Hip Service
By Julian Malek

The zeal of cobblestone tolerance arrayed in fashionable hues masquerading as crimson secrecy, elevates the tide of man but some boats leak in their foundations. Therefore a cork to every exuberance and a triumphant torch for every sorrow lives onward in collective time. Larks that abound because prescience and PUGET sound, that brown has become the new orange which in turn prowls as a concealed swarthy black. To antagonize the willful and frenetic pace, a prodrome of lasting but memorialized disgrace. Should I move to a state by first or last name, or is the final appellation worthy of much more lasting fame. I scurry down the aisles, bemused by shimmering tiles and the beguiled audiences who see much in my limitation but doubt little about my debited elation. Ringmaster Barnum, how much horticulture is needed for assured superstardom, how many cloisters must we evacuate from the incendiary plumes of a metaphorical Harlem..  But know that no virtual reality can supplant the reality that does truly exist, or at least our time is too infernal and purblind to resist. Carrey the tops of mountains in the humor of wellsprings and fountains, we engage a menagerie of egos lilting of an etiolated pragmatic concern. Evicted from paradise, littered with say-cheese demise ensnaring three blind mice eaten alive by snake-eyed vice. To feel good without incorporated tyranny, we must see blue and red as alternatives to the same destiny. A world that reckons with the futilitarianism of pacified malcontent and astroturf monikers that lead the impressionable into a slaughter shed. Established or not, any enchantment under the sea must include fishes once a pastiche of me, but to them I avoid their courtesy flush and never even faintly blush as my egalitarian statements are lavish thrush.

Five TO Won baby one in 99, everyone here aboard the titanic stays alive, you got your boat baby and I got mine, gonna make it with babies numbered in surreal primes. Halt the slots game the nines, a stitch in time is going to turn out to be Mine. Flanger goals, girded piles, liminal like an aborted Harry Styles, we climb mountains we issue tithes, and the turmoil is etched into 45-notched bludgeons and two-tucked knives. Excuse you, where have you been all day, have you been sauntering in a gentle rain or a genteel pain, have you wallowed beyond the mires of doubt and ranked above David Blaine. I hope you tell me of your magic tricks, rather than your other flicks endeared I stand to fight an ineradicable itch. But if not, you placid pond dented by so many rocks and so many ripples give your heart over to me, before I clinch the special Olympics *******, we ran, we span the homespun garments of your left and right hand, but death is a specter that ghoulishly carouses along the carousel terminal disease we call life. I beseech your deepest affection and want to console you for your deepest struggle, to be there every time wed with time rather than a throttled scuttle. Moons make you guarded but maroons leave me desiccated, don’t ever let that wilted flower die, always water it with a rich but gentle ties and widened deck for all to at once marvel and pry.  Monsters of Mars Attacks once flanked my bed, as though the **** brain scared every gooseflesh and restrained every frisson of mystery. I lampoon myself for those cold Dark Knights and the protection ended by the plight of the poor mattering nothing to the deliberately internecine rich. I struck gold in a valley somewhere, an oxymoron of paradox that now you have the privilege to dock, to stay aboard to be a vessel of peace less widely deplored. Even if we don’t sprout wings, we garner the exactitude of measured things and our glass elevator though easily shattered by the glower of enslavement is actually our vista to heaven or listening to brethren tingles for rich mans trinkets and other things. For humanity deserves a legend and a princess, a regimented desuetude and a flanged lust but in our mistakes wildly flouted in momentary moments we become purified by the temptations of an alabaster palace.

***** the left-field wisdom of a pragmatic paragon ellipsis in prison, slip between the cracks and let my suburban muse become your urban ruse. To enchant a caged world beyond a reality delicately and deliberately unfurled. Squirming toads on highways enchanted but dead, are graves for the blue becoming purple in every dignified red. Gainsay assaults me with platitude, a repeated hitter quit on the first bunted ball into foul-line territory. Those gripes are swiped right in all circumstance no matter the plight. The pronged hearing of a trident sensitive to ambient collection, and suddenly we are all in the mad house even though the house of profaned pain is much worse. Glimpses of gambits that gambol for nickels in transit as occult grenades and known dice waddle through without artifice or device, and the laughter and slaughter that trains collegiate minds, differs no more than the tropes of a glamorous violence articled in sordid rhymes. This surfing movie means so much more than Surf Wax America pristine in limited but sacrilege nirvana. Teen spirits smell muskier than 90s pop dreams, the grasp and grunge of gouged eyes becomes a mummified staid, a scarecrow to those who disobey. Childhood flashes with blinding light, and new sight illuminates darkening blight, A blight eradicated only by two magazines and including one that houses the bullets that ***** themselves between death and comatose dreams both within astral sight. Littoral harbor on a seaside town, a shanty with a brackish gown that glides the gourmand to the cosmopolitan eatery on the outskirts of lost & found. But forever lost in embonpoint and forever gained in chavish that exonerates the gaunt, the etiolated prince in heart becomes irrefutable marrow in minded souls.

If I am a spy you are an ESPY, and if I cry than you are a baby,but since neither are the case my wiseacres will cultivate lava lamp dreams for a new generation and suddenly Boston bets on Harvard, but who knows of this piped blather squirming for relevance rather than voguish but temporary chatter. My regatta knows how to swim, my life now knows how to cringe and yet still win and in stilted plays of bungled sincerity the God of peace reminds us of our transcendent personalities. That we in sincerity top the barnacles of invention a novelty but a rarity. But the guillotine quill of emboldened unscripted parvenus ruthless in their eager dues, outdate and outlive the sued swayed blues that indemnify Clinton and make the atomic dog an amazing Winston hill a church often in sheltered disuse. Imps and urchins sting the sentiment, cloy the alimony of repentant betterment, but neither touches the gilded skies of pleonasm striving for raspy disguise as to dissuade further diatribe investigation. Lurking in those scared days of youth, the gore of unalloyed horror scourged me with a limp, that compassion itself could ever become a gimp. Now years later athletics better and scoring goals making the mildew sweat and the years wetter, not a global warming that can be alarmed by global mourning. Take peace at heart if distanced spears of separation make Idiocracy as a pastiche look exceedingly smart. And spar only with the true antagonists bridging malevolence with expedience. Killjoys sure, will joy even more sure, but still boys fluttered heart stopping dead at a stop-watched alarm the worst tragedy of our sordid sort. Give an African Child a real home rather than a spatial roam, a palatial desiccation of momentary Jonas Brothers snapping back at captives with sexualized foam.

Narrative blinds shuttered in an Island among mountains hardly ever wiser to sanitize the sanitarium among the wasps of stung power. Police crumple their uniforms as they prowl down the avenues, looking for misfits and widened platitudes. Somehow that the vigilance of those corrupted by their very career choice, look even worse when megalomania of private is the limelight of public, to their defense few turrets I can muster but castles in the sky will be the apartheid judge. Those that cling to virtue to eradicate Porsche-driven faked or real deaths at the most breakneck speed, that Fast & Furious operation if disclosed completely would turn the Shire of the ring into the hatred curtailed by a song in Sing-Sing. Immunity must not Yoda implore, that livery Liverpool marooned on islands can also to deplore the R.E.D. and still whet the sharpened stead and the fly-by-night Manchester United alights like militant peer pressure for wranglers in tights. But beating the Beatles at a game of Walruses and egg-shelled eyeful towers likely impedes rinkside hockey from anything over bellicose ballyhoo…it exists as a transient fixated glower. But who knows about soccer speculation when love is the transcendent temptation, when nest-egg hens rather than neglecting rig Bens of clockwork and clocked words designed arise better for their token ken. Do I must repeat the subtext of submarines, yellowed as though ugly unused as though unseen, as though the quixotic earthquakes of tintinnabulations Avatar dreams. Wafted souls console the disheartened thoughts of a dashed dream that Berlin hates more than a Furor’s unbridled and useless scream.
Demotic clips slinging from the bedridden silence of a token moon and its token friends, swimming in a shore of ambiguity whether history mellows or whether its furor melts away momentary doubts. I want to avoid the sting rays exorcised by due providence and become the amalgamated talents gentry and of course the upstart swagger of Jack Dawson. But with the psy-op going on, the people manipulated on all sides of a gray picket fence will the relationship bloom without muttered dissent or pretended smiles. Will we take upon the shuffled shuttle and dig with shovels deep-rooted Christmas trees and toast our lives to Dos Equis. We may never go out of style, but the treacle of illuminated imagery when divorced from sentiment bristle shows a swagger that prioritizes rather than amalgamates all love. I love being brash and brazen and honest because when she finally ditches the grandstand of delayed frenemies fandoms of other tinsel decorations without any substance beyond meretricious thrill. You want a roller coaster on some days, but most often you want the nutcracker to elope to secret hiding places. Swim with adventure not just in love, not just in affection with the starlight now matter how luminous, sixpence all the richer is no centuries any poorer and we could be that gilded couple of star and screen and if we ever have to scream, let our screams unite us in passion, rather than a milquetoast deference to pedestaled beauty. but of course the end times don’t laugh at your crumpled wizened relapse. Not out of convenience wed by a discriminating genetic harvest moon but a deeper engagement that flatters when stylish and bristles when romantic but never defiled, never riled of specious pretense. Promise me that you will always remember me in my flaws and my faults, in my scause factory destructions and the penults of PEN-ULTIMATE wisdom that comes before the grace of God in the annihilation of passion for eroded omission. If your goal is to be remembered, check that out…but the most admirable goal is as the propinquities of souls dusted in the wind returning to a spring equinox of passion and if you find in yourselves reservations do not depart from sacred land, and never jilt me because of a boisterous and menacing friend. You are everything to me right now, and I Hope this persists despite the vicissitudes of star-favored afflictions mixed with utter benediction without the pontification of stilted Benedictines  or rather the hyped ludic effrontery of termagants being made of younger and younger women. Leave it at this ,32 leaves the royal secret in royal hands and the Knights Templar and us we altogether hold hands, if only a prelude for a masquerade ball. But the stilted embarrassment of crestfallen time, let that be relegated and emphatically lets embrace what is like to not ever need a real white horse to get back into your favor, because we never go out of style we can brandish the best elements and reject the sentiments of the too newfangled and the too stodgy. We in our crenellated pleonasm can eager ride the lightning to another tomorrow and another yesterday and if even not that, we virtually make an indelible impression of embroidered love not too distant in ivory towers and not to vulgary( catering to popular sentiments) to become a trash glam movement. We soar, others deplore but let their purblind doubts render them blind to our burgeoning love.

Forget the brisk trees dangled in the wind on winding paths through haunted forest or remember them because of ghoulish fortress but with our apotropaic lamp we can avert most evil and call the rest fun and gains and shun but fames never profaned, never inalterable a destiny to magical to be some whimpered catcall. Or we could linger beneath lambent street lights disguised as though wilted garb, attrition of circumstance waiting patiently for the matinee and the vintner to escort us beyond the garb of pretense in a city so abundant with it that it deserves castigation. But I digress, a beachside cliff overlooking tepid waters tumultuous in their power but august in their noises, the cadence of love will sing a half-moon bay on full-moon nights and we will frisk each other like grasping at straws of permanent tracks trammeled of the elite and a sidetracked basque bet. Trim those antlers and instead grow metaphorical wings, to us we all sing but few can match your elegance and everyone would be crazy not to see your ennobled age and together thrilling songs to emulate thriller in sales we will collaboratively sing.
Haughty sneers from lifeless lycanthropy straggling furtively along the pastiched sidewalks of grime, livid because they can’t share the lingering limelight, with as many guarded perks of privacy clambering like a hive of snarky sharks. Lets ditch the big town dreams in terms of posh and stature if only for a caressed moment beneath the unadulterated stars and if you find spars **** to the extent they are amiable than I say guess what my name is Lars! Or wait a second, paused in the big city spotlight our stenciled hearts will guide whatever progeny is yours or mine or ours together we will sing the most comforting lullaby, and caves no longer must we abide. Yearn and earn every inch, as I gripe with my delicate saddened pinch but I think the innuendo speaks . Ripen with our trips to Napa, long afternoon sunsets swim in our hearts as we taste the vanguard’s toast on elegant wine.I console with entreaty to disavow the omen of that San Franciscan church October 2008, the doom implied by Einstein, the raillery of a world grinding down the endless decadence of a railed future inalterable in destiny or partialy amenable to widespread coquetry.

Forget those rumbles in your past that made you feel partial to insecurity and learning the ropes you transcended all and live in all eternity. Thimble and brook, tolerant of all those tokes I took your rebellious side flattens the yeast of Exodus raspy in its begrudged clapping. But the Pharaoh of the modern world sheltered me under his prickly thorns, shielded me from the sickly things that life adorns. We have the numbers on our side, the weight of destiny on our shoulders, dedicate yourself to yourself and I will preen the most vibrant wisdom and love will leap like Apollo across all borders not for camel-****** hoarders. We are culminated destiny in the wings of the best daydream

The cloud settles over the moor.
Scottish peaks and thistle
darkened to shadow;
voids within voids.

A sheet, a film
of papyrus copper
plays reality.
It approaches the single paned window,
the abandoned outhouse.

It is deserted here;
one-and-a-half living souls
‘cross the entire landscape.

The story is in the air,
the tension toiling my innards,
scaling my arms to gooseflesh
and my mind to trepidation.

She’s here.

She is here and at the window.

Please, I hope, please
let it be a billowing of plastic
caught in the wind, movements
stifled by a telegraph pole
or some other cursed sign of company.

Occluding mass, she hesitates
by the window, I daren’t look,
but she is there all the same,
wailing achingly silent for reprieve.

I know why she is here.
I see it:

Thick rope. Crude, unrelenting knots,
I feel them press, cut with friction
into my wrists, twine like snakes,
devoiding me of life

one eternal day after another.
He prowls the door from time to time,
I fear it but it’s all that I have
save for the songs of the Tree Sparrows
that warm the winter.

He comes in to shed light to the room,
brings bread and milk, sometimes fruit.
More often than not he brings just himself,
presses me to the cold floor,

tries to make me feel something real,
demands my artificial praise.
He climaxes quickly, fills me with life, he says,
clutches my ***** hair, wracked with lice
and pregnant with the renewed hope

of his mercy.

None coming, I’m returned to my holster,
a stool upon an opened barrel,
I leave my messes behind,
the stench rising between my legs

and surrounding my senses,
until all of my life is nothing more
than excrement. Recycled, lived once
and then forevermore.

I live in my mind. Only the single-paned
window in this outhouse
offering an alternative;
most usually slate grey skies
and a barrage of hail upon the tin roof.

Outside of the window, I know
that life is something else. No books,
no words, no love, no music;
yet the weak Scottish light still
pierces the glass,

light always finds a way.

And then one day or one passage of time,
it matters not,
my hero, my villain, my father,
came to me no more.

I rejoiced. I rejoiced in my starvation,
the waste of my muscle,
the overflow of the toilet bowl,
skin reddened and bruised and eaten.

No one would come, if indeed there was anyone at all,
I knew that.

So I waited for death,
as death had waited for me.
We greeted each other as friends,
archaic pen-pals, acquainted at last,

I embraced his touch,
felt more life in death than life
had ever cared to bestow.

I kissed death on the lips,
told him of my long-sought desire for him.
He turned, a glint of silver,

and I found myself
on the other side of the single paned window.

Looking in, I saw only my regret.
The stool, the barrel, the waste
that had strewn the floor,
had surmised my life.

It was a sight unfit to un-see,
and so I stood in my perfect sanctuary,
never turned to look and face the light,
and instead stayed only to lament.

And so now I look into the old outhouse,
decades of decay improve its sight.
Old moss gathers over the fingernail marks
that I had carved so desperately
into the flooring.

Forevermore I stare upon my regrets,
forevermore I opaque myself
in half-existent smoke,
tapping on the window.

Upon this I look, a deep plunge of horror;
my heart freezes in frame,
upon a young woman’s face,
no more than fourteen years.

It is locked in a scream, a sense of despair,
eternal and rite, forever in shame.
A life lived in terror, naught but a tirade
of brutish **** and desperate privation.

We lock eyes for a moment,
enough proof thus,
that there is life beyond misery,
if one cares to look.

my blue gooseflesh bores me
i lost my lens and i want to build a wall between my body and my blood
i painted all my nails so i would stop biting them
and i bit the polish off
i told everyone i loved winter
every year before i felt at home
i hate winter
it cracks my bones and i overthink everything there is to think about
i think in monochrome pastel
and it isn't as poetic as it seems-looks-sounds
when you feel like your whole body is turning against you
and your bones are shivering with a garish black
tar paint for blood
if god exists
i want a ******* explanation

Someone is caressing me
In the darkness.
Soft hands,
Warm breath,
I cannot move away.

The night is like a satin shroud,
A long forgotten tomb,
And I am seduced
by someone; they know my weakness,
And make me feral,
Take me, helpless,
Held there, by the dark.

Someone is caressing,
but now I am that someone,
Grasping slender bones
Raising gooseflesh on silken skin.
I bend the darkness to my will,
Seduced, it would seem,
I, Seductress,
Dream.

There was an elegant *****, from New York City
Or maybe Rome or New Orleans.
He was a spectacular ***, but didn't do drag at all;
Falling somewhere in between that category
Of glorious ladies and men of the day.
A queen with no throne nor entourage scene,
Camouflaging himself in skin-tight trousers,
Spectacular coats and jackets,
Packets of sachet in his pockets
To give him a scent of an unusual gent.
As if he had a choice in the matter.

He had a delicate way with his manner,
His hands and his eyes touching gracefully
As if not to disturb the dust on the mind,
Often very unkind, he used his tongue slicing
And dicing those who offended his senses
When such dared to step on his train
Invisibly dragging behind him, around him
Keeping his visitors at bay, a few feet away
Like proper subjects, courtiers to his grace
His face locked in a grin; hiding all within
The secrets protected by laden witticisms
Criticisms if you misbehave, saving smiles;
Handing out compliments like cookies.

There was always a waving of hands,
The arms caught in the wind like cornstalks.
For a moment. Then catching, ending like feathers
Settling together, resting as if cradling a baby
One hip thrown out, the head to one side
As if listening; hearing a devil's good joke,
Smoking a constant cigarette, the ends never wet
Laying the tip on the lip like a kiss
His face slightly lifted so the smoke will drift
Away from his half-lidded cynical eyes.

The talk could be varied, of Tom, **** or Harry
He would call women men and vice versa
Saying, Robert is a ***** woman is she.
He then waiting your laughter, hesitating
Seldom laughing himself, having said it all
Heard it all, done it all, had them all

No fertile male soil left unspoiled by his touch
Just entirely too much for one man to handle,
No woman to compare, he lived alone somewhere
Coming to the bars each night, a familiar sight
Drinking, but not seeming drunk,
Never sunk so low that he staggered,
Still swaggered after hours at the trough
Not so much as a slur or a cough.

He knew all the jokes that could be made
From a seemingly innocent mistake
Taking a word here and there and trading
Raising a regal eyebrow, somehow changing
Restating the meaning leaning it toward the crotch
Watching the listener's face, sensing the disgrace;
Granting himself the luxury of the infrequent howl
His majesty could keen like an un-oiled machine
Setting his victim's nerves and gooseflesh to snap
Giving his udderless chest a slap, he would go on
Make more of the jest, leave his victim no rest
And the mourners to offer their apologies.
Words such as that are not for ladies
Such as this infamous old queen.

The old spirit held on after the body was near gone
Propelling it nightly to appear on the scene.
Mean children would taunt him, just as he taught them
And waving their arms like cornstalks, cackle like hens
And tease him again, then resume cruising the men
Hurting the once regal spirit more with their disdain
Than beating him, or cheating him; ignoring him,
They dealt him a blow he never could abide
That fear he kept inside, all those years, the tears,
Still left un-cried, after he died, in his room somewhere.
He has left to be shared, the way he fluffed his hair,
The off-color joke, spoken in a strange lady's voice
Something like a boy's, not like a man's;
That flutter of the hands and the stance
Still copied today, by the splinter-group gays
That straight people think we all are
Is all that remains of a star once seen;
The seldom lamented, well-imitated, eternal queen.

I wish I held a microphone
every time I went to speak
each person would be forced to listen
and shut their ******* beak
This may sound harsh
it might offend your features
but I'm standing
knee-deep in a marsh
surrounded by brain-dead zombie creatures
These people are dull
ignorant or crazed
and deciding if they like gooseflesh
grilled stuffed or brazed
These words are a knife
and with them I will cut
a line on their throat,
a hole in their gut
there's only two ways
to get out of this rut
The other way I know
to make them scatter like rain
is to open this heart
and show them this pain
These words may be putrid
they may offset your senses
but ooze fills my shoes
my legs are cemented in fluid
and I'm reaching out for fences
praying to gods both demented and Druid
I wish I held a microphone
every time I went to speak
but my voice is worn out gravel
I'm stuck up ****'s creek
without a paddle.

Dislocate me from existence
Put me with the stars
Far enough away to see the distance
Into darkness without reprieve
Under burned down trees
and their shadows

I do not need your voice to convince me of things
like worth
or the color of my blood
These things I am sure of
My heart writes me letters about these things

Forget about what we said we were
Remember I was alone in your company
Your words filled with hot air
Boiling your words
Evaporating anything permanent

Liberate our nerves from any feeling we might of shared
Untie my limbs
Stretching out the presence
Drenching my skin with freedom
Calming the gooseflesh upon my bones

The well in our chests hides secrets
Ones that your words never pulled
The well filled with tainted water
So I added whiskey
And liberated your grasp

I will forever forgive you
Blending business with pleasure
Drowning yourself in an empty well
Dragging feet into the desert
of our yesterdays choices

Tiles
Soaking in cold processed air
Licking with every step
feet bare and made damp
by the mornings dew

gooseflesh marks bare arms
baked from the sun
confused by the rain

mixed signals
from room to room
from out to in
in one moment bright and burning
energetic as the sun
in the next flashed by
new room
new rain

relationships half built
abandoned for the better option
lonely walks
awkward eye contact
misplaced affection
stretched thin and frayed

The gecko
stuck behind a glass door
is a better friend
a warmer soul
a more significant heat
sharing my own space

I orientate myself
from one room to another
different worlds cramped
on a single plot of land

Reason tells me I am not alone
the full bed sharing
my cold and processed space
says 'there are others like you'
but full fields I cannot open
full rooms I pass through
as a ghost through a wall
call 'you are lonely'
and there is no one
(but myself)
to blame

the air touching my skin was noticeably warmer this week
and today is the First of March
and people are beginning to talk about Daylight Savings Time
and there's that familiar excitement in my chest again
the Spring butterflies returning to my stomach
every time I smell the electric ozone scent of
growth
energy
power
life
carried in the warm, wet breeze blowing from the west
it's the chill down my spine
and the recurring gooseflesh
anxiously awaiting all the unknown
possibilities
opportunities
drifting in on the wind
every day it seems the Sun changes color a little more
shading from the hazy white-blue hue of Winter
toward the bright hot yellow-orange fireball of Summer
and I swear I can taste that color shift with my skin
licking it up
cat bath of photons
drinking it down
sunlight pouring straight into me as
endorphin
serotonin
dopamine
adrenaline
altering my basic chemical makeup
transforming
regrowing
my Self
coming back to life
waking the **** up
waking the world up
I can feel it
I know it's time to move again
time to run again
time to drift again
time to dance again
time to **** again
time to kiss again
time to drink again
time to feel again
feel these things again
feel awake and excited and anxious and nervous and alive again
I can feel all of it beginning right now
with every new sensation when I step outside
I feel the familiar twitch of that little seed growing in the center of me
stronger each day
getting ready to burst

This morning is a picture postcard of our first ****.
Sweaty and enclosed
a symbolic fan dawdles slowly
over our youthful bodies;
Velvet with electricity.

I can still feel the starch strength of your hair,
read the invitation on your lips
(the only novel written solely for me)
and ignore the gooseflesh as I recall the magic of
your perfume from the deepest, darkest past.

Your mystery was forged out of the shade
which followed early mornings,
cool like gold covered ice,
sometimes we drank the Sun's wine
from the Sun's cups
and your ******* were bared to the sleeping city
pale and luminous as two alien moons
while overhead the early birds sang their song.

Now you live in the future,
as so many others do,
and I am left here;
with a faded blue rose
who's perfume has fled and now smells of old velvet.

The whir of the washing machine,
half eaten lunch setting on paper plates.
Spoons under sofas
the cat stalks it’s pray of last night’s tea.

The grey summer sky
“sunshine and showers”
tee shirts, shorts and waterproofs.
The sunhat and umbrella medly.

Mouldy orange juice from when I was last here,
stagnant.
a dripping tap
a ticking clock.

Burnt shoulders.
Gooseflesh legs.
Too hot.
Too cold.

Everybody’s gone away
theres no one out to play,
no one can come to stay
I’ll just sit in all day.

Sometimes I believe the
only reason my lips are
flickered on my face in this
grand fire of red,
is to say I love you and
kiss you and to
do dark things that
keep behind the
shades.

These ligaments O
What were they
created
for? To feel your
gooseflesh and
blushing
face, warm like
petunias

And I am your
carnation, daisy,
flower. My busy
bee, scholar,
how everything glitters
gold with
you.

enigmatic, yes it is!
imaginary conversations and gestures
saying someone is being missed.
in this soliloquy,
gooseflesh arises
when words are set free.
at times i wonder,
why do i have this kind of feeling?
to my stories and queries,
feel like you're responding.
the  fact that we're miles apart,
how's that?

The taste of blood in mouth,
Beads of sweat, shaking breaths.
Delivered from the womb,

The world quaking inside.
Eyelids that flicker, cold shivers-
Aching bellies, belligerent

Body consumes, rotting gut
With foul, fermenting stench.
Siphoned out and shot up-

Tie a ribbon around tight,
Pale skin, veins protruding;
Lukewarm, opaque skin

Covering blue aqueducts.
Tape mouth shut, singe
The hairs that raise in gooseflesh.

Bite down, the tongue writhes
In the white chains, blood draws-
A breath exhales, exhales.

Fingers softly guide slender
Metallic forms to soft, fertile
Groves , the crook of an arm.

Eyelids close, fish swimming up,
Up, upstream to breed and die.
Numbness descends, the rattling

Of the world halts a moment-
Inhalation, the broiling gullet quiets.
Then a jarring , bottled through bottleneck,

Back into the womb; an odd
Artificial jar. Suspended in viscous
Liquid, reeking of the dead-

unnatural in pallor, wax
Figurines which lay motionless.
Now, taken to the shelf. The lid

Is ******* on tightly, sealed shut.
Oddities placed upon display,
Hidden away for night fascinators,

Those witches and witch doctors.
Floating limply in sickly yellow,
Skin looks stained with iodine.

Exhale, exhale again until empty,
Lungs collapse and gasp for oxygen.
Resist with fervor, deny deny deny-

The power is not in wispy fingers with
Dirt embedded nails-chipped away and
Chewed upon. Nature's coursing chemicals-

Instinctual will to live, for what?
Brain deprived, Senseless to survive,
inhale the ammonia and ***** of serpents-

Artificial cultivating of embryos,
Only to be born into dirt, onto the
sides of trash strewn streets,

Dampened with spit and rat ****.
The zygote will transform, before birth-
Rigidly imposed changes prevail.

Inhale, inhale, inhale. Taste the
Putrid regret, the rot gut intensifies
(it takes more now than before).

Acrid lungs and rust colored blood-
Coagulated, dried in the mouth.
***** blackened chunks onto

Oak wood porch of elderly lovebirds
Who will curse and pray and curse
And pray, yet shrivel and die naturally,

Shrinking into their flaccid skin
At the approach of the jars contents,
At the infant of chemical wombs.

A sign out front reads "A child is god's gift".
Infanticide predestined, premeditated,
More than Amelia, more, more.

Shaking hands, shoot up again,
Who was that who hollowed out
Your skin? Once gleaming eyes burn out,

Burn out, are ugly ashes in the wind.
Is this what you wanted?
Little pock marks bleed again.

Sun shining
Warmth spreads over me
Gooseflesh covers my arms
I close my eyes
Inhaling deeply the scent of the sea
Looking up I watch as the waves crash around the rocky shore
The clouds roll in
I can smell the storm coming in on the wind
I sit up to leave
The fog has come in now covering everything around me
Something brushes my feet
Its cold
I look down
The tide has come in
How did it happen so quickly
I’ve lost all sense of time
The water rises fast
Pulling me in
I try to turn and walk to higher grounds
I slip
The waves are strong
Pulling me under
I am surrounded by glorious water
In a startled panic I reach for the surface
Air
I have run out of
I find the top
Gasping for air
It fills my lungs
I find I have been drug out to sea
I can no longer see the shore
A wave laps over me
Under Under Under I go
As my last breath is taken
I will myself to live
Pleading with the gods
Any who will listen
The salty water stings my eyes
Just as my last moments come
I find utter peace in all that is
This world I have found myself in is beautiful
A watery dungeon of beauty
I fall down deeper into the depths
Understanding that this shall be my prison
Excepting it
Understanding it
Wanting it
A mermaid I’ve become
A watery angel I shall be

Her fingers shook as she pulled up her dress.
Nail polish,
A ninety-nine cent ‘Reckless Red’,
Provided startling contrast to
Her deathly pale skin
Covered with gooseflesh.

“I’m not sure,”
She whispered,
Her voice hardly audible to the man
Standing above her.
Her thumb drew circles over a patch of unmarked,
Smooth skin.
She added a little pressure,
Giving color.
It didn’t take much to feel her bone.
She was such a delicate woman,
No, child,
And her skin was paper-thin,
Her body free of fat.

A new set of fingers joined hers.
His touch sure and gentle,
Obviously aware of her nerves,
Trying somehow to reassure her
And succeeding.
He had closely clipped nails,
Filed with tender care
Into a smooth curve.  

Letting go of conscious thought,
She allowed her body to relax into the chair.
Intense, focused lighting caused sweat to bead on her skin,
Her body sticking to the fake leather.
Soon her voice erased all further nerves
As she trusted the stranger with her life story,
Which he sketched onto her skin,
Adding his own take of ‘The End’.

Her fingers shook as she traced her journey.
Nail polish,
A ninety-nine cent ‘Reckless Red,’
Complemented the inked stars
Which said more than words ever could
About what she overcame.

i once knew a girl who liked to get ****** hard
during rainstorms wearing striped purple socks
she liked to have her face bounce off the wooden head-board
while her hungry teeth tried to grab at it
something about the thunder and lightning finger-banging heaven outside really got her juices flowing she said

so i'm out on my front porch naked again
unadorned except for flowers pasted on my eyes
and a small burnt-black buddha dangling around my neck
not meditating or peacefully practicing yoga
just jacking off alone
small white *** clenched tight
legs bent at the knee thigh muscles quivering
against the shadows and the weight of my glistening body
fist wrapped hard around inflamed ****
mimicking the hot friction of the sky

i am a pure creature with potent armpits freebasing a rainbow
as the birds grow loud in the trees and two
paper tabs soak into the flesh of my tongue
grunting and swatting at oversized mosquitoes
my size twelves with unclipped toenails grip and rake
the edge porch concrete underneath as thunder hovers
over my jungle and lightning beats the humid air
sending gooseflesh tingling up my spine
i'm standing in subtropical light casting
a big silhouette against the sky and treetops

the garden of eden is my most sensitive memory
and i am a piece of well-oiled machinery
brushed with gold a brave slender boy
simple and greased with a glowing soul and
***** ******* gesturing in the direction of the stars
fingertips tickling the steepest part of the curve
i am screaming my testimony shattering the
skylight and any remaining windows voice warped
into hook-shaped echoes like a wood pole trembling and chanting in the pre-tornado wind

the rain will start to come just as soon as i do
i can smell it on the wind so i reach around and press the tip of my littlest finger into my own tender ******* like they do in *****-tonk saloons because ******* i'm feeling frisky
pulse swelling in my throat face growing flush
temples and nostrils flaring in a state of mindless joy
and sure enough as the hanging fern sweats the first drops
of sugar-rain onto my chest i'm drifting through heaven backward
reeking with attitude squeezing thick fluid out
of a flexible container aiming it at the desert rose colored
sun stained and loyal to the very end
as sweat and rain collect in puddles
at the back of my skinny knees
i'm paralyzed with clarity and
blinking under pre-hypnotic
eyebrows

shadow people flash across cracked windows caked in icy fog offering my epidermis a thin layer of gooseflesh and sending thoughts cascading into visions of murderous strangers and Victorian era hauntings…catching my breath and remaining froze to the ground while the very blood within these veins seems to turn and transform into thick slow moving maple syrup fresh from an Eastern Canadian tree… attempting to regain my composure I conjure images of sunny days and buzzing bees, free government cheese and freeze tag in the warm breeze…ticking of the wristwatch forces reality into the scene and my pleasant daydreams seem to vanish into the mist swirling around dilapidated stairs greyed from years of weather abuse and staining deficiency…splinters, jagged and threatening, stand poised to pierce shoes and send victims screaming to hospital only to discover untreatable infection based on ancient ***** matter and insect larva bacteria…one deep breath coinciding with a white-knuckled gripping of the three special pamphlets is followed by the most courageous step ever taken…confronted with the specter of the large wooden door, I stop, look skyward and ask god for strength before knocking on the twenty-second home this day…

Eye, I and I

                   The first telling me
                       Never to think
                            *But to be

                                                            ­                                          And the latter
                                                                ­                                      Screaming, taunting
                                                        ­                                             Appropriation!
                                              ­                                                        Opprobrio­us little thing!

                                     The middle cowering
                                                      ­     Shaking as she
                                      Soars through
                                                         ­  Calmest winds
                                      And brushing
                                                        ­Turbulent ocean

     She hurts and
      Radiates the suns spit
                                                     Permeable gooseflesh
                                                     Absorbing any confusion
                                                       ­                         
                                                                                              Processing and mulling it over
                                                            ­                                                                              
                                                                                                                                      With plastic hands
                                                           ­           Caressing her feathers
                                                        ­                      Pulling her into
                                                            ­             The stormy cold of Id

              While she meditates on
              The notion that she is

            To be absent of thought
                                            
           Translucent and hollow

                                    A reflection of skies and seas

Beating her wings
     Desperately to catch the

            Sinking sun or
            Hook the rising moon
                                                            ­                                                                 ­             
                                                   ­                                 Alas she is lost
                                     Manufactured materials
                                                       ­       Clogging her pores
                                                                ­                     Infecting her eyes
                                                            ­                                                Trying to trick her
                                                                ­                                                                 ­              Into being but one

                                                           ­                  But three she will be,
                                                           ­                        Three I's with
                                                            ­                         Three Eyes

To see the maidens yesterday                            The mothers today                            The crones tomorrow
                                                        
       ­                                                                 ­               Wholly

                                                     ­                                   Never to
                                                                ­               Cease or halt or falter

                                                         ­                     Or question the reality
                                                                ­                     Of the intrinsic

                                         And never
                                                      To trust, to touch
                                                                           The grand illusion
                                                                                                    Of material worth

1.
a Picasso night,
laden with dust that settles on
my skin like
snow.
I'm sitting in the center of the room
with gooseflesh skin and
broken bones still shifting,
prodding my little flame with
singed fingertips
and all I can see is my childlike
reflection
staring hungrily back at me,
thirsting for an inkling of something more.

2.
the room is awash with yellow light from
the oncoming dawn.
I claw at the floor with
scorched nails,
digging my way out.
through the genesis, my little flame swells with
hope as my reflection shifts
into someone I begin to recognize.

3.
high noon. the roof is gone.
the sun beats upon me like a
drum
and i take the blows with my head
bowed in paralyzing
shame.
something is perpetually falling from
my eyes, but i've already refused
to cry.
the flame is shrunken and deteriorated to
a dull pinprick
of luminance.
i no longer wish to escape this
room;
i only long to understand the face in
the wall
that i know
is me.

i smash the mirrors.

4.
this sunset is all I could have
ever dreamed of.
I am an hourglass tunrned
inside-out and upside-down,
my flame flickering and beginning
to grow again.
I reach out,
grab the hands that have been
outstretched towards me
for what seems like
an eternity.
They will take me home.

Look at the colors, they say.
I know.

I know.

5.
a Picasso night
laden with dust that settles on
my skin like
snow.
I sprout wings and fly away,
stars exploding in my wake.

gooseflesh bulbs on the satin of her skin
like early morning dewfall;
her lips slicken
with blurry, mascara-tinted tributaries
(**** it—she can’t even die pretty)
so the wind carries her
like litter,
a years-old newspaper
with no particularly interesting headlines,
from the 12th story window
in the cerulean dress she bought
just for the occasion.
the dead-end city lights bear witness
to her own dead end into five thick inches of concrete.
and with its downtrodden palms
the city blushes her cheeks with abrasions,
shadows her eyes with bruises,
tattoos her lunar body with its worn-out brands;
it takes her in.
and the ****** kid on his paper route finds her there,
and stops,
and stares,
and wonders,
and eventually lifts his sneakers back to the pedals
and keeps on biking,
because there she is, dead on the side of the ******* road,
and what the **** can you do?

You will learn my rhythm
and lean in when I talk-
The smell of me like petrichor perfume
will linger on your shirt.
Feel of my lips like
satin ties
of the ballerinas shoes
will wind
around your mind
and tie across the gooseflesh
on your arms.
You will know I have come
before my hand
lifts to knock,
and your heart will quicken-
echo percussion against the chambers.
You will remember
the last wet place
we walked with one umbrella.
And when it rains
you will fill buckets with longing
to fit our slick bodies
underneath its black shelter
again.
You will knot your tie
and straighten your collar
and your body will stiffen
because it remembers.
You will have a track mark
like the silver needle bullet
chasing through your veins-
that recalls us.
Like tongue recalls salt,
like  wound
recalls harm-
like child recalls
before being born-
like the prayer remembers
before being sung.
like the rock will recall that the ocean was there
and the cell will recall being painlessly split
and you will remember
with such vivid lust
and you will love in a timeless loop.
And I will love you over and under.
We will love till we're small again,
Love as time resets again
And then do it all once more,
Again.


Sahn 4.10.15

Take a look at me.

Wonder how I got here.

No, really- wonder,
don't assume,
because maybe that's humanity's
biggest problem.
Everybody thinks they're smart enough
to tell the story just by looking at its cover.

I am white. I am so white it's painful,
so pale I know the frustration
of never having found a foundation
in my color,
of having to settle,
of being too much of an inconvenience
to make a shade for.
But there is privilege in this;
there is no denying that,
none whatsoever,
and please know:  I am not denying anything.  
I can't.  It is true.
My privilege is skin deep,
bone deep,
inescapable and ever evident,
but it did not get me here today.
Not entirely.

Because no matter how white I am,
my soul has never fit in.
It must be a motley of colors.
I am so white,
yet I'm not white enough-
eating alone and wearing the wrong clothes,
unable to read music
because we couldn't afford piano lessons,
and now that we have the money for birthday parties
no one will ever come.

I am ten shades less tan
than the preferred caucasian
and they will never, ever let me forget it.

I am judged the moment someone sees my family
because suddenly, the puzzle pieces must fit-
that's why she's successful,
she's a rich white girl-
except fortunate parents doesn't automatically
mean you get everything,
doesn't mean I didn't do chores,
doesn't ever mean I got paid for A's
or that college help was guaranteed.

I had to earn it.  
A's were expected, chores a duty,
allowances non-existent.
I fought for my success and only then
was I promised assistance
to get through college without drowning in bills,
yet even then
I still had six figures to consider
and weeks' worth of scholarship papers
just to make it out with anything to my name.
Privilege was present,
but privilege was not the reason
I won enough scholarships
to make it through.
I worked.
(It is possible for a white woman to work,
as much as I've heard that it isn't.)

My skin won't tell you that I've suffered,
quite the opposite.
My skin won't admit the times
that I pulled at it, hated it,
the days I wanted to make my pallor permanent
and the day gooseflesh trembled
beneath a blade.
It can't tell you about the tears
or the panic attacks
or the abandonment or depression or inexplicable grief
for joy I never knew,
belonging I never experienced,
and privilege that could not protect me from assault
or hatred,
because most of you wouldn't be listening anyway.

I promise,
there are reasons for my self-loathing.

But you won't know it,
won't even realize it exists as a subplot,
if you refuse to open my book
and learn my story
because my cover is white.

You won't realize that
I am scared to let my friends meet my family.
You won't know I've lost friends after they have.

You won't know that I care,
that I'm angry too,
so furious my teeth are cracking
but I can't say a word.
I am not supposed to.
I have been scolded for it.

Everyone says
not to judge a book by its cover,
yet they still do,
tossing novels aside every day
because their binding is displeasing.
Maybe some of the authors before me
wrote horrible stories,
but you stand to discover an unexpected favorite
if you can give others a chance.

And you stand to find a fellow motleyed soul
by opening that shiny new book you can't trust,
don't want to trust,
and testing the waters of the first delicate page.

I want to touch the ink that covers your body
ask you your secrets
search your gooseflesh skin

I want to sink my teeth into your perfect lips

I want you to **** the nectar from my sweet spots
tangle our hair into one

I want you to hand me your soul in a cloud

I want your jumbled teeth
and your tell me everything smile

So in Novemeber rain
******* on wet cigarettes like babe at milkless breast
I am passed
by the jogger.
Tanned limbs wrapped in polyester
hair wet by salt and water
I entertain myself
with the thought
that we
are the two types of people
who come out on Monday mornings in weather like this;
scars turning purple in the cold
all numb fingers and gooseflesh
and their breath
as white as mine
against the dark of early the sunrise
is a great leveler
on days like today.

These are the mornings I do not go hungry
in fear of the growing space between my thighs -
the masters of illusion
can make themselves appear invisible
but I cannot conceal my disappearing act much longer.
I am sixteen smoker's cough they tell me
I have a heart murmur I take it
as irrefutable proof I have
a heart feeling
the early
seeds
of death settle
in my chest with every drag,
some things are inexcusable
and I am learning that I am not blameless.

A few too many nights walking under unlit streetlamps
do not make you a victim I am learning that I
am not the victim Atlas shrugging off responsibility
a person
can only carry so much guilt
before they bend and
bad backs run in my family
so
I may be a coward -

but I will never say I was not warned.

I lay on stained mattresses amidst oil paintings and mirrors
Lattice veils of mascara run down my pallor cheeks
As I stare down at the blood pooling in my outstretched hand
Reflections stare down at me, winged ******* and soldiers
All eyes across the room staring down with me, to the checkered floor
My pale pink toes brush the tile, the soles black smudging the gloss
White, blaring, chandeliers above, candelabras with jeweled adornments
Gracefully falling downwards like tears, my own indenting upon satin sheets
Wrapped tight around my legs, falling loose around my shoulders
Caping me, hanging open at my ******* bruised and swollen
Though I've no babe, and so, I clench my eyes against the staring
Chiding me, beguiling me, burned in behind my eyelids there,
you. are.
Whispering like chiffon, along with the fabric of my dress beneath your manicured fingernails
Tracing the edges of my gooseflesh and regaling me with tales of woe
and wonder, of the conquests of art, fine frames and fantastic auctions
Our freedom, held capricious on the winds of chance, before
Now love, our love, your love, provided such an opportunity, a chance to fly away
This you mumbled to my neck with adoring kisses
as relieving as fresh rain against my skin, hands tuning the zipper along my back to play such a fine melody like a phonograph
A pretty thing, to be molded by such hands, with as much regard as handling a Monet painting

I see it clearly after all

I swim through a shimmering sea of sapphires,

Salt filling my nose and mouth, taste exploding on my tongue,

My legs and arms pumping and sliding through the coldest of winter lakes,

Body erupting in beautiful gooseflesh.



Then I am suddenly not there and then, but here, now, away from my lucid memories.

A firefly alerts me to its presence inches from my face
Bubbly giggles erupt from my lips
Crickets whisper in the bushes next to my porch
Dusk has finally arrived, overtaking twilight
Evening made way for nighttime
Feeling light in the dark
Grass, bright in the sunlight, turned to an inky navy in the moonlight
Heat from the day residual in the post sunset bliss
In the daylight it is unbearable
Just barely tolerable after dusk
Kisses from the wind brush my arms
Lifting up the gooseflesh
Moonlight hazy in the humid air
No such thing as silence at night
Overhead I hear distant thunder
Perhaps a midnight storm is near
Quickly approaching the rocking chair where I sit
Reading, enjoying the evening
Stars blink and twinkle above
Tonight, this summer night
Underneath the summer sky
Violet and blue and indigo surround me
Waiting to disappear in the morning
Xuberance in the bright morning sunlight
Yes, but until then I will revel in the evening
Zephyrs gently rocking me to sleep.

Sunbeams reach through the window
Touching me, tentatively,
Raising gooseflesh, waking desire.
Dormant nevermore,
I am a Summerchild,
Opening up to the promise of the light.
Banish deathwatch Winter
Gift me the Spring like a flower in bud
To slowly open, as the days grow longer,
And the memories of darkness fade
with long forgotten grief
abandoned, left to drown
Amidst the January floods.

1.        Dying of a day /     reflections


on surfaces of oceans


burnt umber, blue, and blood

the sinking sun

                       wounded

death is red


before the dark         / ruins...



2.

It is the sensation of ripples
when supple pink linguist
leaves poetic yearning

fires touching
on nape and taste,

lifting countries and new
conquered kingdoms
of skin

gooseflesh and earthquakes
blood as lava

rushes in
     kabuki cheeks
          secret joy begins

red and parched

sudden seas of thirst
parts / our senses / must
breathe ...
(like art)

Magic whispers kiss
because touch enpassioned
is red
    and wish.



3.

Love lorn letters

poetic bliss
     spontaneous wings born


each ache and void
trumpeting words

when distance fails
the hearts which speak

red

the oceans felt
the tides that ebb
hurried pleas

desperations
red

when letters
lose the dying magnitude

the importance
and impetus

that love must free

clarion song
of hearts are red

as are all
kisses (scarlet)
even to air
and dead

begins on such lips

red....