Wineyards What is this wine made of? you asked for the thirteenth time, your voice slurred, sipping. You count? I count. Was made meadow flowers, monday showers, curling peels of midnight carrots chewed by rainbow feathered parrots, crying willows, soggy pillows soaking grief off dusky garrets. What is this wine made of? you asked for the fifth time, your voice trembling, kissing. You count? I count. Was made lips imploring, tongues exploring, crashing pebbles down the valleys long that linden guarded alley, minted juleps, budding tulips dressing for the grand finale. What was this wine made of? you asked for the first time, your voice panting, sighing. You count? I... what?... sorry, what... oh, count?... my voice slurred, trembling, panting. Is made rhymes enshrining, limbs entwining, hip to hip in anger fusing chest to chest deluge infusing nipples crushing fires gushing scathe through skin and bone diffusing.

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Parading Colors parading in front of my eyes images to come... purple, underlining your eyes with memories once blue... now the red spilling into them up from lips waking to life and from a heart returning from misery’s fields, green, the color of mistakes chaining my will to stone laden baskets crimpled sheets wrapped around each stone broken promises wrapped around each sheet, white, hope’s feathers filling the void between us rolling around us like an oversized down bracelet saving our sanity as solitude turns music and music turns hesitating handhold, feel it? fingers braiding in need muscles knotting...

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Sisyphus, Retold Dragged my bed to the middle of the garden stripping it on the way of sheets, blankets, mattress, all falling behind marking a trail of wet bedlam and havoc and decisions yet to be taken impassively waiting for sanity to return as I plowed two deep furrows in the rain soaked earth and finally let the dragging end fall down with a thump getting rid of my hanging clothes and lying down naked to shiver happily on the wet planks the rain pouring its cleansing needles into my eyes and mouth and chest. I woke up at the itch of dotted red beetles crawling on my fingers and I carefully shook my hand watching them take off passing with a thankful buzz down way from my nose and up into the dripping branches, a bleak sun trying in vain to dry my steaming lump of clothing. I gathered the sheets, blankets, mattress, humid shirt and trousers and shoes, the bed, picked a piece of sun and threw it in watching them smoke then blaze. I did not wait for the black smoke to clear, just stood up and started walking in the new world, unashamed of my nakedness, love, age, one can be born anytime anywhere, I thought, and started climbing the mountain I just fell off days ago. I will find the berry’s to eat and the leaves to dress and the branches to build and the crevices to avoid and the bears and the vultures and the snakes to guide my way. I looked back at the heart dragging behind on steel chains the knife in my hand, hesitating... the steel too strong the flesh too weak... then turned and kept climbing. Soon I will be on my knees, soon on my belly, there is a sun there waiting at the top. It is worth the torment, and the fall.

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The Art Of Gravitation Dragged my bed to the middle of the garden stripping it on the way of sheets, blankets, mattress, all lying back marking a trail of wet bedlam and havoc and decisions yet to be taken impassively waiting for sanity to return as I plowed two deep furrows in the rain soaked earth and finally let the dragging end fall down with a thump getting rid of my hanging clothes and lying down naked to shiver happily on the wet planks the rain pouring its cleansing needles into my eyes and mouth and chest. I woke up at the itch of dotted red beetles crawling on my fingers and I carefully shook my hand watching them take off passing with a thankful buzz down way from my nose and up into the dripping branches, a bleak sun trying in vain to dry my steaming lump of clothing. I gathered the sheets, blankets, mattress, humid shirt and trousers and shoes, the bed, picked a piece of sun and threw it in watching them smoke then blaze. I did not wait for the black smoke to clear, just stood up and started walking in the new world, unashamed of my nakedness, love, age, one can be born anytime anywhere, I thought, and started climbing the mountain I just fell off days ago. I will find the berry’s to eat and the leaves to dress and the branches to build and the crevices to avoid and the bears and the vultures and the snakes to guide my way. I looked back at the heart dragging behind on steel chains the knife in my hand, hesitating... the steel too strong the flesh too weak... then turned and kept climbing. Soon I will be on my knees, soon on my belly, there is a sun there waiting at the top. It is worth the torment, and the fall.

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Rebirthing Eros Open your door, Open your windows, all of them, Undress. All your clothes... yes, them too, of course, remove your earrings, your hair clips, your rings, wipe off your nail polish, lipstick glaze, the mascara leftovers, naked, clean, only skin to your skin and depth to your eyes and beat to your heart and then... float... yes, of course you can, try it, float... float... see?... told you... float till there’s only air to your skin and color to your eyes and serenity to your heart and you are so naked, so beautiful, so soft, ready to be born. Then... close your eyes. Open wide your mouth, wider, open wide your arms open your thighs, wider too, wait, I will wait to hear your wait then I will come to you and you will not know whence and when and how through the window, through the door, through... oh, sorry, forgot to ask, open up your mind as well, please... through your mind I will come to you and you will not know until you will know and I will tell you... touch... and I will tell you touch and you will touch yourself with... my fingers, with my dry lips, with the wet brush of my tongue, with my... touch!... now and wake up that dormant desire and the growling wolves and the pangs of hunger you never knew you owned, touch now and... no... no, don’t scream yet, no, not yet, just touch, wait. And the crust of my thighs scratches your silk and the curls of my chest caress your velvet and the hooks of my palms pitilessly penetrate in between your flesh and your tendons and your bones as your abdominal muscles coil and uncoil and recoil like snakes rolling in the pits of hell until the tip of your tongue touches the tip of my tongue... scream, now you can scream, scream... And after having consumed you, the scream turns breath the breath turns sigh the blue flame turns mist gathers into your eyes... now you can open them... and rolls down into your mouth, you taste it... No, it does not taste like salt, it tastes like... man. I close the windows, I close the door, I part, you hover a few moments longer greedily reaching into the parting sensations, then slowly sink inside your bed the warm blanket of poetry enveloping you and snuggling against you and you fall asleep.

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Search You went all the way to Shangri La to see blossoming blue poppy fields and leaves cupping into goblets of rain and trees dripping liquid apples, You went all the way to Walhalla to taste wine aging inside grapes and thick nectar fed to you by hummingbirds and vanilla flavored cotton candy spilling out of opening buds, I know you went also to Eden, you tried Elysium, Omeyocan, Nirvana, even visited the newly opened pastries shop down from your street and now you have plans for a trip to the garden of the Hesperides. Why all your travel? Because all you have to do is open that closet door in your bedroom and... look in the mirror. Oh, sorry, my mistake, forgot to tell you, undress first.

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Blaze In The Water if you want to drown then let me write you death was... before breathe in my ink live

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Thornbird lark your throat nightingale your hand robin your lip I see you, hear you... them... restless roaming around dissatisfied looking for that thorn a legend promised you and drunken with the moment of discovery you rush ahead into the inviting sharpth ready to crush your breast and give you death inside one moment of glory, torn clothes discarded along the way vocal cords clearing towards the ultimate moment with one audacious move your naked breast thrusts forwards impaling itself upon... the thorn pierces my flesh when your impetus pushes the back of my hand into the deadly tapering end breaking it in between my bones, and your nipple eviscerates my palm when my fingers crush your breast and I give you the dream and I give you life. and the lark and the nightingale and the robin coalesce into that triple trill which tells the world you reached Elysium, sing...

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Criminal You hang on to its arm as it grabs you underneath armpits and drags you up to your feet one of your arms around its shoulders and you feel the muscle supporting you and the promise and you think you see a light and you think you feel a breeze and you think you hear voices, you start limping along in the tunnel’s darkness banging your head against unseen sharp rock edges twisting your ankle inside sudden potholes yet you smile, you trust, you start feeling the warmth you... slide suddenly along the rugged walls of a large pit, deeper still, the hand around your middle slipping away your arm around the powerful shoulders losing the grip and you reach a deeper bottom scratched, battered, crying anew when you realize that the light you saw was inside your eyelids and the breeze was your breath and the voices were the echoes of your own hesitating steps, and hope remains at the top of the pit not laughing at you just indifferent and promising you to find you again and pick you up again to let you fall even deeper still. You are human, all you can do is cry.

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Let Go Hanging by your fingertips to a razor wire gravitation clinging desperately to your ankles like a memory, afraid to fall together with you into abandon unknowing of the depth, unknowing of the lands below... hell, beauty, veldt? Your eyes closed. Open your eyes. Look. There is a world. Let go. And as the hurricane embraces the arrow of your falling body your skirts blow above your head... cut the skirts loose, your hair flutters in a sea of ribbons... unknot the ribbons, nylons tear against stretched toes and silk invades forbidden valleys and lace clutches angrily inflamed summits... rip the nylon and the silk and the lace and fall to your fate blazing through life like a flesh meteor cleaving the hearts wishing to embrace you and the hands aching to hold you and the lips burning to touch you and live to look back and smile. Your desire sated. Your final lair a sea called fire...

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The Woman Beneath a mountain the woman lies twenty wedding gowns her dowry fresh camel milk her bath waiting for a lover’s mouth to melt the ice in her breast and cut the wedding gowns to ribbons and tie to her hair. I cut a hole in the mountain and she beckoned me in. “Come in,” she said. “Come out,” I said showing her the shears, my lips, and an empty poetry book.

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Sea Maiden You left your warm coral bed asking to become woman. Shells your nails, and seaweed your hair and pearls your teeth. And my eyes? you did not ask, I did not yet give you a mouth. And white sand your skin and white pebbles your breasts and white sponge your belly. You did not ask again, just waited. And dolphin’s calls your mouth. And my eyes? you asked, I gave you a mouth. And your eyes rays of sun breaking inside the foam of waves. You blinked. I combed your hair braiding into it anemones and sunflowers. Then you left me.

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Lover's I touched the skin on your back with the back of my hand. Your flesh turned rough your kiss wild, you guided my hand all the way into hell and out my body following. I bathed you in jasmine’s essence and dried you with my regards. Then you rolled out of my bed and never returned.

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Nightingale Winter Your beak clamped inside a fist of frozen tears, The chill of parting lover dragging early winter into your life. Let me cuddle it inside my mouth and whisper back into it the stories of fairies and gentle dragons chased out of your dreams, And as the ice thaws to salt your silence opens into trill blanketing my lungs with exploding carnations.

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Bridge I saw it wobbling, the bridge taking you from yesterday to tomorrow today forgotten in its puny misery and insignificance, so many the columns supporting it... what can I be but one, maybe... I could smell the rust eating into the shine of the nickel, the moss gaining over the once nicely hanging flower pots the foot of rock... crumbling, so familiar the smells from my own once home sweet home... I grated my teeth, shove my shoulders under a corner, heaved... no, nothing else on my mind but the brainless responsibility of a sturdy pillar knowing of no other duty than save the path, save the flower pots, save the nests of tomorrow’s nightingales nestling in between the flowers.

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Rider In The Sky Glean the world inside your laughter From this now and ever after And while forest’s rambling singers Pick the grapes between your fingers Let your tongue with mine entangle As those tears your eyelids spangle. Munch the pears to drooling nectar Calming sorrow’s stubborn specter Then while feeding me the syrup Hook your foot into the stirrup To cut lanes through wheat and flower Watching dreams my mind devour. Let me gaze the clouds each morning Time you streak with little warning Waiting for your mane to flutter Right through sun’s explosive stutter Till my lips ungroomed and ashen Catch your crumbs of lurid passion.

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Insurrection How does one hear the songs unsung, the beauty untold? One does not. Lost. I saw it lying on its side, close to the tall building’s wall, its wing broken its feather stained with caked mud and blood, a bird. Cars and dogs and children rushing by unhearing the thousands of words unwritten. Hey, what are you doing? I shouted from far away seeing it drag itself towards the wall and starting to climb clumsily, its small claws hanging precariously to every bit of asperity to every speck of petrified dust. You will fall to your death, I shouted again seeing it losing its grip half way up, hanging pendulum wise on one foot then doggedly catching its grip again along the waterspout reaching the roof crawling underneath the gutter perching on the gutter’s edge with one wing flapping uselessly like a canvas corner ripped off the easel... Don’t... I called one last time, knowing birds don’t speak human, trying to bridge the species gap in that one desperate call. I know it did not say it when it said it is to fly or to die and let go of its hold falling towards the asphalt like a rolling pebble. No... I almost heard myself scream when suddenly I heard a thunderous clap the wing locking back in place a shriek of pain... and the little shape graciously soared back skywards above the indifferent rumbling cars and barking dogs and laughing children the lark emerging from the mud the shriek turning melody my regard following it till it reached the sun and fell into it. My eyes teared with the intensity of the glare, and of the music.

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Vinyl Undress, naked, not like the day you were born but like now, your breasts full your hips round your legs smoothly shaved, the smell of woman evading your discarded clothing and your sunken desires and enveloping a skin turned sandpaper by the morning chill, Slam on the records player the best of black vinyl tangos you have, no, not a CD, black warm crackling vinyl then imagine me in your arms hug me so tight that the salt squeezes out of the sweat and pieces of coal between our chests would turn diamonds... worry not, no one ever got pregnant from raving imagination... and then start dancing. No, don’t stop until the soles of your feet start to bleed and the needle has cut through the vinyl shaping it after your smile.

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Caretaker Beautiful on that high pedestal the adulating mob worshipping your whiteness your forms those words hiding inside the marble unseen till seen, Beautiful, Lonely. I wonder if they hear those grains of the desert you so love filling in the liquid chambers of your heart the sparking creases of your brain your iris... so deep, white. The night comes, the mob leaves the museum doors close and the only memory of their visit are mud traces on the floor a few lost chewing gum wraps some notes in the guests book, echoes... dying. I pick up my mop, my bucket, my broom, and walk the halls cleaning, polishing, alone with works of art and works of heart and life frozen inside eternity. I stop at your feet gazing up, trying to catch that eye seeing all yet not seeing me, I take the ladder and climb up stopping right in front of you no one knows not even you. The marble... cold under my lips melting, quivering when I bite into it, slobber all over it my hand reaching for the heart, for the sand, a stain of pink waking up on a stain of white as your marble nipple turns glowing coal and your breast screams in lust preventing me from reaching your heart marble loins part and I invade your body with flesh wants and pouring life. I descend, crying. looking up as soft flesh turns marble once more, tears lost in the murky depths of my bucket Beauty untouchable as ever ready for next day’s adulating eyes and adoring din. No one knows the caretaker’s secret and marble’s sin.

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Alien the woman, so lonely in her prideful pain in her prideless need sobbing her nights into the volcano’s gaping mouth and watching streaking tears explode into her much beloved doves I touched her shoulder with fingertips attached to the nerve ends of my words, she thanked me leaving pieces of her skin under my fingernails oblivious to the moment I ripped my way down her shoulder blade and waist I tiptoed away respectful of her memories and hopes and dreams and doves allowing swarming sparks chase me way beyond the volcano’s mouth with she not knowing the woman, stubbornly trying to extinguish the volcano’s thirst with her eyes while the alien observer I sends her flowers and admiration

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The Poet In Me It is probably the poet in me. I blink, then forget to unblink for many moments lingering in that fairies land called Whatifs. Happiness is an oasis surrounded by ever rolling dunes in melancholic yellow. Then, the moment gone, I finally unblink and turn my head towards the palm trees and the ripe figs and the bubbling brook with its clear waters chilling my skin and burning my throat.

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your Poetry the warmth in the softness of soot carrying the memory of the fire creating it there, in the explosive furnaces feeding your mind and hand. i let my finger cross the page top left to bottom right, the black smear tracing my finger’s tip grabbing those of your ink splinters so delicately embedded in your art and painting it black, and red, and heroic smiles in pain. i look at my stretch of skin which touched divinity of inspiration and let the color sink and light my marrow. don’t wonder why i glow nights.

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? Allow me your fantasies. Don’t let your mouth hang open too long reading lines in wonder of dreaming and daring, I fear that your innocent indecency may be mistaken for an invitation for wine to visit your palate and breeze to penetrate between exploding buttons and fingers to test the dangers of the adventurous borderline between silk and skin. Mistaken?

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in between questions arms encircling me did you mean around my chest or around my waist or... lower? did you envisage my fingers sinking into that dense forest growing above the nape of your neck uprooting silk fibers to bind around wrists and down ears and above dancing ankles to catch the wind with ribbons and kites and headless stems? did you feel the fire engulfing the ends of bones and the deserts of skin and burning out of way those absolutely ridiculous props of civilization called clothes? when your mouth opened did you mean abandon?

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the Room there’s a room, don’t look for it, you won’t find it though you know it as you know your insides as i know your insides. you are there already your mouth wide open gasping for air gasping for love gasping for flesh to fill the emptiness of that ravenous cavity cursed with virginal white of teeth and virginal red of tongue and virginal appetite for liquid coal pouring down your throat. to satiate your nights, thus liberating your fingers for that divine dive into my caverns at risk of beheading. that’s about my ravenous cavity, what about my marvelous cavity? you write, your mouth too busy gulping life. and your marvelous cavity unravels itself under the magic of deft fingers... mine or yours?... at psalms of revelation... mine or yours?... beneath shivering fingertips... mine, oh, mine... and as it gazes down brazenly at adulating invader eyes it slowly descends to meet its worshipers facing immediate annihilation preferring all terrors of peril to one desert of ignorance. the moment the touch the bones’ cutting blaze death and you feed me your milk as my lips open up your poetry book and my treacherous tongue leaves me behind splashing drunkenly inside your intimate orchards and exploding barrels of wine.

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Signing Session of course I queued up, patiently. I lie, of course, but I do not want to sound short breathed, or short tempered or short toleranced or short indulgenced or impatient. or short Englished. which of course, I am. all of these. of course they queued up, didn’t expect anything else, actually I just sat in a corner watching them wait for your scribble to loop and wiggle and twist. I was delighted. of course. you even smiled my way, of course, it might have been to the wall behind me. there are of course some more of course’s. of course I brought the book with me, of course, why else did I come? of course, why else did I come I know and no one else, well, maybe one else. of course I brought also my body with me else how would the book have arrived on its own? postal services? hey, I don’t need wise guys in this poem be they even gals. where will you sign it? bottom of the first page, bottom of my belly, bottom of my mouth? yes. what will you sign it with? your golden capped pen before it melts in your hold, your five fingers groping for flesh on its way to boiling agony, your stampeding teeth leaving bleeding potholes all over my lower lip? yes. yes is not an answer. yes is all the answers. I gave up, I had no choice. I queued up patiently (ha), my turn arrived, you looked up at me I asked you answered, you smiled once more and this time certainly at me... of course I had a choice but why not give up when it is so convenient to give up and so promising and writing poems becomes such hard labor with muscles trembling into anticipative disintegration. I decided to wait for yes, wondering at the brevity of perfection. of course perfection. you vanished. * the clash it sounded like hail it looked like dust it gathered light from the corners of earth materializing into fluttering skirts baring slim, barely materialized ankles mounting towards muscled, transparent still yet promising already thighs joining at the crossroads of existence evolving into body swelling into hips and breasts and dark nipples and curving lips pouring sparkle into eyes and nails into fingertips and a sigh escaping from barely formed tongue and throat and lungs... a whisper... was it a whisper?... as you inhaled divinity and the skirts deserted your newly ascending flesh, invisible strings attached to thousands of your body’s anchors snapping one by one letting a hand drop, then a leg, then another leg and finally all of you dropped on all of me as I lay in deceitfully innocent wait above the pile of itching hay and the creator of you released the creator you upon my world your flailing tentacles pulling me out of earthly attire to squeeze the sharp ends of straw into my punctured spine and the blunt ends of palms around my desiring craves and the red of mouth into red of mouth and wretched tongue pieces. who penetrated whose corporeal lair? who sucked whose life through node-less straws bridging eviscerated lips to dripping bodily fountains and bursting skin sores to bursting skin sores burning like the floors of hell on inauguration day? you sang, the trickle from your lip to mine as thin as the end of day the hay smelling of lilac and of no more innocent you. you never smiled before like you smiled after. * departure the desert flows into the sea the mountains flow into the desert hordes of white butterflies desert the north pole to invade the desert... new world? you ask before i turn my back for the last time. new world, i answer, my finger touching fleetingly the ink stains at the bottom of the first page, the blue stains surrounding the lust at the bottom of your belly, the blood stains drying on your lacerated bottom lip. blood, lust, ink, i add. life, you say but i don’t hear you anymore as the huge engine swallows the whole of me.

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Tips under attack, are you naked already or shall i undress you if undressing is pulling open the two halves of shirt and the three halves of camisole disregarding the explosion of buttons and that one sleeve ending away from the rest of your body at the cost of silk, dragging skirt and intimate satin and hosiery down to toes or is it toes up to waist line or irrelevant as elastic bands and zippers and seams simply give in screeching, was there a brassiere?... never paid attention it is nowhere now as my tools of torture invade your premises and crevices and apices and you squeal and thresh and whiplash under the onslaught of those terrible tips of trade beginning with the one ending my tongue and painting blisters around your nipples through the many ending my many fingers plowing ruts inside your flesh and ending with the deep throated one delimiting that fat, stiffening worm assiduously spitting white stains of fire down your guts way and up your guts way and any which way turns your moans celestial euphony.

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Images you send me images, snapshots, soul fragments inside a soul’s blossoming graveyard treading on the coarse gravel of memories and a swiveling neck’s worn out paths and pleats, hiding old love letters inside splitting folds. so real the love gone, so real the loneliness stretching. the floating lady and the waving lady and the reflecting lady and the half chewed flower. and the bud. unopened. sealed. no, these are not yet the words. you will know of efflorescence once the thorn ripens and your skin rips and your blood drips and your lips... oh, those lips once they sift through my nips.

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Freedom You pressed between your own pages, the steamroller of years passing above your covers... how many times? pieces of you sticking to the lead of printed words seeping through into other stories and others’ stories and lives, your legs bound your wings clipped your fingers blunted your mouth... where did your mouth wander looking for its lost sighs of once and of upon a time? Did you try to pull away from the insistent glue and the yellowed corners and the smell of shelves and the fine layer of dust unmarked by fingertips? Matters not your cough, this is just your voice getting ready for the song, matters not your creaking joints, when was the last time you stretched your bones in readiness for the dance? matters not those red spots, the inset of blossoming blush foreboding skin ironed by skin... finally... you smile? as you tear your crumpled figure from between the pages and your breasts swell into flesh and your hips round into offer and your clothes rest behind telling all of freedom finally found.

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The Door Between She looked up from the past, intrigued. Do you believe in magic? she asked. No, I answered. And yet you believe you can do it, she said laying the faded picture on the table. I know, I answered, I believe in words, I answered. The sepia partially peeling the white of the underlying cardboard visible through the cracks the bud closed asleep inside the photographer’s eternal click of adulation. I know, I answered. * Where are we? someone asked. I undid your shoes, removed them, ascertained there are no toes left inside then dropped them into the floor listening to the gulp of satisfaction as the tiles opened swallowing shoes and no-toes followed by the next floor’s sigh of delectation then the next... How many floors this building? I asked. These are clouds, you answered. I pulled down your stockings, glimpses of pale flesh lining thigh bones there, so close to life, invaded my vision before you modestly pulled the skirt back to your knees, hesitating, watching my face sink into the rustling nylon to inhale skin’s pellicle and drops of sweat and the perfumes of intimate you, later allowing stockings to follow the shoes’ way, the floor shivering in exultation of feast and engorged delicacies. Bare footed, your skirt forgotten half thigh up blatantly infringing upon my sense of propriety not that any was left in the wake of that first glimpse, bare ankled, your skirt inching even higher as you reached for the bulb... the sun, you objected... watching incandescence glide down your arms and into your sleeves, bare toed, your skirt flirting with a beguiling floor intent on swallowing the rest of the wear and underwear and fleshwear and bonewear and marrowear... you. Growls inside the desperado Watching desert’s rhyme tornado Braid long petals to your lashes And the snippet blazing ashes Grazing down your blushing cheek’s         glowing gashes. Where are we? someone asked. Thousands of books your walls bulging outwards with the weight of top shelves, poetry, all generations from the ancients of Homerus, of Ovidus, of Nossis and Myro and Antye and Ossian... through the classics of Omar, and Bill, and that Rabi from India, and Bob and Liz, and then the other Bob... and finally to the forest of moderns like E.E., like Maya, like Freddy... no no, not fingernails Freddy, the Lorca one... and Pablo called Pavel in Russia and Paolo in Italy and Paul in all the states except for Miami, and of course Charlie and the billions of others, I wonder if all are there... hey, they are, I see my name... brand new, hmmm... never opened it, did you? Oh, I should have mentioned Emily too, no? I start pulling out books open at a random page and lay down on the floor... cloud!... you insist, face up, a mix of them all ancients and classics and moderns and me the mass and the expensive and the unique and the autographed then reach into my pocket to pull out thousands of candles and light them between the books burning letters reflecting inside your eyes and on the moisture of your lips as the tip of your tongue sneaks out, ravenous... I point to a word - dance! it says... says?... and you skip onto Myro, then from Myro on to Maya, then from Maya to Ovidus and from Ovidus to Bill and from Bill to Bob and every toe you touch to Nossis drops a golden coin and every heel you touch to Omar crushes a grape and every passing shadow over Homerus releases a dove never ever touching a candle as the floor... cloud!... fills with feathers and beetles and marbles and swirling dust and decaying sunsets and you are about to fall into the abyss there where humans looking up wonder at candles falling from the sky and toes displacing galaxies into rhyming constellations and hands dragging you back into the ribbons, mine. Look, you say, pointing to a clump of burning coal, a breathing dragon of red and purple and amber enchased inside your bare heel... I stepped on your book... you say, and I look away unable to watch you pour wine over it and create mists of butterflies. Swirls the light in adulation Gleaning tints of inspiration From your eye’s impatient twinkle And your eyelid’s silver tinkle And that shy beyond despair         smiling wrinkle. Where are we? someone asked. I rolled the marbles and shooed the doves and snowed the feathers, seas cowering under bouncing white and poppies turning bleeding pilgrims inside an ocean of innocence, I lulled the beetles into swagger and slurped the grapes stuck between your toes and dropped the coins into the sunsets and swept the dust to the flo... cloud... thanks, I glued the torn pages and ironed the crumpled ones and returned the books to the shelves and blew the smoldering ashes of mine into the sun’s left eye... lie down, I urged, shearing your satins and your wools and your laces to swathe your wound. You cannot heal this wound, you said guiding my hand a butterfly’s breath away from your body pointing, then pointing, the leftover silks melting under a palm reluctantly exploring moonscapes and comet tails and geyser wells, skin spots blistering, exploding, sending long corona feelers to wrap around my fingers and wrist imploring for the clemency of killing the butterfly’s breath and gripping, groping, grabbing... make love to me, you begged, I cannot make love to an idol without killing it, I answered... kill me, you begged, I cannot kill you without dying, I answered... die, you begged, I will, once I finish worshipping you, I answered... and then will you make love to me? you begged, and then may I make love to you? I begged. I caught a passing drop of rain and started peeling it layer after layer to each a color, a fluttering softness, the variegated touch of a weltering deluge, and I covered your body pellucid bark ankle to knee and then knee to thigh and then closed my eyes thigh to hip before opening once more when the tip of your breast sizzled and the hollow of your shoulder boiled and your mouth accepted in sacrifice pieces of my lips and leftovers of my breath. And the taste of sadness lingers In that nook between my fingers Hosting apples sweetly rotten Herds of shivers misbegotten And that most sublime of tunes...         tearing cotton. * The bud still closed, its red heart enshrouded forever inside that unreachable seclusion, sepia sepals crumbling away into decay... you failed, she wished to cry, crying, about to turn away and part. I did not, I claimed, grabbing her shoulder, holding, hurting, you chose the wrong reality, I claimed once more, close your eyes and then... read me again, I begged. I helped her close those nightful eyes and open those sunful lips and then I started reading me, and as her involuntary echo turned her voluntary narration and lashes began to lift pouring flowers down her cheeks I eased out the door pulling it softly shut behind me. Click. I heard the tidal waves of lilac break against the heavy oak bellowing, the thin trickle beneath the door smelling strangely like a mixture of summer and of woman.

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Kite It dragged behind me, I ran across the lawn, across the forest, across the world like an antelope, like a panther... it just dragged behind me jumping and breaking the ruckus huge, the dust turning impenetrable wall, never rising above the heads of grass before crashing again. Let me, I will show you how it is done, you admonished, taking the string from my hand with your right and dropping your shoes your skirt your shirt and all the rest with your left. It snatched away from your hand the string cutting through your palm unrolling unrolling unrolling rising and while I was busy with my blushing you barely held on to the heads of flowers to not get pulled into the sun.

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Shell The shell hiding the fire, Never able to smother it the more it tries the angrier the flames inside the shell, primeval, thunderous, invincible... You open your eyes, I offered you sight. You look and what do you see but the shell? Smile wrinkles around the eyes, white strands... It is though the same as when your eyes were closed, when sightlessly you listened to the roaring inferno as sun’s claw was dragging you into its cataclysmic heart and your insides were burning into ecstasy. No, don’t close your eyes again, You cannot hear it anymore, You cannot feel it anymore, It died with your opening of eyes and sight. All you see now is the shell. You lost the inferno, You lost that terrible claw, And though my bare fingers can still unbend an iron nail and stab a dragon’s heart I lost you.

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When I Get Old? when I get old? ha, you mean when I stop enjoying Elvis at window shattering volume, when all I look for from morning to evening is for quiet and food and the pill it is the right time to take? when all I can look forward to is my yesterdays, those that I might still remember? when a woman’s naked body does not yield any response beyond an endless cough not dissimilar to the one when watching the morning bus beneath my window, when a woman’s naked leg makes me shiver with cold and her naked breast does not drive me into the raping state of mind of a cougar in heat? that’s when the last memory I will ever carry is the hiding spot of that Smith & Wesson and its unborn 9mm child I will father.

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Before Death Your words riding me into a coma. Your youth vibrant like surgical steel stretched atop a violin body, the only tool allowed to play its music the sharp ends of a lover’s teeth plucking tiny pieces of skin attached to living ends of nerves and pleasure. Your heels never touching the ground as you dance through life on tips of toes forever pirouetting around love’s center of gravity, forever gyrating around a sun held in your outstretched hand it lazy flames lambent upon your skin flickering around those tiny blue flowers kissing your elbows. wait a moment, in this universe this is a physical impossibility. So they say. Yet look inside my universe where truths are spoken only by unborn infants by heretics burnt on the stake and by suicidal poets. The melting marble in your breast The hidden smile in your protest, That stain of sky Inside your eye, My dawn... wherever lies your nest. Allow one day to paint your year One word to swim inside your tear If love’s the word Then lark’s the bird To seed its tunes inside your ear. Don’t close your eyes when suns invade The path you plowed across the glade And sunset glows Between your toes Asleep inside the green brocade. Just hang your clothes upon a branch Let fading grief your shoulders blanch Then like a swan Your beauty don While rhymes sublime your bleeding stanch. Watch sizzling dew upon your skin Entranced with dreams of scalding sin Inhale your sighs And kiss your thighs Along a trail of blister sheen. Then flare your nostrils... scent the breeze Regard those shapes among the trees The pale of white The soft of light The promise of dementing tease. You slide beneath the hugging leaves A crumbling star in silence grieves A glimmer marks Its dying sparks As burning dust through eyelids sieves. The soft of down the hard of steel They near your lair... they touch your heel They pull your hip They crush your lip A lover’s hands your candor steal. lover? who? lover... you?... caress... you whisper, I sink the chalice in the wind to pick a sleepy waft And let it curl around your toes, between, and fore, and aft, Then as my fingers follow suit like clumsy sunset thieves Your skin ignites and tiny sparks roll summers into leaves. skin? why? skin... my?... sweetness... you whisper, I sink my head inside the hive to pick a mouthful gold And pour the glow between your lips with ecstasy untold, And when your tongue lashes for more I call upon the swarm Unleashing in your gaping mouth a raging pollen storm. storm? how? storm... now?... love... you whisper, I sink my hands beneath the earth to grab its hot entrails The molten ore inside my fist drags seven flailing tails, You arch your back and shove your breast till nipples rape my palm, The fire which consumes your skin... your body’s only balm. fire? when? fire... who why how... again?... ecstasy... you whisper, I sink my body in that mine you lined with glowing coal Your nails the master’s scribing tool, my skin your bleeding scroll, We roll into the dragon’s mouth and thrash inside the gore Till splitting skies fall willing prey to passion’s sudden roar. passion? whence? passion... hence?... gentleness... you whisper, I sink your body in the milk decanted from a doe Then dress your wounds with fragrant moss asleep beneath the snow And as you rub into my cuts your mouth’s embalming sap My magic runes will curl your shape to sleep inside my lap. * You slept on your back, The tiny flame escaping your half open lips playing havoc on my mind, this cannot be human. I kept waving away the golden moths whose only ambition seemed to be to burn inside this flame, funny looking moths, indestructible, changing shape and color each time they buzzed through the tiny pyre, now they were gold, before they were yellow with green spots, before that blue and shaped like winged lizards... I neared my eyes, the air crisp and dry the more I approached, sudden pain... no... pleasure shooting through my eyelids as lashes caught fire and turned into thin bodied minuscule butterflies swimming inside my eyes, I swatted the moths away, they battled me as I approached my open mouth inhaling the flame into my lungs and my lungs turning ashes and my ashes turning poppy fields and the poppy fields turning liquor pouring into your flame sizzling, inebriating the moths and me defining the colors of my insanity and the threshing of my heart... I pulled back, panting. Waited a few moments then resumed my examination of your body, not yet further down than your nipples on my way to monumental discoveries and palpitating adventure... nipples asleep, smiling the way sleeping nipples do, cozily sunk in the unripe-apple sized mounds of flesh called breasts on humans... they should have been called love’s cornucopia of grapes on you. I touched the right nipple with the tip of my tongue, my mind set on tasting not on touching, it woke up, yawned, stretched rubbing teasingly against my lips as the left one started showing signs of life as well, they always seemed to act as a pair... then suddenly both pierced the air with a shriek stretching against the surrounding sunsets begging loudly to be cuddled inside my mouth or my palm dark red blood pumping and gurgling through them the smell of freshly baked bread and hot pouring chocolate and cinnamon and wild roses invading my nostrils, the room, the window panes fogging alongside with my eyes as they tasted in my mouth like strawberries then like cherries then like lumps of honey melting inside my throat into the sting of bees... Yes, I knew it was time to move on, much as I feared and more as I desired. I moved a moment’s distance away watching the wreckage caused by my aspiring want – the moths still stumbling drunkenly around the room’s corners, the thickly flavored fog raising and rolling around those mounds on your chest, your breathing undisturbed, serene, quiet... I moved on, past your white belly, lower, I stopped. I got up, froze time, and crashed through walls and cars and trees and mountains till I found that meadow and in the middle of the meadow the wild raspberries bunches of which I cupped in both hands rushing back through the mountains and the trees and the cars and the walls repairing all damage done in my wild surge, unfreezing time, your breathing undisturbed, serene, quiet... I moved on, past your white belly, lower, I stopped. Where have you been? you asked, breaking the magic. How do you know? I froze time, I answered, trying to restore the magic. You left that hole in the wall, my butt froze too, you answered, caring not for the magic. I pressed my open palm against your lower abdomen, the tips of my fingers just beneath your navel, the hollow of my palm crushing its life-line against the raspberry bunches and squashing them on your tense flesh till a sweet-sour smelling mush started oozing between the roots of my fingers, while the heel of my hand slowly started pushing against that mound of feminine delicate intricacies now about to break through the chain of modesty straight into the fabric of momentary timelessness... Your pelvis shot upwards, trying to reach my mouth, I gently pushed it back down fighting against tenacious resistance every inch of the way a hot throb enchasing cinders under my skin and working its way to the back of my hand through tendons and muscles and tiny bones, while hand, then fingers started moving downwards massaging the sticky sap into your need, and moans, and insides... I could not hold back your gale any longer, you broke through my defenses defeating the steel of my muscle and your fulminating intimacy crashed against my face offering my mouth your raspberries, your chalice, your forest wine. I don’t remember the scream or the song, mine or yours? as orbits changed and planets stuttered and a drunken perihelion dropped me into the sun to burn to never return. * I dressed, quietly. You watched me without interrupting me even once, your eyes clicking frames into your memory for later rummage and ransack and pain. I finished tying my shoes, zipped my suitcase shut, refusing to look at you afraid the shine in my eyes might blind you... It probably would not, it was reflecting only a single sixty watt light bulb. Then why did I see everything so blurred? “Is it the end of Elysium or the beginning of Hades?” you asked. “There is Lethe in between,” I answered, remembering mythology and refusing logic. “I prefer Hades. At least I know where I am. And I know it too well.” Pride, obstinacy, defiance. And that endless agony of getting a glimpse of that elusive Elysium. “Is it the end of... poetry?” you asked further, hesitating for the first time, and for the first time I could hear the knot in your throat. I kissed you with a passion I did not know I possess, even at the preceding moments of abysmal mind and body abandon. “Never,” I answered, licking the blood from my lip and clicking the door shut on my life. * Before death, I fall asleep beneath a bench inside a fog of humid stench, the bats, the cats, the drunken rats, the buzzing clouds of flying gnats, one tender, sweet, enchanting wench, and stinking rye in broken vats. I puke, then roll away the rags and weakly hug my plastic bags, dead rhymes, lost chimes, forgotten times, confessions to a lover’s crimes, her beauty... suns eleven drags, my hazy mind a poet’s mimes. The dragon’s lair infests the worm, in blazing eyes decays the storm, the well a shell, the fearsome knell dons guileful guise of tinkling bell, adoring stars embrace her form, and welcomes me to sprawling hell.

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Musings If I be the reason For your cloud of season Then pull down the curtain No longer uncertain There’s skies to your eyes and no walls to my prison. Of passions decaying And memories slaying And bottoms of rivers Strewn hungering shivers I raved when I craved, at my yesterdays baying. Now moments forgotten And dreams misbegotten My mattress are lining Tomorrows confining To one single sheet of embracing white cotton.

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Sex Under the same cover one inch of desire in between empty, hungry, demanding, is it between our toes, hips? Your hair tickles my face no inches there. I can smell your skin you smell like apricots brandy, what will they invent next... blueberry fudge shampoo? I cannot smell your tooth paste though I try as almost imperceptible whiffs of another kind of smell test my nostrils, timidly still, gliding upwards from underneath the covers... I sense your thighs squeezing against each other... You turn on your side and your right breast falls on my upper arm the one inch dying a sudden zero death, I shiver. You want me. Pain. I hesitate moments before oblivion what do I prefer the miles long fall to the floor on the left side of my bed voraciously inviting me to a cold hard hell or the steel hard nipple protesting my ignorance and cutting one long furrow into my right bicep? My mind is set. I start rolling leftwards towards the abyss when your hand shoots down beneath my navel catching the disoriented piece of straining flesh unable to hide its modest presence anymore and with one mighty shove you pull us both on top of you opening your thighs wide and guiding us to perdition inside that bubbling fountain of lust demanding me to release the Cerberus from its ageless chains... I let go, and the roaring howl of uncounted heads reverberate between the small room’s walls as our teeth clash and our fingers break and our bellies’ muscles tie seven Gordian knots around seventeen collapsing suns... * You fall asleep, finally sated, the one inch between us jealously guarding the persistent pungent odors slowly solidifying into a smothering cast of honey ribbons and yawning stars and crushed lilacs in bloom.

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One And now just up, and leave behind Those broken cogs inside your mind And kick to hell the frightened mice Beyond your green of pretty eyes You’re one of kind. You want a mane? I’ll lend you one To growl till cracks besiege the sun And with a claw finding its grip The hug of haze from brain to rip And roar like none. You want to find the bliss in sin? I’ll turn your hide to liquid skin Until the pain turns pleasure raw And passion paints your flesh aglow Your moans to glean. You want my pen? I’ll grant you two To dip inside your blend of hue, That secret mix of word and clay, Your song, your bark, your magic way, There’s none like you.

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P It starts with a p. And ends with...? An n. Pen? Pin? Pain? C’mon, you can do better than that. We were not sitting, we were standing, facing each other one foot apart like two cats... maybe leopards?... ready for a fight tails deceptively wagging opposite directions voices low, smooth, drooling... Porn? you giggled, poking me in the chest. Hey, don’t be crude, I snarled, though there was no reason for snarling, the tension cutting thick slices off my reserve. Sometimes I took myself too seriously. You pursed your lips, looking at me strangely is unseeing the right description for your look? Parmesan? No, I didn’t know you knew Italian. I know French too. Poisson? Close, even very close, but it is not in French and you don’t speak French. No? Are you sure? What about Poisson d’Avril? It just struck me that you were pulling my leg, the ring in my nose the other end of the chain in your hand and I was waddling along without even being aware of it. I looked at you, waiting. Something in the substance of your eyes changed, from clear to turbid, from mocking to reaving, the layers of boiling mud once bubbling peacefully in the realms of innocent sleep now stirring, growling, an awakening demon in your mind raking them pitilessly off lethargy’s bed the trident’s three prongs drawing blood as the storm majestically shook its mane thin steam crawling upwards out of your nostrils and saliva suddenly burning blisters at the corners of your mouth. Kneel!... you commanded my knees sinking to the floor your dress flying over your head freshly spotted panties tearing alongside a complaining seam just as my head entered the forbidden queendom and your thighs closed their vise around my neck ready to rip my head off alongside with the devastating pleasure forcing its way into you and searing your craving insides. We rolled on the floor, intoxicated with escaping fragrances and liquors my voraciousness equaled only by your bacchanal caterwauls famished senses straining for release hoping to never reach that glade where straining fingers turn fists and pieces of skin and flesh and hair slide underneath fingernails and a sun falls over us burying our bodies inside its fierce entrails. Passion... you bit the word into my lip telling me you knew all along, and allowing me to wipe away the ravages upon your body with tips of fingers and tip of tongue and tips of eyelashes.

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November I looked in the mirror, the grey stubble on my face mercilessly slaughtered by the sharp tools of civilization in that endless fight for supremacy I knew I was going to lose. Yet I persisted in the ritual, stubbornly, the grey plague spreading like an invincible tide. I looked in the mirror. November. Is this the way of the dragon when the proud green of his scales fades into the brittle grey and the knight’s spear finally finds his heart? I shook my mane, or rather what was left of it, and roared. The roar still there, my song as powerful as ever. I reached for the reaper’s blade and snapped it in my fist mindless to the blood, then pushed the hooded figure aside, impatiently. I still have one song to sing and you better move out of the way. He soaked back into hell, I opened the door and entered the night. I was on my way to meet woman. Silence. Absolute. For one night, my last, the world died and the mountains were mine for taking and the forests were mine for burning and the seas mine for drinking. I did not want any. All I wanted was you. The night wept white on our wedding bed, gossamer icicles weaving their ephemeral art between the rigid sharp ends of grass blades crunching underneath my shoes. “Blasphemy,” you gasped, your undefined whiteness parting with the night and kneeling next to me, deft fingers unlacing one shoe and making it disappear in a soundless puff of blinding glare, then the other. My now bare feet tingling with the cold. “Let me undress you,” I gasped back waiting for the words to roll around the world and return the long way around in a faint echo. “No, you first,” you answered waiting for my echo to die a second time, undoing my shirt, undoing my trousers, then with one magical gesture blasting them out of existence. I was cold. I shivered. “I am cold,” I said. You placed your open palm on my chest, then removed it leaving a five fingered glowing imprint on my skin. I felt the burn. “Not for long,” you answered. “Undress me, now.” You formed the words, without voicing them. I touched your white gown and it decayed into a filigree of frost melting within seconds and gliding down on your skin, glinting like thousands of stars inhabiting your body. “You glint... yet there is no moon,” I wondered. “Your eyes... they shine,” you answered taking my hand and guiding it gently along a rivulet starting under your left eye, along your cheek, the side of your neck, shoulder, ribcage, belly, and losing its way inside that soft dell where all ends and all begins. “Touch me...” you urged. “And then... can I sing?” I asked. “Yes, when I lose my way... sing, and let me find you again.” “It will be my last song,” I said, knowing. “It will be our first song,” you said, knowing. I suddenly touched you, violently, deep. “You are too soft, touch me,” you urged again. I touched you, hungrily, ravenous. “You are too soft, touch me,” you urged a third time, your hands taking possession of my body, the glowing spots tracing your fingers turning blisters as a timorous flame enveloped me from loins down to toes and up to eyes, and as my fingers crushed your exploding nipple you inhaled with one mighty breath my fire, my skin, my decomposing flesh and we sank into the white cool sheets of our last wedding night melting the ice linen, burning the grass mattress, the ground bed under our threshing bodies turning molten lava and absorbing us into mother’s entrails as we absorbed into each other. I was the first one to hear it, the lark. “No!...” I wailed, trying to get up, unable against the chains of your arms. “The lark vanquished me, there are no larks in winter,” I sobbed. You opened your mouth, I heard the lark again, then again, I kissed you savagely, the lark silent, I removed my lips and there it was again. You smiled. “I vanquished you, I am your lark.” I sank my fangs, my claws into your soft flesh, in anger, in pride, in glory. “I am your last lark,” you trilled. “Do you want me?” I removed my fangs, my claws, soothing your pain with my tongue. “I still have to sing my song,” I trilled, May I sing my last song? Before the world awakes?” “Will I be your last song?” “You will be my last song.” “Then you may...” and you let me permeate once more your body as I opened my mouth and opened my throat and opened my chest and flowers blossomed on your lips and sunshine dawned above your hips and springs adorned your fingers’ tips. “Must you die now?” “I must. You vanquished me.” “I loved you.” “I know. Yet death is immortal. The beauty of death.” I got to my feet, handsome in my scarred nakedness, breaking your chain and looking the grim figure in the face. “You have a new blade to your scythe, reaper.” He did not answer, just raised both arms and with a smooth swish cut my autumn’s bloom. November died. Winter, never came.

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Worlds Tell me the color of your eyes, I asked. I don’t know, you answered. It is your eyes I am asking about, I repeated. Whatever your covet is, I wish to satisfy, you answered, hurt. Are you witch? I asked. I could read in my mind the look of distress on your face as you stood up, the chair ramming into the wall, turning over, I hurried to correct the situation... Are you angel? ...only to get it worse, my imagination guiding me onto reality’s path watching you pick up your coat then bend to click closed the shoe’s tiny buckle the one you just opened... Desperation, or was it desire, how did I come to mix all the d’s in my head... doubt, doom, drought... what was it that took hold of rampaging dementia and clamped down on it for one last try?... Are you woman? Quiet. The miles in between rolling lazily indifferent to the waves battering my chest bones into mush as I waited the hours long distance of your answer, my imagination for once betraying me enshrouding you in the secrecy of my unknowledge of you. I heard a door slamming half a world away, oh, God, no... don’t... the cold waft of air hitting my face and I refused to open my eyes not asking not wondering just accepting a door slamming just a breath’s distance away. I opened my eyes. Where did you drag this posture from, one shoe dangling from an index finger stuck under the strap the other still on your foot the lopsided effect enhanced by a coat dangling from your other hand dragging behind a wooden chair, one sleeve clutched in your fist, a torn, hanging piece of blouse baring a white shoulder, half a bra’s cup... What did you get hooked on? I asked caring not for fantasy or reality. An airplane’s wing tip, you answered, and it sounded logical somehow. You cut the breath’s distance to half, then to nothing, inhaling my lungs. No, you did not kiss me. What did you me? I woman’d you, I think you said, and at that moment I knew this was the only answer and the color of your eyes whatever I covetted it to be because... I tore my lungs away from your mouth and savored my victory asking again Are you woman?... and before you had the chance to vanish through that hole in the ground back to your world I added You are woman!... making sure you heard the exclamation mark. You heard it. I felt it. Your mouth ascending from that sunken south, demanding of its breathless prey its famished want with bites allay and curb its ageless drouth. Your hand emblazing time’s untarnished sand, descending through a flaring swarm amongst the crumbs of raging storm its lust with coals to brand. While knotting muscles down my spine the soothe of balsam shun And plowing nails invest my flesh in search for crimes undone We share the desert of a night beneath the willow’s bark The spasm a dance, the pain a balm, the scream a trilling lark. Your breast denying skin’s demure protest, invoking gods of sunken suns to guide my fingers just this once and claim its lasting nest. Your eye enchasing stars in morning’s sky, beseeching passion’s cleaving bane and endless waves of screeching pain till morrow’s sad good bye. I kneeled to removed the lonesome shoe you dropping the one hanging to your finger, you dropped the coat’s sleeve as well and the chair made a hollow noise as it disappeared to your side of the world, I pulled down your stockings... there were wide runs all over them. Do you want the white of my flesh? you asked. I stood up and further ripped your blouse pulling along the one visible white cup of your bra regarding the tiny blue veins of your breast pulsing as they pumped fresh supplies of blood into a nipple demanding the pity of my touch... such cruelty in my ignorance of the plea, my rampant fingers destroying the other half of the bra dark red stains threatening to explode through your skin and straight into my mouth. Damn you, you screamed against my neck, your canines penetrating and our hands taking hold of each other’s waistlines in one savage pull our nakedness joined and the stank of burning clothes charred our arms to the elbow. The cruelty of ignorance replaced by the cruelty of conquest melting tiles cracking in a cacophony of mutilation a black funnel descending around us as our bodies inhaled the hiding sun’s threshing corona and next day’s comatose dawn enthraled to be touched by the reaper’s long blade. What eye color shall I wear now? you asked, painting circles around the corner of my mouth with your tongue. Kaleidoscope, I answered, watching imploding galaxies and exploding buds playing havoc in your eyes and on my brains. You are... I started, and you placed a shushing finger on my mouth, scared. Please, don’t break the magic, you implored. I removed your finger ever so gently, placed it once upon each of my eyes, then placed it on my left nipple, I wanted you to feed my heart with memories. You are woman, I said, and you smiled. * You put on some of my clothes, a t-shirt, a pair of jogging pants... I don’t need more... you said when I asked what about shoes and underwear. I stopped you for a moment, before you fully pulled down the t-shirt, tracing the intricated topography around the maturity of your breasts, skin deep valleys and dull stains decorating the skin’s otherwise snow whiteness, other lines running around your abdomen... Birth giving marks, flesh deformation marks, gravitation age marks, you smiled, unembarassed. Life marks, I admited, and you thanked me sucking my lungs into your mouth for one last time. Gravitation will never touch my inner side, you added, and fell through the hole in my world back to your world. I keep sending you words. One day we may unbury this hole again, or we may forget where we hid those spades, or that there ever were spades, who knows? I will never forget the color of your eyes, though... Whatever your covet is...

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The Book You let me touch your book jacket, not yet the book, not even the cover. I will leave stains, fingerprints, I feebly objected, eager to touch. It isn’t new, you brushed my insincere objections aside pointing to the miniature tears along the edges, a few oily stains, one burned spot... Cigarette? I asked. Heart, you answered. I turned the book over and over in my hands absorbing the smell, the warmth, pointing to some pen doodles... rings and squares and triangles... Poems someone wrote for me, can you do better? you asked. Yes, if you allow me, I answered and wrote you a poem. Then laid the book on the table, my cheek on it ready to fall asleep, it was so soft... When you wake up I will allow you to peel off my book jacket, then my dress, my shoes. Why? Because you wrote me a poem. And then, will you allow me to open your cover? No, you will have to peel my cover, then my lace, my silks. And leaf through your pages? Peel my pages, my skin, my eyes. Why do you keep saying peel? You are a book, one opens a book, one leafs through a book. I am also a woman, you have to uncover me, discover me, then cover me with poetry. But you are written already. You will have to fill in the blanks. Like my heart. I dreamt of falling asleep on a book, then sinking into it, letters settling comfortably insides the groves lining my brain delectating in the tiny electric jolts I was sending their way. A woman started telling me her story. I touched her.

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Ship I will launch my ship into the red of your rivers, the white of sails blemished into lover’s epiphany by the blue of ink, the black of cannons cut to giant’s wedding rings by the green of grass blades, the helm deserted as the anchor fails to grab the undulating walls leading to the thunder of your cavern where it will smash against muscle, and whorls, and oxygen blasts. You send your scouts to the wreckage salvaging as much of the colors as you can, the white, the blue, the black, the green, the diamond, the topaz, the coral, the ruby, the emerald and let the dye set in your bedcover’s linen where you curl alone at night and let the hues soak into your eye’s white, and your skin’s topaz, and your breast’s smoldering ruby.

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Butterfly... For A Day I’ll pull your cotton layers off and soak them in the rain Then wrap you in the soggy cloth to soothe the growling pain Time fingers spell into your breasts your wish for mornings one And golden wings gash long your back to sprout into the sun. You spread your arms to test your bones, then stretch your muscled toes, A silken sail of tiny scales between your fingers glows, The time has come... a flap... a scream... your arrow leaves the glade And glinting hordes of starlight dust your streaking trail invade. Your roving heart for daylight long will chase the swallow’s tail, The sun will bask inside your hues to share your colors’ gale, Until the sunset’s waning rays will die inside your eyes To fold your wings, and once again to don your earthling guise.

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Shall? Shall I tell you of the line Running errands down your spine, Of those burning spots that linger Way behind my hungry finger Turning skin to scream divine? Shall I plague you with the touch Dragging craves of never such, Plucking nipples to your lyre Crushing breasts beneath the fire As you moan... too much, too much...? When your naked white of thigh Burns its lust into my eye Shall I whine my ripping sorrows To a world of bland tomorrows As we soar beyond the sky?

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A Moment In Time Let the hail come. Let thousands of stone carrying fists rip egg-sized holes through the tin roof, battering into raw agony the countless pounds of human meat once composing my body now sprawling in post apocalyptic death above yours. I feel fingers spider-web thin click back in place my scattered spine fragments then guide my reluctant hand for a last visit to that swampy battlefield and its millions of dead soldiers. The fire crawls back into its sun. The meat turns flesh once more and as I watch you put on those flimsy feminine undergarments I drop a canvas between you and the world turning to masterpiece this moment in time.

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Straps The colored dress strap falling off your shoulder. The white brassiere strap now uncovered, white on blinding white, you pull it off when it does not fall of its own will down to your upper arm, lying there, limp, docilely waiting for me to decide its fate. I watch your neck, thin, supple, a swan’s tender shoot entrusting itself to my fingers as they slide down its side, touching your shoulder, my palm cupping itself on the warmth of the rounded corner refusing to continue before giving in to gravitation and desire and falling long your arm fingers hooking into the hanging piece of satin... pulling... it snaps like the dry resort of a starter gun telling... go!... Our mouths clash, teeth almost ripping through lips before tongues and breaths mix in the turbulence of imprisoned fury let loose as ravaging frenzy invades hands disjointed from reason and body parts disconnected from minds, a shower of cascading clothes uncovering the rage of flesh and exposing it to the sting of fire and demolishing dragons. My fingers turn claws offering your breasts the torment of vise while talons attached to your wrists encircle my nakedness pulling and as we match our swollen deformities we fall into that bottomless abyss ending in the death of a sun.

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Anonymously The door clicked behind you, Your heels clicking a dance known to you alone fading in haste into the noisy street, a huge smile hiding underneath huge sunglasses, rigid nipples hiding underneath a huge sweater, You sneaked away anonymously carrying a fistful of sun in your heart, you could not control the traitorous sunflowers springing up from the asphalt in your wake.

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Sheets Of Ice Sheets of ice, thin, transparent, cutting the gape between us to universes and sides and lives, thin, cold. You pressed your open palm against it rolling it slightly... trying to clear the view? trying to test its resilience to warmth, phantasm, desire? you pressed your lips against it... trying to help your palm or to chill that flame leaping from in between chattering teeth and threatening your eyes and reason? Fulmination, blast, fragments and splinters cutting flesh to bone melting inside gurgling red rivers while your reaching fingers groped for my throat, chest, shivering muscles and as we rolled amongst the screaming needles contorting into the thousand shapes of love sheets of ice poured down cutting our bodies to slices, to snips, to slivers... Forces unknown pulled us apart, our bodies howling our tongues squirming as sheets of ice shot up once more between us their hiss poisonous, deafening, my severed fingers still attached to your ankle with the fading taste of sunflower still between my lips never to forget that look on your face carrying the memory.

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Leaving I led you to the chair, there were others around... I think, never saw never heard. Pulled the chair out then eased it underneath you laying my palm upon your navel en passant feeling the smoothness, firmness, the screaming muscle underneath the cloth, skin, flesh... I squeezed your shoulders kissed your head pulled away to go when your fingers closed against mine, refusing, hurting me with so much innocence and might. I looked at their white slenderness, thin sprouts with a life of their own, with a wish... “Be careful,” you wanted me to promise. I did not promise. I left.

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The Moment I left my window open probably. Didn’t know until I heard the buzz... or hum... or what was it and my smashing hand froze mid way into the strike when I heard it again... the voice... hi. I crawled to the night lamp suddenly frightened... click... you were not a butterfly. Not a moth, centipede, mosquito, gnat, bat, elephant, not even a woman, or a story, or a fairy crossing a bridge, what were you? What are you? Hi... you buzzed or hummed or barked or sang or whatever, inspecting the white strain inside my chest’s curls and the musty granite inside my frozen muscle and the screaming flame beyond iris and nerve and straight into the brain, testing my ageless rage and bottomless velvet before entrusting me with the nest clinging to the tip of my nose. For days no end I walked around cross eyed, carefully where I stepped and where I stuck my nose watching you brush your wings and cleanse your body and making love and winking impudently, loving. From time to time you let me caress your smoothness, with one finger, then shyly you fluttered away to hide beneath a cabbage leaf until the blush would fade away. We weren’t of the same species, we fell in love disregarding the gap and the fact that one day my nose would probably fall off and you would need another nest for your heart, mainly for your heart. But until then you bit chomps off my nose, chewing delightedly, and from time to time wandered inside my clothes and while I held my breath afraid to crush you you would bit off other pieces of flesh looking for your species’ delicacies and pleasure. It was worth the pain hearing, so few times, the squeals of puppy insanity once you would find a spot of ethereal delight and linger there for hours. I learned to breathe through my skin not willing to lose the moment.

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The Reality Of Dream She was exhausted. Mentally, physically, when was it that her head fell with a thump on the desk a pile of papers cushioning the fall, the one finger asleep on the key marked L filling the screen with flying one letter lines and beep beep beeps, her other hand’s fingers cupping one breast guided by that ghost peeking through the glorious haze of a restless dream asking for her heartbeat, her breath, her begging nipple for his begging hand?... It was way past midnight. The beggars met, unleashing the storm and the amok run and the sirens’ song the ghost seeping into her fingers clutching at stretching cotton and tearing lace and pale flesh looking innocently at the world through a torn seam, the flowing L’s conquering page after page continuously yelling their beep beep beep war cry careless of electronic mayhem and of sweetness of smile dawning between lips and melting into dripping sugar molesting the pile of papers into irrecoverable mush... She shivered awake. Feeling his lips hastily departing back into dreamland’s impenetrable hideouts and hating that unavoidable forgetfulness cruelly dulling the momentary memory of beauty. Her almost finished report was shot to hell. She looked at the L’s filled screen, caring none at earlier on wasted time of filling tables, and painting goals, and summing up columns, added ove at the blinking cursor’s position after the last L and slid under the covers refusing brutal logic’s demand to brush teeth, remove shoes, shower, wear pajamas... it would have meant removing his hand cupping her breast and his mouth breathing into hers and those tattered remains of garment, the only witnesses to the reality of dream.

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Fountain You opened your palms slowly not reluctant but rather playful... and the marbles started rolling out blinding in their intensity of immaculate burning light, hundreds, thousands, an endless stream burying your ankles, sticking to your knees, opening wings and fluttering above you only to close wing and pour down round your head down your neck, shoulders, between your breasts... oh, my envy burning... down your belly and thighs back to your ankles then opening wings again... crimson this time, and yellow next time, and blue next, and green, and... I leaned back on the bench watching the fountain of human light smiling in my knowledge of your heart from time to time stealing a few marbles for my dreams to come. So rich in your beauty, you wouldn’t mind gracing me with a few of those marvelous fireflies asleep inside your dresses drunken on the flavor of your skin and the warmth of your flesh, I wish to hear their story, feel their sting and for moments few barter my meaningless humanity for the sake of tasting the drunken death of touching you.

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Escape Your breast escaping the prison, the white one of cotton or the red one of satin or the black one of lace and proud of its dare calling upon my mouth to pour songs down its flute and lick nectar off its flower and kiss linden flavors inside the downy softness of its pillow. I cover it, afraid of imminent death invading my body together with the scream of life once my song done and my drinking done and my loving done and ensuing emptiness filling my body with the misery of missing fire. You uncover it once more, you uncover both of them once more, and as the steel in your fingers pulls my face inside the secret garden I feel the life steering inside your belly touching me and holding my finger and telling me a story of happiness soon to be born and soon to paint your lips smiles.

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Flake the first, past summer’s boiling red and radiant blue and green and purple, past autumn’s boring brown and brown and brown and yellow, the first, the herald, a stain of white purity flake innocent messenger runaway from hordes amassing their strength beyond impenetrable clouds a child of crystalline immensity finding the child of flesh humanity, you, to offer the adventure of children at play and hearts on the soar and falling in love... you fell on your back, tired, panting after chasing each other down valleys and up hills and across torn landscapes eyes closed above a smiling mouth, palms open, knowing... afraid. it landed softly inside your palm’s cradle, sighing its one ephemeral cry of love of warmth of death as its delicate fibers steamed and its filigree shrunk and its heart melted, a round blob of water rolling down and soaking into the frozen ground, invading hordes conquering your kingdom. you cried not for love lost, for love found.

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Sense Less Sightless, Tasteless, Never to smell your sweat, your skin after shower, your wine after making love for hours and days and lingering minutes, Never to hear your moan before and your sigh after, Never to touch the downwards of your neck and the around of your waist and the inside of your soft, discarded shyness. Sightless to seeing you hiding inside thin cotton against the blaze of sun outlining your form sharply on my retinae with a loving hand guided by an adoring god, Tasteless to the insides of your lips.

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The Tale Of Pale Butterfly This tale of a shy And pale butterfly, When blanketing night Embraces the light And silence pervades Through bickering glades, It opens a wing To dance and to sing And sweetness of summer the winter invades With flakes turning snowbells in shimmers of spring. Through morning’s first light Still warring the night And shivering glades An echo pervades, The butterfly lies With wondering eyes A heartbeat impaled on an icicle fades And snowbells - an ocean, are born while it dies. The death of a shy And pale butterfly.

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Rendez Vous i set the glass on the table so that it will reflect the moon straight into your eyes, i paid a teenage band to dress as mariachi to pass by just by coincidence and serenade you just by coincidence, i let a pearl attached to a metal ring sink inside the cake to be offered as dessert. i waited until you did not come. the moon fell beneath the hills the mariachi snored away the night waiting for the coincidence and the pearl melted in cake acid, sharp nacre shards scratching their way down my throat. i stepped into the cake crumbs past the fake mariachi and followed the cockroaches trailing the moon.

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