under the endless fan blades barrage, pennants commemorating a miracle just witnessed.

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Roundabout Trails I woke up one week later, When did I fall into the dream? I turned around, Walking backwards and looking behind me through a spade shaped iris between joined thumbs and forefingers at the end of my outstretched arms clicking in my mind snapshots of the smoking scenery, Hearts of rocks still cracking open with dull popping sounds and an inner glow not unlike earth’s fluid entrails shooting pieces of flaming tar to a hissing death in the torrent, Carbonized trees, their resinous flesh still boiling down abutting against shamefully exposed blackened cores, Traces of sand now liquefied blobs of wandering glass rolling along the soft incline and sucking into their docile rotundness diamond crumbs and raw emeralds and sharp granite shards... When did we have the time for such devastation? I hear the wail, the thin wail of gurgling mud in search for a homeland for its precious load of crushed salt icicles and creased sheets of burned skin tumbling over and over... I halt. My torso stops its gyration as the clicking cacophony in my mind tries to catch up with an impression which was there a moment earlier, I rewind slowly sifting through the flow of words... over... tumbling... skin... skin... skin... skin... nailing it to my eye and the images I was looking for suddenly hit my vision through that frozen outstretched iris, suffusing those parts of my tissues still alive with that ultimate bliss of unraveling kismet and enshrined desires. I suddenly remember, the smell of burning skin. Sparks, skipping the distance between our finger ends much before we touched, still miles apart, Invisible matter rushing between our eyes... do I believe in ectoplasm?... once we were within sight range, Then finally... was it a touch or what was it? when we unleashed the apocalypse upon the world and all which I can gather now through my spade shaped iris debauching my senses and ensnaring my sanity is the reality of a Ptolemaic vision with horizon to horizon flashes of spidery lightning and the baritone belch of mother Earth belly’s growling thunder and sheets of flailing skin as at the center of the universe our bodies merge, alloy, fuse, and fire jetting outward from the convoluting shapes burns butterfly size holes through the never resting skin debacle as it pours and pours and pours... I close the iris, hands down at my sides, turn around and start walking away from you back to you. I will always walk back to you, Ectozoic memories sink thin proboscidean feelers deeply into my brain feeding on the incessant crave of being alive in that one garden where the flowers are shaped mud slides and the smells are shaped insanity and the only reality worth remembering is the presence of you.

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Looking At You I sit back and look at you, Admiring. Not what I see. What I see and what I don’t and I wonder – what percentage of you is woman and what child? I guess sixty percent one and sixty the other and don’t please question my maths – they are perfect, I know you enough for that, You are more than one hundred percent... something. * I look at you, seeing Pierced nose, pierced tongue, one tattoo on your leg, one tattoo on your bum and some other tattoos I won’t mention, Yet when you put up your hair and paint your lips and wear that black satin dress with those black nylon stockings with those black high-heeled shoes Lord Nelson would forget his Lady Hamilton and a great love story would have ended differently. Maybe this is why he was shot, Waking up with dreams of future you and in his excitement wearing his eye patch on the wrong eye... No, it wasn’t I who shot him though I would have, but I wasn’t yet born though already in love... Hey, come to think of it, the one who shot him... no, forget it, impossible, just a moment’s paranoia. What did you just say? he would have been more than two hundred years old? I warned you not to question my maths, they are perfect. Some things are worth waiting for. * I look at you, listening Those roughly one hundred kids around you (I’m great at maths but suck at counting, ok?) all pulling your sleeves and your trousers and your hands and calling the biggest kid (not necessarily body wise) of all to see their latest fist-size find in the gutter which you quickly identify as a two weeks old jack rabbit lost and frightened till he cuddles in your cupped hands, smug, Boy or Girl the kids ask and you watch the little bundle and it suddenly winks at you... Boy... you laugh as it behaves just like a rabbit, age irrelevant (I would have wrung his jack neck, the insolent bastard) And you clean it and you feed it And after you put it on the floor it starts jumping and pooping and jumping and pooping and alongside him you jump and you (no, you don’t poop) squish in his poop and jump and squish in his poop to delighted shrieks of some of the kids and disapproving noses of some kids a bit more mature than you... Past midnight, the phone waking you up, someone is sick, and you pull your jeans on and your tank-top and while the city sleeps you are tired and you save someone. Some things are worthy humans. * I look at you, reading You hide your words with your hand then hide your words with your head then you simply sit on them but I can read on your body and through your body and in your body words telling of thin winged fairies and thick winged dragons and white armored knights on tiger hearted and white maned... hey, you surprise me... ponies, Then I dig down a deeper layer to find roseate images to turn a nun into a whore and to make a whore blush and to provide the real reason why Eve quit Eden for Life, And digging past additional boulders and rocks and burs and high walls and deep gullies I suddenly find myself swimming in words of essence and sentences of purport which force me to rush for my Oxford’s and my Webster’s and I still have a problem following a discussion which would make an Apollonius of Tyana listen and a Kant change his opinion on metaphysics and make you a guest of honor at the table hosting Maimonides and Spinoza and Simone Weil. Some things are worthy to listen to. * Tell me, do you sometimes think of me in normal terms? she asks from the safe distance of across the room, uncrossing and recrossing her legs (sometimes I wonder if she wasn’t the one who secretly coached Sharon). No, never, I answer categorically. And yes, always, I add. I admit, and it takes some personal effort to do, that I may have missed on those percentages earlier on. Gulp. It is probably more in the range of seventy and sixty five, I conclude. The safe distance previously mentioned proves to be not so safe after all, if to judge from whatever follows in that once chilly room. Some things are beyond description.

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Symmetry, Almost facing each other, naked, seated on the messed up bedding after uncounted muscle wrenching incursions into the land of forgetfulness, our bodies finally at peace, the spasms gone. your left nipple throbs, swollen, lightly held between my right thumb and forefinger as your right forefinger and thumb crush the leftovers of my left nipple so much smaller, thighs clamber above your hips, your legs above mine disregard thighs and knot lithe ankles at the back of my waist claiming possession, my left hand, forgotten in the nook between your spine’s third and fourth vertebrae hangs by one finger your left hand barely holding to my back on friction alone, my head on your left shoulder, your head on my left shoulder, our eyes closed, asleep. you can almost hear the sweat drops soaking into the linen as they drop with maddening regularity from the bony ends of right elbows.

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On Love I paint you, when suddenly you tear away from my side and the puppy in you sinks vicious milky teeth into every bitter red petal. And white. And yellow. Wait, don’t come back, I did not finish... I gesticulate, And you are just too content to kick off your rosa tennis shoes and sink to your knees in last year’s dry foliage stomping crazily up and down in the crumbling brown detritus till you fall breathlessly victim to an unending sneeze attack. I keep painting, rushing my words away before the curse of sanity catches up with you, And as if guessing my mindset you go to war with a pacific goat that just happened to take a liking to your tennis shoes offering him in exchange your dress, your socks, your brassiere and finally your panties. The stupid beast refuses all compromise till you offer him my shirt, my pants, my underwear, and only when you offer him my freshly printed poetry book he gives up his justly earned spoils of war. I cannot scream no! as you fell me into the mildewed undergrowth and I watch transfixed the unfolding drama of systematically chewed page after page while you systematically chew finger after finger... and other things... speaking about literally thankful to an illiterate goat... We splash in the dust till dusk, then again till dawn, then further on till winter catches up with us and we huddle together with does and skunks and oxen and two, three bickering foxen (my tail is longer... my tail is softer... my tail is redder... the bitches, couldn’t close an eye all winter long). Yes, foxes, I know, thank you. I finished my painting. Don’t worry, it is not contagious, I try to calm you, Only deranged, And the red spots is where you bit me, And the blue spots is when we crashed into that bluebells bed. Foxes? What foxes? Are you on love or something?

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Untouched Downcast eyes, Blinking eyelids scrapping layer after layer off the ice cubes forming upon your irises uncovering the untouched raw green of shy coral reefs. Clenched fists, Fingernails sinking past skin reaching bone sharp edges bathing in invisible glow before reluctantly opening the gates to warmth flowing inside your palms spreading on both sides of your life line the untouched celestial red of melancholic daisies. Grating teeth, Crushing lumps of sugar gleaned from the insides of your lips and waiting patiently for the mouth to open and drown the world in the untouched sweet blue of exploding suns flavors. My skin, what about my skin? I look at your skin and dare not touch it, Those white sacred grounds where butterflies come to die.

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It Matters Not Don’t pick up that paper. Let it roll on down the street, down gutter lanes between car wheels leaning soggily against bushes for the pleasure of any and all dogs. It matters not. I can write it again, I will write it again, the same meaning though words may be different the same words though meaning may lie hidden another sort of paper... matters the paper? It matters not. Read it not with your eyes, nor with your fingers tips. No, try not your mind nor your intellect not even the much abused sixth senses. Or seventh. You cannot. And if you can then you cannot and nevertheless It matters not. Don’t read it at all. You should know. You do and it emblazons your skin’s inner surface with songs none other can flute and colors none other can dye and shivers none other can sculpt. And if you don’t It matters not.

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Arcadianly When evening lays its blanket’s chill Upon the flaring beds of sand And crossing barefoot traces spill Imprinting wishes on the strand, Beneath the toothless smiling moon Aghast at lovers’ parting ways Till shadows past the thick pontoon Embrace anew in glowing haze, Along a dying frothing crest Deprived of wind’s imparting shove Endued with one and last request To touch a heel aflame with love, I’ll make your bed of silk and night Disrobe your skin of lace and cloth Then dressed in dawn’s invading light To pledge you rhyme, and life, and troth.

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Bride I will drop you in the middle of the ocean nothing to your skin but a promise incrusted on thin silver Only to watch you rise, Your hands stretched high above your head twisted around till palm faces palm And the entire ocean hangs on to thin seaweed strands descending from between your fingers Dressing you all around in a liquid bridal robe whose train slowly slopes away towards ephemeral foam fringes lapping the sunny shores of Africa way beyond the curve of Earth, While fishes of thousand adventitious shapes and colors ride mile long eels in and out of your robe in a fountain of glittering waterworks way beyond the amassed imagination of all masters of word and art and color and their immortal wisdom. And your melody never ends calling. It does not exist. It does. And who is my groom? I don’t answer. I gather my brush, my pen, my flute, And break them.

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Concupiscence Finally, Finding sanctuary at the heart of the sun. The chill, So refreshing after emerging alive from the indefinable inferno of your body’s all annihilating embrace.

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Naked I wish I could show you The way I see you. The way I see you... the way you are. Beyond words fenced by the impassable razor wire of letters combinatorics and vocal cords inflections and the finality of neurons and time. True, I use fanciful, multi-syllabled expressions... strip them down! I employ metaphors as thin as the peeling ends of a sun’s corona... strip them down! Synonyms and antonyms and homonyms and nym-less oxymorons... strip them down! There, see it? the essence, not much left. Truths are simple. The beauty is naked. Woman. Poet. You. Ever listened to butterfly’s wings?...

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Wound Your heart... wounded. No, not by me but it matters not, it hurts, The traces in your voice and eyes unmistakably leading back to the source, I follow them. I see the gash and my entrails knot and unknot in compassion touching it with the tips of my fingers and the tips of my words, absorbing a little bit of it as much as you allow me, you don’t allow me much. “It is mine,” you say. I keep my fingers near by, nevertheless, I join my lips... the same color, none will see, Then, as you lie down tired and restless, I pull out a bunch of wild flowers roots and all cut it down to petal size pieces and spread it over your wound in thick layers... your mother Earth will heal you... “Something is still missing...” you half smile half whisper eyes closed, breath irregular, and I lay my head on the steaming mound inhaling your fragrance, your pain, your smile, the taste of earth... “...thank you...” your breath regular, your smile deeper, your pain oozing out into the bleeding flowers. You sleep. So beautiful when you sleep...

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Singer Please, sing... You accepted, Blushing like a newly wed bride virgin of body and mind, Your lips pale in comparison, Your joy immense. You chose the song, I love the words, you said Innocently posing me a challenge which I accepted greedily, delighted, hearing I love words and knowing that as long as the pen is the extension of my fingers You love me. You started singing gratifying me with the incomparable pleasure of a private performance, You, the unique artist, I, a public of one, The only public to ever witness this performance. And the only pleasure higher than hearing you is touching you, And I am not even sure.

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Reality You’ll never win a beauty contest, Your body swollen by gifting life Your bones eaten by chemistry warring the invading scourge Your skin tinted by the zealous folly of youth, You, the most beautiful of creations, You are.

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Apocalypse The sun woke up angry, sending a long tendril of fire cutting through a forest like a sickle, then through a mountain, In a fit of madness it raised its flailing flame for one fatal last blow about to slice earth’s corpulence in two blazing morsels cutting seas, continents, children, dogs... I knew its crave, so not unlike my own... I rushed to your door crashed through it unceremoniously and dragged your puffed and disheveled self out of bed shouting in my incoherence... the end of the world, the end of the world... You tried to hold back... wait, my make-up... the all too powerful female vanity clashing innocently with reality, I dragged you on, running now, You followed reluctantly... why me?... I was out of breath, out of time, couldn’t answer, moving on, up, up the mountain... There... I pointed up to the sun, its blow already on the way down, its hellish left brow rising in... wonder?... excitement?... Sing!... I screamed above the roar of the approaching inferno, Sing!... and I closed my eyes. For once, just for once you did not talk back hiding behind out of key and out of tune and out of voice excuses and before my eyelids finished their trek towards my cheeks I caught a last glimpse of a fiery haze burning away your clothes leaving your skin bared in naked splendor and the first note sounded in my ear... Oh, God, the sublimity of that note, then the words of love, then the quiet. * I opened my eyes, daring, I knew I was alive and I saw you descending my way, flushed, smelling of sun burn, beautiful, scared, a flaring mist fading away behind you... ...how did you know?... you asked taking my hand and starting down the mountain listening to seas, and continents, and children, and dogs unaware of the peril just skidding by. I did not have to answer. I did not. Not even when we reached the mountain’s hem. Just let your touch singe the inside of my gripping hand and listened on to that tune you finished so long ago. And now, can I put my make-up on? you asked further. I could answer this one. Now you can even dress, I said, watching sizzling sparks trail off autumn leaves as they flittered by in incandescent majesty and started to settle in worshiping adoration along glittering paths flowing down your skin.

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Poets You knew you were not gonna marry a poet. ...going to... ...gonna! Beneath the secrecy of an overhead blanket, hardly aware of the cricket invaded quiet of after midnight you ignited the sun of a flashlight’s yellowish bulb and soaked in thousands of palely reflecting pages alive with so many circular rainbows... all of your youth’s heroes courting you, declaring their ripe classical love to ripening pony-tailed you with forests of magical words - Longfellow, Wordsworth, Poe... all dead, magical words immortal, heroes die, none left for you to marry. You kinda accepted it as a fact. ...kind of... ...kinda! Never giving up your search, Omnipresent life running its predestined choice of path words and deeds of day mocking and hunting words and deeds of wish, buckshot deafening you till you could not hear your own screams as you watched fellow humans netting cloudfuls of swallowtails into grocery bags desecrating first your dreams then your body and finally your poetry ranking it on the same wall with ivory and antlers and eagle’s tail feathers yet never extinguishing that tiny sun beneath your blanket. One day you found a living poet. He asked wanna marry me? ...want to... ...wanna? He smoothed his roughness into the shape of your softness, Changed the bulb on your flashlight, Stole ancient enigmas and threaded them into your desires, and then started knitting the cobweb filigree of your forgotten colors into the texture of your eluding skin’s agony, never rivaling your heroes, never willing to, lending you his paper words to light your fragrant candles as he kept rolling the red ribbon around kissing elbows, then kissing wrists, and finally, before the dust of his thoughts settled in the glowing after-storm, around the grappling clench of kissing fingers.

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Time Prison Locked behind the hours, The impregnable prison continuously sprouting sparkling new all around me with the nerve wrenching chemical tick-tock in my brain counting its unending rebirth and decay and both. The greatest philosophical conundrum and physical mystery since the days the sun was still rolling around a flat earth now my slow enemy, my passing away friend, my indifferent acquaintance. I tried so many clocks... and watches and hourglasses, no way out, tried even the most repugnant form of bribery... ...no, thank you, keep your hours... No one can prevent me from cheating, though, when I go to sleep and time has no choice but to dissolve into the incoherent realm of dreams where I am master, king, a monarch absolute and my mace shatters clocks and watches and hourglasses and out of the artificial fountain of vibrating springs and balanced wheels and individually painted grains of sand the myth awakens, stretches yawning hungrily for life, and finally shudders into incomparable beauty, You. * I hereby decree the obsolescence of midnights and Cinderella never loses her glass slipper again, By royal ruling and seal the years will turn to eye blinks and Sleeping Beauty never falls to sleep before her prince kisses her back to life, All of growth pains are hereby and heretofore abolished and the Ugly Duckling is born straight into a majestic swan... (please forgive my unprofessional wording, I’ve never been a monarch before...) “Wait a moment, lover, wait a moment.” She rolls around facing me with one single visible eye, and pulls a clump of hair off my chest. “Ouch... why did you do that?” She moves her head a bit, so now I can see both her eyes. She moves her hand as well, elsewhere. “You are killing the most beautiful stories, fantasies, you leave a monotonous bland trail of flat bald vapid uniformity.” “But I take out the pain, the wait, the pain in waiting.” “You take out the magic.” “But there is so much pain in the magic...” “But but but my butt, you take out the magic,” she repeats stubbornly, taking up her preferred position of sitting cross legged on my chest, knowing I’d rather smother than give up that scenery of enticing flesh hanging threateningly above me. I say a lot of things but all she can hear is the iiiii... of my lungs working hard on pulling some air in. “iiiii...” I try again, and she listens attentively before continuing. “You speak funny today. Something wrong with my breakfast?” Yeah, you being a smartass. Luckily you had only two eggs and one bread roll. One more of each and you would have crashed right through my rib cage. Not that I give up on your nipples, mind you. “iiiii...” well, I give up, on the breathing not on the nipples. She slides next to me, on my other side now, allowing one of my hands to continue its exploration. Her hand does the same, however completely asymmetrically to mine. “Please,” she whispers and I do not hear, I have to imagine, “please bring back the magic.” “Even if there is so much pain in it?” “Is there love in it?” I start calling back in all my earlier decrees, I know not how to phrase it correctly so I won’t detail. But Cinderella can take all the risks she may ever want of breaking her neck with her glass galoshes, and Sleeping Beauty can pierce not only her finger but also her navel and her tongue and her nose and hang rings everywhere, and the Ugly Duckling can keep ducking duck hunters until that long neck finally stretches out from between its shoulders if it ever does. “Lover,” she asks, a bit alarmed, “are you being vindictive?” “No, I am not, not to my subjects,” and I wasn’t. I was just trying to be a modern democratic monarch, whatever it means. “Well, then don’t be!” So I wasn’t. Modern. I was in love. Cinderella would still lose her shoe each time someone would read her story, and Sleeping Beauty would prick just one finger and wait hundreds of years for her prince’s lips, and the Ugly Duckling... I hesitate... she props herself on one elbow, her breasts defying Newton and pointing my way, her look diffident and worried, “...and the Ugly Duckling, what about the Ugly Duckling?” I hesitate, thinking, does the poor thing really have to suffer so much? “There is beauty at the end of the road,” she whispers in my ear, audibly this time, so I decide to leave even the Ugly Duckling the way it always was. Ugly. “Thank you. Now you can make love to me,” she decrees, and I give up my kingdom for her kiss. * Hours away. Funny counting prison bars in hours, Knowing of that one singular moment they will disintegrate out of no wish of my own but out of that undefined flow of now to then to thereafter when eyes clash and chests clash and lips clash once more and for uncounted time slices time ceases and there is no conundrum and no mystery but simply... being. And the enemy turns suddenly fast, and the friend turns enemy and the sun rolls like a mad gone carousel around and around... I hardly have the time to say I love you when the world shatters anew and I sink to the bottom of the springs and wheels and painted grains of sand fountain, and scraps of metal and stone scratch my eyelids and lips before burying me under their ever growing layers. I don’t die, no, I can’t, as you left with me the most precious of your possessions, your poetry, and I lie down there protected from worldly disasters and cosmic debacles reading your warmth and waiting for the prison bars to open once more.

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Pearl Drops ...telling me about Fraggles and Muppets and Pufnstuf and Gonzo and Wonder Woman and the little boy whose nose she bloodied and her Jewish girl friend whose mom spat all the time and goats and Red and Mokey and poetry and Pigs in Space and Longfellow... I hated to interrupt her. I didn’t. The child in her exploding to life as she kept pouring broken scenes into my delighting knowledge bank while forgetting even to sneeze... Hey, I missed my sneeze... giggle, and the tireless tirade picking up at the very same letter she paused at, sneeze and yawn foregone... She slid with absolutely no fear into the snake pit of religion wars coming out unscathed and deliriously happy to have said her word, Then I find myself seated through a complete lecture (slides excluded) about the Cuban revolution before during and after Castro’s birthday And in the time still left (about the rest of my life) she dissects Russia, Mexican corruption, ten ways to commit a murder and not get caught, Chinese tourism, the asshole ex who phoned her yesterday afternoon and almost forced her to put theory into practice, English bland food, circumcision, beautiful southern Italy and its friendly pickpockets... I am dying for a pee, almost dripping, but I wouldn’t tell her for the world till it is her turn to die for a pee and the I love you... I love you... giggle giggle, is the most beautiful poem I’ll ever hear before the final click sends me basking in that tender all encompassing warmth she unselfishly clothed my mind with. What would I give for adding vision to sound and touch to vision, You ask? Let’s see, how many days do You want in return? Or months? Or years? No, I won’t bargain, it’s a promise given. One does not bargain his dreams. lips of wine divine...

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Triplicates, One And slash that tether, rope and chain Braid long, red ribbons to my mane Then kiss my forehead’s silver stain. In neighing dust I’ll ram the sky And while beyond the sun we fly I’ll bring you chunks of sunset pie. Just pour my way your burning coal To feed my heart’s eternal foal And your’s my muscle, hoof and soul.

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Before Triplicates Conquer The World, Two It matters not, as said I have, that autumn dies, Lone be the winter’s crispy nights beneath a blanket’s itching skies Lest skin infused with lilac’s scent beneath my twitching fingers lies... It matters not each time I range my shoes with night, Evading raw delirium forgets the count’s ignoble plight Just long as takes to touch your breast and soak tomorrow’s raging might... Enchasing teeth inside my flesh do make me roar, Although I’ve seen parading lust it merely draws my yawning bore, Now day I’ve reached, what days I’ve left, to take your hand and simply... soar.

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Triplicates, Three Upon my palm a strand of reddish hair Incises grooves inside that future lair Of wanting breasts asleep in waning flare. Persistent scents of apple’s early bloom Incrust my mind with glimpses of that room Where flickers tell of summer’s bride and groom. My fingers close, impatient is my wait Inside your red the curling strand to plait And lions wild to drag beyond your gate.

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Paths Between Don’t drop a pin’s head In my brain Now. Or it will shatter into billion shapeless fragments of crystallized matter Cracking my skull And polluting the street and the world. Frozen Into the absolute zero of apprehension and fright Known also as expectation Chemistry and neurons and glia rigid in an immobility of wait Wait For That One First Moment With you. Look at me, cannot even write anymore, So far from my style and shape and word... Is it the way it happened, so long ago, far beyond our imagination’s ridiculous horizons? That ball of matter, if matter it can be called, God, Content in an absolute smoothness, absolute density, absolute nothingness of thought, sense, existence, till... A sudden invasion of vision, A spasm of self conscience which lighted the spark, Mighty He Lost in His blessed or cursed eternity Suddenly apprehending from the corner of His inexistent eye that... shape was it?... He didn’t yet invent shape. He had to. And then He exploded And the big bang Was And incandescent dust called suns drifted away creating space And chilling particles coalesced into rotating hells called worlds And in His one-way vision street He orchestrated the evolving upheavals, and cataclysms, and creation, and breath, Till uncounted eons later He finally sat contentedly back Bewondering the apex of His creation... A flaming hair, a molten eye, a transparent skin, Beauty, You. Digressing, ain’t I, Once vestiges of sanity painfully escape my unyielding shell? Don’t touch me Once you see me. Don’t touch me. Just let your palms come within a hair’s breadth to mine, Your lips within breath’s distance Your body... within my olfactory raging need And let me bask in the radiating warmth enveloping, invading, thawing me. Then you can give me your hell, I want to know it when I die. I love you.

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Cabbage in collection: smiles I started counting them again. The freckles, of course. Failing. Of course. But not even enjoying a feel of déjà-vu, which bothered me. Strange, I told myself, Conspiracy, I told myself, I have to investigate, I told myself, Frightening images of cabbage and invaders and cat people (well, leopards are some kind of cats, aren’t they?) invading my thought processes. “Leopards... hmmm... I kind of like the idea...” She smiled, claws ripping through the bed linen before redecorating my skin in a similar way, Then she stretched languorously to twice her length (ok, fine, I exaggerate a bit, but she did bite me, ok?) and purred her way into my ribs and beyond. She offered me another portion of skin to check, Asking me if I recognized this one before going into my silly count, And... I did not. No, I did not panic yet either, After all (I pinched myself, one never knows) this was reality and there certainly was some logical explanation to it all, relativity theory, and quantum mechanics, and... She kissed me. Oh God, thank you, I thought once I recovered my thought processes a few hours later, It is her... And cabbage and invaders and cat people started sliding off my mind as her tail smoothly started tickling my lower back. Tail?... something seemed to try to scream its way into my head before gates opened and I fell through into that bliss where screams are poetry and tails... well, leopards do have tails, don’t they?... I logically explained it to myself.

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Gateway I hate it, She said. No one ever touched this portion of skin, She said. Then she guided my hand, I touched it. Because you love me, She said. You know, I said, daring a second time on my own. Then I started picking bouquets of memories none other will ever have.

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Measures How do you measure love? I asked me, curious. By beauty, I answered, knowing. How do you measure beauty? I asked further, trying to find logic in all, inclusive beauty. By poetry, I answered, not feeling uneasy but the same earlier curiosity one notch higher now wondering where all of this was leading to. And poetry, how do you measure poetry, what is the measure to poetry if at all? By her, the answer came easily, so surprised I was not surprised neither by the question nor by the answer. Was there, after all, a measure to all? By her? I asked, surprised. By her, I answered, not surprised at all. And how do you measure her, the inevitable question, the toughest, most unanswerable question of all times, not even a question but a riddle so rich in timeless mystery and immeasurable philosophical depths. And her, how do you measure her? I asked me. Oh, poor naïve you, I thought to myself, before smiling to me and answering in the absolute confidence of knowing, By quiet. For a moment I was lost, clawing inadequately at the splitting hairs of logic and the accuracy of mathematical theories before, slowly, joining into my smile. Never thought of it, I thought, true, you know it, By quiet. Because when she is quiet I know. And there is no question beyond this absolute knowledge. I love you, I said. No, I did not say it to me...

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Raging Impotence I’ve been through it, lived it, can spell it forwards and backwards in any language any color That raging impotence of seeing pain wrapped inside so much love and all you can do is sit on the sidelines and... wait. Moving, if moving is possible, feeling like an empty tin pot filled with broken glass and with every step and every breath the sound of crunching glass and the feel of cutting glass sending you into hells virginal in their untouched power and terror. Watching you, the worry in your mind the ache in your flesh, and craving to touch you and wrench it all away and let it mingle with my glass and my terrors and crunching noise while your own tin pot seethes and bubbles and overflows with all of sun’s sprouting seeds you seeded in my heart. And contentment settles in your heart. And quiet. That raging impotence of wish, oh, the raging torture of it, and the love.

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Imagine, Two Imagine an ocean emptied. Imagine me standing on the deserted beach and pouring glassfuls of water into it running back and forth to the faucet gasping, trying to fill it up to its brim. Imagine the ocean the size of my love. Imagine the glassfuls the words to tell it.

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Beauty Sinking into it, The ocean parting on all sides of me Water soaking me into its smothering smoothness and bewitching life in trillions of colors parading restless wonders inside my eyes. The only way to describe your beauty is close my eyes and refrain from describing it. Anything else... is blasphemy. I tried. I burned.

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Loneliness Loneliness. A TV on mute, A clock rushing towards midnight, A phone fishing back into memory banks for a voice, the voice, A rumpled bed holding traces of my single body rolling inside sheets empty with you, your warmth, your sweat, your smell... Tears of happiness, swelling behind the damn dam in wait for a click of a lock a rush of jeans aspiring to fade and fame and famine soaking you into my body after soaking you into my arms out of your jeans and flops and the upside down promise of jewelry, In wait... None other but you, Will understand. Will know. Loneliness. The moment before life And eternity. I love you.

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Hell, In White “Where are we?” I asked her guiding her into hell, again. “This is hell,” she answered as if she didn’t know I knew. I was mapless, torchless, clueless. I looked around in wonder at the large corridors, bright lights, sharp smells, ticking monitors... “I didn’t know hell is white.” “Hell comes in many colors,” she answered. “This one is white,” and she dragged me on. I was supposed to be the guide. “I am supposed to be the guide,” I sent her a note, afraid to talk, “yet I am mapless, torchless, clueless...” “I know,” she answered, “I have the map, the torch, the clues, you have that which I don’t.” “And what is this?” I dared wonder aloud, the echoing sounds impressive, frightening. “Please...” she stopped and looked pleadingly in my eyes, so unusual of her, “Please... hold my hand.” I tightened my grip on her warm palm. When I die they will have to cut my arm and leave it behind, They will never be able to break that hold.

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Moments, Nine You are not coming. Your lips Tight like a fist about to strike Is this going to be my last memory of you? My sobs Soon to be chopped by an implacable master timer Into voice-box pieces sized so and so many seconds Is this going to be your last memory of me? Our memory of us What is our memory of us going to be? I sit at the desk Covered over the head with a blanket A canopy Do you remember the canopy on that wooden bench Once ago? Shivering The blanket unable to cut the cold Blankets cannot cut the inner cold Do you remember us hugging and shivering under the blanket Leaning against the car and alligators all around us? My fingers all knots and rusted joints Unable to paint Do you remember when you stretched your jacket Taking me in with my dreams and tears and wishes Cutting all cold away And the cacti flowering late at night? A knock on the door. You came. And our memories of us are Sun Beauty Tenderness Tenderness Tenderness. You love me.

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With You Your body the perfect shape Your skin pink Your curves soft as I outline them with my finger upon the bed sheet. Your body perfect, still the same body. Your skin blue Your curves frozen in that unbearable wait For my finger to return and outline them upon the bed sheet. The bed empty. The woman Hiding colors inside her skin Telling stories of life or none. Thank you for calling me life And wishing me there. Your beauty eternal. My love you know. Pieces of me never leave your skin Your mind Your loneliness is never.

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So Easy So Easy To imagine A world without you, love. One color, black. One word, sorrow. Cold. Dead. So Easy To find the brush Painting the sky in pinks And the summer in red ribbons. You. Us. So Easy To love you, love. All I have to do is Listen to the music. Your voice. Please. Sing.

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Love, Through The Windshield Distance, Stretching my fingers gets me at most to the windshield, I need an ocean. I pull my fingers back Having tested the impossible And finding it real, Trying words now. Distance, Your body sheathed in the memory of my last embrace Sends flowers my way Wilting half way through And as they soak into my space Through the long crack in the tempered glass They cover my fingertips with sensations of you. Distance, The wipers smear the crumbling petals and knit the breaking stems Into circular scratch patterns Telling me of sublime curves Awaiting for the windshield to break And for fingers to ruffle their immaculate perfection.

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Best I sit down again Promising myself again to write the best poem ever From me to you, From anybody to anybody, Ever... Of course I fail. No, not because I cannot, of course I can. But rather because it can’t be written by anyone, Not even by me even though I can. Maybe wrote it already. No, and no again, this is not some silly paradox, This is reality. Because of who’s to decide - You, I, others whoever others might be? And how? Does best mean long, short, rhyme, abstract, soft, hard?... Does best mean beauty, pain, happiness, irony, dream?... Does ever mean a hundred years from now, Two hundred years from now, Or as long as someone remembers me? I get up from the chair Pacing the room inside the discolored worn out carpet groove, Sometimes missing my step and stumbling, Thinking. My mind returning like a well trained horse or dog or cat To that one word in the crowd I am certain to know beyond others Having met when others looked the wrong way And been touched like no other... Beauty. You. Synonyms. Sitting down again. Yes, again sitting down again, One day it will never stop... ha, perfect English mind you.

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Coming Day I dream of coming day When you do whisper... stay! And as I cup your warring flesh And grunts with sighs with songs enmesh We crush the blooming ley. The seed inside your eyes My kingdom’s swift demise When weeds inhale the tiger’s roar And thistles bursting through the door Behold your eyelid’s rise. Do lead me to your field Against a breast to yield My battle weary hand, then horse, Then courage, fear, my dumb remorse, The rose beneath my shield. I know of coming day When red assails your grey And green above your sinking blue And storms inside your boiling dew Will turn my winters... May. * Beneath a linden tree The morning’s kissing spree Despoils a sun of drooping flames Invoking gods to call us names Like I, like you, like we.

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Parting, Three Your skin Hanging on to the tips of my fingers Like a puppy Suckling life with tiny teeth and a hungry tongue, I pulled my fingers away Gently, tried to... Oh, the terrible squeal As the tiny mouths tried to claw their hold into the ends of flesh Wrenching away from you one after the other, Hanging limp at my sides and dripping red on the pavement. The skin of your mouth So wrongly called lips Sewn with inch thick thread to the skin of my mouth So wrongly called lips, Whose flesh was the first to rip When forces alien to us pulled us apart, The thread uncoiling on the already glistening pavement As pieces of torn flesh splashed noisily into the sticky, Coagulating puddles, Marking the ever increasing distance Of fingertips And skin. I heard the scream, did you hear it When all the two of us pulled at chains, At nails, At chariots dragging us away? Long time after, Seconds, Eternity, I slump sobbing in a hostile chair Dipping the tattered ends of my fingers in my eyes And waiting for brine induced numbness to take over, In vain. The world died. Pain Writhing like an excoriated snake inside my body The only sign of life on a dead planet. I sink into daylight’s grim sanity Thankfully drowning, Waiting inside a world of suspended motion For the monster called life to knock down my walls again And let those hungry puppy mouths of your skin Clamp once more around the deeply scarred nipples Of the ends of my fingers.

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Sleeping Beauty Afraid to touch lest I break the thin skin and the fay illusion framed by the bed sheet’s canvas will break into its component parts... oxygen, and heartbeats, and countless toes. And the adze having carved perfection is unaccounted for. I lie to me, telling me I am near sighted, an unnecessary excuse to near my face to the paleness of skin careful to avert my breath as I exhale passion yet careless to inhale the fullness of a freshly cut bouquet of flowers I forgot to name letting skin flakes settle inside the humid tissue of nostrils and mouth and throat and my body swells with the arrogance of knowing you were created for me. Barely visible, the texture of birthing stretch marks flows from belly, along hips, down thighs, immortal white vines telling stories of life and inebriation and pain and renewal, my eyes shyly avert their regard only to allow lips take over and trace the vineyard to its roots. You stir. I pull back, alarmed, afraid the illusion will open wings and fly. But you just moan softly through half parted lips and sink back into that warm mattress indentation jealously absorbing the right side of your body. Your left breast hangs across your chest, a sleepy nipple trying to wake up under my insisting gasp, then recognizing the falsity of alarm it yawns itself back to sleep and pert contumacy. * Tears. Mine. I look away. For a moment I hesitate, panting, my mind a confused itinerary out of context and crawling into insanity and four stanzas and no rhyme and I did not even begin to describe the fullness of your sleeping beauty and its impossibility and time lets the smoothness of scythe glide across my neck and cut. I say. I ask. Beg, tell me woman, may I have your lifetime? I look back. I wait. That smile. Creeping straight out of your mouth’s crepuscule, contagious, ebullient, irreverent... I dare... I guess... I may. * The curls, that silken noose around the venues of your begin of shoulder and my descent into delirium, did I tell you already about the maddening frivolity of curls?... * I never stopped telling.

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Tell Me Tell me of moments beyond and above, Ribbons of morning and whispers of love, Tell me of courage then whimpers of pain Watching the sunset beg mercy in vain. Tell me the valley where old rainbows die Colorless graveyards that beauty belie, Tell me of pebbles which once you called stars Seeding your orchards with blossoming scars. Look for my shoulder then look for my hand Dream of the marbles asleep in the sand, Know of the promise I pledged once ago Ever with glitter your footpath to sow. Tell me of songs you have sang in your sleep, Tell me of willows when nightingales weep, Then, when I sprinkle your eyelids with dew Tell me you know that I say... I love you.

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Knowing I... I know. I... So, say it. I... Stop stuttering, what are you waiting for now? I am waiting for you to allow me, And by then, of course, I have forgotten. She didn’t. You miss me. Nothing she ever said sounded as painful as she saying my words. Yes, she knew. I miss you, I finally said Waiting for her to say again that she knew. She did not. Only I was wasting time on the obvious Waiting for her to say the obvious Which she didn’t. We both knew.

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Moments Of Death The large automatic doors swallow me in swallowing you out. I look back, the wrong way, my neck turning about three quarters of a full turn two hundred and seventy degrees if I remember my geometry right and my body wrong, impossible in dreams, possible there, in life, wishing for death wishing to run wishing the inside of your mouth. Alone. The taillights of your car, was it yours?... the wheels of my suitcase, a hard bench where I lie down wishing for the FooFoo raspberry soda bottle to hug at my chest and curl around to sleep learning a bittersweet lesson in tears and burps and carbon dioxide and endless love... Did I see you glance in the rear mirror, maybe to settle a rebelling away curl, maybe to catch a last glimpse of a fading away me as the large automatic doors swallow me in swallowing you out?...

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Impersonation “Before I met you I was nobody.” “And now, now you are everybody?” That slight hesitation between mockery and curiosity. “Now I am anybody,” I answered, “King Kong, Dracula, Peter Pan, Longfellow...” “A very strange mixture,” she contemplated, curiosity gaining for the moment the upper hand. “Are you also anything?” “Anything? You mean anything like a desk, a chair, a scream, a horse?...” “Yes.” “Yes. If you want me to.” “Johnny Depp?” “Do you love Johnny Depp?” “Yes.” “No.” Typical of her, always finding the flaw in my carapace and sticking the needle making me squirm... Not because she did not love me. Because she did. “Did I find a weakness there?” she asked, her fingers still tightly holding on to the hair on my chest. “No,” I answered, “You found a limitation. You found my humanity. If you cut me I bleed.” “Another great poet said it before you.” “Another? This is quite a compliment. I know, other poets said it all before me. None said it to you.” “No,” she corrected me, mercifully moving her hand from my chest to the nape of my neck, “None said it like you.” I went on impersonating anybody and anything of importance, and of less importance, and of no importance. I knew not when I was going to touch her heart, so I kept trying. I knew though that I was cheating myself, finding an excuse for my unending flow of words and tales. Because I did touch her heart eons ago when she was searching for me in the wrong places knowing of me, now I was simply trying to tell her she was right all along. “Romeo, King David, Franklin, Longfellow...” “It is the second time you mention Longfellow,” she queried. “True, I envy him. He was your first love.” “You are my last,” she said, preventing any kind of response with a well placed mouth and a well placed hand. I knew it as well, still, I could not stop myself from telling her our story. Many times. Then more.

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Deathless step on me, I won’t scream though your high heels may punch holes between my ribs, tie me, stretch my limbs to wooden stakes just let my mouth free to smile as your rope cuts wrists and ankles, forget me, let the sun burn my skin and eyes and I will bless the day we met and learnt of you and love. don’t forget, if and once and whenever... I am still here waiting for you. may it be just a skeleton yet touch it and you will see words of love form in the dust and bird flocks gather in praise. and before bones crumble, please, let them caress just once more your skin and sing your eyes. love, my love, is deathless.

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Are yes, you are, yes, I meant it, yes, I mean it. and your fingers are the petals stretching towards the sun with every morning’s singing light... no one hears, I do. and your eyes are the leaves opening from freshly born buds and uncoiling all through summer’s life evoking creation... no one knows, I do. and your breaths are the butterflies falling into rivers to marry the sparkling water in an agony of unassailable magnificence... no one sees, I do. when die I must and die I will, none would have known this beauty to understand why my tombstone is always so rich in freshly colored petals and uncurling moist leaves and butterflies dripping colors from wings in never ceasing motion. if beauty is sickness then you are afflicted with the deadliest of them all. thank you, love, for letting me soak in this path to worlds unknown.

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Of Mind And Perfection And Things Your perfection In my mind Uncontrollable, wild. Mother nature may have been careless at times, stingy at others, Its mindless indifferent cruelty seeding hungry wounds Where alabaster tranquility should have reigned your body. My mind, That absolute despot within its own mighty kingdom, On its knees in front of you With delicate monarchial hands Sewing your cuts And combing your hair And decreeing your purity of beauty the law of the land. Then it ushers my body into that tiny white room Where beeps and clunks and shuffling nurse shoes Are the only music allowed, And we perch on the window sill, Invisible, And agree once more on perfection Waiting for the suns to blink. I accept to be goaded into a duet, Such an insult to your art of singing, But it works. Sleepy muscles underneath your cheeks wake up Pulling at lips void of blood towards corners of eyes And a tired finger lifts above the bed Dragging countless tubes and needles and wires, Wagging its mock menace and endless love towards us. “It hurts when I smile, you calamitous pair,” you chirp feebly, “You should take song lessons Before you try any of this kind of torture...” ... your smile so beautiful... We don’t leave our vantage point on the window sill. We dance a little, cry a little, make a few pirouettes, Then we promise “We will. Yes, we wait for you to teach us.” Yes, settling for perfection. My mind falls asleep, waiting. I follow suit. I wonder, who was it singing us softly to sleep?

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Moods, Three in collection: moods do you know miss you, cousin to death? brother to epileptic forgiveness and forgetfulness and fleering annihilation. when long words crowd your mind and meanings alien drool off dictionaries’ unwritten yet pages cocooning your sanity in a thick miasmatic concoction just clotting layer over layer. and the exotic fumes of a death penalty soak through your gluttonous crave right into your nerve ends and muscle fibers and finger tips till the hands holding the steering wheel undercompensate then sharply overcompensate then erratically start guessing their way from lamppost to lamppost never even wondering when it is they will lose their way. one long blink is all it takes.

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Artist to the one I admire... Drop your modesty clause, artist, Let stage fright be the uncompromising share of skinny ingénues Twice your beauty and tenth your gift in creation As the thin pretence covering their emaciation is ready to rip off and uncover a land of bones illustrious in its meaninglessness. Banish downcast of eye from your land, artist, Leave the paths of grass to the grazing multitudes quoting their university books and their professors and their brains cut to one perfect measure, One single perfect measure, One, While you up your chin and your brains explode in the myriad incoherent manifestations of absolute creativity, beauty, divinity, unseen yet, unsensed yet, Gilding your way paths of glory. Recast your glove for your gauntlet, artist, Not nail but claw, Not the quill but the burning tip of sharpened coal your tool, In a sea of humans moiling to the refinement of artificial silk and encased diamonds Let your fist rise above in furious creation majestically soaking from humanity’s ancestral untamed roots straight into the tempestuousness of your words. Not supplication your share, artist, But roar Cutting water into rocks And light into obscure minds With the razor blade Of your scalding talent.

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Realities No, it is not what I want. What I need, desire, what I crave for. No, it is not. It is what you can. What you wish, What you will, What you won’t. I never outgrew the boy, The one hungering for dreams enveloped in ripe apricots, Sneaking into cellars for a taste of heaven shaped inside drying apples, Getting into bloody nose battles for the sake of self respect or respecting others, Saving ants from underneath the wheels of rolling chariots Willing to give away the last of the basket’s cherries for a cause bigger than my own petty appetite Looking for a love worthy to die for. Today I call it differently. I call it freedom of mind, Freedom of intellect, of decision, Freedom to take up arms for a worthy cause, Freedom to laugh, to deny persecution, Freedom of choice. Freedom to say yes. Freedom to say no. I never outgrew the boy, Ideals, sobs, painful disillusions, sweet discoveries, First love. No, it is not what I want. It is what I can live with and be proud of.

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Genero Your smile before your laughter, Like the silk of kimono yielding its folds to delightful sin to fall off daisy petal shoulders touched by no other fire than the smoking flicker of candle and the pits of my eyes. Your laughter before my life, Like long thin ice needles pulling out of honeycomb’s heart to melt inside a poppy tinted mouth assailed by endless clouds of angry hummingbirds and bleeding in the sanctuary of my lips. My life after, Like embers praying for ashes exploding into a blizzard of scintillating leaves to bury their flame underneath the rose-petals engrafted skin spewing thin aromatic mists escaping the kingdom of blisters into the hunger ridden fields of my lungs.

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Love? Love? Is when I know. After that last hug I know it is not the last Just one more feeling like a terrible last, Like all the others. Before I open my mouth I know the ending words Even though I don’t know the first and the middle, Boringly repetitive in their splendor of I love you. When I wait And I don’t know the where who whom of you I can still close my eyes And in absolute serenity Fall asleep Knowing that the dream awaits me When I wake up. Love? Is nothing but certainty.

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