It's been far too long
Since I heard your smile
Or felt beautiful reflected in your eyes

The warmth of your skin
Is a vibrant memory
That tucks me in at night

It's the only reason
I bother trying to sleep

Memories taste sour
When waking
From the reality of dreams

The universe is cruel
While love is kind,
Or perhaps that's backwards

Maybe...
It's just been far too long
Since I heard your smile

in a stadium,
in the nosebleed seats,
a lemon rind moon was all the light we had
when the city lost power

the crowd murmured, impatient
for the carnage to continue, players knelt
on the turf; their coach-gods commanded,
Let their be light!

I rose to leave, when I heard them
a canine symphony from jackals who escaped
the ranchers' sights, the dumb traps,
taunting us, the light seekers

who knew not how to comport
ourselves without electric diversion, without
staged battles, while they roamed the dark,
snouts angled towards a charcoal sky

sharing song and scent, sentient though not
like we, but content to be yip yapping in the autumn night
while we lamented the lack of light, and yearned yet
for different blood

take it,
live it,
like it,
return it,
loan it,
sleep on it,
look at it,
close it,
open it,
occupy it,
own it,
buy it
populate it,
disseminate it,
talk about it,
listen to it,
feel it
destroy it,
stop it,
yet to in love with it....

(c) Ko Win Khine aka. D Hlaine (May 4th, 2016.  NYC)

I'm there,
an old portrait hanging on the wall
in need of a good dusting--past worthy
of restoration

passers-by will now and then pause
(more then than now), and wonder what my
two grey eyes saw, what my folded hands held,
what words came from my pursed lips

then came you, all dozen years of you:
maybe you liked old oils; maybe you were bored;
but you stopped, you ate a plump pear
while gazing

you squinted to see the signature
of the one who created me, though somehow
you knew there was but one creator
who gifted all brushes

you read the brass plaque
which summed up my life--three names and
eight digits, the last four a score before you were born
then you closed your young eyes

because you knew mine were closed
despite the painting's vain attempt to keep them open  
and you imagined you were asleep, waiting for a new sun,
or for another curious soul to stroll by

one who would take the time to look
and, like you, wonder, who I was, and why I was draped on this wall,
in this quiet hall, where you stood, pear in hand, finding color,
light, in my untold story

eat me alive

in the darkest
coldest
part of the night

the moon
will not
haunt you

nor follow
your footsteps
in the midst
of our
love's demise

i can smell
your flesh
from afar

eat me alive

i'd rather
be dead
than being
alone

he wept, T.S. Eliot
for he lost a poem he penned
by hand--a piece that called itself
The Waste Land

in which he declared
April was the cruelest month
but he recalled little more, while scavenging
his memory for wily words

though I did not weep with him
I placed a light palm on his shoulder
to tell him I understood, for we all
lamented the loss of verse

phrases that came to us in dreams
lines that licked clean the inside of our skulls
words that repeated themselves, coming and going,
coming and going with each breath

my actress, who
sweated blood on Broadway each night
off Broadway too

said, on a long stroll
through Central Park. she was successful
because she did not like herself

on the stage, she proclaimed,
she was never herself, and she fell in love
with every character she portrayed  

every script was a better bio
than her own, and the playwrights knew
her better than she knew herself

and when our walk
was curtailed by a downpour, she dragged me
into a crowded cafe

where she knew half the patrons
and the wait staff, and they all knew the different
personas she had owned, on the dry stage

rain now forced her to choose  
which selves to keep, and which to lose
while she sipped scalding tea

with me, on a grey wet afternoon,
only hours before she would again be under  
the spell of the hot lights,

and read verses from the pens of prophets,
poets--those who purloined her soul for the price
of admission, to a place without self loathing

on a Texas hot day,
a thrifty bird of prey, was enjoying
a red repast

his plate, endless asphalt, his meal
entrails of a cur, whose flat fate was sealed
by black Firestone rubber

the manged mutt left to be lunch
for a ravenous buzzard, with beak bent,
pecking at his fine feast, until

my mindless Michelins
gobbled him up, faster than his greased wings
could flap for flight

blind from birth, she
could tell the difference
between the odor of chrysanthemums and tulips,
and remember her first whiff of both

she could identify
the scent of her brother
in a groping group
of sweaty brutes

she knew
her nose was her biographer
collecting memories, visions
her eyes could not

she studied biology
only to discover her compendium
of smells originated in a space infinitely
smaller than a fly's eye

a few molecules
devoted to identifying ham,
the rich smokey meat
of her first Easter

another clump to help her hold
the faint smell of perfume which lingered
in the room hours after
her mother passed

and who knew what atoms,
what cells, what curse of chemistry
forced her to recall, most of all, the sweet scent
of her newborn's hair,

the few seconds she held him,
after his heart stopped, and they took him
and placed him in a smooth, cold box, where sight,
sound and smell were locked forever

the gray grasses sang sweet songs,
without even a breeze to move them
the coyote howls were marrow yellow,
crimson, as their sour colors sifted
into the night

lightning streaked my charcoal
sky, and I could taste it, a salted butter
that tickled the throat on the way down,
the sonic booms it hatched smelled of baked bread,
and I hungered for more  

then a white owl spoke to me,
but I did not hear it call my name
no, not mine--though its hoots formed ice,
chunks which pummeled me, froze me
to the bone

the waters ring red
with the ferrous clay from these plains
brutish brown on cloud cluttered days
caramel during floods

my feet know nothing
of water moccasins, though
a rattler nipped an ankle on these banks
a million years ago

feet don't recall
they slip into the cool tickling stream
innocent, not looking for a Baptismal
though the serpents are ever present

slithering in the depths
just beyond my eyes, only a few silt filled steps
from my ten toes, waiting--wanting fallible
flesh to slip within their sights

where there will be no
original naked temptation, only the striking,
the ******* venom, and the second fall
from grace, without woman to blame