The Charm Gates*
   or *escaped, and so

We roared up Rue Bourbon and back again,
shaking the gallery shanks with our dancing
feet and fingertips, slipped a thrilling romance
of sobriquets and keeping apart of lips.

Thirsty, she perched me atop her fidelity,
gasping when pinched by the flesh of her neck
in my teeth, our steamy heat-seeking indecencies
churning a chemistry cagey, perverted, and sweet.

I wrung the wrought iron of Isabella's gate
devotedly hanged as enchantment laced
fabled accouterments, pickets and posts.
I dismissed it as ferrous fetish, historically significant kitsch.

And that night she unsettled my incredulous bent,
a disposition I've had hardened and always.
In the doorway, over our sparks, she disarmed me:
"I don't know what it is, you're just so charming."

The ceasefire line dividing us into the confines
of our separate lives defies me to find her,
reminding me she's studded with diamonds,
a mother three times since twenty-nine.

She missed that a revision of spirit occurred,
staked in the mist of coincidence and kismet,
conferred of this lascivious tryst and kissing
against those storied bricks, before she escaped.

And so she'll never know how much I think of her
or what my having met her truly weighs.

I called to you 
softly when I 
was young; my
voice bounced off 
the bricks of a 
suburban slum,
sauntered down 
side streets and 
stirred piles of 
leaves, then snagged 
in the branches till 
the wind tore it free 

to collapse at your 
window like a 
weary songbird
that had been 
singing for decades 
and finally, you heard.

You asked about it later,
in the best way you knew how
as I was tracing dreamy cursive
on your neck; I sighed across
your skin just like a cool front
blowing in and said –  It
doesn't even matter. I forget.

We were misfits
the neglected *******
of a backwards world
that rejected us
not because we were sick
demented or dangerous
but because we didn't prescribe
to a preconceived notion
of what a functioning citizen was.

Not rotten enough to spoil
behind the bars of a prison
just competent enough
to work menial jobs
and drown our sorrows
at the corner pub.

We swallowed this hard truth
the same way we drank our shots
with no chaser
and at times it burnt
maybe even made us tear up
but we never let it beat us
(too strong for that)

We were beautiful
resilient beasts
that could carry the weight
of the world upon our shoulders
and it was heavy
but we would tell ourselves
"doesn't every world need an atlas?"
so we went on holding up the sky
when no one asked it of us.

now I'm a shipwreck in a sundress,
an aimless, shameless coquette –
a first kiss, a second guess,
a weak and wobbly pirouette.

Sundown in Onyx


Warning This Poem is rated Mature and may contain material unsuitable for readers under 18.

Ask if we are far along enough
now
for a close up,
when my eyes are closed
it's my heart that answers
in body movements.

So does it really matter
from whence the wind comes
who tags along with strings
and violins as long as it brings
him to me
gently.


and  gently he would come,
opens me as
soft as petals,
prying inside, branded,
as hot as a red iron
with his blushing in me.

brushing of cheeks,
in plaits of winter twine
and in my mind ,
I could not stop this soul
song from happening.


takes me into it's web of desire, and
cradles me there wet and unfolding
as a flower that
blooms in the dark dew
of June nights and gold leaves.

grasp my lower jaw and force
apart my lips, open my mouth ,
and check for teeth ,
examining the inner walls
filled with the width of the world
in subconscious whispers
slowly exploring the fit within reach.


love this body that calls for a raven
shameless and craven,
thoughts of him
black as onyx at my neck
oval as half of eternity,
there is no space
between my heart
and where this sun goes
down.

we lived at a staccato rhythm
punctuating each other's
exclamations, yet
traced not a mark
on noteless time: an empty score

dissonant parts leave
not even the faintest of echos



- - - - - -

He didn't, and that was that.

There's no going back and erasing the past.

Life's too short not to forgive and forget.

Sometimes, there's just no time to justify where everything went wrong.

Time is a battle, a war you won't win, but you gotta push along.

Keep moving forward, you can't change the past or make it come back.

He didn't, she didn't, they didn't. It's time to accept and be okay with that.