As we lay in bed,
Afternoon creeping in on us,
You said eight words that
Hold you in my head forever.

“I really wish it was raining right now.”

And how I wished it was too.

Not for the simple pleasure of
The covers smuggling
In our warmth and trapping us there,
In as friendly a way as one can be trapped.

Not for the gentle transfer of raindrops from
Windows to our ears.

Not for the plants, not for the trees,
No drought on our minds
But our own.

It was for the washing away of guilt -
Just, sound reasoning to keep ourselves there.
To lay
Just a little longer,
As if the outside world now held nothing for you,
Nothing for me, and, in fact,
Ceased to exist.

The sun broke through your curtain,
Unfair and unforgiving for a November afternoon.
And we lay there,
Just a little longer,
Until a bead of sweat
Slipped down my spine.

“Maybe I should go,”
I said,
And you made no move
To stop me.

You are like sweet pickles.
I prefer dill,
Always have and always will
And your taste will never be enough.

But I choose you
Because you are the
Only thing on the table
That looks familiar.

Your skin is just as
Pleasing as a dill pickle,
But this little similarity will only
Sour my smile,
And my disappointment in your taste
Will become quite apparent
As it echoes through the tunnels and channels of my
Lips and eyes.

But I’ve passed up cheeses
And wines for you
(The cheeses are unfamiliar,
Smelly, and fattening; the
Wines turn me red
And stupid).

Yes, I have chosen you.
I hope your eyes dilate at that
And the growing and enveloping blackness
Takes over your vision and your will,
Rendering me invisible
But twice as lovely and
Four times as dangerous.

With you blinded now, sweet pickles,
Let me tie you up in my fingers
And **** you.

There's no formula.
Why would there be a formula,
Why muddle it up with signs and
Figures and giving and taking
When words do enough to draw a
Coroner's bag over it?

All you can know is the beautiful
Tightening of the Devil's hand on your soul,
Which he has now turned into a stress ball
With a witty or motivational saying on it.
Some are smiley faces,
But he crushes them all the same.

Too bad Libra isn't there to balance you out,
Sort out the Good and the Evil,
Your God and your Devil.
Because really, we ride on a line
Some would call razor sharp.
The most difficult task throughout our lives
Is, undeniably, the act of balancing.

Imagine this:
We are all the King's Fools,
We sit in the King's castle
In the Grand Hall
With wooden tables
And beautiful banners to represent
Who discovered and exploited
And conquered a certain piece of land,
And a certain part of the population,
And a certain percentage of humanity.

And these banners are red and gold,
Red for Passion,
Gold for Obsession.
And the walls are ******,
Breaking themselves apart
Like hourglass's employed grains of sand.
We all balance in this hall
On ridiculously tall unicycles,
So tall that the fruit and assorted
Desserts we are balancing on our clown's
Top hats on our sweating heads
Brush against the lion's tail on the first banner,
The boar's tusks on the second,
And sometimes the rose's bowing stem.

We do this all our lives
While the nobility,
Or the cosmos,
Or God and the Devil,
Or Good and Evil,
Sit and watch, laughing and throwing themselves at us
For us to catch and juggle whenever they please.

I had always thought that Love
Would open the floodgates,
Would make of me
A giant vial,
Tipping me over and causing me
To spill out the sweetest poison.

Love came, in his crafty, shy way,
And as he announced himself,
I prepared, filing through my thoughts,
My bank of literary currency,
Searching for the most succulent of metaphors,
The most shining of similes,
And twenty-six alliterations for
Twenty-six letters.

I sat at my island,
Pen in hand,
Pensive smile on my lips.
My heart was full of music,
And I said, like Orsino,
"If music be the food of love,
Well,
Give me more!"

I sat,
And waited.

I waited,
And nothing came.

No sounds to move my heart to dance,
No symbols to make my eyes twinkle,
No product, no design,
Nothing at all to say.

It is not that Love has made my head blank.
Rather, it is that Love has made
Me mute.
Love waltzed in,
More elegant than I ever will be,
And, approaching from behind,
Placed his solid and ice cold hand
Over my poor, unmoving mouth,
Paralyzed with a smile.

Love spun me around to face him,
Taking my arms forcefully, and said,
"Dance with me."
My mouth remained paralyzed, but
Oh, how my feet flew!
How they skated across the floor
So recently turned to ice
At the courteous request of Love.
How he spun me like a spindle,
How he pricked my finger upon its
Needle.  How he smiled and smiled,
And how I took in nothing but his eyes.

They were not an icy blue as one might imagine.
Instead, they contained a shallow blackness,
Darkness divine.
Where mortals have mere specks of color
In their eyes, flecks like those on marbles,
Love has the stars.
Love has the universe in his eyes,
And the universe has mirrors,
And the mirrors have eyes
That grasp yours,
And soon you know not
What you are witnessing.

I am in love with
Melancholy.
He is the sweetest of suitors,
Bedazzled in jewels that glint so smoothly,
And just enough,
And right in your eyes,
To shield you,
Maybe protect you,
From his abuse and his repetitive,
Cyclical nature.

He is so handsome in any light.
I sometimes love to just stare at him
And contemplate the rigid, weepingly gorgeous
Features that make up his seraph's face.

There is a sharp angle just beneath his perfect
Ears, which hear me splay cheeky compliment after
Cheeky compliment toward them.
This angle turns into his jaw,
Which opens up and down, not like a hinge but rather a
Hatchet, to tell me
So many lies.
He presents them just so - as lies.
But he sways them so wonderfully,
So persuasively and professionally
That I can do nothing but fall
Asunder to this dark suitor's mouth.

He pulls me towards him,
Like the Earth pulls the Moon,
Like the Spider pulls the Prey,
Like Love pulls the Fool.

Intoxicating, really.
His lips move like planets.
They orbit around his weightless voice,
And they spin on their own axes,
And sometimes they spin toward my own.
They plant themselves like magnets,
As if we were meant to be,
And they move in harmony,
Just as hard and stubborn as magnets,
Just as ineffably wonderful we sometimes
Find physics to be.

But then they release -
He releases.
He floats backward, his beautiful
Demonic grin enticing me,
Telling me, "I'll love you and
Leave you, and you can do nothing do
But enjoy it."

My Melancholy.
My beautiful, beautiful angel who blots out the night,
Sweeping the stars together to form a
White, blinding fingerpainting that he tapes to the heavens,
And delivers unto me what I believe is daylight.

But then his head bends back,
Exposing that beautiful hatchet-jaw,
And his crackling fire of a voice beams
Like headlights right into my doe ears and eyes.
He cackles, tells me he loves me,
And flies away.

Red, red ripeness.
I bite into you,
You waxed up, charmed up,
And now bitten up
Red apple.

I bite into you,
And you don’t surprise me.

And when Eve bit into you,
I bet she wasn’t surprised either.

In fact, I’m willing to bet that
Mother Eve
Ate not you,
But a green apple.

Green, green ripeness,
Sweet upon vision,
Sour upon tongue,
****** upon taste.
You are what made Eve fall.

Red may be passion,
But green conquers so much more.
Envy, poison, birth, death,
Sickness, health, cycle,
Recycle.

The Snake knew this well.

The Snake fashioned the apple
In his own image.