When you were born, I held you in my hands.
When you died, my hands brushed you face and raised the sheet that served as your shroud in that oddly quiet and sterile room.
I always had such a way with living things: people, pets, plants, words.
Everything I touch now seems to dry up and wither away, since you have gone.
Yet somehow, I have not succumbed to failure to thrive.
Why?
The candles are lit.
The treats are passed out. Footsteps fallen away, like the leaves skittering past the door.
Leaving out the silent meal, we wish well upon those who lost to our touch but not forgotten.
Here in the darkness take my robes and leave me bare, as the trees that line our streets.
Closing my eyes, leaning against you chest, I imagine that you are rising higher than I can see, majestic in the night.
Let all that has hurt us fall away.
The pain dissipates.
Taste the pomegranate from lips and feel the grasp of eternity.
I step out of youth into sunset; you are the sacrifice that feeds us both.
Time out of mind, over and over, the circle unfolding.
Piling up. Time.
Hours, minutes, seconds split into fifths.
The days folding neatly into each other.
The ragged edges only appear at night, when I go to bed and your voice does not track softly behind me to say goodnight.
The leaves are turning, like the world. Without you. Me with you.
Standing at the top of hills, at top of stairs, on balconies, I wonder.
Wonder if you will catch me if I willingly fall.
Will you ghostly arms cradle my soul, as I my body loses the fight against the hard surface?
Or will I wake, even more broken, dragging my ruined body like a dog left to side by the side of an abandoned road?
Bits and pieces of the flotsam of the universe after all; walking, talking, living, dying.
How does the my world function without you?
But then again, why would it not?
Once, my heart thrilled to see you.
Now, it is sluggish, no matter what you do.
I hoped you saw my dismissal flow across my still face.
Blinded by memory, not the present, you persisted.
Until you could not find me, only traces of my absence.
Like the paper left over after the candy is consumed, the wrapper of you is discarded.
Tossed away.
Left to bounce along the concrete, to wheresoever the winds take you.
The stars are fading in the sky, when you awaken and reach for me.
As right as rain, I am not there. Was I ever?
You call for me. Not that it is really me you seek.
*
You fooled yourself into thinking I could solve the naked equations, square your bare rule, converge your series.
With the honesty you don’t possess, I will admit that anyone with XX chromosomes could. If she looks right, XXY would suffice or a deliciously deceptive TS, who smells like sugar and feels like silk.
Prowling about your room-shirtless-the thin cotton of your boxers barely containing your pulsing erection. The thin dew of night sweat still covering the fine hairs lining your spine.
Stand still in the quiet morning sun and admit that I/she/me/her/it/they/anyone can fulfill your need.
Whisper it to yourself. Then say it aloud.
Again. Again.
Until it manifests right before you.
Watch your world transform.
*
I never yours to have. I left you with a phantom.
Do you recall running your fingers through her, as I found meaning elsewhere?
For you never wanted me.
You just wanted.
And you hate me for knowing.
The Teacher spoke and you appeared. For me.
Like skin attached to muscles, connected by sinew and enlivened by nerves, you were to me. And I to you.
For it is so plain.
Let the wise among us hear. See these truths.
*
Feed me. I hungered and you gave me food for my body and fed my heart.
Without you I am wasting away, one molecule at a time.
Slipping back to the Great Darkness where I slumbered before I was sang into the Light.
You were in the Darkness, so I was not in fear. Only unaware yet always safe.
*
Quench my thirst. I was parched, fevered and you gave me water. Your tears of concern refreshed my soul, for I knew you would split your last drop of water in half so that neither of us would have to suffer discomfort.
Yet there is no one like you, no one to hear my cries in the night and rush to me. No one to put the cool rim of the glass to my lips.
A cool loving hand to my burning brow.
*
Shelter me. I was wandering and weary, and you opened the door, lit the room. Wrapped a warm blanket around me, showered me with words and knocked the ice of fear off my mind.
Who will make sure I have a warm place to sleep? Only you would give up your bed, allowing me to take the place where your body heated the sheets.
You would watch over me until I was firmly encased in a restful, quiet sleep.
*
Visit me. When I was in a prison of confusion, you faithfully visited me. Day after day until the bars bent and the door swung open.
I have no visitors now. Chained in a dank corner, watching listlessly as the light throws the pattern of day, noon, night on the cold floor.
I wait for your footfalls but I know that I will not hear yours or any other.
No matter, for only you held the key to the doors of this cell.
*
I do give credit where it is due. Thanks, CB. You helped me in a big way.
*
I cut class (yes, I did) to wait for him. Instead of being seen leaving together, it was best to meet there.
The bookstore, of course. Where all good things reside and all pleasures of the known worlds can be found.
On the ride to the bookstore, I wished to hold his hand but my empty hands just sat on my lap, curled slightly. Waiting to be filled with his strong slim fingers.
I beat him by about six minutes. Like a stone I stood, as the waves of passersby flowed over me.
He perched upon me, as a bird does, to keep it’s feet dry. As usual, he slid up behind me, wrapped his fingers across my eyes and whispered in my ear. (What he said is lost to time but he did say something witty and wicked.)
In that glass enclosed doorway, I cocked my head to the side and wondered if things were going to ge better or worse. He smiled at my expression and used his right thumb to smooth the furrow created between my carefully trimmed eyebrows.
Placing a kiss there, he told me that I would get a permanent mark if I kept it up.
He was wrong but maybe it is there, unseen, under my unmarked skin.
*
Purchases in hand, we went out into the sunlight. After the hush and soothing soft glow of the interior aisles, the light seemed twice as bright.
Heading over to our favorite café, he slipped his fingers into mine and gripped tightly. I suppose he wished to make sure I would not float away.
But I was not planning on leaving him too soon. Not too soon…
*
He liked to order for us, so he did. I sat. Jacket and purse on the back of my chair. My purse that doubled as a book bag at my restless feet.
Under my stroking fingertips-nails glossed with a slight lavender blush-was a book. We promised each other to not read ahead, to not give in to the desire to take it to bed with a cup of warm milk. Not lie about reading it the next day, fingers crossed behind our backs. (Is it a lie if you did not mean to do it but were too weak to persevere?)
You fill me. My eyes consume you and my stomach is quieted.
Your mouth is dessert. I kiss you until I am stuffed.
My eyelids lowly fall shut, my head lolls forward onto your shoulder.
You hold a finger beneath my nostrils and count the space between each breath.
When you leave, I starve.
I cannot sleep.
Tossing. Turning. Pacing.
Return to me.
Kill my hunger.
Rock me to sleep.
Keep me in oblivion.
Shivering. Not just on the surface but inside, deeply.
Come close to me.
Take away the chill that rattles my bones.
Place your lips on mine, so your heat can seep along my jaw, down my neck.
Rub your hands over my skin.
Nestle between my thighs.
Hot; you are burning to the touch.
Enter me.
With each thrust, melt my ice, feel it running down my thighs.
Pressing my forehead to your neck, breathing in the warmth.
My cries mingle with the salvation you give.
He called to me.
He knelt before me.
His tears wet my bare cold feet.
Stumbling on the words, he asked me to hurt him.
To love him.
I gave him silence. A long exhalation of moist breath.
He told me that he needs to be gently choked.
To be slapped, spit on.
To be overpowered.
His shame is great but his desire, greater.
To hear names of filth whispered in his ears.
Each word making him whole.
Every syllable washing away his false persona, his outer shell imposed by society.
I closed my eyes. Presented him with the curve of my lashes, my still lips.
His fingers wrapped around my ankles.
The outline of his spine under his smooth pale skin.
He begged me to to take him, penetrate him.
Take away the world, obliterate his boundaries.
Please. He said.
I replied with a lack of motion. Rooted in place.
I waited, like the statues in a hushed an dark church, until he pulled away.
His lean and spare form, fading from my downcast view.
He wants. He aches. He dreams.
I am not an idol.
I do not want worship.
I sent his prayers into the skies, gossamer ribbons floating.
To be caught and answered by another.
You run forward.
A babbling brook, a swiftly running stream, water crashing over the falls.
I am not dreaming of standing in the midst of you, watching you froth and eddy. I wish to see you rising, water and steam flowing down your thighs, as you walk toward me in the heat of the day.
Mouth closed. Hands open, heart overflowing.
Khelônê, I wish you to be. Not because you stirred me to anger and I dropped a house of distaste over you.
Let me dive into you, float in silence.
Inspired by C. Barker’s fabulously primordial work
*
Yours. His. Theirs.
Bear the signs of something easily explained away as DNA yet is profoundly beyond such simplicity.
~
The discrete line of your jaw, which cuts through my confusion. I ache to scrape it bare, when nature takes over and appears as fine hairs, blurring the edge.
The pulse in your throat. Your neck is a pillar, upon which my lips rest. Paused, embraced in the sinew of your arms, my ear picks up the soft tattoo of your heart.
Place your hand on mine, the veins playing against the muscles and nerves, tapering to sensitive tips. My teeth want to playfully sink into your wrists.
The light hits you so perfectly. Let me look at you. Let me feast, assuage my growing hunger.
~
I tear my eyes away from your sleek thighs, the memory of the angle of your hips swinging around to your narrow rounded ass. Singed into the darkness of my shuttered eyelids.
The smell of your breath brings to mind the sea. Warm, salty. Open your mouth again and wash me clean.
~
Seen and admired but totally inherent to you. Natural.
Your cock.
Your flag marks the spot, where you are different from me, as night is to day.
Tracing the length. A line which stretches back, to the origins of the world.
Fragile it makes you and in turn, strong.
Fingers wrapping around, see the light blaze in your eyes. Pupils constricting, matching the aperture of the glans head.
The length, the depth, the absolute breadth of you. You draw the light, cast a dense shadow, take up space.
Disturb and excite the very air I need.
Fortune finds me. I shy away, turn my face, shut my eyes to it. But I hear it walking up behind me, feel the subtle kiss left behind on my cheek.
Right after, you appeared. Sunlight encased in skin, glowing. Warming.
Lips parting in a smile that caused me to close my eyes. Rays seeping out of you. Your hand lightly brushing my arm, leaving a gentle sigh, a brief memory of summer days.
Do you know that you must illuminate the night sky?
Breathing in the air you exhale, I taste jasmine on my tongue.
Once, I neatly refused. Twice brought a promise for later.
*
Watching the sky-soft violet, streaked with rose, fading to plum. The wind was tired and packing to go home for the night.
Water pulling away from the shore, as geese were shadows breaking free and flowing jerkily across the sand.
Then, night descended. First the smell of leather, smoke, vetiver. Then your voice, coiled around my head. Sitting next to me, the heat of your body singed me. Dark, dark you are. Inside, outside, every layer.
I was told sulfur stinks. Yet your breath is redolent of cloves.
You ask for later. I pretend that I have it to give.
*
Days turn into nights. Time is like oil on the floor, I slip across it, blind.
You were my eyes, my ears. My loving smiling metronome.
What is time, if it exists with you?
He told me that it would break your heart if I came to you, prematurely, ahead of schedule.
He is right; if you were there. But you are not.
The sweet soft eternal darkness. Not filled with honey-coated dreams nor terror, sight and sound.
If there was more, you would have come and told me.
You loved me–you would have come for me, if you were neither destroyed or transmuted. You would have saw me crying and told me not to weep, for we were leaving together. I would not need anything, for your heart held everything for the journey.
You would not have left me cold on the floor, barely able to stand or speak because my grief turned into physical knives and nearly broke my mind.
You would not stay away. You would not leave a sign. You would not hold back on giving me the date when I am to join you and the great mass of the departed.
You are gone. How terrifying is the thought of the last time I saw you-cold, silent-is the last time I will truly see you.
For when I close my eyes for the last time, I will not see or be seen, either.
I had you.
But I do not anymore.
Either I live with it. Or die from it.
Mundane things. Washing dishes, rinsing dirt from front stairs, cleaning clothes.
Under the hum of the whirring washer, you slip behind me, arms curling tightly, face in my hair. Words of urgency, of alleviating the fullness in your groin tickle the edges of my ear.
One arm still tightly wound, the other moving. Hand goes to my neck, brushes hair aside, for your lips.
Softly, they trace.
Then your teeth graze, making a shiver bolt from my brain to my toes.
The tracing becomes gentle gnawing and sucking. Your other un-snakes and dives, fingers right into my panties, a heat seeker seeking the fleshy wet target.
Harder and insistent, your mouth, while fingers increasing speed.
You are hurting me, my neck tingling, the skin abrading. I hear the moist sound of your lips.
In my head, the good and the great are mingling, until you bend me over and fill me. Turning it now into grand, colossal, momentous.
Deep. Hard. Repetition.
I breathe through my mouth, at the roughness. Trying to mount the falcon before if flies away and drags me.
I cannot. I am dangling, by one strap.
Then I let go, as you let go.
We both fall, spasming and crying.
A hard thud. Leaving me bruised, you less so.
After the landing, I hear your breath. I feel my hair flutter past my ear, with the bellow of your lungs.
You lick the skin on my neck, where you have worn away my defenses.
Wincing, I pull you to my face, kiss you.
Taste my blood on your lips.
That slight metallic mixed with your honey tongue.
~~~
A few days later. Routine things, daily movement.
You are away. Maybe thinking of me, maybe not.
But I look at the bruise that is healing. Shudder as I lightly touch it, as I cover it in aloe.
More days.
That bruise.
A mottled rose, fading back into oblivion on the soil that nurtured it.
It is leaving.
My need for you, not so.
The feel of your lips on mine.
Your hands, pressed against my curving hips.
Your breath, escaping your parted lips, as your pupils constrict.
My head lolls back, as you enter into me violently and clear my brain of everything that does not matter.
Only you remain.
Some people have bullshit.
Others have Real Live Shit* they are dealing with.
Let us not ever confuse the two.
I fell into a troubled sleep and there you were. As always. Your eyes, full of light. Lips open, words to soothe me tumbling out.
I buried my face in your hair, feeling it spiral and slip past my cheeks, down my arms, the tangled ends brushing my thighs. Moving gently in the breeze.
Then I awoke.
But this time, I could not reach out and touch you, run my fingers along the silky curtain that holds your scent.
Not this time.
Maybe not ever again.
This morning, I stood mute and frozen, all around me, mouths opened and poured forth the hymn. The one from your final service.
My eyes were rooted to one spot, slowly filling with frozen water that could not fall.
Inhaling, I smelled the flowers that sat on my mantel, withering slowly, returning to the Earth, as you did. As we all will.
In that room, someone took comfort from those words that only stab me in the base of my brain. Over and over, with each refrain, the sharp blade lifts out and then go right back in. The hole is no wider or deeper-it hurts just the same.
I carry your voice in my heart, and the sounds of the laughter of those who left us. Until the us become a solitary I.
I drag the songs of the dead behind me.
Follow the trail I leave.
It leads to my grave.
I come to you for silence, to wrap my fingers in your hair, to watch dusk spread slowly across the sky.
That is all I want from you.
You give me talk, action, movement. You turn me from the spectator to the participant, you make me your unwilling physician.
You want me to heal you, to fill the gaps, fill the cracks with love mortar. Strengthen you.
I cannot.
Here I am, as me. I do not possess the tools to cure what ails you, bandage your festering wounds caused by long-ago injuries, heal your damaged psyche.
I do not exist to give you the love you need. All I can give you is what I have.
I am here to watch the day slip away into night. With you, my lips pressed to your collarbone, hearing your heart ticking like a cooling engine.
That is all I want.
That is all.
Friend: mmhmm…unbelievable ambiguous yet with a tone of authority.your posts are veiled, shrouded, yet also so very pointed at the same time. I’ve always adored your prose.
there is never any real hint, not consistently, of who you may/may not be….
You don’t mince words- you have firm opinions. I never know if you mean them, or if they are just today’s observations. But they are never careless, never wandering…always spoken as if from a point of view of power.
Liras: Thank you. I do like to get a verbal hug every so often.
Reminds me of you. What are those poor girls gonna do?
Succumb. Well, well…
Not well. I am not.
A broken lamp leaking oil. A bulb with only one filament.
I cannot cast light.
I appear as if all is on order.
Pass your hand over me and feel the lack of heat. Notice that I cannot cast your shadow.
***
Words offer no solace. Only dreams of a true past that cannot be maintained.
I wonder if these shiny little beauties, mute but screaming to my ears, can calibrate me, set my balance right.
Will it be enough? Or will I need more, so much more, to refute myself in the night?
Strong hands, firm lips. warm sweet breath, veins standing out, lean sinew. Not enough, does not reach into me, does not reset my circuitry.
Only the lulling siren of those mute beauties that click in the palm of my hand, boat and winding stream at the same time, can reattach the parts of me and allow me to stay sane.
Stills the roaring of the grief that holds me tight in sharp wicked jaws.
***
I dreamed that a man came, attired so very fine and asked me why wasn’t I dressed to go. Did I miss his call, he asked so gently.
Stepping away from him, I stood where you bed once was, where you used to drop in sleep and screamed that I loved you. Shouted your name once, then once more.
Upon jolting awake, the lack of you settled back upon my chest. But my dry heart only sighed, releasing a puff of dust.
I do not cry in wet. I leak out dry.
Others offer my things, try to distract me, soothe me.
But I am an addict, a true junkie, only for you.
Because of every and all things, I loved.
You.
You sigh, turn towards me, pushing against sleep but losing.
I gently run one tender fingertip over your right brow. Skim the fragile skin that covers your eye, moving to pictures unseen by me.
After being so much with me, do you slip further, taking me with you into your unconscious?
Hold me close in life, embrace me in landscapes created by your mind.
Standing among the red roses, bees circling lazily, you come close.
I feel a thorn, pricking at my startled fingertip.
You kiss me, your breath rushing into me; biting my lip, as you press my finger down.
Drawing blood, both ways.
Your shirt still hangs in the bathroom. I cannot remove it, only brush my fingers over the smooth woven cotton as I enter and leave the tub. Look at it, as I brush my teeth. Turn the light out and walk away.
Paused, hand on the frame. Watching it sway very gently in the breeze.
I want to leave it there. I want you to open the door and change into it, before you ask me for dinner.
You are gone. Leaving on reflections hanging on the wall, flowers cut and arranged in your stead.
Colors. Sights.
No sound, no you.
After I left the cemetery, I took off my blouse. Pressing my nose into it, to smother my tears. I caught magnolia, tea, incense, my sweetish natural scent.
So different from your salted territorial musk.
Stumbling and half-blind, I slid one of your freshly-laundered shirts over my head, and used it as my anchor. Lying on your bed, I felt my soul dripping onto the duvet.
You are gone.You were the love who loved me. The one who cared, who would go insane without me.
Who will bury their face in my blouse, before it is packed away for charity, upon my timely demise?
photo property of Viable Herbal
You were elegant in your kindness.
Majestic in your perpetual optimism.
Even as you were consumed from inside out by that cluster of voracious cells, you only blazed brighter. Your smile grew more radiant. I had to shade my eyes when you greeted me.
Light leaked from you, as it does from the windows we pass by one cold winter’s night.
Some people adored you, many loved you and a few took advantage.
Yet you loved each the same. Bountifully, joyfully.
Something I cannot do.
*
Standing in the church you loved, in which you have shed tears in many guises, I cried for you. Once you were born away in the sun, I faced the altar and wondered why I felt I could not breathe. It was hurt and anger, wrapping around my throat the way a rose circles upon itself.
Your eyes are with me.
My eyes only want an answer to why you did not get more kindness in return.
I known you want me to not hurt, to not question, to smile.
Now I can only shake. Confusion is my pillow.
A softer stone for resting my head is marble.
+
The peonies are blooming. As I watered them, my tears ran down my cheeks, adding salt to the cold gushing stream.
The ants are crawling, tickling them, as they open. You would smile and remind me everything has it’s place, it’s season.
Even and more importantly, death.
+
Before the seasons changed, I had someone who cared, someone who would hold my hand and remind me that you are fine. It is us that are not.
But he and you are both fine now.
All I have is myself.
Not enough.
Never enough.
*Dirige, Domine, Deus meus, in conspectu tuo viam meam*
I have been a fan of Green Day forever.
And I like live performances.
You.
Experience me.
For you. With you.
In you.
Not give you what has been used by others and left, detritus along the road.
Grit in your shoe that is tossed out and cast to the winds.
—
If I tell every man who strokes my thighs that he is loved, that he is the best, then…what of you?
Must I wear my dark lips and heavily shaded eyes for all, or should I reserve those lips and eyes only for you?
The laces of my corset. The bite of my g-string. The point of my heels.
The arch of my back.
Before during and after you.
For you. With you. A gift to you.
—
What is hidden is yours.
What is secret belongs to you. With you.
All for you.
Not shared by eye, ear, finger, tongue, nose.
Not fodder for the grist of the dull knife of his imagination. Or his.
Only for you. Sharpened on the fine keen edge of your desire.
With you. Shaped to your unconscious need.
—
The joy of me is to give to you.
For you. To you.
Will you let me keep the dark inside, only to be entered by you? Is this abyss one you control?
Or must I be forced into strange shapes, follow the other mass of humanity, conform to showing what is inside to all?
Will you rip me to neat bloody pieces and arrange me, like the petrified bones you dug up in your yard, so long ago?
Into those boxes I abhor?
—
For you, I exist.
With you, I breathe.
Under you, I live.
In you.
I am.
The sunflowers I bought in your memory are fading.
In the vase, on the table, they are turning that dark red of decay.
They smell like love rotting slowly.
There is always a first.
For the Nothing gives birth to Something.
The sound of your breath, marking time.
Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni Sa.
Your hands around breasts. Mine, always mine. Even before you realized, even after I am gone.
For they all represent Me.
I long for. You appear and Give.
Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni Sa.
My breasts, the light in your dark.
I gave them to you, negating the primordial poison.
You ended my rage by appearing as a child, thus turning my breasts into my calm.
The skull cup you remove from my hands, the urge for the seat of life ebbs.
For you are here and we fall into each other.
Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni Sa.
Our worship. Mutual. Spin the Universe into silky strands that slip through Time.
Apply the sandalwood paste to my breasts. Gently, tenderly.
Flowers woven though and around me, from your lips.
You fill my heart with joy.
Your hands dance against my skin. Silent, my fingers flow.
My thumb touches my index finger, the others bent softly.
Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni Sa.
I lift my voice in praise to the Unseen God.
I am seen and blessed by you.
Thus I am Seen.
Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni Sa.
This is my Light.
I want you.
Either I chase. Or play coy. Or forget you.
Either I dream of you in day. Or feel desire rising at dusk. Or bury my want in the tomb before its natural time.
Not clear if there is a difference between any of them.
Not clear.
Like all heathens, I love to laugh and fritter way the Sabbath.
Thoughts of you.
Circling in my head, in the manner my fellows are buffeted by their whirling passions on the second level of the Inferno.
Your smooth skin, your lean frame.
I imagine you would melt on my tongue, if I dared to taste. Sweetest cream coating my palates hard and soft .
Only to stuff myself, gorging on you in a rushed, conscious state.
Like my fellows, I look at the acorn and the water and do not partake.
Nimis -Ardenter -Forente.
+++
I sleep in torment but plead with Eunoë to bring her gifts to my waking mind.
The sight of you hits my nostrils like the bite of acetone. My teeth grind and flake away at the sound of your voice.
My soul-circling on the mountain, veering eternally between levels seven and six.
Wishing.
My body stand at the banks of Acheron, frozen. Clutching a reed of humility, fingers tingling.
Craving you.
+++
Only the brute is good at coupling, and copulation is the lyricism of the masses. To copulate is to enter into another — and the artist never emerges from himself“. -Baudelaire
Yes, I bought the entire CD. What kind of fan would I be otherwise?
Let’s do this again. The video has soaked our brains, so what about the very mundane work of making a masterpiece?
The moon is sending such light through the lace curtains.
Looking over my shoulder, your pale skin gleams in that light.
Your nails dig into my soft hips, as your teeth press against my shoulder.
Your cock impales me and like the moon, I am hanging in the dark sky.
