I want a man that reads with blue pen,
ink blots a page like he unbuttons my blouse
slow breathy traces from knot to knot
fingers passing every imperfect freckle that dots
his eyes to my skin. Then pause.
I want him to read closely
the blooming scents that escape
my sighs – first quick and salty
anticipating a touch flirtation at my
inner thigh, then a rub, no,
a well placed grasp. I want
him to know when to squeeze
throw down my hair and pace
the heaving contours that flow
more passionately than the Baltic Sea.
Then I want to make waves
make him crash and sway into me
deep until the sheets seem to float
above us and then drop to drape like flags
pull under me once again reading
my gaping breaths now heavy
like a volcanoes peak, tasting the raspberry
magma of my tongue. I want a man
to study the life lines of my erosion,
know where they crack and ache
and split into new directions.
I want a man to know
the geography of my desire.

Keep your feet on the ground even though your friends
flatter you. (Movies have pause, friends don’t.)
Traveling this year will bring your life into greater
perspective. (Actions speak nothing, without the motive.)
People enjoy having you around. (Appreciate this.)
Your emotional currents are flowing powerfully now.
(Movies have pause, friends don’t.) Listen to yourself more often -
you are thinking about doing something.
Impossible standards just make life difficult. (Actions speak nothing,
without the motive.) Don’t do it, it won’t help anything.
May you have great luck. You are admired for your
adventurous ways. (Everything has beauty but not everyone sees it.)
Right now there is energy pushing you in a new direction. (Hard words
break no bones, fine words butter no parsnips.)
People in your background will be more co-operative than normal. You
are the master of every situation. Listen to yourself more often.
(When the moment comes, take the top one.)Your emotional currents are flowing powerfully now. (Everything has beauty but not everyone sees it.) Encourage your peers. (For hate is never conquered by hate.)
You will be successful in your work. (Appreciate this.) Use your head,
live in your heart. (Hate is conquered by love.)
Don’t do anything, it won’t help you. When the moment comes take the top one. Soon life will become more interesting.

Ears pressed cool against
glass tables and vinyl flooring
words score high drained slowly
slow like wasps caught in guttered draining
not like velvet names etched in casing, but weathered like bricked and beaten graffiti –
Waning like wax always melting

Tools: spelling and grammar – uncheck

Don’t fret too many gerunds grounding air suffocating hearing between the lines that past lower truths out straight in dirt and stinky face: eyes drawn with pensive staring
lines drawn global remains of words unused: boycott form because it isn’t daring.
Adopt sonar because it traces the smokestack between eaves drop
and scrap metal hearing like thorns prickled cut by cleaver.

Clink, clink, clank.

Unlatch cellar doors of images fixed in meaning: glances slanted
heads poked out behind legs enchanting ink under eyelids.

Clank, click, click.

Wishing: Sunday morning came to rest and the cat perched rest without the windowsill and the space between my legs lost meaning.

Forgetting: Painted houses haunting furniture misplaced, training lessons in memory fading.  

Dreaming: Sounds dipped in vegetable oil, Van Morrison in teething states caring.

Still lost without my last breathe wondering…

Just last night I caught gender
waltzing with *** in an entirely gestural affair.
I hailed them both to come join the rest of the party
but they were quite content dancing there
while the well dressed men and women ignored their spectacle.

Perhaps they did not remember their previous performances
that cast them into exclusion,
because their bodies were so entwined with such fluidity,
their parts swirled the whole of them into a state
of being only Picasso could understand.

I entered the world like most of my kind – whitewashed and nameless,
faceless yet searching for a face
to nibble on corn mashed scrapings of my time and place,
just hungry enough to pervade ignorance and grapple at the ripeness
of a more fruitful
truth
acknowledged in a vacuum
where dreams rot and decay and suffocate the eyes,
where an echo reverberates a menacing shriek
that tastes foul and perverse – dried sweat teared in blood
but it stays with me and my kind
alone in the haystack by God and his word
silenced by the power of an unlicensed scripture
these conditions fixate me, us
as they fixate the man behind the whip
as they fixate the land, the family, the working stick.
but I unlike most of my kind
have choked on an inch, and spit up a mile
and wielded a pen to inkblot a trial,
a trial constructed outside the vacuum
offering light, air and room to breathe
in the tangibility of humanity.

Because the thirst wouldn’t simmer; it ruptured cities into boils,
turned cultures into armies, an armageddon of cheeky stubborn Irish Catholics and thick veined Germans couldn’t imagine a world without their stout hearty headed pint.

Because white dry protestant angels thought crime existed in a vacuum, in a filthy saw-dusted saloon, the hub spawn of evil.

Because twice as many of those saloons were ******* by unlicensed blind pigs, not through free swinging doors on the streets, but in the domestic sphere; in the dark crept crevices of household sanctuaries.  

Because bootlegging capitalist princes turned the industry into a stenchy liability with their home brewed distilled poisons. Alky cookers wrapped the commodity fetish and dubbed it moonshine.

Moonshine – spirits for the poor and blind.

Because this social reform was a moral reform lost in the oblivion of politics, lost in the timeliness of progressive spring-cleaning referenda’s.

Because the ragged, toothless class had to be scold, striped clean of their traditional barings,

because wisdom is everything and they’re spirits ran vilely wild.

You don’t understand,
At first it was a compromise I had to accept,
The sulfur-ridden stench that blazed my nostrils
And made me seek a foreign tongue.
They do not think I worked
But I did.
I washed the pains that clenched at
My existence.
I refused to ignore that foul pulpous print.
Lured did it!
Lured me to utmost perfection.
Then John became but a stone
In lurking shadows completely unseen.
I revealed me to myself
And hands were not shaken, that was not custom.
Into the circle of my life
One revelation proved its superiority,
And now its comfort has deserted me.
Take me back
Take me back
Wrap me in your shredded parcels of paper-tainted glory
Tinge me with indecencies. I fear no guilt.
I want to see my better half sing
And dance between lines and smudges that thwart
Into perception,
To suspend the hour.
Being.
Doing.
Without Needing
To be
There is no sanctuary here
I lie in a familiar position now
The attic floor cools my flushed face
Pinching nerves cultivate essence
My hands clench a tight fist
My knuckles…
They bleed yellow.