youth lived harder passing into unyouth
your hips something nice are full and easy

(they are curving

they have docile sleeping entering


they are wide have thickness firmly steep

                                                                          )

like them better apart and better doused
in my kiss agile slanting heaps of love
and hips,baby,they are some kind of
tiny perfect entering curve of sleep
me and please come into (you like
to pull me out and)

Legion, O the sleeping of your flower is October
many fewer than everyday fewer and many

O slumber, your October is a legion of flowers
hairless kissing bulbs that bend oh just bend
in the grey bluster steeply bend and oh just

O flower, your slumber is the legion October
who marches cruelly through miles of trees
picking of them each their every jounce and bobble

October, O the flower of your sleep is Legion
many always fewer and always fewer many



(grey cruel blustering and through miles of
trees picking bobbles and jouncing marches
hairless kissing bulbs that lean just bending)

sitting pale breasted
lipped in certain
opaque girlness
hangs by mortal
froth hair darkly
a thousand thick
and brutal firm

(a table usually
hangs over) thighs
brushed gently
akimbo lengths
of drooling ***
unmeet slowly
(while you
pretend to eat)
and laughing
divides rapidly
your cheeks
blundering with
crimson by wetly
fingers consumed

He loved her and she loved him
His kisses ****** out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she ******
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and Sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered  into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Or everlasting or whatever there was
Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy place
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His word were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assasin's attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
Her glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon's gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows  pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall
Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined  sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other's face

Cool black night thru redwoods
cars parked outside in shade
behind the gate, stars dim above
the ravine, a fire burning by the side
porch and a few tired souls hunched over
in black leather jackets.  In the huge
wooden house, a yellow chandelier
at 3 A.M. the blast of loudspeakers
hi-fi Rolling Stones Ray Charles Beatles
Jumping Joe Jackson and twenty youths
dancing to the vibration thru the floor,
a little **** in the bathroom, girls in scarlet
tights, one muscular smooth skinned man
sweating dancing for hours, beer cans
bent littering the yard, a hanged man
sculpture dangling from a high creek branch,
children sleeping softly in their bedroom bunks.
And 4 police cars parked outside the painted
gate, red lights revolving in the leaves.

                                        December 1965

Today from the atrium the oleanders crept.
It has been coming, I have foreseen it
in the dark where soil is kept,
in spider cracking windows
and the pale greenery's lost steps.
though I had once thought the escape
to be inept.

I used to worry their fragile buds, when
seeking freedom from prism light,
would not survive the harsh transition
would not survive the come-on night.
Now I see the morning to come
after the midnight run would be
the first light born, negative the shield,
through which the oleanders used
to see:
the dawn,

the triumph,

oh the sight,
The harmony of the dew
with daylight's furious might
and the sun breaking the way - it makes
the gloom so bright

while I, in my room with my pill candy and my
sheets: the white is just too white and the
walls are Mary clean.
I watch them from my window and I hunger at the sight.
I envy them their beauty, their strength,
and their flight.

Be of good spirit, child, and carry light
upon this wondrous, worn and weary world.
Seek wisdom, search for what is true and right.

For those around you may not have the sight
to see this precious gift of life unfurled;
be of good spirit, child, and carry light.

You will encounter thoughts divine and trite;
philosophies to set your mind a-whirl.
Seek wisdom; search for what is true and right.

The days will come that seem like endless night
with sharpened consequence unfairly hurled.
Be of good spirit, child, and carry light.

A man who lived in darkness, fear and fright
in foetal crouch took ages to uncurl,
seek wisdom, search for what is true and right.

I may not be around to see the height
you'll reach as you climb past me, darling girl.
Be of good spirit, child, and carry light;
seek wisdom, search for what is true and right.

I wanted to stop someone

on the street

and ask them.

I wanted to stop the next random person

and say, hey

can I ask you a question.

They would think

I wanted some change

to buy a little more alcohol

but I don’t really drink

and they would say sure you don’t, buddy

and maybe hand me some coins anyway

or just walk on

without another word or turn of their head

convincing themselves that my homeless state

is my own fault

and it is

but I am not even homeless

Not the way they think.



I want to ask them,

the ones reverently typing into their phones,

excuse me but what exactly does LOL mean

because I don’t hear anything.



I wanted to ask someone

but everyone seems in such a hurry

procuring caffeine infused drinks

with names that are so long

that you couldn’t fit them on billboards

but they rattle them off

with a fine, practiced precision of the tongue

to Baristas in green aprons

wearing Verona smiles,

their eyes glinting from farther away than

the place which the precious coffee whence came

and I want to ask

if this is maybe their own illusion,

one that mimics conversation,

making the five-something they pay

so ******* worth it.



I wanted to ask someone

sitting at their desk

incessantly checking their on-line profiles

and commenting on comments

made in response to the comment

they left on the post of a picture

that has captured a small snapshot

of some life

while they pretend to be working on something else

so that they can pay the ever increasing price of access

because its important to stay connected

and I bet if I asked them to list

six things they could never live without

surely Facebook is what they would list

right after water, food and God

but they just seem too busy which

I think is their intent.



I wanted to ask someone

but everyone seemed so focused

on getting home

so they could embrace their loved ones

on the sofa

and hold each other close

while they memorize the reruns of

some reality TV show,

while they don’t talk to each other,

being so engrossed, and

I would ask them

if I were in their living rooms

while they strain to hold their heavy lidded eyes

high

shooting their television with their ray guns

chanelling their TV gods,

chanting,

there’s nothing on,
there’s nothing on,
there’s nothing on.



I wanted to ask someone,

anyone,

if that girl was right

when she told me that

I speak too passionately when expressing a point

and if it really is good

to nod in agreement

with the things people say

like a parrot

as opposed to posing an argument

because she professes to know that

beneath my façade of not caring

that I do care if they accept me or not and

I really do want to know

if she is right and

I wanted to ask someone

but instead I decided to just keep it to myself

because deep down I do know

she was as wrong as

I always was

and if there is one thing that I did learn from her

it is that

if you cant fit it

in the one-hundred and sixty character space

of a text message

no one really wants to hear it anyway



so instead of starting a random conversation

with a stranger

I spent the morning memorizing acronyms

so that I might communicate more effectively

with people farther away than my voice.


Michael L Sutter