Aquiver mellifluous ineffable hiraeth nefarious somnambulist epoch sonorous serendipitous limerence bombinate luminescence ethereal illicit petrichor iridescent supine aurora solitude syzygy phosphenes oblivion ephemeral incandescence denouement vellichor eloquence defenestration Sondra effervescence cromulent cellar-door debridement

Illustrator icon verdant cerulean aeneous  albicant amaranthine azuline argent chartreuse damask ferruginous  haematic  hyacinthine ibis ochre primrose russet sanguineous virescent mystborn transcendence

People, you are pots of paint for my canvass.
With all your quirks and foibles,
And wonderful ways.
The world indeed is crowded
With many pots of paint:
Glorious views.

My brushes are all aquiver,
Inspired by everything.
From India to Iceland,
Russia to sunny Spain.
You folk, I love to paint you,
Though never your actual words.

The universe, a marvel,
Flying through the heavens.
Swirling spiral galaxies,
Pallets for my verse.

Paul Butters

my ***** Little Secret, symbolized
by ***** words and little idiosyncrasies and
secret secret liaisons;
je c'adore,
laying Control alongside
cast off clothing and kicked off wet *******,
heartbeat aflutter beneath your
oh so deliberate ministrations and
thighs aquiver beneath your
oh so deliberate teeth.
my wrists chafe; bound by bitter steel to demure wood,
powerless
or rather
entirely in your power.
you've always loved it,
the thrill of exploration, of
Newfoundland, of
conquer and subjugation and ravishment;
your tongue flickering against my
**** like eiderdown,
fingertips tracing spirals and Möbius
Strips upon my *******.

Our life puts the "Sh..." back in
"Chicago."

This pulse could race, slow to a dull thud or stop and curdle like the residents of a container of milk who've been left out, and still you will never love me.  

Gobs of waiter phlegm we never detect in our bowls of soup and teapots beg our forgiveness and howl for our affection, and are invisible.

But where is the crime in not loving
when we are not loved?
How could there be a crime in not loving,
when we are loved poorly?
Loved so poorly we cannot afford
to ask ourselves where is the crime,
thus implying innocence.

We put the "mice" back in
"monogamous."

tip-toeing, silent but for mere squeaks, nearly inaudible whispers,
furtive looks, and how we run away, screaming,
or, like mice and Chicagoans all, we freeze.

Aquiver with fear, iced up in the Polar Vortex, hands raised in the policeman's spotlight.

But where is the crime in not loving
when you are not loved, or loved poorly?
Loved so poorly we cannot afford to stand up straight,
We scurry close to building walls,
trying not to be seen or see each other as we curse our fate.

Where is the crime in not loving those whom we hate?

There is no crime, but still, not loving is the heart of all crime.
To feel so deeply unloved we wish to destroy ... you name it.
Blot out, ruin and erase them; our enemies, our families, lovers, and even the world herself.

Jab a knife into her verdant hide and twist until black blood flows.
Gouge out mountaintops seeking iron for our towers.
Remaking her grace to build our graveyard.

These vibrant phosphorescent tombstones, overpopulated pillars of mutual isolation reach up into the clouds.
Announcing to the universe, we trumpet a loneliness as profound as it is absurd and ugly.

You are an upheaval
that is not chaotic
yet you are enough
to shake the center
of my soul out of its
stagnant state

her skin shone like moonstone
as if the universe she held
was able to illuminate her
bedroom as she stood before me.
for so long she was nothing
but a daydream. an unexplored
option that I was too nervous
to venture to. but the way her
hands held mine and how sweet
the *** tasted when it sat on
her lips intoxicated me. I had
to touch her face to assure myself
that she is in fact real. that it
was really her navy blue eyes
that begged me to give in.
she was the most beautiful being
and she was just against my
fingertips. she held my heart
between her teeth, holding
the power to devastate me.
what was there to be afraid of?

Loving you was both ineffable and unendurable
I felt a hiraeth for your heart
As you had already set mine aquiver
Your voice sounded so mellifluous and sonorous
That it was almost nefarious
The epoch of while I looked at you
I knew this wasn’t limerence
And every day I prayed for serendipity
You were ethereal
So much so that it seemed almost illicit
You smelt of petrichor
Maybe it was just my glasses
That made you look iridescent
And made you look like you were luminescent
I didn’t need to rub my eyes to sense phosphines
When you were near me
Because although the time I got to spend with you was ephemeral
It sent me into oblivion
Because I was convinced this was yuanfen
It kind of made me feel like defenestrating you
You made me go through metanoia
The thought of you was eunoia
I guess what I’m trying to say is
I’m ******* in love with you

Your words and eyes
resonate deep within
and set me aquiver.

They set me a task.

At once mellifluous
and sonorous they
tingle from my hair  
to my very toes
(and all the mysterious
places of pleasure between).

I have been given
a royal charter
to explore your body.

I imagine my hands
(very willing hands)
gliding over your
callipygous posterior
or your adorable *******
or your ineffable *****
and discovering
new territories
as yet unknown.

I want to fill in all
the blank spaces
on your map.

A cartographer of lust
who will not surrender
until your world is whole

and you are wholly mine.

  ~mce

early morning,
with
cup of kenyan blend.
i step outside,
to meet my day.

all soft,
misty drizzle.
cocooning the view,
to the koi pond
and slick driveway.

stepping stones,
are
soft wet coins
on greenback lawn.
dewed and glistening new.

the last
of the snapdragons,
weep in bright tears
of beauty.
the portulaci
have closed their
faces to the world,
to await the
returning sun.

in the pond,
the koi swim,
and glide
like solar flashes
caught while bathing.
bright moving wonder
on the colourless day

and as i watch
the surface becomes
hypnotic as water drops
create ring,bisecting
ring, bisecting ring.
concentricity,
most exquisite.

the smell of jasmine
eucalypt and coffee
mix and mingle with
exhaust and salted iodine.

sound is muted.
birds, whisper this morning.
even the kookaburras call,
in stuttering short chuckles.
the sea, so close, is but a murmur, a chinese whisper
on the frail wind.


the small grey cat,
comes to sit with me
nose, aquiver,
ears swiveling
to and fro.

a pause before,
harrumphing
and stalking
back into the
dry, cosy, warmth.

i soon follow....
leaving the day,
to it's softness.

It's just 4:00 a.m.
I am alone in the balcony
Cold wind giving therapy to my face..
Nature showing its solace.
And i ... Standing still
Breathing fast..
Breaking the chaos and auroras of past ..

It's just 4:00 a.m.
Clouds are heavy ..
My hands aquiver ..
Sky being navy ..
Though tenebrific..
Birds sounding nice..

It's just 4:00 a.m.
And i am able to enjoy my own company..
See how far the moon is
And indicating me it's bravery..

I wonder how lonely it would be last night .. but hushing everyone to sleep more ..
It's 4:00 a.m. now and see i am appreciating it  and both of us have found the company

Do dogs dream in black and white?
A shame, an utter shame.
I flounder for a hold on this man, his broad shoulders that used to carry me so effortlessly lifted upon the throne of his smile, so much worthwhile.
When now all that I see are the heavy hanged heads of the love that was once so deep, once so deep.
Pained silence pushes me to tears barely contained when before I laughed.
This is it; Don’t… Be. Scared.
Do I dream in color?
The hold on this; like the grip of my prints on wisps of smoke that flee and disperse from my desperate fingers, forever chasing an image that once ran to me with open arms.
I was a queen once, you know.
I danced with grace across maple panels glossed with the sheen of a million diamonds, painting the path of the white stag that pranced with me upon my forest floors, parting particles of light as they float like precious snowflakes to meet the dead pine needles.
The violins and ivory keys trilled out in their glorious voices with the angels that watched me dance.
Elegant and beautiful and free; commanding all who would listen to smile.
Then one day the earth shook and took my forest floors away, my white stag dead where he lay, the crimson painted corpse of all I held dear.
They brought their guns on fearsome horseback, their steeds’ bright eyes ringed white with horror, coats aquiver, for their king lay silent, glass eyed, still.
The throne of his broad shoulders askew with the pain of something only he knows, limbs tied back, no gentleness to hold his head, no soft cradle for his head.
The king is dead.
The king is dead.

A picture was promised,
Yet stands undelivered,
My heart isn't broken,
But my body's aquiver.

Please send something soon,
I look forward to see,
A picture of you,
Taken solely for me.

(Preferably naked)

combustible
is the feeling
streaming inside you:
a rose rolled up
in a bloated tidal wave
amniotic, aglow

it tastes like gold and fury
like the atomic composition
of a dying star
and there is dedication there
an extraterrestrial fervor of love
which persists as tirelessly
as our dear moon circles this planet
even though it has been
pocked so many times by
unidentifiable things hurled
from the root of deep deep space,
even though it is marked
so physically and permanently
by the gravity
of its worship

you are full with it,
the rain-slicked gravel
the buds unclenched
the sonorous maskless
moment when you reached
for her
and she did not let you
go empty

your belly is aquiver
and your chest is unlatched
and god
billions of prisms could never catch
all this light

My mind is aquiver with these thoughts that swarm like bees
Yet just the same my body trembles by the touch of your skin
As your mellifluous voice makes silent the buzzing in my ears

It's strange you see, the paradox that is us, you and I together
There is terror and calm, there is beauty and horror in it all
Like a sort of Yin and Yang but more so just a tug-o-war

With this I look in the past and question the limerence that was
It blinded us and deceived us like a butterfly hiding from a predator
We thought we knew what Love was, but maybe it was never made

We only rubbed our eyes and like phosphenes we saw an illusion
Colors that may only exist in a moment, but aren’t pure reality
Our lives together became so flawed in all we tried to conceive  

The moments of bliss and happiness were always just ephemeral
We got caught up in oblivion, because we lost ourselves before
There never was a truth to see, we were birds flying as if deaf

With this I come to a resolution that our relation was merely cromulent
We attempted to ameliorate something that was doomed from the start
Yet I think there was a sort of dalliance, but simply rooted in the flesh

we

we di

we did walk

step
step
step
step
;stutter
(stop
in that) garden

verdant lush
withers thus
our kissing
i's
play soft fingers (over)
thighs:
all aquiver

darkness longs to touch
(obsidian sheet
hangs off petals)

;you

Hair clenched in a tightly closed fist
Your neck exposed to my eager lips
Face pressed into freshly washed sheets
I can feel your pulse beneath my teeth

Hand throbbing from the smack I delivered
Bare skin set instantly aquiver
I push deeper to feel your fire
You taste of *** and liquid desire

Spent in terms of patience as excesses , now, abound
Common law and jurisprudence are now no longer sound.
Tribal rule runs rampant in the steel belt of the West
Where raging Trumpists violate, seemingly absolved from arrest.
Democrats wring their hands and bleat, aloud, foul play
Republicans roar with gleeful mirth and veto every say.
The Fat Cats of the oil game rub their hands with glee
With the cost of fuel escalating, to ruinous heights, for thee.
Catastrophic global floods and wildfires rage at large
Fueled by rampant climate change, unchecked now in its charge,
Political expediency, bold power lust and greed
Depict man’s abdication of remedial actions need…
Like Nero we all laugh and fiddle, shrug and fail to learn
Ignoring the collapse as our darling Planet burns.

Russia kills and maims and rapes and bellows it’s demands
Disavowing war crimes as the blood flows from their hands,
Rule book’s out the window, she holds the world at bay
With overt nuclear threatening optimizing Putin’s play.
Regardless of the outcome, Russia is condemned
For the next 10,000 years she will mirror ******’s trend.
Ukraine will arise again, Ukraine shall be secure
But the global condemnation Russia suffers…SHALL ENDURE!

Unlike other nations, China’s plan is long
They map out their objectives in a 500 year old song,
Patience is their virtue, diligence their strength
And little on this planet will deter their competence.
The populace supports their totalitarian regime
And their ascension to Superpower status, is uncompromisingly supreme.
Commercially a powerhouse, with military might
And an ambition to conquer the whole world, as of right.
China’s tentacles reach out through mantles of trade
Extending worldwide in a vast networking blade
USA, Africa, Europe and the East
With a recently conquering infiltrated feast
In thrusting South to the Pacifica Islands, ensnared,
Rendering, startled, fortress Australia, scared
With New Zealand aghast, dithering hither and thither
Leaving them ideologically and economically, ridiculously aquiver??
China weaves her long term fat, greedy spider web
Described, perhaps,as Plumish Pink… than rather Hellish Red!

The voice in the wilderness, howling it’s concern
Roaring it’s objection to the fact WE NEVER LEARN,
Mistakes remade repeatedly, Mankind outstays his hand
At the risk of phased obsequiousness….The timer’s running out of sand!
And time is of the essence here and courage is the key
But the combination’s lethal with our WEAK MENTALITY.
It only takes one tiny phrase, an insult out of place
And that offended nuclear nation suddenly plays their hidden ace….
India and Pakistan, Iran, the Middle East,
North Korea and potentially a remilitarized Japan, may join the feast?
The rampant insecurity found right now across the globe
Shall guarantee a reaction, which is likely to explode.
The cataclysm shall erupt….. WE SHALL CEASE TO BE!!
….Then the rat and the cockroach shall own eternity!


M.
The Voice in the Wilderness
In New Zealand, aquiver.
15 August 2022

Countless generations lapsed since height of Greco-Roman mythology conceived, birthed and populated vast canopy of sky and expanse of terrestrial firmament, whereat obeisant propinquity quintessentially remains stalwart this day and age as guise dolls dote demonstrably come Valentine’s Day, when Cupid plucked from the quiver, notched in bowstring and launched Eros tinged arrow induces love struck swain to swoon upon a lassie faire, whence fecund female feast proliferates progeny.

Yours truly not necessarily romantic at heart
more accurately methinks myself
lame and inadequate sorry excuse
for reasonably rhyming spouse,
but courtesy after sipping
(née - chugging away
like snorting caboose)
Welch's sparkling white grape juice
accompanied with entree couscous
generic and garden variety
run of the mill by the floss husband
ordinarily fancy free and footloose
feigned being inebriated

noisily squawking - imitating
deafening honking lunging goose
creating ruckus whereby resultant outcome,
whereby wife playfully threatened me
to hang me (all choking aside) with noose,
(I needed to gibbet a chance)
as ye can accurately dead deuce
nearly turning unnatural shade of chartreuse,
thus I immediately called truce
after hiring team of animated experts
Rocky the squirrel
and Bullwinkle the moose.

Ring with no feather in my cap only envy
at handsome man drakes with bucks,
who could bank on "hot chicks" willingly
aligned in arrow emitting clucks
fluffing their respective tail feathers amidst
loud squawking out quacking,
yet straight as an arrow nock king,

establishing pecking order like ducks,
or any other foxy fowl billetted
within walled din noisy hen house
preening, each be solder self flux
sing wings and waddling, flirting, casting...
webbed wide good lucks

at the growing flock
including male friends relatives,
minus yours truly, whose presence,
would merely generate a yawn,
though even a distinct black swan
received royal carpet treatment
particularly one named Shawn
encompassing another honorable guest

with illustrious surname Rawn
guests underwritten by Cupid,
whose presence surreptitiously withdrawn
(invitations distributed widely explained,
just beak cuz gerrymandering redrawn)
even provoking deer interest
of stray doe eyed fawn
hence lacking bravado and brawn

this bird den some seedy,
yet dove out crow kissing Avocet
trundled off to parts unknown you bet
far from boys stir russ, raw cuss, diss cuss
ting clacking clique, and thus this solitary fret
full ostracized, rejected, unwanted egret,
who heron there experienced many a let

down, not simply because of stork disparity
with the Aves and havenots,
but I never met
any other species so set
in their ways, hence off
on a wing and prayer
in search of other buoys and gulls,
whom this dodo bird they will coe vet!

frail, are you so
pale neat and
thin

          wrists

curled wrists

with unsudden
invincible lust
crawls up each

                                                          

                                                    and




soft feels aquiver
stomach struck
by split folding

    (tonguelips)

into folding split

pink as nothing

(i, continually,
      in the terseness of
         things

     seek gentle reminders which
        when it comes,
      straightforward as a gull,
        that i cannot
     utter completely,
       speak into beating,
      about love then i shall
         write about it)

say, i shall plant a kiss
   in the landscape of your cheek
    and gravitate like rain towards
       your soul as we are higher
     than any hope that in the
      reticence of our mouths,
      our eyes would gain courage
        and converse a secret
     nobody knows.

or carve the words onto your bones as they tremble backward when we alone don moonlight and
    dance sprightlier than
   parting and when it
    comes that there is no music,
      your breath is the sound
    where my movement is born!
   our lips shall grow wings
    and flutter into the
      starless evening and perch
     at the boughs
        of love aquiver.

  the silence promises all of this:
     let us go!

For whatever it is worth...
_____

Once upon a time
I came upon a flute;
chic, delicate and fine -
fashioned impeccably
from exceptionally fine wood
hauled discreetly
from the flourishing forest
of fumbling youth.

‘twas just one of its kind.

A surrogate to which
you would never truly find.

One scale at a time
one throb at a rhyme;
its notes ripened into
mesmeric, beatific rhymes.

✽

The day was Wednesday
and December was the month.
My fingers had gone all numb.

Aquiver...

I held the flute nimbly -
the dew on my vernal lips
caressing it gently,
when the clasp came undone
and the comely flute
split in two
or maybe five or seven.

The tally is incidental
but the occasion,
for sure,
was nineteen eighty seven.

A proxy I could never find.
‘twas just one of its kind.

✽

Just this verse remains
like a tease that dwells
amidst lost reminders
of contiguous yonder.

It seems like today
I have little to say
Nothing amusing or clever

No biting retort
Nor subtle bon mot
Or an idea to use as a lever

To open the crypt
Of my bottom lip
A relevant thought to deliver

The very concept
Makes me feel quite inept
Yet also sets me aquiver

No funny remark
Providing a spark
Which bursts into creative flame

So while others may hark
From lives shallow and stark
Remember that this is no game.