She wore a knee-length skirt. I like them a tad shorter but for some reason this didn’t bug me. Her smile was bright and cheery. Her hair looked soft and came down to the top of her back. She was beautiful and her teeth were white and seemed to pop out of her mouth. I liked her a lot.
We decided we wanted Italian. I told her about Acario’s, a good-quality place up the street, and she said that it sounded fantastic. I opened the door for her and we drove away in my car. It wasn’t the nicest one on the market but it went fast. When we got out on the highway I pushed the accelerator to the floor and weaved between traffic. Some girls get nervous when I do this but she seemed to enjoy it. She looked over at me and grinned with those bright teeth. I don’t remember much except those teeth until we got there. I opened the door for her again and held the small of her back as we walked to the door.
There was some native Italians singing in the corner as we sat down. There was very electric light, only candles and occasional flicker as the kitchen doors swung open and shut. The waiter seemed a natural at his job. Sharp clothes, slicked back hair, good smile that didn’t seem full of contempt. He greeted us in Italian but quickly reverted back to a more common tongue when we began asking about their specials. She ordered Rigatoni a la pesto. I ordered Linguine a la Bolognese. We shared a semi-expensive Merlot that the waiter recommended. It was all very good but neither of us ate much. All I could focus on were her teeth. Their movement up and down when she talked. How badly it felt to see them go when she plucked a single piece of pasta into her mouth. We stayed for two hours. I paid the bill and left a generous tip. The waiter seemed grateful but I suspect he gathered this was our first date.
I did not want the evening to end so I asked her if she wanted to go someplace else. She suggested a park about a fifteen-to-twenty minute drive away. We both got into the car and I sped down the highway, looking over when I could to see the white gems she kept tucked behind her lips flare open as I revved the engine.
When we arrived she took my hand and led me to a lake a small ways away. We walked around the lake for a while until we found a bench. It was old and wooden. It had seen many people’s ***** and absorbed the sounds of children calling to their mothers, old women throwing seeds to the birds, and even the sounds of young lovers hungrily snarled in each other’s faces. She sat down quickly and smiled, looking at the quiet waters first and then into my eyes. Her eyes seemed full of life but I could not help to be drawn slightly lower, to the confines of her red rim.
I leaned in for a kiss but she didn’t lean back at first. I opened my eyes and saw her grinning, her teeth seeming to say, “you don’t think I’m that easy do you?”
“No”, I said in my mind, “no you’re not that easy. You know I want you. You know why I like you. Why I desire you. Fine. I’ll earn it. I’ll make you want it. Just come here. Come here once and I’ll win you over.”
I leaned in all the way and got my lips on hers. She didn’t kiss back. She wanted to see me try. She wanted me to impress her. I did everything I could. I moved my lips up and down. I ran my tongue on hers. I touched her teeth for the first time. It lit a fire in me. I fought harder than I ever had. I tried things I didn’t know could be tried. It felt like hours and I think it might’ve been hours but that one kiss was what did it.
When we separated she was still smirking. It was different this time though. She was satisfied, not disappointed. Approving, not taunting. She agreed. She was going to give me a shot.
We finished out the evening. I dropped her off at her house around 4 in the morning. We barely talked the rest of the night. We didn’t hold-hands. We didn’t kiss. I don’t even remember what we did for all that time, but it was wonderful. It was enough for me just to know those white, gleaming, wonderful teeth were mine.
That date led to another, the one after that to another one, that one to a fourth and so on and so forth. Weeks turned to months. Months to years. It was years and years and years it seemed to me. I couldn’t remember the days of the week, the hour, the month, the year. It was all about the next time I got to see those teeth. Until, one day, in the blink of an eye, it was the last time I got to see them again. The last time, the very time they warped to fangs and breathed fire like a dragon upon a now useless play-thing.

I won't call you perfect
nobody's close to that
I'm not gonna drown you in affection
I won't resort to that
but when you stand in front of me
It'd be hard not to notice
You're fragrance is amazing constantly
your eyes sparkle like jewels
your hair is glossy, perfect even in a mess
you stand there seemingly so blessed
others simply can't contest


I'm not saying you're an angel
however angelic is quite close
not a better word that I could find
I'm looking, searching, lost
then I find my closest friend
I like her quite a bit
I'm not sure how she will react to all this sweet and sappy stuff
I'm sure she'll like the compliments
they are what she deserves
even though she leaves me
emotionally perturbed
this part is probably the worst
most just call it the end
meaning that there's no more words
to describe
The
        Pultrichude
                          Of
                                My
­                                        Friend
                                                         <3

Melancholy monotony
ridiculous repetition
like the tides of the sea
back and forth I'm swept

Warm and kindly
a gripping embrace
your arms around me
face to face

I stare into your eyes
you stare into mine
I see you heart
you destroy mine

Metallic, this bitter taste
it's the same for us all
this cold and hating
gripping embrace
crushing our emotions
I'm no longer as innocent as I had once thought.

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to **** you.
You died before I had time ----
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off the beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My ****** friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You ----

Not God but a *******
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the *****.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two ----
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagersnever liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you *******, I'm through.

If you were a dream
          let me be the eternal sleeper
If you were a song
           let me never take off the headphones
If you were darkness
          let there never be light

If I were a boy living the dream
          of listening to that song in the dark

Let you be you.

The young maricones and the ***** muchachas,
The big fat widows delirious from insomnia,
The young wives thirty hours' pregnant,
And the hoarse tomcats that cross my garden at night,
Like a collar of palpitating ****** oysters
Surround my solitary home,
Enemies of my soul,
Conspirators in pajamas
Who exchange deep kisses for passwords.
Radiant summer brings out the lovers
In melancholy regiments,
Fat and thin and happy and sad couples;
Under the elegant coconut palms, near the ocean and moon,
There is a continual life of pants and *******,
A hum from the fondling of silk stockings,
And women's ******* that glisten like eyes.
The salary man, after a while,
After the week's tedium, and the novels read in bed at night,
Has decisively ****** his neighbor,
And now takes her to the miserable movies,
Where the heroes are horses or passionate princes,
And he caresses her legs covered with sweet down
With his ardent and sweaty palms that smell like cigarettes.
The night of the hunter and the night of the husband
Come together like bed sheets and bury me,
And the hours after lunch, when the students and priests are *******,
And the animals mount each other openly,
And the bees smell of blood, and the flies buzz cholerically,
And cousins play strange games with cousins,
And doctors glower at the husband of the young patient,
And the early morning in which the professor, without a thought,
Pays his conjugal debt and eats breakfast,
And to top it all off, the adulterers, who love each other truly
On beds big and tall as ships:
So, eternally,
This twisted and breathing forest crushes me
With gigantic flowers like mouth and teeth
And black roots like fingernails and shoes.

My Welsh is just not good enough for verse.
My dw i'n hoffi coffi's lacking fizz;
cynghanedd is pedestrian or worse;
I wish it wasn't so, but there it is.
My struggle's still to learn, as yours to teach,
and so my englyn's still in English sung,
and aching awdls cower out of reach,
and English shows the thinness of the tongue.
But here's my goal: some month the Gorsedd meet
so many miles ahead— I may be there
to share my bitter words, my verses sweet,
at common table. Never mind the chair.
But that's a dream, and not what's on the card,
and much as I might dream— for now— I'm barred.