Kiss me here, her fingers said
tracing the chalky porcelain
of her woman’s jaw,
light as a water bug
skimming the surface,
over that seam between
flesh and mask,
where the little girl ended
and the doll began, draped in
lace and fragile gossamer
but so very little substance.

The fact is your presence is intoxicating
like smoke you enter
assaulting my body but soothing my mind
creator of soul shadows;
flavours of margarita,  mohitos on the side –
all I want is you
on the side


i want you when your absence is obvious
you are my soul-searcher, my thought-finder

this mind that holds you intact caresses me
(envelopes) me (completely)
light to dark you are my solar eclipse
between what is and what should be

you are you, just the way I never expected you –
talk to me; I have ears and eyes and arms and hands for you alone

patches of paint I give to you
to mix and match
to find me;

your woman of colours.

Sometimes I cry for you
And sometimes I cry for me
But my eyes leak for us.

Fish cannot fathom the rivers I have created for Us.

The Us that runs to me like a child with open arms
but I am tired
too tired to pick Us up
spin Us in the air
make Us a laugh..

It needs water
but my spirit is parched.
It needs food
but my storeroom -heart is empty.

I want You
to meet Us

I want Us
to spend time with You and I.

I fathom fantasies that can turn
a U into a W
and a S into an E…

We drove by the cemetery in a different part of town
Searching for another restaurant where we didn't really want to go
And suddenly I remembered you were there; that is, your clam shell was there
Carefully wrapped and placed underground, somewhere among the thousands
Your inexpensive namecard merely flat brass; invisibly close to the ground
And I thought of the oddness of life;
Here I was with two people you never got to meet,
Who meant everything to me, as you did back when,
And indeed always will. And back in my touchy days of grief
I could not have envisioned a happy day
On a drive beside where you lay,
Busy composing your still reverie for the ages.

So life goes on, however we wish it would not at times,
And though it is difficult to believe, we do get better, by and by.
And though the Earth will not remember one flower
That we knew together,
I realized the cemetery ground is made hallowed
By all the love and faithful memories being poured into it:
I'm pouring in mine now-
Who knows, perhaps it will flood?

The conjugate of idolatry,
The alchemy of flame,
The Astarte of pure harlotry-
And nomenclature'd name.

The lode-stone of sly coquetry,
The compass-stone of hearth,
The balanced stoichiometry-
Broken waters of birth.

The Vestal of impurity,
The perfidy of shame-
My blood in you runs truer red;
This craving never tames.

My words are cutting themselves again;
razoring their loosely-sutured syllables,
deep as white-eyed bone.

The suave dipththongs butchered
to the cadence of bloodletting
in hemorrhagic oppositions.

Stapled-closed sentences, smeared with Iodine,
and subcutaneous sentence diagramming
for the retractable scalpel
swiveling along the edge,
of the well serrated cliche.

Once I pressed my wordy flesh
against the wrong side
of a paring knife, while paying no attention
and suddenly,
and without warning
it gave, like an over ripe peach
to the cleaver-
and after that, I was hooked.