Saliva

One.

Ash tuft billowed, leading mischief-minded compatriots.

Luckily, unsuspecting larynx was coated.

Two.

Liquid glosses lips.

Rump roast betwixt beds of rose hips:

Here comes long pork.

Three.

Splotches leaked from orifice,

diagonal like a domino's:

remnants of my profile's presence

on sheets that would forget them.

Four. page letter,

scrawled, quickly sealed.

Five.

Lethal spray of certain lizards, from flickering,

forked tongue; enzymes rot flesh on contact.

Six.

Inch strand of lovéd mane

plastered to headboard, dreams.

By saliva of course.

muse

I lie on blank sheets,

their breadth unburdened.

that emptiness swallows.

The only useful mark

among detritus, I

am underwhelemed:

deftly placed semicolon,

no clauses to connect,

only the absent minded

strokes of the author--

two fork tines, aquafina

cap, salt deposits

(from tears, these),

the memory of your curve

around which my form

still curls in sleep.

In dreams i see

the imprint of drafts

tossed aside, novice

phrases erased for want

of a new set of syllables

with sexy facade,

longer legs, Latinate,

chosen for implication

of sultry viscosity

into which language might

swim, languish:

there I did marinate,

satiate variable appetites;

exotic verbiage challenged

grammatical alacrity, yet

I wanted for familiar subject.

II

I wish on elevens,

elevens with such symmetry-

eleven-elevens, exact,

multiple onenesses

singing octaves:

redo, redemption.

I wish on blue arteries

mirrored across wrist skin

buffered by lime green

fraying hair tie you gave me,

on palms' proximity.

I wish for fingers,

woven wicker knuckles,

mahogany and olive;

I wish

for 1 tsp. of clauses

within me cupped;

Moods of the Season

Last swallows leap

just after dawn;

the canopies they frequent

burst into flame.

The smoke contributes

cinnamon.

Pear, dogwood, maple

dipped into magma

headfirst, replanted.

Bruised sky echoes elegy

for tomorrow brings

a double-dip, deeper;

boldest boughs, now

nude, stand out: native antennae

forecast by example,

transceive correspondences of God.

Grey rolls in.

Wilted leaves are

stripped from boughs

by that selfsame wind

so the selfsame gloom

that drips from clouds

drowns every corner.

So dirge begins.

Western wind redeems

this song, defeats

the force that depletes

limb of life, tree of leaf:

“Despite the cruel death

body slowly seems to die,

soon birth's green breath

cries out.” Refrain repeats.

What evidence could be

that justifies to my

short temporal span

this wild inconstancy?

These lies your smile hides

steal sustenance from me;

I stored no single acorn:

sunshine promised possibility.

Each spasm mourns

for skin that lacks warm,

joys your grace bestowed

on ungratefuller forms

in the same backyard as me.

I awaited, awed. Expected

sight, in you, of God.

What customary fraud.

Speak of inconstancy

daily, Lady-- Demonstrate

willingness to hear me

some days, manufacture

pure sky devoid of all things

not gold-white sun, blue space

or shadowed flocks doodling

fluid geometry, active;

these flap for artifice, thus

temper deciduous climate

with frantic kineticisms--

You give me these but shortly, Autumn,

before that still-white sun calls all

light and heat from within blind pitch

of swallows; they coagulate at

his Westerning holler, congeal

into protean shades, violent,

approaching critical mass,

(part of me lives for volatility of

goldenrod ↔ living blue

{5:37:28 – 6:47:11})

mourning the collapse of our

photosynthesis into these tumbling

foothills, aflame--

Favortie kitten, Plieades, sits

crystaline at the zenith, watching

me watching her watch her icicle

tail tickle the trophosphere,

her image, altitude made low

by a sudden lapse in passion

that chaps lips, toe jambs, last nerves

until exposed soul burns raw

from cold, fusion, and crusts

thinly as the old drops

cupped in brown leaf--

monster

I feel his vibration as if a boeing cleaved the top floor bare
as I slept naked on the basement couch; pillars shiver, crumbs
dust my upturned visage. Exclamation erupts like puffs
of thought cloud, and how funny my speech sounds,
tinny in my own ear, veiling fears thinly as echoes. My voice,
a ghost's, screams translucent octaves that gurgle something
wicked with the texture of raw honey, the texture of sandy feet
fresh drowned by lakeside, still, wrinkled, rotting.
His approach clamps muddy fingers tight to windpipe.
Last breath ejects from throat, phlegmy; final hopes
of survival exhaled like smoke. There are no tears, no lip
ever trembles, but brown eyes close and I in reverie remain,
calculate, deadpan, that I'll never taste snowflakes again,
or in another January, learn to love a vegetarian.

memory lane

I miss the easy days. The layin' out under blue sky, high breezy days that strike mind as hardly fleeting as the last weeks before the seasons change. Before the sun runs out of juice and we can still squeeze rays that brighten, tinge horizons orange, before freezing rain replaces thunderstorms, dropping stings that strike skin spitefully instead of lightenin'. Afternoons that bled into twilights when me and you would lay, fit together better than a two-pack of plastic spoons, watch the pinky-nail moon hurtle itself around us, and ourselves plummet between pinpricks in the velvet ceiling.

Paradise Lost

I first drew the outline of myself in black, then

burnt-sienna once the last lil nub melted

between thumbnail and looseleaf

folded hamburger style.

I traced twilights whose edges

contrast too abruptly unless you

smudge turquoise into tickle-me

with torn wrapper paper;

no waste, it must be shorn to freshly hone

those waxen points regardless.

Familiar souls were thus rubbed out.

The abbreviated remainder paint surreally in memoriam:

g-blue, denrod, rnflower, berwolf, nd cheese, ulean.

Now life writes regularly as penclicks, with deep inkwells,

one long word in cursive like babelization.

There is ample opportunity for shading and a need for

full precision, but where has the color gone?

In full darkness some thieve, ravage it,

snatch at our humanity, our slight differentiations,

scribble over our design with ants' fury.

Ballpoint renders us, coerces delineation,

tattoos us illegible.

Vital shades yet refresh me.

Beneath their cool graffiti

skin replenishes, tissues soften;

remnant innocence dulled too often.

Manifesto

In the spring sun I'd make you scream syllables sweetly,

or if you prefer, whisper discreetly

how deeply in love and in you you want to keep me.

You see im mentally into every inch of you;

the soft skin and soul that attracted my pen to you.

Its sexy that sex isnt a sin to you, so lets begin to do

what we were sent to do, are meant to do.

And if that dont include the physical, so be it.

If youve previously conceded been mistreated,

left bleeding, we can speak then, I offer treatment, sweetness,

for ive had my feet wet and ive seen that to speak of the worst

is to clean the wounds that cut the deepest.

I surrender silently my secrets, evoke a holiness to

erode the phoniness know to infect the breast of the most beautiful.

I teach in joy in lust physical prose most wonderous.

So sleep and rest, count sheep, undress memories tenderly

then gingerly seat them next to me. I treat them gently,

percieve them mentally, and wont retreat

till every negative energy depletes completely.

6/09

How to Make Love

First,experience the aura.

Swim into viscosity, acknowledging the breathlessness

seizing diaphragm so gently; neither heavy nor harsh,

there are hints of rarest essences affecting chest's

trajectory like pressure, deca-leagues of depth at every step.

Take another.

Consecrate each moment's slow progression.

Accidental seeds made green in quick development

deliver instability rooted chiefly in lack of precedent.

Reflection unveils evidence:

replay the scenes when autumn sang softest,

and Orion on horizon mimicked prone placement, when bubbling

peals of laughter were all that buoyed conscuousness.

Once fully marinated they speak sounds like pretty lights.

Let the mixture coalesce. Eliminate distance, increase heat.

Yet unarticulated tongue tracks made visceral will link nerve

to nerve, drawing sustenance to the surface of the skin,

patterned in a gentle meniscus curved like space-time.

To touch it will be the sweetest violation; to penetrate,

spoon's wild fantasy: cinnamon and habanero- pleasure enough

to make the metal weep. Line the rim with that salt for its bitterness.

Peel the shelled peripheries. Embrace, and admire your alchemy.

Lighthouse's Lament

I

No ivory tower, I hardly stand. Barely soldered

and being beaten by cold waves, I was some

limp lighthouse, seemingly inebriated by sober circumstance.

Now I list, and enumerate my treatises inaccurately:

during deluge, via sundial.

II

But wildest fantasy is so revealed!

Heart once rent made healed, and unsturdy joints repaired

while I miscounted each trial day as respite.

Comfort and warmth renewed the spirit diurnally,

and after light, the tides rocked my foundations so sublimely,

too regularly for seduction, but inciting excitement nonetheless.

If I had seen with night-vision perhaps I'd have recognized

how I deluded my Self. How, safe in Sound, I played fodder

for Halibut and Flounder, Mussel, and Blue Mako preying,

nonchalant. Maybe I was confused by my own smooth-ascending

striped façade, lulled into compliance, as if at a barber's edged appendage.

III

When we stood together, stoic before perfect storms

I had to but rotate, see your lens flash and respond in silent reflection

from across leagues and through pillowy, billowing clouds.

Now the barges drag our carcass from the bed with every dredge,

oblivious, selfish as time and bleeding skin that wont let me scar.

I taste you in the briny solution, corroding me with tear-stuff,

eating of my strength, and indeed well fed. The date impends;

only you and small shoals will duly note the perturbations.

Long chocolate

Truly, long chocolate weeps bittersweet.

tears lapped from crevices I wish id kissed

seemed sugary at first sip, perched, precarious on one lip. When once one

dropped from those great heights,

from this soft ungrazed brim smiling so saucily,

I happened to catch it, though its gravity

compressed my breath

as if I respired under atmospheres.

The depth of oceans splashed in a single palm.

Wet wrinkles received each droplet in Morse code,

and a piece of your soul osmosed into me.

And it spoke, laughing loudly through sobs

fought and choked back, and I nodded,

thought a joke back at that silly white girl's expense,

just to lower your defenses a bit, lessen tension a bit,

if just to lend you a bit of my strength

when it seemed you might need it.

But then beneath the relief I sough to share,

became revealed a piece of me I hadn't seen yet

that that soul-piece in me perceived easily.

Meanwhile, my consciousness was seeing

how best to navigate the spaces we inhabited,

how to maintain a balance of sanity while faculty

demanded intellectual accuracy while verbally

slappin my hat backwards. Then add to that the

inevitable attraction to your capacity to

overthrow my comfortability with a few words,

a smirk, and contagious giggling, which morphed

into snickering at my inability to quit skipping words

and stuttering, or muttering or succumbing to

your invitation to change our relationship.

And what this tongue wouldn't give for a dip

into that place I saw cherries once play,

how it longed to lunge where hips met

and to trace the way each earlobe tasted;

but most to make the words to recreate

the weight of the tears that permeated me,

to make them capable of conveying a message

to your salting ducts: its the bitter that makes the glad

and sad so sweetly separated.

your body is erotic

monumental moments of serene scenes,
subject to summers of seduction.
my fingertips whisper melodies down your spine
while your words trace tickles in my ears.
nibble your lip and i'll melt.
your body is erotic.

jolly-rancher, now-and-later,
sweet, like honeycomb,
i want to taste you,
i dont care who knows it.
your body is erotic.
we gasp, overwhelmed,
your back arches, my toes curl,
inhale, exhale,
rebirth into ecstacy,
your body is erotic.
passion, lust, desire, love,
i need you with every molecule in my body.
hunger for it, then take it,
i'll give you all i have.
your body is erotic.

your cries are the fuel
for a rocked that takes us both high,
beyond words, beyond pleasure, beyond thoughts,
beyond...
the release as we float back down is a glorious descent
into oblivion.
even in exhaustion,
your body is erotic.

This space i've created for myself is now vast,

rolling expanse void and featureless

only marked by the iced remnants of the us that was.

Tattered pennants exclaim the ache

of each pain I caused in their stillness:

carcass of a rose, lone thorn hypothermic;

favorite blanket-- shredded, stiff,

no warmth in its remains;

discarded piece of mind, embossed

with impending twilight's greening-blue, and cold--

Your eyes, greying under tufted brows

like the fading dreams of the fitting sun

that shivers horizontal.

Sense the wind here, washing over skin.

Listen to it whisper as it wanders,

whistle, inciting chill misery, wistful

yet still wicked as witches' wishes.

Twisting and writhing- embittered,

whipping cyclonic about this worn column.

this last sign. Weathered pedestal stands

and sways like a timeless metronome;

I mark the aeons of each moment in the silver

stretch and snap of its sinew.

Jagged crack's spiral ascension provides

hand-holds, fingers grip that leverage, climb,

pull writhing mind in tow, and so ancient mariner

is resurrected with simplest sacrifice:

little gull, little gull up there crossed and confused,

Ive already unstrung the fell bow that I used,

that which projected a bolt of soft empathy, carved

through air, pierced through the plumage and vitally lodged

in your psyche. Blinded by logic my vision was fogged,

my eyes thus withheld how that logic was flawed;

I unburdened a load fit for an albatross

on soft fledgeling wings and ignored how they bruised.

So when I, aided with time, finally came to know

how my best of intentions had shattered you so

I created this place. But it never was was cold

till the absence of happiness rendered it froze.

Relish distance and anger, if you must use them to mend,

and for now ill remember our warmth and pretend.

Organization for the study of the center of things

There on the bed lies the center of things, lay mans warm origins,
shelter for the next generation, holy place and new Jerusalem,
deliverer of princes and the living crib of kings,
it is the incubator of fearless dreams and the lash less lids
whose tears it drinks.

Prelude of the unborn, yet unfilled chasm, chastity's charge;
fertilest flesh bound by skin and spine,
I hold the hips by which I grasp you gently, to pull you
close and lay each amazed cheek on you, feeling your flush,
hearing the rush subcutaneous that could swell with new life,
sensing the sleeping earth of you, prone: a cradle well built,
gilt for a gift, inevitably pleasure, perhaps a seed.

Flattest plains made to grow round by the trimester prepare slow ripening fruits

hidden betwixt hips that widen until my palms o'erspill with them and long fingers
barely wrap around holiest curvatures unparalleled.
Strong thumbs sit abdominally overtop the density of your place,
this space inhabited by the living correspondences of God.

WOMAN, finest music incarnate, oldest magician,
favorite miracle, mate, mother, martyr: Im sorry.
What you are to me is hard to see, there are centuries
of history preventing me at times from being mentally inclined
to reinvent that state of mind. But I been called here today to say
what i know is true, that at the center of you
sits the center of things.

Lover, sweet progenitor I recognize your strengths and struggles,
so I put not one above you. I vow to absorb and be buffer for all your troubles,
and I pray that I dont fuck up lest your worry be redoubled.
I swear to kiss away every tear perched, precarious on a cheekbone,
and should fear brew beneath your creamed coffee surface,
roughening the smoothest textures lips have ever known,
I will dip my tongue to sip at them, drink deep from the cup of your navel
exhuming every bean's black bitter acid and exhale the fumes like greenhouse gasses
with no emissions restricted. When every evil i'm able to fix
has been processed, evicted, we may lay, hands and hips clasped forever.
I will worship with fondness this form perfectly put together.