erotica without you

dilequesce

your face warm against the curve
of my neck. a palm, a panic, a circuit
breaker, closing, when we are
the beating of wings in cove. your nude

foot balanced on the rim of metal
outside a door that opens at a word.
the word is look, the door is yes. lips
fold into my heart, a strip mine. the no

that i could not say. powerless
in the wan sun, clouds with fire
inside, mouth on my thigh. your wrist
a river, banking in flight. the creek

in your arm, the water of my body.
the questing banks we follow with
a snorkel, a mask, a school of minnows
that tick frantically. explosion.

the slow melt of snow over crocus
in my eye, falling into yours.





)(***

she stands

on tiptoes reaching for the sugar
in the upper pantry. her shirt rides
up above the belt line exposing
skin. a smoothness found in opals.

she places the sugar on the counter,
sticks her finger in her mouth.
sticks her finger in the sugar.
sticks her finger in her mouth.
sucks the sweet. her eyes

have lashes that whip. her eyes
escape to venus on the back of a submarine.
there is an answer waiting under the table
against the tile, where cold fire kindles.

dating site blogging

ok, so this ok cupid site has a journal
thingie. and i've been doing expository
writing there.

today i thought, damn, i can't just
delete that profile when i want if i have
all that writing, unsaved to any other place
on it. so, i'll be posting them here as well
and i guess there's a feature over at okc
that'll do that for me. i'ma have to check
it out. but for now, here's the twelve posts
i've already done.

1)
sure i'm not the first

i'll chronicle my interactions on this site.
not specifics of course but just the general experiences and emotional reaction to them.

emotions? do they have those anymore?

i'm pretty sure it's my age that leads to the kind
of reactions i have to the ways i'm approached on this and other dating sites.

to put it succinctly i'm gunshy.


huh huh. she said suc.

yes beavis it did sound that way. which takes me squarely into the realm i'm trying to avoid. i'm a sexual person, but i'm too old to be playing masturbatory cyber games and like a typical woman, i'm wary of one night stands.

and sadly, i feel like most men are gonna look at that statement and wonder wtf i'm doing on here. i often ask myself the same question.

i'm on here cuz the past is the hope of the dead. so living in the current, i find myself to be open to talking to anyone.

too often IMs degenerate into sex talk online. soooo frustrating to me. as a woman and a writer i get nothing from these kinds of chats. too cliche and i'm imaginative enough that i don't need someone on the other end of my masturbatory fantasy. porn is very popular with men, along with football and other blood sports. i'm not into either but can tolerate the former better than the latter within a relationship. . i'm fond of neither when i don't know who you are. and no, a profile is not gonna clue me in.

let me ask you this, men. if you were in a bar and you thought me hot enough to approach, for whatever reason, including a few drinks (so that we can get the insults out of the way up front, i know that i'm not attractive to everyone, but neither are you so shut up) would you whip out your cock and lay it on the barstool? and if you would, would you really expect me to suck it? if you've answered yes to this, please, avoid me. i will stomp my huge stilletto pen right into it, no matter what its size.



of course i'll be dismissed as antisexual or antifun or bring on your anti's i'll raise them by one. then i'll fold. i just expect too much.

perhaps i'll learn how to lower those expectations online.


2)botmatic
the programs are getting better. soon there will be a turing machine for each and everyone of us, with personalized preprogrammed responses for each / and if i'm wrong, if the come ons that seem like bots aren't really that at all, then again, i'm an anachronism in a digital suit.

programmers, the machine still needs work. realtime conversation isn't working like it should and it's not responsive to specific questions. pre programmed responses just don't work well enough on line vs txt msg.


get busy. we need our god machine.


lol

3)

the bot question got me thinking about a trend i've seen in the online dating world in real men's profiles

so many guys lookin for a real woman. now, taking that at a figurative value i've been thinking they mean someone who doesn't wear one mask in one situation and a different mask in another. but what they might mean is they are tired of recieving bot messages as well. also, i know that pros ply these sites, and pimps as well, looking for customers. so, i guess if you've been approached by that kind of behaviour enough, you find yourself beginning to be skeptical and cynical about anyone, but maybe most especially about someone who seems too good to be true.

after all, great expectations are easy to play off of.

so maybe my profile looks like a pro's? i mean it's not the like girl can come out and say hey honey gimmee money.

honestly, i'm not going to change it if that's the case. it's just a excercise in futulity to try to translate yourself onto the page. people read any profile with expectations already engaged so who they see is a piece of a puzzle they're trying to fit into an empty slot in their life. i don't think that's pathetic, only human. but it definitely can skew how you view.


4)
making comments
now i remember why i almost never do that. language is akin to holding a landscape painting in your hands, with which you're trying to communicate solely through the way you angle and move the painting. what you mean to say is clear to you, but the person on the receiving end brings their own interpretation to the message. rarely are they the same thing.

props to scattered frags for the painting metaphor.

5)
ind
open minded can have different connotations on the web. do you notice how language is almost becoming like a signified network, where meanings morph depending on distance and direction from the center/root/nexxus?

i call myself a free thinker. and of course i think i am. but some of these match questions are repetitive and limited. i think there are no real true/false questions or black/white choices when it comes to matters of personal choice, ethics or character. many of them only gave two choices where even 5 might have been insufficient . how sad that nuance is lost to statistical averaging.

6)

losing
"which would you rather lose, the right to bear arms of the right to vote? omg. someone said the right to vote. hello future felon. in gaza they lost the right to have their votes mean anything but they still got the right to bear arms, taken at the point of their guns, and so does the other side, but their guns are bigger and badder and they have more more more more more. you say you want a revolution? i'm glad i'll be dead before the middle of this century.

7)

some common mistakes i make
i guess if i'm going to retain the metaphor of internet dating sites being a bar or some sort of meat market, then i guess emails that are not replied to, or ones that drop off are the equivalent of making eye contact or even "hey can i buy you a drink" and "thanks/no thanks". it's just i never was a bar person. i call myself a dweeb for a reason. if i was at a bar and some guy was trying to catch my eye, i don't think i'd get it. like "whu, you lookin at me?" in fact, that's often been my reaction.

another one is, i suppose, being too defensive. i want to be open, i truly do, but come on, i've had several conversations with bots, an email exchange with a man who said he was honest and straightforward then sent me famous web photos saying he painted them, and of course, the inevitable online booty calls. also an invitation for to be a long term third. i dunno, i'm not that a free a thinker. i get jealous. what can i say, i'm human.

the biggest mistake. lol


7)

i don't know what to put sometimes for "dating category". as mentioned before, language is a minefield and we all bring our prejudices to any interpretation.
my ultimate goal is to have a longterm relationship. but instant relationships suck as much as instant coffee does. so, isn't there a middle ground to walk..somewhere between love at first site and a four year engagement?






of course i don't discount love at first sight. but it very often doesn't work out. we confuse love with lust.





the thing is to nurture love within the lush rush from lust. realize that the little things you're let slide due to the great sex are not gonna seem so little in a few years (if you're lucky) or a few months (if you're typical).





that's why common interests & common tastes can be a good clue . if that hottie you're looking at doesn't really seem to be compatible, interest wise, they probably won't be over a long term.



i'm not saying you have to joined at the hip. in fact, i can think of no better way to ruin a relationship. but if he's really into fishing and you don't even want to watch a hook being baited , you prolly shouldn't even begin to get involved.


if they're christian and you're atheist, it prolly won't work out. if they're bored by poetry and you're a poet, well, don't go there. DAMN, there goes my fantasy of jon stewart. lol.


anyway, the point is, i used to have this attitude of you can never be sure before you meet. but i've learned that indeed, you can be pretty sure about some things. you have to set reasonable boundaries and not let either enthusiastic lust or abject loneliness override them. either way, your judgment can be impaired. remember that long term can only become that in a walk thru time.


8)

big ones vs little ones.
nikki49 wrote this in a comment to my post below on ltr.

"After the haze lifts those small Idiosyncrasies all of a sudden come into play!! They become huge problems once the romantic (Gaga)stage subsides!! The really big ones will doom the relationship,while the little ones can be worked through together!"

so it got me thinking of idiosyncrasies vs. deal breakers. the big ones are easy to spot,like smoker vs. non . it's the small ones that don't change when pointed out that can be blown into the burst balloons. for instance, she's always late. it annoys him, a stickler for appointments. how did they get together in the first place? lust overrides, perhaps increases during, the wait. but a while down the road, her chronic lateness seems to become a weapon she uses to goad him. her behaviour hasn't changed at all, but his perception has.


or he slurps his soup /eats popcorn in handfuls. at first she laughs. boys will be boys. but she wants him to get to some manners. she hints. his resistence is not seen as individuality anymore, but a disrespect of her request. again, behaviour vs. perception.


i'm speaking here of practices of everyday living. if you wear flannel pajamas and your mate wants to sleep in the nude, both of those differences can lead to a perception of judgment from either party or to either party. if you can't tell your lover 'hey, your sleeping in pajamas says to me you don't want sex anymore' and get that issue straightened out, then you stop making advances in bed based on assumptions to which you don't know the real answers. maybe he just likes the feel of pajamas. it makes her feel safe to bundle up in flannels at the end of a stressful day. or just because she vacuums in the nude doesn't mean that she wants sex right now dammit. or he just feels more comfortable writing with no clothes on. etc. (i like to mix genders within the text, it's my compromise to the sexism inherent in english expository writing.)


so anyway nikki49, thanks for the comment and the goad to some more outrospection on these matters of the heart.

9)

do you like meaningless sex?
was the question. only 2 answers. yes or no. is it really that b/w?

give me a definition of meaningless sex. does that mean nsa sex? and if it does, why? i think one can have nsa sex that has meaning. now, maybe the meanings are not the same in each participant, but that doesn't mean it was chaotic or random. each person that comes into any kind of relationship, no matter the duration of the exchange, will provide a meaning for it.

nsa means that. no expectations. you are feeding your animal. you put your mind on hold. you put judgment away.

no expectations. how many of us can ever say we go into meeting someone from these sites with that? even if a profile is on "intimate encounters"(a misnomer of the highest form), expectations abound.

to me, a definition of meaningless would be "i am viewing you as an object. i have no interest in what's inside you. let's just get it on, no words, no exchange of anything, including bodily fluids. no kissing". now, do i enjoy that? nope. did it once, didn't like it. i don't think i'll do that again. but one never knows what life will throw at us, do we?

9)


i am 2 % my own "enemy". wow, is that all? i thought i was waaaaaaay more contradictory than that.


10)

day - 4:17pm
protection
oh let me enter the fray. but here. where i am GoD. lol.

"anti abortion laws protect unborn children." or babies or whatever you want to call a potential life that is not viable on its own.

hey, i understand how the anti choice people are sooo protective of life. the same way so many of them think that society has no obligation to the lives that come into this world, unwanted, because of their moral posturing. "we don't want to pay taxes for WELFARE or social seCURity. that's ..that's socialism!"
but ask them for taxes for war and they're always first in line. i guess that's "protecting life". in hell.
they're so protective of life they want to encourage it to begin in any way possible. unless it's already growing in a crack somewhere, struggling thru concrete and trying to get to a better place where the sun is not clouded by acid rains and the soil isn't toxic, but organic. that's why they also don't want to distribute birth control or the morning after pill (which PREVENTS impregnation) or, their god forbid, talk to their children about sexuality in a non judgmental way. they want to protect the children. which is why they're now raising their children's children to have more children and stay that way. nice. life. what a concept.

i should not go on. the vitriol is beginning to rise.

boutique

caramel light thru the curtains
that drop for a moment. it's
morning, and we all know
what that means.

if i play hooky again
i'll be living under the bridge.

it's not that far from slacker
to don't go backer. i should be
grateful to have a job in this
economy i should be should be

ya see? i don't appreciate
the big things in life
but gimmee an orchid, tiny
and waving on a stalk
and i'll gladly become your bee.

the woman of today is

miserable says this post on craigslist.
cuz i took my pof profile down. i just coudln't
handle it anymore. i'm on okc now cuz
well, it has a journal feature and also
cuz people seem to expect a real profile there.
some things to look over.

now, my bff encourage me to join
over there and even tho i said
the old people on that site are slim pickins
bff insisted he was having a lot of luck.

at least he gets to chat with real women
even tho he almost never meets them.
my chats have mostly been bots. or men lookin
to hookup online (gag n sad) like what ru wearin
type young cougar hunters. cuz it's a youngy
site. a place for da youth. which is why
is has some features that are better
than other sites, like cool tests to pass
the time and questions made up by
the gamers to answer and feed into an
algorithm of compatibility.

i wnat to know why smoking is not in there.

but tonite is time for bed.
i'm pretty sure i wn't be hearing
from you this weekend. or anyone.
and me, with free time on my hands.


no kidz. mebbe i go to the open mic
empty handed.

butterfly on a teardrop diamond chain

i'm thinkin of that old beatles
song. fits me. except i can't find
even someone i'd like to kiss
while mine are wrapped round.

wish i could break free
they're pretty enough
to cut the glass
that divides me from me.

i wonder why i can't use them
for that. or maybe it just takes
time cuz they're so small


i really don't want to be
in life without romantic love
but that doesn't last. it's what they say.


bleh to them.

stealing from work
that's a good way to cope.
heh

momomomomo

i can safely sigh a disaster's
been avoided. dark moon indecision
has its own charm. an ending
becomes beginning and we move on.
down the road. without headlights.
indeterminate, gravelly, potholed.
holed up in pot. go ahead hippy haters
and hate. at the concert everybody sings
that line from al, only love can conquer hate.
i guess israel hasn't heard about that one.
i heard their god was a jealous one.

i can dig it. i get jealous. it comes from
insecurity and apprehension of superiority.
why else would god make the no other gods before me
first in his list? sounds like the number
one wife in the harem if you ask me.

ya never know what life will throw at you.
a co worker with a hard on for your mac
a poet with a penchant for piracty
a roommate with a reason to keep you
or kick you out. the steady three
keep trucking on. you tell me i should

stop hoping and i say i will as soon
as you let me out of this box. pandora
pandora i shout and you have a key
you won't use . indecision is so
easy a place to sit. it's nobody's
and nowhere. like some sort of face
with no background. like art, falling into
your fingers, it burns but
it wipes off. a vanity procedure
tacked to the office bulletin board.

a singleminded simpleness, yeah
you two, perfect for each other.
why haven't you found you yet?

curtain that hides a curtain

she pulls the veils aside, matches
intent to desire , drops them
into acid wash. one by one.
what survives is skeletal,
bones in a tinted window
seen only at dusk when the lights
inside battle a sense of time, just
before the closing of the heavy cloth.

the bombs begin at midnight. so she turns
the clock ahead, quickly. past the cease fire
into the next round of cackling hens, crackling skins.
this is how she slides the needle in.

with closed eyes. missing vein. missing veil,
ported from surgery to recovery to hospice
eventually she wraps the white plastic drapes of medicine
around her nude body and tags herself gone.





**)(**







recipe for butterfly


caterpillar hunger
safe twig, not too shady not too hot
silk threads
spit
sleep just leave
me alone
pls
?
a razor on the end of a tounge
claustrophobia
desire










***((****







haunted with past lives
the dancefloor jiggles
packed tightly with awe
and awe shucks. he's sexy
and cold, jujubees pop
in the unwritten subtexts when he looks
at you, icicles dripping from his chest.
he looks at her who is you. he looks at them
who is you, he sees his lover's eyes
in the batting of the crowd, her lashes
don't compare if you aren't listening if you want
less than to hold on to him
when you dance.
you cannot catch him
his wings are too fragile his wings
can't be pinned he must be allowed to land
upon what he desires when he tires
of the flitting, musical wind. if you want him
make an o with your mouth, breath
a puff, maybe hitch a ride
on lithe seeds rising.
















(*)&&&









your feet are caught in salmonella shoes.
i urge you to return them to sender.










*()&&()~

oh tilda, you grapple
with my strawberry hooks, the grape
umbrellas of disaster, formulation
and fermentation to keep warm.

there comes a winter then a spring
and then will be a different thing.

the persistence of this radiation is mutating me.
hand down the moss a light
green variety, add to the wet ground
of the unfreezing tundra. something
will come along and eat it. a crystal what of emptying
stained glass desert, a hunger pang, whimpering.


making a corpse
alone
is a more difficult thing than you might
imagine. it takes a certain type of breakage
and paper shredder flour. plastered in paris
on top of the seine in an exqusisite gondola
imported from spain, not one of those machievelian
venice ones, but the real spain found in disneylands
around the worls, with an h, little flat
boats, skimmers, filled with benches and big poles
to manhandle to trout embarking. slither and slide
into the jaws of the fish processing animatronic
small worlds of yesteryore.

sos , say the bots. i can't follow your direction.
did you dye your hair green again? the borg section
is stressing over that but only in a polyhedric dimension.
if it metastisizes into something more, we'll let you know.

later versions will naturally be less fuzzy, more logic.
we're working on the perfect being


when she saw that message, she knew she'd have
to hide it from the kafkaphreaks. the ones
self propheting into mob bomb matrix one.
the ones holding the button. they see themselves
in every allusion and so are mau d'ib. (sp. to confuse
the logician . !footnotes are parenthesized to save time
and shift key duty. )


she went to the group for advice.
nina, we just got this message in. tasha pulls
the text from her hand. after reading it she powers
up the brut and begins to fold the paper
in a series of triangles and points. hey, i want that
says jack, from his position on the floor
tickling the river babies feet, to make them giggle
and fart the smell of autumn and falling leaves.
come get it, says nina, her lashes are
compass points mating. she's smiling, she's folding.
jack is beside her. let me show you how it's done. the paper,
flattered to be the center of attention, flutters, uncreases
and erases the comments she'd written upon it. she grabs
the airplane from jack's hands and with an exasperated sigh
sails it toward the fire. soon chai gasps.
she walked in late. the tableau freezes as she stomps. glitch. glitch
glitch the mother hen in the other room
is heard to mutter. the interface shuts down.









**&^^



east and west were in the second wave. the rental had been extended
up till spring break. a real discount since the market collapsed
and no one real was getting the rent checks.jack wrote them out
to who ever drove out to the house once a month , as long as they showed
id and gave a receipt he could show the cops .{often it was the cops.
what the fuck did they care ? the banks were foreclosing on all the properties
and this little real estate on the side was pretty lucrative. all they had to do
ws pay the electric and water. the city inspectors got their cut. it's all good.\\\\\\\]
the grow room gave off a healthy glow, which the bots easily masked
since all data was fed into the web for processing.

is this what we've come to, asked nat,interrupting her grilling
of the river babies about their hats. or, rather,
the lack of, she corrected
mentatly, on the fifty first pass of the regulon carpets of venus.

anything but berber-- laughs lynze the orange cat takes offense
and bites it little tale off. it slithers lizardly into wishardry
and the sun and the moon bide their time
till eclipse. the next wave
was on its way.

blogging before the glasses

my vision's going
and i rarely get the day right
i had another dream of you
but the first in a while.


this time there were happy visions
which made the unreachable
impossible to bear
when i woke i cherished them
then got up in the cold air and pissed.
when i came back to the warm
comforter, you weren't there
so i wept a bit, went back
to dreamless sleep.


this morning is a cataract, filmy
gause and the sound of beating machinery
saying get out in the day, make it count.
writing is not considered in that equation
it sits beneath gluons, resides in neutrino guts.

the rattle travels from one side of the window
to the other. a train moving the seams of the trailor
apart, divides at the clefts. finally
the laundry ceases. i can think again.

but do i want to? sue me for the things
i can't do, lack of will in the infinite canyon
a sunset of walls waiting for the midday eye
to take notice. a chronicle of crumbling.

i have to clean out my car. there will be dancing
tonight, outdoors in the cold under a barely there moon.
maybe the stars will poke thru.






*



i thought it was time to be gone
but your face keeps seeping
like sugar ants, pixellated around
a microscopic mound.


no one watches tv
on saturday morning, that's the time
for projects and shopping. later when the football
game is on, comes some rest.


i want it to be time to be
gone, a dull effluvium
dissipating, trace chemicals
bonding to earth. done, this
vision of never was. but there's nothing
i can burn, no candle named "tried".
so it calls me from a future i can't tame
unless i refuse to play the game.


in dreams, as in life, desires piece
themselves together, cell arrangement
makes its own room in the spacetime allowed.
how vast, the universe in my sleep.

here

if this keeps up, i'll have to see a doc.
no worries, it's just my head.
she says it's coke, says it's magic.
you message, telling
me where to meet you
as if shore and skyscraper
walked thru arches, under mistletoe.
your lips, an expensive pillow
stuffed like metaphor into a bad poem.
archangels line a cup of green tea.
the taste, you say, is bitter.
drink the draught of carmine and ambience
i gave up for a night of belief.




















()***







my son has princess
cruise lines playing cards, he
shuffles them in the air.
guitar heroes battle on easy couches
pizza boxes gape, grease a forensic
detail, escape unlikely.

we have company this weekend
and i am not doing well not doing well
i have lost the battle with anti depression
because the hopeamine inhibitors
doped my sun rays into alkalias and other
chemicals related to overplanning.

there are things that need differing.
you told me that. but.
but.
i mean come on, i want to wonder why
i want to want to want that rush.
i want to be ok with not needing it.
because in my last life i was a popping
pill and august night. in florida. where august
is scantily clad and coconut milk
baths are sold for 888 in miami
day spas. that's where i met
the doc. he gave me a nip and tuck
at head meets prefrontal
cortex in contextual
contests of curative comas.















living. that's what happens outside this door.
they give me space to be seriously
depressed, co dependant on the tapping
keys and sticky spacebar. cuz they don't hurt me
on purpose. and anyway, it's all self directed.
as long as i get up and go to work as long as i
pay the bills i can be as isolationist as i please.

it takes a lot for me to go to walmart.
i've got to need toilet paper
or a dose of tabloid. if you were here
we could send you instead .
you , wisely, decided to fend elsewhere.
florida is for people who can handle paradise.
















+088






you know, jack wanted to me to post the bloggy stuff
on the board
cuz he didn't want to add another LINK TO FOLLOW.

i think it's a bad idea.
if you really want to know what's going on
in my life just
come live here.

had

a story of a bee. the small bitter flowers
in my front yard, their exsquisite whites
cardinals , got me a colony under the trailor.

let the party begin. right after i go to sleep.

think positive he says

like an angel's mouthpiece
when he's being chavaunistic
over needy, too effusive.
just like that other dude.
the body builder that i drove away
with a silly observation.

ok, maybe there are gods.
you guys love my gullibility.

he'll give me his number when hell freezes over.
i mean come ON. using photos readily available online
and posing them as your own artwork
really chafes my butt. at least with a line
you don't steal the whole poem...

i think i'm positively glad that
i didn't hand out my phone number
and glad that i i've got some claws on my paws.

yes you did a number on me.
i'm not going to be able to let anyone close
for a while. i'm positively certain
that the one you threw at me today
as a lark, the one who might have a chance
is just some guy flirting with a maybe
without any idea he wants to be with her
or who her is. what did i want?

respect,love, trust your eyes looking into mine
not god talk or telling me
i'm not positive enough. who is her?
i dunno. i guess i need a mirror to see.

lens retracted to itself, warps alone upon the shelf.

i want to break the thing, come shattering to self.

crying over the past

i can't believe i broke the twelve step
guess i should have prayed to my higher power
which i thought was love. the moon the moon the moon.

so i tell you i'm ok with knowing
what's up with you when you get over
the black breath that chains you
and you rope me back into being your friend
but only because i wanted to know.

curiosity killed the cat. imagine that.
i asked you why you didn't love me yet.
the tarot said a message from far away
would result in a union of worlds
and i thought it meant i had to send it
because i felt far away from you. it was

where i needed to be. the message was from
an old friend, an unanswered passion of youth.
now you're both aged, and she
named a son for you. another regret
you'll have to see through. i guess

i just have to realize what and how
it is that you and i aren't for.
that's love. that's union.

if i read the tarot today
i would not believe her.

but i would. i have to know
as if knowing did me good as if
i believed the knowledge.

i should have stayed on the twelve step.

expectations are the arrows we sting ourselves with.
so she says. might be.

examing my navel thru /you/

i'm an earth pig born in
the month of the metal dog
to english ancestry
does that make me an english pig-dog?

no but it makes me way to0 lazy
cuz the kind of dog i am is an old labrador
retriever, not so much for the hunt
as the fetch . i don't think i have a soul
mate cuz i'm always late
or early. never on time. dualistic
predictive. spitting on a chance
for netherlistic. woohoo jus coined a new goo.
go down with the leather tricksters
generating zoo boo. hungry, i eat my corn flake
frosted, make diets shake the rockets, shaved
heads are much too toxic for the mind this kind........











i'm so lame.

















78987

a string of homecomings

sundown, between clear
and stark water, a channel
with a mermaid and a fool
on a catamaran. it's carnival.

a pearl in your mouth
falls into a lucid palm.
sitting, tapping keys
against the table,waiting
for authorship to grab your
collar or kick it into
a cross country drive.

it's perilous to court poetry
his excuses are bangles
for your wrists.
















*(&&&&






after we put the kids
into their tents for the night
often we'd take up music
or discuss a piece from the book
you or i had read that morning
during toilet, when the east was a candle
in a frosted glass set inside
adobe walls. i stare at you,engrossed
in a book you found on the shelf
releasing the offal of your dreams.

i pretend sleep; solitude is an amethyst
worn on a circle of morning and yoke.
i have mine to slip on later,
after you've gone from our bed again.


when we never came to these rivers
or caught the fish to send back to the stream
or found the rhythm of days unencumbered
with the sharp whip we used to claim life, when we
lay beside each other, making music that looked
like our fire haired child, her dark lashes
his depthless pupils. when that didn't happen
and i loved you anyway.










^&^%



or.... at least
i stayed i tried i wanted
it
to
be
real.





and you stayed. i still can't
say why. was your love so
different from mine?








*(&&








we met in a ghetto nasty
shelter for the homeless

overwhelmed by bills or bad
choices i got into a program for women
sociologists to get me
out of the gutter

too sensitive to work
bad with deadlines but creatively
gifted with a genius
for bouncing from man to man
none of whom understand her.
you apologised for the inconvenience

























*(&


time spirit

my father was a tree in a forest

god, amichai, you.
we wander the sites of a black mood,
change adjectives at will
never looking back or down
at the roots we've been shoving
into soil.

they come to bear anyway.


when i'm lonely i think of how perfect
you were when i wasn't looking at your life
as it is, at your actions what they are
but at what you might become
if what you wanted was what you still wanted.


he wanted her to wait on the bench
just right there until he sorted
this all out. he'd be done soon
he was sure, just a bit more time to get his
head on straight. she couldn't stand
watching him take it off and screw it back
on upside down or a slightly off kilter and that
time it was on inside out was really too much
even for the kids. they pulled
all the tape from the casing
and took the slasher films back
on time
after that. the things they were good at
together were the things they never did
when doing them would have mattered.
she laughed at the joke, but he shook
his fist at god and his grandfather's
menorah. he was a lottery ticket that never came in.
but she just couldn't put it away
so she kept buying the same numbers every week
that never came in and when he returned
he looked for her in vain, telling
the old lady on the bench but she was just
here i thought she'd wait for me the bitch.

coastline on a stopwatch

bodies are beginning to tumble
dynasties crumble , burnt jade
and cinnabar. bees lost in sunspots
bereft of the hive, the sweet spot
where they fall, heavy with pollen
into the hum, a scrambled memory, so heavy
this descent from the sky.

the executive moves in waves through the outer
cubicles, through all
the people he must execute
in dissonant form across his his mirrored sunglasses.
shelly whispers to judy "uh oh. that doesn't look right".


evening has fallen. pink slips are in the mail, color of watery
blood, after the cut is rinsed and dressed, color of the dress
her baby girl wears in the small
3x5 day care pic skinny & bound
to get thinner. the boss is leaving
the building, the elevator
bells politely bings.



*(*








the man stands beside the tracks
where the trains come through;
packages of humans, always hurtling,
missiles of commerce.

he is thinking of red lines
only shades of red, like rust
co opted for rail, the slope
of a ticker tape, line on a chart.
the direction of down.

when he was young his family
business thrived. rich was his life.
now he's old and has seen the bloom
fade, the dissipation of skin

in his daughters' faces. the things money
can't buy are no longer appealing.
a small child's shadow beckons to him,
thin and bound to get thinner. she is

dressed in pink. he follows.
the train is leaving
none of him behind

i wanted to transcribe this poem

by yehuda amichai

sorry for any copyright infringement
but as you can see i don't take ads.




All these make a dance rhythm

When a man grows older his life becomes less dependent
on the rhythms of time and its seasons. Darkness sometimes
falls right in the middle of an embrace
of two people at a window; or summer comes to an end
during a love affair, while the love goes on
into autumn; or a man dies suddenly in the middle of speaking
and his words remain there on either side; or the same rain
falls on the one who says goodbye and goes
and on the one who says it and stays; or a single thought
wanders through cities and villages and many countries
in the head of a man who is traveling.

All these make a strange
dance rhythm. But I don't know who's dancing to it
or who's calling the tune.

A while back, I founc an old photo of myself
with a little girl who died long ago.
We were sitting together, hugging as children do,
in front of a wall where a pear tree stood: her one hand
on my shoulder and the other one free, reaching out from the dead
to me, now.

And i knew that the hope of the dead is their past
and God has taken it.

saying the unsaid as theraputic diastole

the opening comes
when you least expect it
though there is rhythm
you cannot bear.

in the circle of drums, you become
the focal point, then the antimony
in the pill. you think there are spells
so you work to unweave them.

there's no need for that kind of substance
in your life. you're trying to rid yourself
of delusion, but with it you find pragmatic
reasons for staying inside.

you expand.
expand some more.
the chamber fills, distends.
you were not aware you had
this much corruption inside:
begin to wonder if perhaps
contraction is for the living
and perhaps what this is
is the opposite. you've seen
warp and woof in flesh,
on the streets, understand life
vs. automation. what you didn't know

previously, was how coming from there
and getting back to the basics of robotics
requires a stasis field. you hunt for the makings
in your boxes but there's only old receipts
and ticket stubs and coin. they may have
to do. still the balloon expands. there is room
yet, for a therapy. you want to distill it
toss into the ever expanding film
but the beat brings you home. it goes on.

the magic was not yours, alone. it never is.
a large plastic sheet becomes a wave in stone's
backyard and you sit in the swing, motionless
so that when the wave breaks, you can see
the wind sigh, feel the muscle, emptying.

sacred robbery

feigning confidence is possible but
disgusting, don't have motion sickness pills and
too much consciousness for confidence
pal around with lucifer
won't play the clown
--hector the crow

yeah. you know what i noticed about not playing the clown?
they got me in a suit and painted my face n everything
so they don't know the difference. i don't know if i'm lucky
or not, since i seem to be able to.

last nite i was invited to write a wish on a scrap of paper.
there was twine to tie it with, or you could crumple it up
and stick it in the crevices of the log to be burnt at the night's close.
i didn't see what phase the moon was in. the woman next to me
made spells with her hands. i was taken back to your sliding glass
door where i did the same, my back to you, engaged in the motion
not feeling pain or desire or wishing for anything. conduit.
this is the sweet spot jack talks about, the way your piano rolls
under your fingers and for a moment you and the music
are the lovers you wanted to be born into. maybe you smile.
i don't know. i wasn't there. maybe you grimace in concentration
not trying to control, only trying to hear what's being played thru you.

i dunno. i was there with the drums or a voice of a time
you remember? we had sex without bodies? or was that
just me because i'm still stuck in the flesh metaphor and until i can kick it
i won't reach nirvana. see, how i look at it is god keeps dressing up
in these bodies cuz no matter which, pain or pleasure, it's not the void
and god has had enough of that for a while.

we all die alone

i have this scene imprinted in my memory
from the movie donnie darko. an old woman
stands by her mailbox on a duskfilled street.
she's been waiting there all day.
donnie stops to talk to her because
she's whispering to no one. when he bends
ear to mouth she grabs his collar
and what she says is we all die alone.

not that i didn't know that before.
in that movie though, i felt it.
that's the kind of art i like to witness.
the kind where one feels the source
and recognises it as their own.

of course i'd love to produce that.
i'm an artist. but so are you, so are you.
why must you categorize me as different
because i see things and try to recreate them.

you do the same, with ritual and chasing
novelty. the polaroid, the digital validation.
see, i saw this, did you see what i saw, here, look
taste this recipe, smell these flowers, admire
my fine children, my stellar physique, my gift of god.

so. we all die alone. but the living it seems
must be shared. what we miss most is the terry cloth
bathrobe around the steel monkey momma.
sure we're used to it. we die. alone.
how many times we become a pheonix
is up to us, until we become less than white
noise and big as the void.

a word

not the first
not the lost
not the last
somewhere floating in determinancy
so if you ever find out
where you're going
you can let me know cuz i guess
i'd like that.