She sits across from me sipping and slurping her fat free french vanilla.
While I'm pacing myself with cappuccino imitation.

"All I'm saying is, that if he starts calling me baby, I might wanna keep him!"

She says it with that cajoling tone.
But I can notice the glimmer in her eyes that tells me she longs for that.
That sweet pet name that would mean she's special to him, in her mind...

I never could get comfortable around those things...pet names.
Cutesy little endearments reserved for a child's affection.

What is wrong with me?

She's vibrating with unmasked giddiness, glancing at her phone.
They've been dating for only months but she is lost in him.

Him.
With his once a week date nights
and clean shaven face
and joking interaction with her friends.  

She's full of soft embrace and warm affection and vulnerable interest.
Wanting never looked so form fitting on a person.
Like a cup waiting for a refill...

"If you want, I could see if his friend is up for dinner next week? You know it's been months for you..."

I hope she doesn't choke on her millionth slurp with the glare of indignation leveled at her cherub-like face.

"Ah thanks, but no thanks." races out of my mouth before I even hesitate to pretend to consider her obvious proposal.

How is it that easy to just offer companionship like that? Do I give off a "desperate for love" vibe?
And what the hell makes her think I can't find someone on my own **** time?

"Okay, okay. It's just...I hate seeing you alone. Don't you want to not be alone anymore?"

I know she loves me but those kind of questions from her caring heart, make me contemplate knocking her in the head.

My alone-ness she says.
My singular existence.

I'd laugh at her if I didn't know it would hurt her feelings.
To disregard her feeble attempts at pairing me up with whatever half-assed man candy she could sway my way.

I'm staring at the ring left from my coffee,
wondering if I should just give in this one time for her,
for me,
for the over used batteries at home.

"I'm not lonely you know. I just, haven't felt that connection yet."

Looking pitifully back at me she wonders aloud, "You're always waiting on that connection but have you ever felt it before? I mean, how do you know it's even real, that body, mind, spirit...magnet pull you believe so fiercely?"

It's the first time I've given her a genuine smile today as I tell her yes I have felt it before.
Briefly...
Bitter sweetly...

I just never got his last name.

It might have been years ago but I can still recall with clarity that electric tornado that seemed to have surrounded us.

We had only been gifted ten hours together but it left a mark on me for over fourteen years.
His face is definitely matured I imagine and his body shaped differently.
But I'll never mistake those sea green eyes, haloed by dusty blue cloud rings.  

The only boy who has ever made me want to get lost and never be found.

"Well...good luck with that. But until mystery man crashes back into your life, for god's sake live a little huh!"

She means well I'm sure but like an eager pup I just tsk at her goofily plastered expression and finish off the grainy remains of my only afternoon delight. She's in a hurry to make her "honey bunny" a homemade dinner anyway so it's not hard to cut things short on our weekly coffee shop vent session.

She's floating out the door before I even get my coat above my elbows but I can't feel offended.
Mulling over the uncomfortable idea of boring interaction with another stranger I decide to grab one more drink for the ride home.

Alone.

Oh, wonderful...now she's planted that seed.

Shaking it off, I order my vice and move benignly to wait and resolve to not think about anything related to that anymore either.

"Seems outrageous they charge so much for imitation don't you think?"

The question's asked to me but I pretend I can't hear it. A guy hitting on me today is not what I want to deal with.

And he seems to be standing right behind me
making goosebumps scatter across my neck.

He tries again, "So I guess you like buying bottom of the barrel cappuccino?"

This time I've gotten a little itchy from his voice and want him to just stop in his tracks.
So I turn to tell him where, in fact, he can go...

But I'm the one stopped short and a bit flabbergasted.

No way do things happen to me like this.

Those coincidental, lucky, fated things...

I almost wish I was a liar right now with the things I just spilled to my loyally, encouraging friend.
Because there is no way the universe would be this cruel.

Finally I exhale and word *****,

"They're the only place that taste just like the ones at my grandmas' house every summer when I was a girl. I waited a long time to find that connection again, even if it is just coffee..."

The smirking face and broad shoulders that greet me aren't the cause of my temporary delirium.
Not even the wild hair and black rimmed glasses.

It's the sea green, haloed dusty blue eyes centering all the rest that shallow my breaths

Of all the places.....

Like a falling satin sheet his face morphs into a query riddled expression.

I hear the barista call out a name and he reluctantly steps away, never taking his eyes off mine whispering,

"I'll...be right back. Don't move...please?"

I'm nodding like an awkward parrot and he turns to grab his imitation coffee.
The same kind I'm waiting on.
And I start smiling after a second.

Not because of the similar drink order, which could be anyone...

But because of something I haven't known until this moment for over fourteen years.
All thanks to fate, or destiny...
Or perhaps the oblivious barista.

His last name...


*© NDHK

Fast flowing messages
pinging back and forth.
Electronic endearments
cannot mean a lot.
Genuine questions and
invitations to meet.
Within myself
my soul calls for caution.
These men are ephemeral,
chase a photo.
My soul calls for real.

It is morningtime in the hour that the day’s light shows its hem in the East. It is that time when dream and memory are replaced by invention and desire. Desire to invent, to feel the words form on the page: messages from the heart, an imagined landscape, a different time freshly peopled.
 
The mind’s eye, as though a flying sprite, enters the privacy of home, alights on a child’s pillow, marvels at the untroubled face, the easy limbs still resting in half-sleep before rising. In an adjoining room his parents, aware of night’s echo, stretch and touch, delighting in the comfort of those known places where love and desire visit, made precious through stroke and caress. Her dear head fast into the pillow, his right arm resting lightly across her body, his left folded into her back. He inhales her as though a most delicate incense slowly burning on the mantle shelf, on the altar of this gathered home; beside his glasses, her simple jewellery, the once jasmined vase, cards ascribed with the love of friends and family, endearments, a child’s gay picture, a photograph of a cottage in silhouette against sea and distant mountains, and five stones from different shores, each a talisman, a gateway to a memoried story.
 
Still this still time, this fragile cushioning of quiet before the necessity of movement, the need of thought to plan the must of the day, the have to in this hour or that, the when and then, the care to this and there. Another day beckons in a sharp noise from the street, a car starts, a door slams, away in the vallied distance the hoot of a train.
 
It is warm for a late December day, but against the possibility of damp and cold he takes the necessary gloves and scarf, though wears a lighter coat. He will walk purposefully, though unbreakfasted, through the grey streets, past houses where the lit opaque windows of bathrooms shine, onto the heath land and then into the woods of oak and birch and alder. The trees therein are pilloried hands stretching their gaunt fingers to the whitening sky, still in the still air, almost silent but for the change of the air’s resonance, that particular quality in a wooded space where sounds’ reflections have a confused trajectory: a bird rising at your footfall, its wingbeats echoing a cascade of almost touched finger strokes on a wooden drum.
 
Here in this dank wood the mind is restless; it moves ungraciously between what the senses tell of the now and the interventions of imagination and memory. Her fatigue at the dinner table, the dull green of unberried holly, the description of a woodshed its contents delightfully named, and that short paragraph about the similarity between books and trees (he makes a mental note to learn this: to keep this warm thought close in times of stress). This is why we read he thinks: to gather to ourselves a temporary safety, the consolation of another’s voice, an antidote to loneliness. She is waking he thinks. He can ‘see’ inwardly her movement as she shakes off sleep, raises her eyebrows before opening her eyes, sitting on the bed now (eyes still closed), she stretches her right hand for the juice he brought silently to her bedside, that little action of love borne up two flights of stairs, every footfall carefully tiptoed, to place very slowly, silently next the clock, her bedtime book, a pile of his letters, a scribbled address on a notebook’s torn out page. She will never be so tenderly beautiful as in that moment he so rarely sees but knows and thus imagines. This image reverberates over his moving body and he stops to calm himself, to enjoy for a few seconds this almost-presence of her in an imagined touch of skin to skin, his fingers stroking her naked back as she gathers herself to move.

The shoreline bites at the toes of attendees,
watching the little appendages curl up together.
The footprints there have been etched into fossils,
the sand crunching together and sounding like
echoes of war cries and whispered endearments.

The raft is loaded. The time is traced.
A caterpillar in a chrysalis hums a love song,
glows with the light of ‘vita vita vita’ as
the gathering crowds taste dead languages.
Children eat from lunch boxes carved with runes.

Sometimes a glipse of twenty years is caught,
a journal is forced open by the wind; it’s pages
creak, the voices from the world's coffins
that have been wrenched open start a hymn
and the songs pile up in our ears as dust.

Those who are do not mourn titter respectfully
as men in white coats try to push the raft
into the water, but you were so lovably stubborn.
You always returned and even here you knew it;
your final laugh was filtered through sign language.

I step forward and push, float you off into
the water, put my fingers over the candle and
over the lips of dead kings as masses shoot the sky.
The match roars and your raft gasps as it burns,
old things being laid to rest and new ones kindling.

The roses of Love glad the garden of life,
  Though nurtur’d ’mid weeds dropping pestilent dew,
Till Time crops the leaves with unmerciful knife,
  Or prunes them for ever, in Love’s last adieu!

In vain, with endearments, we soothe the sad heart,
  In vain do we vow for an age to be true;
The chance of an hour may command us to part,
  Or Death disunite us, in Love’s last adieu!

Still Hope, breathing peace, through the grief-swollen breast,
  Will whisper, “Our meeting we yet may renew:”
With this dream of deceit, half our sorrow’s represt,
  Nor taste we the poison, of Love’s last adieu!

Oh! mark you yon pair, in the sunshine of youth,
  Love twin’d round their childhood his flow’rs as they grew;
They flourish awhile, in the season of truth,
  Till chill’d by the winter of Love’s last adieu!

Sweet lady! why thus doth a tear steal its way,
  Down a cheek which outrivals thy ***** in hue?
Yet why do I ask?—to distraction a prey,
  Thy reason has perish’d, with Love’s last adieu!

Oh! who is yon Misanthrope, shunning mankind?
  From cities to caves of the forest he flew:
There, raving, he howls his complaint to the wind;
  The mountains reverberate Love’s last adieu!

Now Hate rules a heart which in Love’s easy chains,
  Once Passion’s tumultuous blandishments knew;
Despair now inflames the dark tide of his veins,
  He ponders, in frenzy, on Love’s last adieu!

How he envies the wretch, with a soul wrapt in steel!
  His pleasures are scarce, yet his troubles are few,
Who laughs at the pang that he never can feel,
  And dreads not the anguish of Love’s last adieu!

Youth flies, life decays, even hope is o’ercast;
  No more, with Love’s former devotion, we sue:
He spreads his young wing, he retires with the blast;
  The shroud of affection is Love’s last adieu!

In this life of probation, for rapture divine,
  Astrea declares that some penance is due;
From him, who has worshipp’d at Love’s gentle shrine,
  The atonement is ample, in Love’s last adieu!

Who kneels to the God, on his altar of light
  Must myrtle and cypress alternately strew:
His myrtle, an emblem of purest delight,
  His cypress, the garland of Love’s last adieu!

He had sat at his desk with intent to write to her. And he had not. He had sat and let his mind wander. He wanted to write if only to capture something of her he had yet to capture. It was as though by trying to find words to describe her everyday self he discovered it was often extraordinary, and it filled him with more tenderness that he could reasonably deal with. The other day he had written her a letter. It was rather ordinary, full of unplanned thoughts and descriptions, a day-to-day letter, but he had written it by hand, taking care with the curl and mark of his pen on the little sheets of laser-copier paper he felt suited him best. Once he wrote expansively (though never to her) on large sheets of thick, fine paper with a calligraphic pen and Indian ink. Now he felt more comfortable with a fine roller-ball nib and a light touch, on paper of a dimension and quality that seemed appropriate to the size of his script.

Today, as he thought about the letter he might write, he had imagined her finding his most recent letter as she came home, a letter with his careful handwriting on the envelope. It would be lying on the doormat with the brown envelopes, the circulars, the bank statement and one of the many journals she subscribed to. There was a letter too from her ‘pen friend’, someone who had invited her to correspond having been so touched to find a late relative’s letters full of the minutiae of life, but properly described and not the ad hoc jottings of what now passes for communication on social media. So this friend, who was not then a friend but an acquaintance, had set out to recruit a group of like-minded people she might write to properly, in proper sentences – and had, it seemed, fixed on her. He had been a little jealous at first that she should write, and write properly to this ‘friend’ she hardly knew, and since then she had so very rarely written to him. He had so wanted her words, on paper and not just her end-of-the-day thoughts on the telephone. But he had soon got over this jealousy realising how valuable this letter, written once a fortnight, would be for her. An opportunity no less, of the kind and value he could no longer provide.

It had changed the way he had continued to write to her. He stopped the hand-written caress of a letter on paper and took up what he called the Ten-Minute Letter composed at the computer. Not an e-mail, but a proper letter as an attachment she could print out. Written each day just before he stopped for lunch, he set an alarm on his phone and wrote for ten minutes only until the sampled chimes of Big Ben struck. It was a challenge, and to meet it he would prepare his ‘daily subject’ in those transient moments between the demands of work and other people’s needs, as he walked to work or cooked supper. He felt that by doing this he would eradicate that falling into passionate contemplation, the downloading of his memory’s thoughts, his often-intense feelings and emotions. He thought she would prefer such brevity, as she now had so little time for reflection, except when travelling.

In imagining that picking up of his letter he sought to imagine further. Would she open it straight away? Would she put it at the bottom of the stairs on a pile of things to take up to her bedroom, and read before bed?  Occasionally there was  a little time stolen during the day when, before the necessity to go at her desk and ‘get on’, she would sit on her bed with her cats and be conscious of her physical self. She would think of him beside her, kneeling on the floor in one of those occasional preludes to their passionate moments she knew he so loved, when he was full of tenderness, and he would kiss and stroke her, their quiet voices caressing each other in the lamplight. He thought of her carefully pulling the envelope flap open without a tear (whereas he could hardly contain himself, when a letter did arrive, from pulling the envelope apart). And she would read his careful writing, his late afternoon thoughts written after a long day’s work, before returning to more time at his desk.

She would read quickly, rather impatiently sometimes. She had to ‘get on’, attack the list, get things done. But just occasionally he surprised her. He would catch her attention. There was some phrase, some reflection that made her feel warm and loved. He would make an observation about her, and she would feel treasured and honoured by his words and be grateful for the time he had put aside to write them. And then the letter would be returned to its envelope, placed on the bookshelf beside her bed, and she would feel secure that she was loved, and could then put all that away for now and ‘get on’. But just once in a while she would recall the pit-in-the-stomach thrill of his first letters, as letter by letter he declared himself, saying what he thought of her, what he felt for her. She was often overcome with his play of words and would touch herself to sustain those rich feelings that would gradually envelop her; that someone could care about her that much. And for a while she was transformed . . .

Today, as he continued to hold his pen away from composing that first sentence, he had wanted to return to writing of her and for her. It was his small gift, his almost once a day gift. With words he knew he was on safer ground. He struggled somewhat in his *******; he worried that he disappointed her with his awkwardness and never being sure if he was doing the right thing at the right time in the right way. Perhaps in reading his thoughts rather than responding to the messages of his physical self, she felt safer too. He wanted her to know something of the intensity that she brought to his ‘being aliveness’. He remembered a recent phone call when for once he seemed able to say pretty much what he meant. ‘I hope I don’t presume in saying,’ he had said, overtly formal as so often, ‘ that one of the reasons I think we are the companions we are is that we have so much in common; we love the same things, we share the same joys and pleasures.’ And she had agreed. He felt this was true, and he wanted to celebrate this somehow; but they were apart, being on the phone, and he could not. There was less and less time for the joy of coming together, of that celebration of being-together that had once seemed beyond magic and the stuff of dreams and fantasy. There was now the ever-present awareness of the clock, of having to do this, needing to do that, and at a certain time. Their life together was changing and he needed to rise to the challenge that this change would bring, no matter how busy and preoccupied she became. He would write, he thought, and tell her that he knew this would be so, that she should never be concerned for him if there wasn’t time. Hadn’t she said she loved him, this young woman who had once been so diffident about speaking such endearments? She had already given him so much that he never imagined he would ever receive. Perhaps not for always, he was so much older than her, but for a long time to come. He must acknowledge the receipt of such gifts, and let her know he loved her all the more for her industry, her ambition, her preoccupation, and the beautiful, gracious person she was.

I quite like the virginity of a fresh notebook
the way my wrists and palms drag across its leaves
breathing life between lines in pink magic marker or the severity of red ballpoint
I like the prickly practical meticulousness of a shopping list:
a dozen eggs
one pineapple
one bag of fresh spinach
one bag of English muffins
one bottle of dish soap
I like the tender impressions of curlie cues and firty cursive
communicating endearments placed on counters such as:
TAKE OUT THE RECYCLING YOU LAZY OAF ******* <3 XOXOXO <3
I enjoy the audacity of a wandering doodle
meandering
cartwheeling
hopskotching
between
and under and over
indices

and spaces
between shopping lists and death threats
i enjoy the lingering ghost of prose shaped caverns
carved onto seemingly empty sheets that carry on for pages
until they fade like whispers into an evanescence
I crave the obnoxiousness absurdity of a to do list
daring me to take a day off from procrastination
until tomorrow
call Gramma
rent due on the first of the muuuuuuuunth
take the GRE
update resume
be awesome. like a boss.
most of all
I love the pain and joy of a poem
the way it slowly leaks from heart to mind to hand to paper
staining
spaces
urgently
faster than muses whispers
barely escaping onto lines
prolific terrific poetry
sporadic spacious atrocious poetry
I croon over the denial of the last page of a beat up notebook
the way the paper hangs onto spirals haggard
littered with stringy remnants of lists and reminders and death threats and poems and goodbyes

Write me ******
Converse with in my notebook
Write me in verses
Use  lust a word to trace my lips,
kisses in forms of sonnets,
Touch my hair in feather inked  pens,
pencil my buttocks with curvy nouns
Endearments in & out like syllables,
while spelling out sensual adjectives
poetically ****** me,
calling out my name
as you rhyme again in and out out and in
****** deeply within me your hard penetrating
Philosophy.
Wrap your hand in mines as you  
once more trace  your tongue down my notepad
become master ******* within pages of my dairy.
Converse with in my notebook
as we fill up  my pages.
Please Please Please
Write me in verses
Write me ******
Write me harder& harder
Faster Please
Write good long as you Write me
Sweet Poets!
Always Me Ayeshah

Here comes the shadow not looking where it is going,
And the whole night will fall; it is time.
Here comes the little wind which the hour
Drags with it everywhere like an empty wagon through leaves.
Here comes my ignorance shuffling after them
Asking them what they are doing.

Standing still, I can hear my footsteps
Come up behind me and go on
Ahead of me and come up behind me and
With different keys clinking in the pockets,
And still I do not move. Here comes
The white-haired thistle seed stumbling past through the branches
Like a paper lantern carried by a blind man.
I believe it is the lost wisdom of my grandfather
Whose ways were his own and who died before I could ask.

Forerunner, I would like to say, silent pilot,
Little dry death, future,
Your indirections are as strange to me
As my own. I know so little that anything
You might tell me would be a revelation.

Sir, I would like to say,
It is hard to think of the good woman
Presenting you with children, like cakes,
Standing in doorways, flinging after you
Little endearments, like rocks, or her silence
Like a whole Sunday of bells. Instead, tell me:
Which of my many incomprehensions
Did you bequeath me, and where did they take you? Standing
In the shoes of indecision, I hear them
Come up behind me and go on ahead of me
Wearing boots, on crutches, barefoot, they could never
Get together on any door-sill or destination-
The one with the assortment of smiles, the one
Jailed in himself like a forest, the one who comes
Back at evening drunk with despair and turns
Into the wrong night as though he owned it-oh small
Deaf disappearance in the dusk, in which of their shoes
Will I find myself tomorrow?

The air is brisk, all the leaves the color of flames,
as they send off sparks to incite the heat of desire.
Watching as they sway like lovers dancing in the wind.
The sun reflects off the pond as if sprinkled with glitter.
Ducks swim amongst the flickering lights as if they
were a ballet that never tires,

A path leads to a magical gazebo that has withstood
the hands of time. Etched into its body are the words
of lovers written in rhyme. What wonderful secrets
this old wood must have heard told. All the kisses
and whispered  endearments of lovers so bold.

Stolen kisses, forbidden embraces, anger, frustration,
laughter and tears. this place had to have seen it all,
in it’s many years. Touch the wood and feel all the warmth
of love and desires it holds. Each grain protecting a memory
of one of many in its fold.

So come with me my friends, walk along its trodden paths.
Stroll with me into the Realm of love and fantasies.
Listen to the winds of change, dancing through the leaves.
If you listen close you just might be able to hear, a lover’s
soft laugh or maybe the falling of a tear.



Kathleen Kohl/Levinski

Buzzard, eagle, falcon, hawk,
Tiger, cheetah, lion, leopard,
panther, cougar, wild cat
intense all these predators are,
in carnal love and the war for dominance.
Each has characteristic hunting ways,
in day time prowling,  plain beasts, they remain,
at sunset , each springs up,  party time starts.
Birds of prey in silence watch from above
and find the right target, at a time that suits.
No endearments, in love or in games,
only body speaks of desires or warnings
Swift expression of demand, quick strike,
overpower and make the other surrender.
Throaty growls hurting silence of the forest
double as their sparse love language.
Hunters can never be lovers, their actions speak,
they demand, commandeer, force to surrender.

Little effects that quickly infuse the problematic and they can do great work and what’s better
We will start this journey on a night beach in the Mediterranean we sit alone a roaring bon fire
Ignites the immediate and the far reaching the mind also is ablaze the darkness sits as a stretch
Of measurable consciousness comfortable broodiness with a touch of spell binding running
Through it the lips have spoken wonder into this place then you board a ship bound for ancient
Troy you are below deck surrounded by the richest wood paneling the room you are mixing
Feelings with the timbers and the sweet tortuous sounds as the ship ploughs through the
Turbulent waters you go top side standing by the rigging in the gathering darkness the sails
Are full the wind howls ever so gently as the ship slips through the waters life as well has waters
You stand in this present world the real of earth and sky but with power of thought instantly
You flex mental powers your sum total is told in all the waves of yesterday that break as sweet
Tremors that contain smiles that hold endearments that are without price a parents hug long
Lost to deaths foreboding reality springs anew and it holds as much feeling if not more because
Of separation and the tears and pain that are raw and immediate the unbreakable bond that
Has to be experienced through that fleeting emboldened treasure of nuance you hold your
Hands over objects that are prized in themselves they can be ordinary but by memory they are
Addressed in true terms of their sacred effect on you its automatic when you take the hand of a
Child innocence courses into your soul you have collided with your own self in those tender
Days of longing for a world that was absent of harshness and magic was real you accessed life
Truly with features that were real intuitively they were the whole of storybook treasures or by
Advancing years the wife of youth is found by tender recall she frets and speaks of negative
Aspects of herself she doesn’t know love never ever looks in that way his eyes are filled with
That sweet and beautiful girl she is ageless and without having to create it as truth she only
Improves with age everything about her is softer she is more giving wiser and as she finds her
True self it commands more mature pure love and the years are viewed through the mist in his
Eyes caused by gratefulness and thankfulness that he was so blessed to be given such a one as a
Life’s mate from the fragile nuance life can and is transformed bitter turned sweet you
Customize and make life fitting and beholding nightmares will hold no tangible fears when you
Interject the lovely and the possibilities that live in the extraordinary circumference that can be
Found in the simple but profound realness of nuance I started this piece by giving the idea of
Nuance the richness of place and value and wonder that is discovery although loss tries to
Prevail the mind can slip at times the little space just this delightful shadow bewitching as shade
From a tree within this balance a flow a glow burst as the powerful beam found in silver moon
Light the opposite of contentious day here the powerless is visited by the distinctive caring rest
That is able to soften unravel the toughest knots you find the bestowing wisdom that leads to
Victory and peaceful rest where intimidation is thus confounded and you twist free abiding in
Love that always watches and delivers when facing stone walls that are the makings of a
Prison the light of nuance appears and provides the way of escape proceed the glorious garden
of freedom awaits