Favorite word: “nymphet”, but no!
Halcyon, a kind of drug, you know.
Searching through the pages’ mist
And imagined deeds
Of poets’ needs…
I found my favourite word,
As asked,
Neither sacred nor profane
That describes the Venetian rain
In my beloved’s eyes
And the Florentine sun upon her hair:
“Auburn, russet, mythopoeic”.
Oh, it is not fair,
To liken an object
Of my lust and love
To anything as mortal as autumn air!
Nor “October’s orchard Haze”;
She had her own
Inscrutable, premeditated ways!
Rather let me say that she was perfect,
Though her eyes, pale and myopic,
Her shuffling gait and
Graceless limbs, to them Grace lends
Fey charm, the power to mend
My suffering and
Delusions of a poet’s end
As anything but pathetic,
(Her mother’s fondness for vague emetics)
And I left softly hanging,
On a girl’s new taste,
A tang of russet apples on her face,
But no, not that, the sum
Of my love, My Lo!
Then her bleak demise, partly by my hand
That none of you brutes could understand;
The pure love,
So sadly consummated,
Between a lover
And the one she hated
Yet loved once with inexplicable delight,
On one stolen, frightened night…
In which the two of us agreed
To satisfy a simple, yet maniacal need,
And then depart…
But I could not,
You see;
She was my life,
My love, my heart.

Humbert Humbert 1950

Sharon Talbot ca. 2005

there is a word used for us,
a phrase for our situation.

lo-li-ta.

was i your annabel, humbert?
your first,
in preparation of your very own lo,
your dolly, your lover?
did you care for me, really?

(of course not.
you were fourteen.
i was six.)

did you understand what you were doing?

(no, that's preposterous.
you were a young teen,
an adolescent,
with hormones.

i was the smiling,
unsuspecting
object of your clumsy,
confused affections.)

do you care about me now?

(nope, wrong again.
you have moved on, after so many years.
i no longer know you,
your face,
your name.)

did you ever spare a second thought
to the bright young child
you corrupted so early on
in both your lives as you grew?
did you dwell on thoughts of her
late into the night,
contemplating her fate?

do you know me?
would you recognize me,
if we passed on the street this very day?
would i be easily picked out
in a group of girls all my age and complexion,
plainly marked by the ever-darkening
stain you left on my soul,
my mind,
my body
so many years ago?

i have forgotten you,
your face,
your name,
yet you haunt me with re-emerging flickers,
flashes of memory
forgotten to have ever existed.

for so long,
you have stayed hidden,
shrouded in the fogs of distant,
intentionally buried images.
but now you're struggling, humbert,
fighting your way to the surface,
messing with my mind,
my entire sense of who i am,
altering my perception
of the accepted and the tolerated.

perverts beget perverts,
so they say.
and i, better than any other,
know that you are,
indeed,
a pervert.

so what, dear humbert,

will

     that

          make

                me?

i only started collecting a library, because, would you believe it, my local library was a pauper in rags and tatters; apologies for omitting necessary diacritic marks, the whiskey was ******* on icecubes to a shrivel.*

ernest hemingway, e.m. forster, mary shelley,
aesop, r. l. stevenson, jean-paul sartre,
jack kerouac, sylvia plath, evelyn waugh,
chekhov, cortazar, freud, virginia woolf,
philip k. ****, dostoyevsky, aleksandr solzhenitsyn,
oscar wilde, malcolm x, kafka, nabokov,
bukowski, sacher-masoch, thomas a kempis,
yevgeny zamyatin, alexandre dumas,
will self, j. r. r. tolkien, richard b. bentall,
james joyce, william burroughs, truman capote,
herman hesse, thomas mann, j. d. salinger,
nikos kazantzakis, george orwell,
philip roth, joseph roth, bulgakov, huxley,
marquis de sade, john milton, samuel beckett,
huysmans, michel de montaigne, walter benjamin,
sienkiewicz, rilke, lipton, harold norse,
alfred jarry, miguel de cervantes, von krafft-ebing,
kierkegaard, julian jaynes, bynum porter & shephred,
r. d. laing, c. g. jung, spinoza, hegel, kant, artistotle,
plato, josephus, korner, la rochefoucauld, stendhal,
nietzsche, bertrand russell, irwin edman,
faucault, anwicenna, descartes, voltaire, rousseau,
popper,  heidegger, tatarkiewicz, kolakowski,
seneca, cycero, milan kundera, g. j. warnock,
stefan zweig, the pre-socratics, julian tuwim,
ezra pound, gregory corso, ted hughes,
guiseppe gioacchino belli, dante, peshwari women,
e. e. cummings, ginsberg, will alexander, max jacob,
schwob, william blake, comte de lautreamont,
jack spicer, zbigniew herbert, frank o'hara,
richard brautigan, miroslav holub, al purdy,
tzara, ted berrigan, fady joudah, nikolai leskov,
anna kavan, jean genet, albert camus, gunter grass,
susan hill, katherine dunn, gil scott-heron,
kleist, irvine welsh, clarice lispector, hunter thompson,
machado de assisi, reymont, tolstoy, jim bradbury,
norman davies, shakespeare, balzac, dickens,
jasienica, mary fulbrook, stuart t. miller,
walter la feber, jan wimmer, terry jones & alan ereira,
kenneth clark, edward robinson, heinrich harrer,
gombrowicz, a. krawczuk, andrzej stasiuk, ivan bunin,
joseph heller, goethe, mcmurry, atkins & de paula,
bernard shaw, horace, ovid, virgil, aeschyles,
rumi, omar khayyam, humbert wolfe, e. h. bickersteth,
asnyk, witkacy, mickiewicz, slowacki, lesmian,
lechon, lep szarzynski, victor alexandrov, gogol,
william styron, krasznahorkai, robert graves,
defoe, tim burton, antoine de saint-exupery,
christiane f., salman rushdie, hazlitt, marcus aurelius,
nick hornby, emily bronte, walt whitman,
aryeh kaplan, rolf g. renner, j. p. hodin, tim hilton... etc.

1.MY MOTHER WOULD STAND IN FRONT OF THE MIRROR AND PAINT HER LIPS RED FOR A MAN WHO WASNT MY FATHER.

2.MY BEST FRIEND STOLE HER MOTHERS LIPSTICK TO IMPRESS A BOY AT SCHOOL AND THE NEXT DAY SHE CAME INTO CLASS WITH A FAT LIP.

3.THE BEAUTIFUL BOY FROM MY FIRST PERIOD CLASS FRESHMAN YEAR BROKE MY HEART WITH LIPSTICK STAINS CRAWLING UP HIS JAW.

4.THE INSULTS ON THE BATHROOM STALLS WERE WRITTEN IN BLOOD RED LIPSTICK.

5.MY GEOMETRY TEACHER USE TO SNEER AT ME WITH SCARLET LIPSTICK ON HER YELLOW TEETH.

6.THE GIRLS IN MY FAVORITE BOOKS ALWAYS MADE ME CRY. THIER RED LIPS STILL HAUNT ME.

7.WHENEVER I’D TAKE IT OFF MY LIPS WOULD STILL LOOK PINK AS IF YOU’D SPENT HOURS KISSING THEM.

8.WHENEVER I THINK OF RED LIPS I THINK OF THE SCENE IN ****** WHERE HUMBERT IS ******* HIS LITTLE NYMPHET IN A DESPERATE ATTEMPT FOR HER TO STAY AND HER RED LIPSTICK IS SMEARED ON HER MOUTH AS SHE STARES UP GLASSILY AT THE CEILING

8.WHEN YOU FINALLY GOT OFF  MY BROKEN BODY THAT NIGHT MY RED LIPSTICK WAS SMEARED ACROSS YOUR CHEEK. YOU PULLED ON YOUR PANTS AND ZIPPED YOURSELF UP . YOU THUMBED THE RED MESS ON YOUR CHEEK AND SMIRKED AT ME AND SAID. “GOD I LOVE THOSE RED LIPS"

He is hot and ***** and menacing
like the naked flame of sexuality
But ah, the girl has cravings
He is dangerous and a threat, maybe
A few ***** dreams to fulfill
But ah, the girl played with him

He might be filthy, in fact
A love affair so low, so black
like Lo and Humbert on the car
She is confused but not abused
Very different things, these two
Try to make her a victim
she refused

She is fatherless
She killed him before he could **** her
So Daddy comes to save the day
She has a hole in her heart
He drinks from her fountain
of youth, of blood

And they go around, they dream on
Sad sad dream by wire
Giving both of them life
Her parents would choke and so would
his wife

She didn't die and he didn't ****.
They simply carried on with their lives.
Now they chat on Signal like old friends
with a past to hide, both of them

****** grew up
she got herself a man
and a disability card
****** grew up
and she's not yours anymore

****** grew up
her life has changed
did you take advantage
not of her age
but of her winter?
Did you want her locked in your cell
was it convenient for you?
Well, the winter's gone
She's not the girl of your dreams
She's the woman of your desires

****** grew up
but always in your heart
always in my heart
the girl she was

but you can't take it anymore
the fact she grew up
it was going to happen
as soon as she left winter
and you were summer
but now the summer's burning
and you are not the flame

the beautiful, deadly winter
the place where she lived
the comfy, White walled, mind crowded Winter
where she still lives
but now put a handful of pepper
and a handful of flames!
would you take it better
if summer had a girls' face?

It was nice, keeping me in a jar
It was nice, helping me out
what were you?
a wolf? a friend? a ghost?
true love? My Humbert Humbert?
all of this? and even more?

Did you really know me
(because you do)
did we build something more
on Spanish lessons and kisses by wire
did I lead you on
well, I'm partly guilty
and not guilty at all!
we were friends! not lovers anymore!

****** grew up
but always in your heart
always in my heart
the girl she was

What light do you throw to yourself?
You are not guilty of your feelings
but you must abide...
I cannot, either, forget our past
But I must move on...

****** never grew up
but she's not yours anymore

Friend
or
foe?