friends or frenemies (feminist safety instruction card)

a coastal flight, boredom has me riffle through the various
offerings in the seat pocket, and on the safety instruction card
come across this...
<•>

she’s blunt, direct, proffers me an either/or choice,
game on either way, pick door A or B, up to me,
she’s no lady, but a hipster shooter using semi-automatics,
three lines of verse, rat-a-tat-tat, your guts spilling,
hoho you’re dead or kicked in the *****, at the minimum

if only she knew what she was up against

I got words for which there ain't no antidote,
can whip her into a lovers frenzy with cooing metaphors,
slap her with stingers so that she’ll retreat hasty to another site

friends or frenemies, how juvenile, how sweet, how absolutely
childish girl, no interest, play in my arena, I have studied with
the masters and lionesses and offer you no terms but this:

be my lover

extend your reach, speak slow and soft, open and willing,
my sonnets demand close attention, slowing and holding,
building links into chains that make boundaries into a single
tie that binds, not for now and not for later but for the only measure that poets alone command: forever

concede and give up that conceit that tough is a defense,
lose everything for rewards you have yet to witness, conceive,
in my circle is in my circle where the intuitive rules and gasps of shocking come so frequent, they are normal breathing

be my lover

knowing that we will never meet never see the inside of
the furnace that can be dreamed-created with tonguing verbs,
adjectives that dance intertwining pas de deux,
oh my femme fatale, my agent provocateur,
let us learn together how,  to teach each other
come,
will be the only action word ever required

come
come write me
come together
come close my eyes
come open them wider
come free me to be a one two

anger is false brevity - loving is the languid forever languishing flames of golden burning orange caramel, word chips of
liquidity that verses, penned passioned calculations,
see how takes many stalks needy to  birth bound into a
single sheaf, count the wips of smoky wispy slivers,
combine and separate, the calculus of recombinant,
offering a unique poem with a momentary invitation,
an equation of equality and there is no diverse different


<•>

the first class steward sh/wakes the dozing body
with an apology;
“landing soon, would you like some breakfast before we land?”

the sleepy soul replies,
come to me with water,
just water...for my dream

he rises with words in his  unwashed mouth,
mouth, is unwashed, tongue tastes dregs, bits
of morsels of his past, some good, some bad,
some tastes of places, of women he has loved,
sweetness of sorrow, dregs of regret, and all a
jumbled, tumbled, intertwined, clinging combo
of nations, his~stories …a mashup of a mashup’s
smashup

he tries to separate them, this admixture, to better
recall, but the sacrificial fire lit, the ember-members
are too burnt, indistinguishable and can’t find the
vive entre les differences…

South of france, tahiti, the one he loved in cities,
Toronto, L.A., and Portland, and the communes
in Asia, but tries harder but it’s no longer possible
to separate the essences and the similarities same,
and a great sadness is what he recovers when runs
his tongue across the roof of his mouth, the roof of
his memory, the roots of his…being…his unbecoming

he rises to a glorious day, where he is can’t be sure,
who he is with, certainly not, the why, but he recovers
some pants and the idea of a fresh start seeps creepy in,
but by the time both legs dressed, his mind’s eye wanders
to a new sunrise and old template of temptations. . .

i love poetry
unto
death or till
the watch
stops ticking

which ever comes

last.

in the south,
the drawl is just one
of many a
sad love song

sad?

aye,
a trickery,
it’s a
rhythm rustler,
rhythm hustler,
a vipers innocuous,
a woman’s poem
poisonous spoken

this fool northern boy,
lay on the grass,
at her feet,
attentive
smiling
cause he loves listening
to the drip drip,
of the warming venom
seeping in to his cold,
codified northern veins
and his fooling ways

there is no new, only renewal:
the space between brain and mind

the harder shell a skulking humanizing container,
the neuronic heart cells,
brain stem and heart bloodstream
scented/stented,
deny the newness of no new claim

the tower of ourselves built on the babble
of old images and read readings,
songs in seconds recognized by just the first two notes,
the point is this when do you become a grownup,
when new is but renewal, with a hint, a pinch,
of a new insight maybe recognized

now, how will you know me new when your eyes
search the iron bank cellar, where,
by voice deep, by fuzzy photographs, what tissues will connect
when the new sight knows me from too many old poems/songs?

!when the babies gather round for lifting up, sky scratching,
when the old man grand father, carries three upon his back,
a nonpareil horsey ride,
when the doorbell rings
I’m older than now, you’ll say,
read your wild mercury back pages,
taking the grays of our mutually curly
Medusa locks as a renewal gift offering
that will someday
match mine!

the flesh goes familiar, those “things “ that manufactured
desire frequent, hacked by time, weakness of spirit, no blame,
just the same, the not so vague re-collections, not insane, we-
we’re crazy desirous in ways only humans can rationalize
naked crazy desire, mating for life, the eroticism of certain letters,
e, k, s, t & y
and unbefitting, un-bewitting:
accident incredible incredulous,

you have spelled ecstasy,
not reality for ecstasy
is a state of trying to
make memories so crazed
that they become
lore
factual,
actual,
but beyond
belief,
singed with
grief, at their
disappearance
from current
history.

we play Prince, Michael Jackson,
The Commodores,

like the way
we tasted,
eclectic,
eclectic,
*******
direction,
the wordle
of interconnected
devolvement
fluidity

she states you write differently,
what’s the differential that been inserted?
are you pregnant or just elder?
her head shaking, possible sighting
of tears, fall into teacups, poured into
the aquarium, where the species
remind us we don’t cross breed,
and when we don’t, we master
the creation of rationalizations
and know, no, that it is a far worse
than the then of naked, pure, unlimited
desire.

ah.


we agree,
that changing my name
would be gracious,
efficacious,
hazardous, potentially
noxious and go back
to our laptops to
shed verbal tears.