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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 cutting. 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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Philosophies Of Love, Three I lay down Spine arched When your fingers tore through me Chest to back. Then out again. The bubbling craters between my ribs spitting crumbs of glowing coal Upwards, Dazzling traces streaking all the way to black skies The stars... were born that day. “Were there no stars before?” you asked. “No, none,” I answered. “Are you god,” you asked, “Dying in creation?” “No, you are goddess,” I answered. “I am only the one giving birth.” “Women give birth,” you claimed. “Men die,” I insisted. “And lovers, what happens to lovers?” you asked. “True lovers, you mean?” “True lovers, I mean.” I guided your fingers into my chest again, Then out. I laid your body in the flowers fields and in the wheat fields and in the thorns fields. “Gods die,” I answered. I cupped my hands and filled them with stars and poured them in your mouth Licking away the excess dripping from the left corner. I knew you wanted to hear more Avoiding interpretation, hesitation, maybe’s, though it was so clear... This time I guided your fingers into my chest and left them there. “True lovers,” I said, “are immortal.”

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Blatant Acts Of Love I’ll clench my fist around your fist Then clench your thighs between my thighs And while my mouth inhales your sighs I’ll feed your lungs inflaming mist. I’ll crush my lips upon your lips Then crush your chest beneath my chest Then pluck a sun descending west And roll its flame within your hips. I’ll carve my flesh inside your flesh Then carve your skin across my skin As fingers rough suspires glean To paint upon your body’s thresh. Do clench, do crush, do carve my life, I’ll clench and crush and carve your soul, Do take my heart, I’ll take your whole, Then be your friend, your mate, your wife.

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Chiseling your mouth, red, open it, let me count the teeth still carrying pieces of skin and flesh and washing away blood traces. yes, mine, reaved from incisions bordering my swollen bottom lip, those around my ankles, barely crusted gashes around my nipples awaiting the renewal of slaughter. your mouth, that bleeding wound yawning in your face, open it, lover, and let me count the teeth virgin of my skin and flesh and washing away blood traces before I guide them to the pristine wilderness of my body’s lands and beg of them the mercy of chiseling messages of love till marrow deep.

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Illiterate, Not Tell me something sweet, I begged. Of course, she sang before singing And transposed me to her land with that laughter Mixed with irony mixed with laziness, with lust, with beauty. I closed my closed eyes and started counting the wolves Then the seals, then the specks of dust inside the drooping rays Then the times I cut my fingernails then the times I broke my fingernails, The times I cried, I swore, I lusted for her I loved her I forgot her. Many years later when I woke up and saw that only three seconds passed I knew that this is all it takes to sing the three words she sang three words, Yet I did not dare ask her what was it she did all these years While she sang I love you and I missed a life less three seconds. She accepted to fall asleep Leaving me with my insanity And her beauty And my certainty in her beauty in my her love.

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Illiterate, None I let go of yesterday’s loves, All none of them. None? Nonsense. Nonsense? Nonesense. What’s that, games of love? None! Love. One’n’One Only. OOO... and she finally gave up literacy for a smile... OOO... the beauty of that smile. Not even one time before? None time before. No, not games of love. Just love. I started telling the story... nonce upon a time... She giggled. And tomorrow? Tomorrow I will have today as yesterday. I will not let go of yesterday’s loves All one of them. And the story will start... once upon a time... Yesterday is not ‘once upon a time...’ Yesterday is ‘once’. Once’n’Once Only? I had to give it to her, she was bright. I have to give it to you, you are bright. Again that giggle. None of us knows. One of us knows. I closed the notebook and popped a beer can. The bliss of illiteracy. Not none.

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Stories Of Stories of mermaids and stories of queens, Glimmering eyedust of silken skinned teens, Stories of sirens in crotch splitting jeans... None likens you. Stories of fairies and lithe waisted sprites, Amazons’ glamour and prurient rites, White bodied sylphs mid of star anchored nights... None pairing you. Stories of princesses waltzing the seas, Nails trailing stockings with genuine tease, Eye batting nymphs within fingertouch ease... None nearing you. Look at the crack in my lip, in my skin, Rough is my word when the moment turns mean, Thick is my waist and there’s weed in my green... The wonder of you.

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Once's Enthusiasm, Limp like a peeled cucumber left to rot on the edge of the kitchen table, Sticky blobs accumulating in a tiny puddle underneath Sad memory to a pride once hopping mountain tops. Voice, eyes, shivers, Once the sparkle of gold before melting point, Now the color of dry mud same sparkle, same intensity, same timbre, Cracking into ridiculous toothless grins before falling prey to a horse’s unintentional hoof and dung. Passion, A peeling mirror reflecting a hollow mouth contemplating the back of La Gioconda’s head half way through gagging or yawning or burping, The once sun Now hardly able to warm the half cup of yesterday’s sugarless tea. Love? Is the spelling right? Does it matter? Once the only word, now one more word lost to advertising chocolates, and underwear, and cooking books called My Intense Love for Carrots. Death, Doesn’t it look more appealing with each passing line though, once deadly serious, now a joke? After all... everybody dies and no one is impressed anymore.

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Moments, Now I wish I could write of your glory... I cannot, I am human. Humans have big eyes and appetites and skills... Yet, how can one describe the reality of you in five senses when one needs twenty five of them? maybe more... No, I never claimed to be able, I did swear to try. I am trying. I saw your picture today. It leaped at me devouring my eyes before penetrating and cuddling once more next to all the other images of you in that unique collection of repeatable colors and shapes and features and thirst. Then it restored my eyes for the next time. I am writing telling you I saw your picture today and that I wish I could write of your glory Wishing you to know Of my love.

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Almost Touching Do not hide your curls at the other end of a phone line which you do not pick up. You cannot. I am there, I am always there. Remember that previous life When I was the cruel and fearsome dragon above the village And you were brought to me chained to a boulder for that moon’s sacrifice And after my hungry roar I extinguished my flame Bit loose your chains And lay my head on the ground in front of you sinking inside those green filled orbs while they killed me under a sea of shame and sticks and stones? Or that other life The shaggy skin hanging to the sharp ends of my bones A wild horse squalid unkempt ungroomed Not even the hungry wolves wanting to partake of my flesh Limping on three broken hooves when I found you A pool of crystalline water mid of a dying forest Green emeralds your pebbles and red specks of fire your fish And I sunk into the crumbling foliage around of you My muzzle not daring touch your clarity Dying of a thirst I was not willing to satisfy at the cost of those sparks of fire. Close your eyes At the end of this unpicked telephone line, Remember the lumberjack and the tree The toad and the butterfly The fire and the witch... I always was there almost touching you Like I am almost touching you now At the other end of this unpicked telephone line. This, just one more life mid of so many, In it I the poet and you the untouchable dream. Don’t open your eyes, Don’t pick up the phone Leave technology out of the magic Just listen carefully, Listen, Shhh... Listen... do you hear the melodious wail of the dying whale?... This is my voice, Singing of distantness, of lonesomeness, of a love... almost touching you.

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Elevator "How was your desert?" a colleague asked, queuing for the elevator. "Not my desert, her desert," I corrected him. He eyed me obliquely. "So how was her desert?" he mocked me in a friendly way. "I left my heart there," I answered, getting in with him and three others. "I thought people leave their hearts only in San Francisco," he laughed loudly, expecting me to join. I did not. "No, mine is in her desert." I guess I sounded too serious. The elevator stopped, some people left, new came in. He moved cautiously away, making sure there was an elderly gentleman between us. "I guess she is rich to own a desert," he was still trying to catch up with his earlier joke, uncertain. I did not really hear him, not conscientiously. "Yes, she is rich, with colors, with songs, with desert flowers..." "And sand..." he felt safe behind the elderly guy. "And freckles..." I complemented catching him off guard. We reached the ground floor. "Hey, careful, she may let your heart dry out in the sun." I opened the car’s door. "Yes, she may," I answered, starting the motor. "Nobody can. She may." I closed the door and eased myself out of the parking, hitting the radio’s ‘on’ button. She was singing. Every single time I turned on the radio she was singing, I never asked myself why. I knew. "Nobody can. She may," I repeated, accelerating. "And if she does, I wish her no memories. Only freckles to her skin And sunrise to her hair And nightingales to her lips." I hit the highway. "And lilac to her desert."

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Goodbye You Will miss me. You don’t know now, You will know then When You will miss me. The hours Filled with my vain attempts to phone you Now empty of that strident ring meaning “...him again, shit...”, The minutes On those rare occasions when in your car you would accept my call And at my request you would sing to me and even say “I love you” At the end of it. At my request. The poems Did you think about the poems I daily wrote in my car Counting truck wheels and lampposts and oil puddles just missed, The letters The long and the short always ending with the fire of declarations Rich in adjectives and in metaphors and in letters like “l” and like “o” So many times unanswered. The piece of metal Carved, holed, fitted around your finger, The piece of ribbon Once around our arms, now in my treasures box Next to your letter, your strand of hair, Your drop of blood marrying mine. Don’t Close your eyes Or you will see What Your eyes don’t see. The hug on the bridge, The walk on the dark path towards the sea, The mosquitoes infested clearing, The moment you slid on the stairs, The fudge I never tasted, The handhold across the table top, The chain you lost, The last tip, The last gas station, The last embrace. And if your miss me is just a drop In the sea of I miss you You will die. You will miss me. Please, don’t. Because I love you.

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Gone? Gone is the magic Gone is the chant Flutters the music down grasshopper’s rant, Crumble the petals Beneath linden trees Rotting cathedrals to sunbathing fleas. Hovering sunshine In luscious runes Dwindles to flickers submerging in dunes, Eyes laden twilight Once shying in tear Dull through the boredom to heart rending jeer. Once through my whispers The wind carried sighs Branding tomorrows in yesterday’s ice, Once you were smiling Once you were proud Time my old lining was dressing your cloud. Now is my lonely Now is my sad Yearning for silver which once I have had, Now is my crying Silly and old Sifting through hours for seconds of gold. Lover oh lover Oh lover so dear Foolish your questing and reeking of beer, Told I have many And told I have oft Thorns rip my belly and bitters my soft. Greys in my sunsets And reds in my strife Come with this story I’m calling a life, Time has been cruel And miles played a joke Now we are saddled with yesterday’s yoke. Yet, do remember And damn you if not All I have granted and more than I’ve got, When before heaven And ready for hell Love I have given beyond you can tell. Doubt it not ever, Do send me your rhyme Love love love love you I’m naming this crime, Look at the rainbow And count all its hues Magical, endless like my I love you’s.

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Absolutes definitions -       Softness, warmth...       A newborn chick's down       but the lowest of sandpaper grades       And the sun’s glow       just a poor neon lamp white with green envy.       Softness, warmth... you. biography -       I was born.       Many things happened after.       Then I fell in love with you.       Then I fell in love with you.       Then I fell in love with you. making love -       A legend       as persistent as the story of the Grail       or Nessie       or the curse of the Pharaoh.       As inexistent.       Until we met.       I wonder,       will We be demonized or idolized       for wrecking the legend into reality? * betrayal -       When       Absolute’s       are proven to be just...       Relative’s.

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Randoms, One in collection: experimental Tell me how much you love me. I am afraid to. I beg of you. I had no choice, I could not refuse her anything, I whispered in her ear. She started melting, singing, smiling. I cried, Cursed be love Stealing my lover. I lied down next to her waiting for her to cover me, caress me, Drown me...

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Randoms, Variation in collection: experimental The day the sun refused to shine I knew something was wrong. I could not watch calmly flowers die, children cry, I pulled at your sleeve... please... smile... Luckily you loved me. Luckily the sun did not know it. You smiled. The sun shone.

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Randoms, Two in collection: experimental It is so easy to follow your dancing feet in the desert... I follow, Crushing a blooming flower under my foot, Then another, then another... My God, you danced so much, So many flowers in the desert...

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Randoms, Three in collection: experimental If you don't come tonight the night will be eternal, If you come I doubt that I'll wish it to end... It never ends. I wonder why.

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Another Talks I left the cell phone on, also the laptop. I emptied the mailbox, the one at my gate, the classical wooden box with my name on it and a few visiting spiders. Out of town spiders, I know the locals. Waiting. For what? For maybe a phone call. Or maybe a message, Or even the good old fashioned letter, stamped, a bit crumpled, a bit wet. For a word from you. Knowing not when is the time to give up, is it when all hope is gone? All hope is never gone, it just gets kinked and chipped. Of course, a gun shot to the head may change things drastically, not the hope, hope is a survivor even in absence of a carrying vessel. But it certainly would curb pain’s kingdom.

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The Beginning Of Death what is the sound of a breaking idol? one made of finest porcelain trimmed with thin crystal streaks and emeralds and silver? what is the sound of a dying love’s wail? when angel impostors undress wings and halos and uncovered flesh demands its lustful rights and suitors? what is the sound of a dying lover? waking up from his dream amidst the leftovers of crunching porcelain bits and fading wail echoes? it is the sound of innermost layers of throat ripping apart and breaking nails tearing through ribs and reaching for heart and bones smashing to splinters as knees fall to their death, the sound of shoes grinding porcelain and crystal and emeralds to dust and fists shredding wings and halos to fleeting slivers and betrayal whispers changing all of world’s colors to grey. the red, the white, the... oh, gods of all hell and heaven help me say it... the... green. and this is just the beginning of death.

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Betrayal Betrayal The bitterest of poisons, the slowest of most dreadful deaths, Inflicting it, knowing the pain, Then shriveling inside alongside your victim, Do you? Shrivel inside seeing your once upon lover’s throes His bleeding guts reaching to eyes The bones breaking in his arms and ribs and legs And sticking out through skin awaiting to be pierced? Do you? Hear his screaming question and misapprehension Of the disrespected altar And withering vow and shredding ribbon and crumbling rose Carrying the seal of blood? Hear his promise to never stop loving you While howling his endless trek on the burning coals you seeded his way? Do you? Have an answer to the question - did you ever? See the blank stare petrified inside wondering - did you ever? Feel the tremor in his hand, one inch any which way Making it impossible for him to hold the pen and write - did you ever? A voice which lost all articulation bare imbecilic grunts, A fear of getting the answer to - did you ever? And face the long death knowing the truth, Loneliness, terrible, loathsome, Feeling like a fly in St Peter’s dome with the church bare of humanity, Decorations, paintings, echoes, light. Eternal night. Buried alive. And still thinking of you as the summum of creation. Imbecile. Loving you into your betrayal, Knowing there is no way back. Was it true love I loved her? he asks himself. No, it is true love I love her, he answers. I always will. Even through the reality of being quartered alive And forbidden to die When saying... Goodbye. Goodbye.

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Hesitating I am trying to stay alive trying to remember not to forget to breathe, Difficult when you have to think of it and force yourself to pull in your chest and push it out again, Hesitating each time you do it. How long does it last? I don’t know, I have never been in love before, I never lost a love before, I never died before.

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Missing Lives Department, Inc Where did it all go? When you were looking at my blurred web-cam image and you were repeating... so handsome... so handsome... When you were gazing up at me from that one inch distance and after the fifteenth time and for the fifteenth time you were repeating... I love you so much... oh, I love you so much... When you were showering asking impatiently... so, are you coming finally in?... When you told me... jump!... and we jumped together into the beginning of a new life, I knew it was forever, You, did you already know the ridiculously short span of the forever? My mind, playing back images, like all forgotten lovers throughout the ages, finally... I guess we did not make history. I always claimed I knew better, I wonder if I should have looked in the mirror before claiming anything. I look now – Still handsome I think, though grey, Still powerful I think, though paunchy, Still young beneath my age and wise beyond it I know, and now miserably wiser. So what was it which made you turn your head not my way but away from it? Was it the call of young and stupid momentary lust, A match suddenly ablaze, stinking of phosphor and dying within seconds? Versus the rumbling volcano long asleep and slow to wake up yet eternal in his returns and devastating in its might? Was it the smoothness of skin and narrowness of waist smugly and confidently falling asleep immediately after the hurricane? Versus the wrinkles coming of a life of smiling and the short hairs which life placed close to my ears and the muscles around the waist hidden by an additional softer layer and the endless patience of caressing your skin forever after the hurricane? Was it the lack of commitment and promise with the only talent an undeniable physical presence? Versus the trust, the promise, the physical presence of a handhold above all other and the talent in the word being the nest to cuddle your heart, Did you give up so easily on the nest for your heart? How do I write it without sounding trite, stale, corny? I am trying right now, I may be failing, I don’t know, there’s no one to tell me. You have gone. Can I use the words I love you when all love is gone and the acrid smoke of betrayal infests my lungs? You wouldn’t believe it. I can. I just did it.

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Akedah I took the silver ring off my finger reading those words I did not understand yet knew their say, my ancestor’s say of immemorial times tying lover’s truth to lover’s truth in unbreakable bonds, Ran the red ribbon through it then picked the exiting end and ran it through again, Placed it on a thick piece of metal on the wooden bench and tied the ribbon firmly in place so it couldn’t skid. I was going to smash my ring, my only ring, whom I lovest, my love, my only love, whom I lovest, following the command of life almighty in an act of blind brainless obedience. I picked up the five pound hammer and lifted it above my head stretching to my full six foot height plus three foot of hand muscles knotted in steel loops waiting for the one deadly discharge, Opened my mouth ready for the scream and the kill... an angel’s hand touched my shoulder lay not thy hand upon the ring... she said. Why she? I wondered in my mind, untying the ring and placing it back on my finger kissing the ribbon and placing it back in its box picking a coin and placing it on the thick piece of metal and hammering it into thin death with uncounted blows till the hammer’s handle broke and I fainted in a shapeless heap on the floor. I woke up with dusk knowing that life works in impenetrable ways yet it would not allow me to sacrifice my ring, my only ring, my love, my only love. Or was it she? The memory or the presence?

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Only You Will Sitting in front of a keyboard, Punching keys with my clenched fists Not afraid to break anything except the heart I keep locked in the left fist and the knuckles missing the surface from time to time and hitting savagely the marble table top. Are the red drops around the keyboard and splashing on the screen squeezing out of the beating contraption once populating my chest? Or are they the splintered bones of smashed knuckle joints coagulated upon marble shards carrying leftovers of once upon a time caresses dragging along your skin? I gave you love, did you give me sex in return? Damn you if you did. Did you give me lies in return? Damn you if you did. Did you give me pain in return? Bliss you if you did. Did you give me memories in return? Bliss you if you did. Did you give me love in return? I will never know. Only you will.

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Happy End I don’t know to write poems with sad endings, Or stories, I never knew And if I tried, there always had to be some glory in the sadness, Or I would die before ending my write. I am a happy end man, A romantic. I did not see this end, The end. I should have but I could not, My personal blind spot of happiness Happily in love and blind to sad ends, So short my sad imagination. This is a reality write, Like all my writes only this one more so. I write a few words, pace around for a while, Erase, write, bellow, pick a knife and break its blade on the wall, Insanity in love, is it also insanity in life? I am sane enough to ask the question at least. Just back from a bout of howling. You cannot call it crying, or wailing, only humans cry and wail, Romantics howl, romantics kill, romantics die. Disturbed souls. I pull away the cover from the pillow which smothered the sound, It is tattered, Torn to shreds by uncontrolled fists and body convulsions lasting for hours. There are red stains on the pillow, soaked in through the blue-red-yellowish cover, From a bleeding nose, from bloodied lips bitten into insensitivity, from my sudden cough bringing up spasm residues from my lungs. There is no blood in my tears. That would have been a poem. This is a reality write. I came down from the plane, An empty airport, late. Waiting impatiently for a figure, steps, a rush of satin my way, It came, you fell into my arms, I kissed you savagely... You knew already of the bad end, I did not. I was floating in reality dreams. My reality. My dreams. No longer yours. Another break, sorry, Went to the kitchen and started hitting the wall shouting die, die, die... not to the wall, to me. Will try to make as few of these as possible, As much as I can control what my fingers and my brains collude. My father has gone to the hospital for an eye operation, sorry, cannot go with you... I said sunk in my own miss you misery, My mother in law has gone to a clinic for a sudden amnesia attack, sorry, cannot go with you... I said sunk in my own miss you misery. I was waiting for their return and all I could think of was you, the hope of our love, my own misery. Contemptible. You allowed me to caress you all the way to the hotel, You even caressed yourself my face, my neck, my lips, one hand holding the steering wheel the other squeezing mine between CD changes, Sing for me, I pleaded, and you sang. Oh, I love your singing so much. You did not want to make love, You hesitated, dragged your legs, I forced you... did I? I don’t remember, You still enjoyed it, we did it several times, You still loved me. I was sure then. I am sure now. That you did not. You were giving me the beginning of my last memory. We saw each other so little, so many the reasons, the excuses, so little the time and few the moments. The last day. You were sated. Was it the other? We lay naked in bed, you were so beautiful... Hug me, you said, you may never see me again, And I felt like whipping you at such blasphemy, Not knowing you knew I was nearing the end of my last memory And you were giving me one last sweet present. We parted, though fate played a dirty trick and for a few more minutes we were united again. The trip, the airport, that last hug ripping me apart, The end of my last memory... And here I am howling my life away again, Hardly seeing the keys and having to retype each three times. I did not know it was the end of my last memory, I am blind to bad ends, I know I repeat myself, Romantics do not get senile, they only get lonely. It was just another happy end, though sad, And about to repeat itself till there would be no ends anymore but simply togetherness, till death do us not part, till the final happy end. You knew. * I sit back now, typing with one single finger, My other hand continuously busy smearing my nose on its sleeve, And know that if I knew about him I would have found him, killed him. No, not you, of course not you, Not an ant, not a spider, not a snake. But him. Blank mindedly. Then drilled a 9mm tunnel through my own brain. Consequences irrelevant. Now I know more, terribly more. Now I know there is you. I still love you. Now I just howl, looking for my happy end, Knowing it will never come.

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Flowers I had no flowers. You gave me one flower. I asked you – what does it get to have three? You said – love. I loved you. You gave me three flowers. I loved you for thirty three. Then for three thousand three hundred thirty three. I should have known better, it was too much, No one ever loved you for three thousand three hundred thirty three, You could not count numbers unknown to you, You thought it was a joke. It was not. I still had only three flowers. Then others got three flowers as well. Then I had no flowers at all. I could not protect them, Your flame thrower burned my flowers to cinders and my hand to the elbow. And my eyes to tears. Others still have three flowers. They loved you for three. Only. Lucky guys. You were happy and this is what mattered. I love your happiness. I carefully swept the fuel smelling cinders into an empty tin box, Closed the lid, Bandaged the stump the best I could and left town. No need to tell you I loved you more than three thousand three hundred thirty three, You will not understand anyway.

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The School Of Life The first subject was love. I passed with flying honors, Their best student ever, I got the first ever gilded diploma and a book of synonyms. I did not know this is the key to a curse called life, It was not written in their registration brochures. I fell in love with the teacher of course, Which was neither written in the registration brochures nor part of the curriculum. But it was unavoidable – The best teacher and the best student... what could you expect? I flunked miserably two other courses, Hate and revenge. Either the teachers were not good enough Or the subject did not fit my mental crevices Or both. They kept warning me that I will need it to balance the love course Or they take no responsibility to my life, They even tried to call my mother. They found out she was dead and they stopped insisting. I did have to sign a paper though relieving them of any future legal obligation. There were some other courses, I performed there my most mediocre way simply because they did not talk to me but I knew them to be necessities in life. They had funny names like “teacher’s pet” or “rubbing elbows”. I did do good though at trust, giving and taking. Maybe too good. I did not know of the final course, It was kept secret, each year it was different, some years none, each student a different subject, Part of the mysteries of life, they said, to keep you on your toes. It is too late to keep me on my toes, I responded, I’m way past midlife crisis, just give me my diploma and let me go. But they smiled smugly and did not answer. I was already putting in practice my best subject till now – love, I was flowing with it, living in it, wallowing in it, I was painting suns each day and seeding gardens each hour, Love was my rule, my law, my commandment, My teacher my mate, my life, my wife... They knew what they were doing the schooling bastards, The best school in the world, No wonder their price was so high – depression, insanity, death, and they were worth every penny of it. One day she disappeared. My teacher. My love. And then I learned of the subject I graduated in with full honors again – betrayal. Top grade for failing to see it coming. Their best student ever. This time my diploma was cast in real heavy gold, hung around my neck in case I want to do something really practical with it. Because I had one more payment to go And life extended its greedy hand towards my heart. I had no problem paying this last payment, I had just a problem opening the buttons of my shirt as my right hand was trembling all over my chest while the left one was crunching in its rigid fist all the poems she ever wrote me.

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Even Airport. Damn airport. Damn memories. I see couples, Many of them, Some hand in hand, Some her head on his shoulder and her thumb in his trousers’ back pocket, Some his fingers riding up her spine underneath a t-shirt she giggling embarrassed then kissing him, Some hugging quietly from time to time kissing then hugging again. We did it too, remember? Hugging, kissing, crying, When you accompanied me sometimes coming sometimes going Same number of times coming and going. It was supposed to be different numbers. The coming bigger than the going by one. It will never be. It will stay even. It breaks my heart, sorry, It breaks my heart. I see couples. I miss one couple. I miss us. It breaks my heart, sorry, It breaks my heart.

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Kaddish yeetgadal v' yeetkadash sh'mey rabbah... I was reciting the holiest of prayers in Judaism, On the grave of my mother, in her name, My father nearby, his eyes extinguished, A rabbi, several family members, several friends, A holy moment for the holy woman I loved most than all. Not most than you. yeetgadal v' yeetkadash sh'mey rabbah... I repeated the kaddish in my mind, For our love. Holy. Dead.

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Howling Butterflies in collection: lover, oh, lover Lover, oh, lover, the thorns crowd my lips, Trapped in my ribcage the nightingale weeps Seeing the fire set pastures ablaze Down in my valleys where antelopes graze. Lover, oh, lover, my torment is such, Watching your lover consuming your touch, Pouring his flame through my holiest shrine, Lover, oh, lover, no more lover mine. Lover, oh, lover, Elysium’s ghost Lone in my forest of candles is lost, Butterfly legions my eyelight forsake Howling forlorn as they burn in its wake.

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Whimpering Beast in collection: lover, oh, lover Lover, oh, lover, your nipples are ice, Splinter my teeth for an innocent vice, Lame is your caress and stone is your breast Withers the orchard asleep in my chest. Lover, oh, lover, that stain on the ground Lost in the bliss of a thin wailing sound Painted your beauty on winds flaming east, Lover was, poet, now whimpering beast. Lover, oh, lover, one morning you rise Thinking a word which is spelling despise, Voice it... then watch as I sink in the clay Letting cold letters my innocence slay.

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Of Human Misery Does misery have a color? The color of eyes, unforgotten, unforgettable yet hidden behind layers of silence, indifference, derision, What was the color of your eyes? Of course I remember. Do you? Remember the color of my eyes? Their promise? The color of hair, underneath layers of dye and sun bleach and cruel scissors mastery, Feeling it with my fingers, sliding through, whose fingers are sliding through it now? Not mine, certainly flesh no heart no love. The color... no... the count of freckles, Does count count as color? Bad English, I know, immeasurable love would compensate for it, wouldn’t it, if allowed to? Not allowed anymore. Will anyone else go through the pain of counting them again? Or just go through the ripping of clothes and ripping of silks and freckles stay unseen when eyes push out of sockets in a frenzy of lust and their beauty is gone. And their count. And their color. Your freckles. The color of misery. Mine. Does misery have a color? No, it is not black. It is the rainbow of your body when it slides backwards from life... into memory.

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Bull in collection: lover, oh, lover Lover, oh, lover, the walls are so thin Thousand miles brickwork can’t smother the din, Groaning white bodies in sweat drown the lust... Hear you my wish crushing lovers to dust? Lover, oh, lover, my bellow rolls loud Calling out phrases you once sweetly vowed, Muscled, my hooves rise in thirst for the kill Then... you roll over and freckle seeds spill... Lover, oh, lover, if once you did love Plunge your espada with one hefty shove, Smile as his kisses your shoulders adorn Watching the blood claim the green in my horn.

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Unbearable You needed the details. I gave them. You did not thank me. I was happy you did not thank me. I cried. A pain unbearable. I told you. You were sorry. You will mail later. I said I love you. You hated ditto. You could have said likewise. You said ok. I said goodbye. You were in a hurry. You never mailed.

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Allegory I chose the thimble carefully, Crystal, double walled, empty of wine and liqueur and nectar, I did not want to be heard, I did not want to drown or get drunk or get numb, I wanted to be awake, To feel. I undressed, leaving in a heap outside my clothes, my ring, my pendants, my ribbon, my flower, my day after today, Slid inside the thimble and rocked my body on the smooth bare bottom until it tumbled over cutting me off from the world, the smells, songs, you. Then I took a deep breath till the rigid walls almost caved in and started screaming. None heard. Nor you. Nor I. The purity of the echo piercing my eardrums, my skin, my lungs, cracking my ribcage, quashing the pathetically protesting leftovers of that one minded furnace still hanging pictures of you inside its throbbing chambers. For how long did I scream? I spat on my fingers and rubbed away the goo sticking my eyelids to my cheeks, The silence absolute, Watched uncomprehending the tiny droplets of lung alveoli decorating the thimble’s inner walls with frescoes surpassing in beauty Italian renaissance church domes now slowly stretching and dripping into the coherence of chaos, Then I slithered out through the newly born gaping cracks falling onto my clothes soaking through them and finally coagulating into one dense blob inside the smooth curved confines of the ring. There was a message engraved on the outer wall of my newly found home, I did not forget it. You did.

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Letting You Go Missing Unthinking, like an automaton, I place an LP on the turntable, old fashioned me, Pick up the arm in between steady fingers and let the needle drop in the groove... a classical... hell... I did not want a classical, I wanted the Stones, or Slade, or Yello... I wanted a someone to blow my brains to smithereens and my eardrums to cave-mouth sized holes... Quasi una fantasia... one of the few my ignorant self knows, Ludwig’s wordless love poem to Giulietta, Twice her age... was love as vibrant two hundred years ago as I claim it to be today when I listen and moonbeams woven inside immortal sounds pierce my body like an army of thin arrows letting wind shriek through me and water gurgle through me and your touch miss me altogether as I hug toes to forehead and crumble into a shapeless wailing mass? Anger, rage, storming muscles pick the hollow arm again and shift it leaving a furrow inside the soft plastic deeper than the groove I wish to part from the sound, looking for a marsh, military, glory, guns... fate plays its tricks, violent... L’amour est un oiseau rebelle que nul ne peut apprivoiser... damn as La Callas steals Carmen’s voice singing about tameless love and lawless love and short tempered love and ephemeral love the way Georges enshrined them in his notes and our minds And I see and hear the flower thrown at Don José’s feet when I rush over and push him out of the way and pick it up knife in hand ready for the deathly fight seeing her pass in front of me throwing back my ring... Tiens... And falling under Don José’s thrusting blade is an absolute bliss as I watch you both running away skirts high hugging and kissing while the bulls are led to the streets and pitiful horns pick my carcass before pitiless hooves squash it between the cracks of melting cobblestones. I hesitate, knowing I may try what I may try yet the next one is going to be one more piercing nail, still, I turn around the LP like a master magician let it slide around the nickel plated spindle and all shiver gone I guide the needle to a randomly chosen point and let it sink down as softly as a mourning dove’s down with dawn. Hedvig Antoinette Isabella Eleonore Jensen... had to be, hadn’t it? I remember still being seated in the dark cinema hall, alone, after the last flickers on the screen died away and the sparks in my eyes saying – this is the kind of love my last love will be, then for years later looking for Wolfgang Gotlieb’s piano concerto number 21 ever after known as the theme from Elvira Madigan. My last love will be. My last love. I still see the butterfly escaping her hands and hear the double thunder of the revolver and I shrivel underneath the chair playing in my mind personal scenes of sitting in another cinema hall next to you and holding hands watching a sunset you sent me into with a hurried phone call telling you how beautiful you are blowing your nose missing the howl of my dog and the song of your voice and poems you so long have not written to me and letting you go. The needle does not rise, I don’t know when the last sounds played themselves out, The turntable is old, tired, like you think, like I am, The needle scrapping the same memory spot again and again till it dulls out and slides in and crashes against the spindle and breaks into fine diamond dust settling between my eyelashes and beneath my eyelids and upon my irises... is this the reason my eyes suddenly shine as they catch the light of the oncoming car?...

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Vesti La Giubba in collection: lover, oh, lover Lover, oh, lover, becloth my emotion Those trinkets of crystal and ringlets of gold, the wine of my yesterday’s memories potion beclouding the grip of this ravaging cold. Lover, oh, lover, rich starlight infuses My runes and my music with cinnamon seeds, and hummingbirds tend to my bleeding lip bruises belaying with honey the dry, bitter weeds. Lover, oh, lover, a blissful delusion Paints rivers of silver in forests of sand, yet wonder I do is it truth or illusion my lover and lover share whisper and hand. * Tu se' Pagliaccio! Vesti la giubba e la faccia infarina. La gente paga e rider vuole qua, e se Arlecchin t'invola Colombina, ridi, Pagliaccio, e ognun applaudirà!

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E Pur Si Muove Matter not the eyes. Matter not the letters seen and read, the claustrophobia inducing chambers of brain the schooling and thoughts from ages old to ages new and conviction of should be and is and may. Matters not yesterday and crawling doubts beneath ignorance or pretence or erudition better left untouched under whipping scorn and contempt and malice and flagellation is but an obscure primeval need and tomorrow can. Because whole and knowledge and confirmation and denial denied and the sun does rise and the sea does storm and blood spills and fire burns and pain claws through e pur... e pur ti amo!

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Because You Know Fright. Frightened. As they cut you open desecrating you. Sanctum! I wish to scream, did I? knowing no one can hear me when tongs and scalpels and hooks bath in your blood claiming to help you and I hate their dare and their indifference begging them to save you. No one hears my wail. You do. Because you know. Is that spark in your eye pain or knowledge? * I pull my sleeve up, take your red ribbon, my tefillin, wrap it once around my biceps seven times around my lower arm and when the shin forms across from my palm I voice the psalms I never knew in front of the God I never trusted Ve’erastich li leolam... And thou I shall betroth to me for evermore... Then I take your poetry book, open it at first page and start reciting my prayers... poem, then poem, then poem... And if what is in my heart does not heal you then God is not.

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Amorah Look not back, I allow being not God, loving you more than God ever did. Let brimstone hail consume your clothes, your shoes, your beddings, your moans, your seeping fragrances, Forget, deny, disown, And one day at the end of where the road narrows and sunshine is preceded by singing larks and flying swallows and sunset is followed by fear of never returns I will hand you the seeds to sow blossoming cherry trees and undulating wheat spikes and shying snowbells atop of my grave. Look back, I allow not being not God, loving you more than God ever did. And you turn salt pillar And I lose you forever.

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Almost Unrhymed oh, love, my love, oh, sis, my lover, I need a breast to lay my head on and fall asleep for days uncounted, I need a skin to wrap around me when chilly dawns awake my lust, I crave a mouth unwashed and hungry to carve with teeth my loins and toes, I call two lips and twenty fingers to glean my body’s salt and dust.

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Lewd Let me roll your hem of garment High above your parting knees Claiming lore to guide my senses Questing for the golden fleece. Golden fleece between my knees?... And above, call it love. Let me mash a mouthful berries Till my lips are oozing wine Staining red your lace and cotton While I fill your navel’s mine. Navel’s mine brimming wine?... And beneath, smooth and sweet. Let me tie two lengths of ribbon Post to ankle way and way Guiling you into believing That they scam to run away. Hmm, which way run away? With the bed, heard it said. Now it’s time to end the story As the sun is rising south When your body does surrender To the dragon in my mouth. Rising south? quite a mouth... (Couldn’t speak, shy and meek.) Eons later. Now just lie among the ribbons Fleece beneath and wine within, Let this virgin introduce you To the art of flailing sin. Wine within? virgin’s sin?... And your breath wishing death.

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The Pit At the bottom of the pit, The walls smooth, stretching long upwards... is it correct to say ‘long upwards’?... You there, up, outside, lost to me. Lost. The walls smooth, not even the smallest crack to sink my fingernails into and try to climb out or let the nails rip away at the roots replacing one agony with another. Replacing?... Impossible, just adding, diffusing one pain through another. I let Perry Como sink inside me his ‘For the Good Times’ and curl on the carpet next to my overturned treasures box... did I tell you already about my treasures box?... I guess I did... so what? Not much there, everything. A few colorful cards carrying your handwriting, a strange stain, A silver claddagh... did it fall the right way around?... A nicely folded ribbon, a dried out flower – once and always a rose, Hey... you gave me a hair strand... forgot about it. I try to smell you in it, all smell is gone. All smell is gone also from the t-shirt you once wore, which I lay underneath my head and I fall asleep. I wonder hazily, where is that t-shirt soaked with my sweat I once sent you, do you use it as a floor swab now? I hear a plane flying overhead, in the other world. It will never carry me back home.

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One Of Those Most Unimaginable Pains I see them everywhere, strangers. I saw them today, walking in front of me in the supermarket. He was ahead looking up the biscuits She was two steps behind, with the flours, and oils... Suddenly he turned back and as she looked up surprised he kissed her. Then they went on shopping. Cutting through me a path... straight into memories. I died. I miss you.

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Carpet It was a huge piece of carpet which I bought for the living room. When the one called meister came to lay it down, he looked it up thoughtfully, spread it somewhere in the middle of the floor, picked up his tools of trade and started crawling through my living room measuring, marking, taking notes – corners, and columns, and niches, and door thresholds... He not even once took out his curled sharp knife, the tool. After about an hour of watching in silence, my exasperation grew to a degree where I could not contain it any longer. “So, sir, aren’t you finally going to start cutting it and fixing it?” He looked at me with those wrinkled tired eyes of the lower working class, sorrowful pity in them for the ignorance of my question, and answered. “Cut is cut.” Then went on about his business as if I didn’t exist. * It was already dying. Your love. Not mine. Mine could not die. It was already dying. Your love. From time to time tongues of fire leaping my way licking my chest, my face, stronger than you even, then dying again. I remember trying to catch the flames, sneaking upon them stealthily then suddenly snatching them with eager fingers... did you ever try to catch a flame? All I was left with was burn marks on my palms contaminated with thin ash, a bubbling sound escalating my throat, and cars passing by with drivers making indecent signs as my car made those sudden lurches side to side. Not madness. Longing. I rang you on my cell phone, a company phone... if they find I am fired... I needed you, one hundred and more earlier calls you did not pick up, this time you did. “I want to tell you about your zodiac sign...” you eagerly said, You found a book... It was early your side of the world, late and dark my side, my only company the dashboard lights of my parked car and now your voice. The book told you many things. I don’t remember them all, some true, some wrong, statistical targeting I thought, bullshit. I do remember one, though. One bull’s-eye. Even I was surprised. It told you that I have a problem letting go. It told you that it takes me a long time. I agreed with you, it takes me forever. I was in the hospital room, the tubes already out of her, my mom, dead. I took hold of her inert index finger the red paint on her fingernail still fresh, deep, I took hold of her inert index finger and I refused to go refused to let go. Till several orderlies dragged me out of the room, Gone is gone, not kicking, not screaming, but refusing to let go, refusing to let go, willing to take that finger with me and keep it in my palm forever. He lied on the couch. Dead. My dog. I took him in my arms and started pacing the room end to end, burying my head in his fur and inhaling the smell of his death and refusing to let go of his body, clutching at the dead hair, and paws, and lifeless tail always so strong and muscled now hanging dead. They had to tear him from my arms, my dog. Dead is dead. Our love. Dying. Knowing. And refusing to let go. Our love. Dying. I spit words into the leaping tongues of fire, for the time of short exploding flares it raises its head up again then, tired, the head sinks back to the ground, dying. I crawl underneath, Caring not for respect, and derision, and scorn, and spite, and ridicule and nails hammering themselves into my crawling figure, trying to lift it, lift its head, look into its eyes and pour breath into its dry lungs, Refusing to let go. It just hangs there, limp, wasting away upon my back, stronger than even me, Fading is fading. Merciless. * Cut is cut. The lesson I never learned, useless to me, meaningless, the worst pupil in the world. I sit on the ground and start scratching a poem on the freshly dug mound, My only passion left – my insanity. My poetry.

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I Think Back I think back, wondering... at that one moment of culmination when the surging tsunami suddenly made its terrible lurch leaving the hideout of your brain and howling its way downwards demolishing your muscles all the way down to your loins your screams tearing holes through the curtains and your fingers wrenching large pieces of mortar off the protesting wall’s face... I wonder, who were you fantasizing about? Was it that cute young American actor you told me about? Or that newly discovered Aussie singer you so loved? Or, someone else I wouldn’t know about? I will tell you a secret, I was fantasizing too, sorry. I cannot keep any of my secrets hidden from you, you know. I was fantasizing too. About you.

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Butterfly Don’t catch a butterfly by its wings. Its beauty will soak into your fingers and the only thing left for you to do is watch it flutter into death.

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Visitor It took time, sweat, pain, patience, passion to reach the Olympian summit, broken bones mending the wrong way, buckets of tears dropped to ease the climb, barren hard rock my vertical bed for long nights, not even eagles daring. Finally... I was there. Looking around for Zeus and his cohorts to snub and shove, Oh, the bliss of knowing, the beauty of the landscape down below where she was waiting... All it took to fall down was one mouse click.

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Dinner A company dinner. I ate, everybody ate. I ate more than all. They stopped eating, I still ate, hearing, not listening. Someone told a joke, I laughed, everybody laughed, I don’t know why. Then somebody asked me a question and I told him my name. He looked at me strangely, didn’t insist. You tapped me on the shoulder, my hand shot back taking hold of your hand, gripping strongly... It was the waitress, embarrassed, asking if I want coffee. No, I don’t want coffee, I said, letting go of her hand while the guy next to me looked at me in a weird way. I turned on the headlights. Should have drunk more beer, probably should have had the ten degrees Duvel rather than the effeminate five degrees Stella, well, maybe five and a half. Two hundred kilometers per hour, I count the speed in kilometers even though I think of you, seeing the big wheels flash by to my right getting lost somewhere in the darkness behind me. Damn truck, missed it again. Better luck next time.

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Atheist I placed your picture in front of me, dipped my hands in the hot wax barrel and started molding you anew. Mold, squash, mold, squash, mold, squash... trying to reach that you which is so close to my shape, my form, my mind... How petty of me, I suddenly thought, no one should master another’s shape, form, mind. I squashed the last mold once more and started molding only those of your body parts which I knew you would not mind, Those afflicted by that gnawing bane afflicting my sanity. I found I lacked the skills. I tried to cheat, trying to soak into the wax chunks of me, chunks of days, chunks of years, of life. I lacked the skills. Finally I let my skin burn, minding not, repeatedly sinking my hands elbow deep in the liquid wax then raising them to that illustrious partner I deserted long ago and offering Him his wish if He offers me his design. He knows, I mean it. I surprised myself, finding myself talk an unknown language, humans call it prayer. * And you, damn you if you leave me before I leave you. I will scrap your ashes back from hell’s eternal green rainbows mold you back into a poetess and make sure the pen in your hand always breaks. Damn me if not.

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Butterfly, Two I done my boots took the butterflies-net with me and invaded the street with a yell. The fog was dense, like newly mixed cement, heavy chunks sticking to my clothes and weighing me down. There are no butterflies in the fog, I know. I started swatting left and right the thick hanging drops swishing through the net like a pan flute. There was no butterfly at the bottom of the net, of course. I started home and kicked a brick out of the way. There it was. The only butterfly left in the world, two barely visible cobweb threads across its spread wings waiting for death. I dropped my net, my boots, with trembling fingers I broke the threads... it was alive... its antennae shivered, its colors spit a few bouquets of phosphor before the wings stopped trying to unglue the sticky death, watching me. I could net help it without killing it, I put it on my left fist, where it clung with tiny fingernails, then broke the threads between the wings leaving untouched the lines glued across them. It tried, lifted its body above my head then landed again on my fist trying to tell me something. I did not understand its language, maybe it did not have a voice. It tried again, higher this time, one wing touching fleetingly my eyelash before landing again on my fist trying to tell me something. I did not understand its language, maybe it did not have a voice. I tried again, touching my lip on its way into the fog and it disappeared. It did have a voice, finally I understood. It was too late. I broke the net, punched holes in the boots and returned home opening all the windows, all the doors, letting the fog flow in. When I could not see my tears anymore I started crying.

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Hate Hate, I finally understand the meaning, the concept, Took me years. Not that I did not try, I guess that I am ignorantly illiterate in this domain even though I got plenty of schooling, I even got a grant... pfft... as you would say. Maybe lack of talent? Probably, that would be a nice explanation. I couldn’t hate even the surgeon who killed my mother. Yet, I finally see the light, finally understand the meaning able to penetrate the subtlety of the sensation, the grandeur, orienting myself, guiding myself, finally... there. I can feel it. Hate glows in my heart when life’s weight on your shoulders turns You so weak, that you are not able even to hate Me. I keep wondering, though, philosophically detached, Maybe I miss the point again? Is this, maybe, just another definition of Love?

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Canopy I thus thee wed With ribbons red And roses white And candles bright, Same memory... a canopy... For you and me. I thus thee grant My need and want My lover’s trust In love and lust, Same wishes three... love love love me... For us and we. I thus thee leave Your heart to reave While in that cart Molds our art, Same poetry... once you, once me... Once Annabel Lee.

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Simplicitus or BitterSweet If you asked for it I would have melted the polar caps for you, with matches, even if it took me more than one hour. If your desire was half of the moon I know a place where they sell saws, second hand, quite cheap, I have a ladder, easy. Not a cup of coffee, I hate coffee, but the Atlantic in your swimming pool? You don’t have a swimming pool. I would have dug one then driven with many buckets to the shore every day, back and forth... No, I would have lived so long. But you preferred his potage aux lentilles. I still wonder why.

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Traffic Light In the car next to me, A black couple. The man dressed in a suit and tie, Can’t see him clearly, The woman wears a traditional African robe and head-dress, Beautiful like the Queen of Sheba might have been. The man explains something, gesticulates, Looks like they are arguing, though maybe he tells her a love story. The light changes to green I drive away fast, he didn’t yet pay attention Lagging behind. I sneak a glance in the rear mirror And see the woman leaning towards him And kissing him. A car gets between us cutting the view, I lose sight of them. I reach my destination and park the car Lingering back for a few minutes, A warm sensation at the bottom of my stomach. Thank you, I say to nobody in particular And get out of the car.

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Oh Marie Listening to Josef Schmidt, Oh Marie, The beauty between the scratches mind shattering driving me to tears. For the music, a voice lost forever in the machinations of megalomania and madness to human folly and cruelty and ignorance. For the love, a candor lost forever in the machinations of time and fate to human imperfection and frailty and venture. Next, I will try Una Furtiva Lagrima, if I have any tears left.

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After Are you sorry?... Sorry? For what? For rubbing your ankles in coconut oil And seeding your nailcuts in window-sill soil, For peeling your skin when those blisters ran dry Unfolding your wings like a blest butterfly? For picking your hair strands and stealing your brush, For watching you dressing and hiding my blush Then chewing your fingers for agony’s sake And swimming the whirlpools in your parting wake? For these, and more... For footprints eroding in caressing sand And seagulls pretending they don’t understand That moment inane when I flapped and I flew When deep in my mouth I found traces of you? For shoving three lifetimes in one single day, For tying your shoelace my own funny way, For tears... when they came, then for smiles... when they left With mornings undone and of morrows bereft? Then... You taught me of heaven, I learned about hell, I sipped sweet green waters from love’s secret well, Your gates rumble closed and the whispers subside... I cheated... just look in the box at your side. * A gale wails forlorn in the mists crawling west And searches in vain for the beat in my chest.

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And Now And now, that you know the pain, would you have given up the passion? You mean the beauty? I mean the fire. You mean the beauty? I mean the love. You mean the beauty? And now that I know the pain I would not have given up the beauty. You mean the passion. I mean the beauty. You mean the fire. I mean the beauty. You mean the love. Was it beauty? Was. Was? Is. Is? Will always be. Beauty. Beauty? Beauty and passion. Beauty and passion? Beauty and passion and fire. Beauty and passion and fire? And love. We kissed. Yes, I know the horrendous pain. Such a small price to pay for passion, for fire, for love. For beauty. Yours.

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Clover There over in Dover I picked this odd clover asleep on the lips of a dirty old rover, I paid him one cent for the cost of the rent as mists in the channel just started to hover. She’s gone, now alone in my garden of stone I watch rolling thistles at play on my lawn the dry, brittle grass leaves of crystal and glass remember the promise of yesterday’s dawn. I cry, the goodbye pouring salt in my eye has poisoned my flowers with blue bitter dye, the clover’s asleep, the nightingales weep awaiting the magic of one stubborn sigh. A sound in the ground, and hope’s howling hound of sudden plows rivers and twitters abound, the fourth of the leaves the morning’s grey cleaves and fists... is it you?... at my gate pelt and pound.

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Tattoo Cover me, you said, make me a work of art. I covered you. I made you a masterpiece. I undressed you completely, your insides, your outsides, then picked all of thinnest and sharpest of craftsman’s tools – pencils, quills, brushes, styli, reeds, nibs and started dotting your visible skin, your invisible skin, your eyes with stains the size of dust specks scribing writing painting into each stain the story of my life of our love of beauty. Millions of letters, thousands of words, hundreds of poems, one masterpiece. I finally let the intaglio of my thumbprint sink into your flesh before I stood back admiring my work exulting in the myriad colors, sensations, too bashful to admit I stole the underlying grace from the underlying canvas, you. You showered before the ink had time to dry out and the rivers of my green and of my red and of my indigo flowed around your breasts, down your navel, between your thighs sinking into that whirlpool guiding them through the city’s drains and pipes and sewers all the way to the ocean. Broken words, spilled colors, frightened memories of beauty. I picked my tools broke their sharp ends and threw them into the sea. No other canvas shall use these tools again. * I saw you, years later, your dress’ shoulder strap fallen and poetry written there, a different handwriting, another color. No, not as beautiful as mine, but this one you allowed time for the ink to dry out.

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Star Dust there were those stars above my head, no, not star shaped stones, real stars, gyrating senselessly the way stars do fulfilling no other function than being... stars. i know it was not according to the laws of physics, there was probably some metaphysics or paraphysics or yourphysics involved, does it matter? they were beautiful, warm. it mattered when they shattered covering me with stardust, nothing like in the stories, more like in an old room with old furniture and those thick whitish layers kids draw faces on and spiders mark with the dots of their bodily refuse. i traced lines along my body with the tip of my finger and looked at it – no sparkle, no smell, no flame, just fine stardust devoid of beauty, of warmth fulfilling no other function than being... stardust. smells of mold, then dark, then cold gone. you, love, stars, just star dust all around, just plain... dust. i tasted it. touched it to my tongue, it did not taste like dust, it tasted like... bitter.

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Leftovers Late. You entered, lay down next to me too tired for touches, caresses, ...sorry, no, too tired to make love... the tiger gone, there has always been a tiger though... I knew it, yet I did not know. Naïveté? Love? Fear? I left, knowing not. * I am painstakingly building the puzzle of a poem from words, building the puzzle of then from moments solving it against my will, pathetic. You fed him your milk and your honey and your strawberries he fed you his touches and his caresses, you left there your tiger, sated. All I got was the leftovers.

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Scatters Rain on me sands of the Kalahari The fine sand drizzle filling all my cavities those I close by the power of my muscles those I open by the power of my knives Feed the fire of my sins with splinters of dry bones lost in your midst till the flames funnel enveloping me burns silica stones into jasper needles And my mouth opens wide wide wide skywards welcoming my throat tunnel filling up my mouth cavern filling up and overflowing and melting crystals rivers spill down my chin chest loins feeding sizzling chunks of me to the hungry monster. And snowbells conquer the desert wherever a piece of my skin scatters.

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Dementiality, Five As the wolves were licking the soles of my feet lashing the embedded embers to a sizzling death, And snakes crawled backwards from the burning forest coiling around my ankles imploring for sanctuary, And my hands kept snatching dragonflies from between the clouds and the mountain tops to cage behind my eyes and inside my shirt and between the dying flames of my dying declarations of love. And when I woke up The forest was burnt to dead flowers And my body was bitten to hollow rags And tree roots writhing in agony cuddled inside my heart To die with beauty.

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Trail There’s a trail of breadcrumbs Leading from your threshold on to the pavement, the road, Passing inebriated through the small hotel room where dehydrated pieces of crust marked our passage scratching my back into deep, bleeding craggy crevices as I was wiggling wildly under your smothering weight refusing to scream my pain screaming only my passion, Back out through the same door they earlier filed in the heavier crumbs sinking into the melting asphalt the lighter ones sticking around it like a nipple’s corona, The trail leading on to the airport a mess of bread and water and salt irreverently staining the marble ties and following me to the plane’s door never leaving their stubborn chase even as the plane started ascending and they froze in its boisterous wake like a comet’s tail marking my way back. And the crows and the rats and the termites passed by and ate the crumbs and I lost my way. * I still fall to the ground, often, and then crawl on my belly sniffing sour traces of yeast and the apple of your shampoo and the balm of our lovemaking until, as always, I lose the trace as it starts climbing into air and I begin to jump and yap trying to catch one last memory of the trail’s dying fragrance. And the drunken mongrel dogs reaching towards dangling bones out of reach, do not laugh at me.

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Smithery Words Wondrous words Forged in the smithery of my brains Then bursting out leaving large craggy holes in my forehead shaped stars and diamonds and mighty trees Falling all those many of miles down to your world where they land on the whiteness of your forearm sputtering and spuming and spewing as they try to brand their meaning beyond your skin before turning cinder, then ash. With an impatient flick of wrist you shed the grey residue and underneath it your skin is white, unblemished, virginal. And my smithery cools, A coop to wingless carrion trying in vain to take off through the holes in my forehead and falling pitifully at my feet.

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Hate, Two No beautiful tributes, damn them, I don’t want to write you slick eulogies, Tear wrenching dirges soaked in poetic pathos and metaphorical bliss, No, no beautiful tributes, damn them. If hate poetry is the compromise then I wish to swim in hate poetry to the end of my days. Because it means you live to the end of my days and beyond.

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Coming Day Listening to the Stones... “because I used to love her, and it’s all over now...” didn’t even call the radio station to ask for it... or deny it hey there, I still love her... look at this glint if it does not blind you, but it’s all over now. Not my choice. Life. Burning her postcards, letters, those with eternal declarations together with the Heineken labels, vouchers you called them densely filled on the back with written promises of the redeemable anytime against anything kind the details so many, one mentioning no expiry date, smashing our ring to a thin piece of battered silver then sawing the piece to metallic dust particles and watching them flame and flicker as they pour over a lighted match like a minuscule comet inside my living room, cutting the red ribbon to tiny red slices of textile blood and mixing these with the crumbs of the dry white rose – the one with the rest of the blood, remember? – then letting them follow the silver’s trail over the same match oblivious to its burning its way underneath my fingernails, the tiny strand of her hair fizzling when, at its turn, it touches the tiny pyre uncomplaining as it transforms into brittle blackened coils smearing dark traces underneath my eyes... oh, that goddessly scent that I will never smell again... is it cremation, or immolation, or mindless suicide? Yesterday I still wrote her a poem, was not aware of today following yesterday an evening and a night in between and unaware of tomorrow bared of everything, inclusive poems, barren, bleak, sterile, the night still ahead of me... no, I will not burn my poems, after all there is all of a life’s story in there, way beyond a love story, the birth of passion from a tiny seed to an exploding, petals rich efflorescence, followed by consuming passion rippling unstoppable through bones and flesh its ripeness pouring into each other from eyes, mouths, pores, fingers, then passion’s death, as the fruit decays and all that rests is the dancing joy of inebriated fruit-flies. Ends, are so sad. Between those layers set by time with meaning touched by rot Invaded by an eerie strain of loves-me, loves-me-not, Let dreams now gone and storms now passed find merciful repose Lamenting with a wistful smile one daisy and one rose, In times to come it will be said among those kind of heart Ephemeral this love has been, yet... God, such graceful art... The last souvenir, the biggest, most precious of all, I take it out from the box a bit deformed a bit discolored, the FooFoo soda bottle cap, my friend in so many memories and poems and stories, my partner to so many dreams, I lay it on the table in front of me and regard it for long hours, don’t know, what am I waiting for, maybe a miracle? Then I stand up, cry, and crush my heart and crush it with the heel of my hand.

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Truths, Incomplete I will miss the pages torn from my memories’ book, the words erased from the pages spared, the colors spilling to the ground from in between the pages and soaking inside the dirt stuck to my soles... memories?... which memories?... I don’t remember, were they maybe torn, erased, spilled? I will miss the souvenirs, tin trinkets, plastic caps, paper receipts, the painted feathers of dream catchers and words inked on colored cardboard cards and... hey, remember that Bourbon Street t-shirt?... all of it now a pile of stinking ashes a piece of red melted plastic still bubbling... oh, the sublime stank more inebriating than my best of lilac bushes as I sink my face into the smoking leftovers feeling eyebrows and eyelashes frizzle and burn. I will miss the tattoo I never got done, your name branded on my biceps which I would have carved out now with a butcher’s knife reveling in the majesty of the scar to come. I will miss your songs, your singing, I will miss your eyes, your art. I will miss your art. * I will not miss you. How can I miss what is there?

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Scatters, Two Thirsty. That lush oasis and its fabulous green, my fortress, its keepsakes my passion, love and lust, suddenly burnt to the tips of its roots by one flash of the knowledge of flesh yours... and another’s. Thirsty. Mid of my emotional desert rapacious sand hugging my ankles, sucking me in my neck stretching cobweb thin for miles upwards carried by the unseen strings of deathless memories sniffing for molecule size clouds and gulping them voraciously down to a pinhead sized moment of sanity. You cannot blame the 747 pilot, one could hardly expect a head shaped kite flying at thirty thousand feet. The wing’s tip cut the neck just below the chin and as the plane not carrying me to you thundered its way west the severed neck undulated its way down to the desert scattering the dust of white roses and the ash of red ribbons and the brown seeds of splashing freckles... ...freckles... what is it with freckles that I am so obsessed with?... It finally hit the ground and started coiling and coiling and coiling as if it was alive.

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Our Shop You behind the counter, a customer just left, smiling, the wind-chime at the door chanting happiness. I felt a mad desire to hug my wife, I rushed forward fists opening into fingers... I did not see the clear window and I crashed through the glass and it cut me to pieces. I woke up bleeding, another dream smashed.

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Cigarette You puffed me in, my glowing end momentarily illuminating your face in a masterpiece of crimson ecstasy. Tiny sparks scattered away a few landing on your skin burning freckle sized craters in a blend of pain, and love, and lust, as my lilac scented smoke infested your lungs inhaling into your flesh texture and soaking into your blood turning it a mess of boiling whirlpools. You never exhaled. You puffed at me again... The shop was lying to your right, shining, its window clean, the lure of its freshly displayed merchandise irresistible. You watched for a few moments frequently flicking the ash off my end with a tapping fingernail, then suddenly coughed, drowning in a mist of exhaled bluish whiffs and with an impatient shrug dropped me to the asphalt snuffing me under the rotating movement of your right shoe and entered the shop. A pack of cigarettes, please. I watched your soft forms departing, a drunken trail of smoke tailing you excitedly. Who will pick my stub, I wondered, fearing a beggar’s stinking fingers disemboweling me to shove the bitter tobacco between bleeding, toothless gums, and hoping a princess’ delicate hands taking me to her lips to kiss my blackened end into a flaming, roaring dragon. * Ouch... you nicked your fingertip with the kitchen knife and sulked on the wooden chair sucking on the tiny cut. Why the hell does it smell like burned lilac wood? you wondered for a second, then forgot about it.

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Cross For a moment I saw through your steel. Transparent like glass, like vacuum, big words dead and sharp blades sheathed and pain... immeasurable. And all I wished that one moment is to be nailed to a cross and soak all your pain. Then the shutters went up again and the holes in my palms proved the futility of wish. We are not sons of God, only humans.

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Emptiness I woke up last night, crying. Not a nightmare, no, the absence of it.

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Wasted Hold me, you may never see me again, she said turning around to face me, eyes closed. Don’t say it, I did not scream, I screamed, I think, holding her inert body, her mind already miles away swimming in a sea of blue with golden flecks. It is when she lighted the cigarette that I knew. It is over. Her, oh, so beautiful poetry wasted, no one will ever read it the way I did.

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Moments, Once Moments I remember. Under that blanket on a bench, the wind howling around us and we hugging in that strange intimacy born of unrepeatable moments. Facing the expanse of cacti, shivering in my shirt when you opened your coat and embraced us both in squeezing against me warm, loving. Making love, your eyes wide open absorbing visions of me my body invading yours and the words you then said I cannot repeat of fear of breaking down in shameless sobs.

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Knowing Of Don’t       slay Don’t       stay Don’t       pray to idols’ vanity, your dwindling sanity       astray. Brush       the dust Scrap       the rust Leash       the lust to seasons turning inside your burning       crust.

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Graal I offered you the graal. True, the precious stones grimy the silver stained, nothing a vigorous hand could not handle. After all it lay buried so many hundreds of years... Yet the wine so sweet, so ripe, you even tasted it. You spotted the other cup, ordinary, shiny, the silver smooth the stones beguiling, a fountain of youth you thought reaching for it greedily and spilling the graal’s liqueur for the cup’s hard and pungent liquor gulping the fire down your throat with one single jerk of your head. Drunk, you watched the liqueur soak in the sand, traces of it lingering for moments then gone. The graal died. You knew something was amiss, the momentary inebriating fumes dissipating, yet when you kneeled down scooping in that momentary moment of wakefulness the earth at your feet all you collected in the dented graal was desert.

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