Part one – The Hedgerow watcher.

He is almost obscured by the Elder branch, which laden with fragrant summer flower heads, casts a shadow on his cloudy features. Nearby, small birds chatter in a hawthorn bush, completely unaware of the figure sitting in quiet deliberation; only his eyes move beneath his darken brows, as he ponders the small animal traffic in the verdant river valley below.

And were you to be hurried, or impatient, and not look too carefully, you would never perceive him at all, so well hidden is he. You would have more chance, if you caught a glimpse of him sideways through the corner of your eye, and even then there is the possibility, you would not believe what you had seen...

His eyes light with golden flecks, as the late evening summer sun, ensnares sparkles off the languid river surface and directs them upwards into the unhurriedly darkening duck egg blue sky. He watches intently as a young female Fern bear snouts her way through and across the lush emerald green grasses just inches away from the river bank, where water voles play, creating tiny V shaped furrows across the shallow stream surface as they cruise the nearly mirror like silver face.

He notices’ that he can see the smoothly pebbled bottom and the rainbow spotted  coloured sides of the almost motionless trout as they hang fins fluttering awaiting the last daytime midges to perhaps drop down and furnish them with one last gulp of dinner.

Native birds flit from branch to branch on the overhanging trees o’er softly trickling water, their tiny songs much muted by the distance, and up above a Buzzard floats on browned wing his eyes trained downwards to impale a darting field vole, which seeks his own dinner of scurrying iridescent Beetle.

A flurry, as a black and red Moorhen jumps onto a small sandy beach at the corner of a turn, long wide toes and even longer legs, carry it up under the curve of bank, as it returns to its night time roost in haste.
A flash of instant Kingfisher cobalt blue and a small fisherwoman arrives upon a twig, her anxious beady eyes blackly spearing the dashing minnows, which with silver sides, play amongst the reeds and gently waving flags.

Part Two - Reynard the sly.

A ripple runs across his hairy back, as upon the delicious breeze, he catches hint of reddish skulking, sulking trickster near, and then from edge of pupil gold, catches merest glimpse of tail held low, as Reynard makes his courtly bow. Neither twitch nor tremor, the watcher makes as deviously this prince appears, his fetid stench announcing him to creatures far and near.

Then slowly as he cowers, the Fox glides by and down the steepest sides, to hope of careless rodent or of bird on nest, that might bring him windfall of instant feast that he may carry for his cubs that play at home beneath the staunchest tree, a woodland Oak of stout and height. They chase their tails in this perfect evening light, but learn of fear and flight, as horn does play upon a Sunday Morn, and colours bright which chase and catch them with some baying dog, not far removed from their much scary plight.

And all along the bottom of the wall, as laid by hand, a hedge pig snuffles for a slug or snail, his attention close upon the leafy mould, and then a surprising squeak as rippling back with reddish fur and chest of white, a family of the weasel exit stone built home and hurry for their evening hunt of beetle, vole or mouse. They disappear amongst the tallest grasses as a damp mound of freshly risen earth ejects the black velvet mole, which sniffs the air before he enters home and tracks the juicy worm back to his lair.

Little by little, so slow in fact, that you would not suspect, the watcher turns his face and looks with wonder to wooded river far, where branches bent create a vault, for shining, winding river run, and there in this, the darkest greenest place he spies a glint of hope as Dragonfly darts its wings a blur, and Mayfly dances beneath its many cathedral branches.
And further still above the trees a line of deepest blue meets lighter blue as sea and sky become no more than one, and smell of salt in distant climes come hither across this idyllic vista...

Part Three – Watcher revealed.

Dog Rose crawls its way across the bushes of the hedge, mixed with twinning convolvulus of purple hue, light green stalked, white capped cow parsley, groups in fading sun, with ragged Robin and dark pink Campion standing proud along with other flowers. Behind the silent Watcher lies a different guise of manmade meadow topped with crop of corn, which yellow in the fading sun, has bread like smell, significant of fresh warm loaves, and Man the farmer, is carrying all his toil, for the harvest of his many labours.

And in amongst this very yield, wild life is binding shoot and ear, as weeds are flourishing with the golden head, but make a pretty sight instead, for walking couple, who do not fear to tread, where woman glides as though a cloud, and pulled along upon her path, a little man who wishes he, was all alone, but must follow in his mother’s stately wake.

Towards the hedge she makes her way, and life goes still and much less vivid, but Watcher never makes his move, whilst beyond the wall the light is dropping further still, he rests his hand on object dear, but still refrains from moving forth.

And just before the barrier itself, she turns her stride and looking north, then moves away along a path, which chosen now will pass all sight, of secret ancient valley. The little man he cannot see what lies beyond his ken, and worries if he misses this, which might be very grand and maybe just beyond this very land. He tugs and pulls his Mother’s calloused palm, and as she continues on her elected special way, for she is old and cannot see, this wonder all around.

The lady now cuts back towards the way she came, and like a ship with boat in tow, she cuts a swathe through sea of golden grasses, and when perchance the little man would look behind to see, if there were aught that he had missed, of life beyond the that wall.

And then, as if on cue, the watcher stands, for he is proud with legs astride upon that hedge, no longer still but raising up, as he does stretch towards the sky, and then with no delay but still with yearning, he lifts up to his lips his instrument of all his learning.

The boy’s eyes are all of shock, for he has seen the Watcher well, half man, half goat, with shortest curling horns upon his almost woolly head, and listens in near rapture as Pan the woodland God, plays a merry breathy tune upon his pipes of river ****. The song is fierce and strong and as the boy pulls hard to stop his mother's walk; he looks away, in hope that he may, in attracting her closer assessment of the apparition, which he has spied in gay abandon, will be more than just a fancy of his dream.
But when he turns his head to take a further glimpse of this sudden ghost, who would be dancing, playing away along a valleys edge, he catches nothing, but the song of bird but which whilst trilling strong, is nowhere near as long as tune in moment gone.

Then in the middle distance church bells as the practice for the Sunday first begins, with peeling clap and stinging ring, and then as if he fears, that he shall never ever see again this horned guise of natural thing. He peers more closely yet again, but all is gone, and though he will return on summer nights, when man not boy he seeks a God, he never ever meets again, the edge to freedom and a God glorious not but never ever vain.

who is this
husky?
shedding luck and fur
down by the horizon.

town tips in snow
& breathy-fog.
the mountain tips and prays
on bowed-knee,
to daughters in pursuit of happiness,
& trees.
she’s out there looking for the best in mother
madness.

a horse’s bangs, sprung
moon to ridge
to purpling autumn-seared fields four days lit.
this ease into living,
carousel,
carnival of lights
& love.
the rolling of a family unit.
the sound and punched beauty of it.
like when we were birds, or kids, or
humming the sun
strummed hills.

          [ catch a dream. ]

open your little eyes, bear cub.
see small pools of sulphurous heat
& repeat,
let go the smoke to breathe.

.
Each morning I rise unto hours,
Wheeling in sun, with wee wild flowers.

An hearty wish, on hills by the sea

Each day I skip about live stones,
In winds I run, deep dancing my bones.

I am made of each, cairn on hillocky

Each sweep of air a breathy kiss,
On skyline by the sea, one mighty bliss.

Dancing my bones, in winds I run

Each hour a new turning of page,
Each heap on hill, of these I am made.

*Wild wee flowers, wheeling in the sun

The trellis of oak trees winked,
captured my soul in a spinney,
chalked whispers of free promises
breathy like a silken shawl trailing

Those wise men of old, withered
skin of bark, tall and strong, waving
their introduction. They bowed to me
in free form, in humble escapism.

Sun had stroked their warm palms,
fed them sweet sap. To my left a
stray leaf, rested amid invisibility,
caught the air train, and spiralled free.

Twizzled to the green painted rug
basking under my cotton covered feet.
Reaching out, it blew away,
I chased the freedom fields.

The brook teased it and set
sail under the woody bridge,
green from seasonal tears.
Lost sight as it spun the space

between us. The grass sprung
its beginnings in full Spring, tall in parts,
summer not yet wrapped and
ready to visit us, much less

invited to the summer ball
where shadows are ten a penny,
and sunshine bought on every
street corner.  I am among spring

devoured in daffodil eiderdowns,
elbowing out the crocus, snowdrop
chandeliers. I seagull my way,
swaying in step with willow, blossoming

surprising myself, how I let go of
school day shivers, tinkering my brain
into gear for terms talking tightness,
cramming commas, fat full stops.

Lay rest your flashing glaze of wishes
Down received for a moment
Breathy bow lifts to hold
and waver across few measures
Sienna and topaz
Sienna and topaz
Singe and simmer
Shine and glimmer against
All the thoughts born and dead

What makes you eager to rise
If it is not sensing gone away stories
or nursing the aches that lunge through anywhere else but here
While you replay and delay all creation
the blossoming goes unseen

She, the maiden is reigning
Une palais à remplir
Une palais à remplir
where she is her own queen
Her oceans made of no time channel open mouths
flooding its spill

She waded into The archer
Downed in his own vessel he mistook himself the pilot of

He, marooned in the surrender of damp and fertile places
where in Death he is still recovering
Soldiering and sullen
Soldiering and sullen
He is choking, and can not stop to see or savor the blossoms rising from his own till

A cold touch, lingering, searching
with every tiptoed meeting
A cold tongue lingers, searches

The warm caress of brown-paper packages-
After us, unravelling
The warm caress of gift giving

Breathy open mouthed kissing
In each stolen evening
Breathy, open mouthed, we finish

Indigo. A dream of the color, and the sound of soft rain. Bathing birds babbled among pines beyond her window, and morning light was warm on her closed face. An ache in the spine. Creaking knees. Shoulders cold cliff-rock. Complaining muscles knotted tight as wood. The wooden house around her also creaked in the wind. Smelled wet. And somewhere echoing through her fields Edgar barked three times, then once more in playful affirmation. Today maybe the last today. In her mind’s eye, falling almost back into dream, Nora surveyed the long acres surrounding her cold home: untended wheat, alfalfa, cattle-corn, all woven through untold ecosystems of weeds. Stray indigo flowers and violets. Scattered dust-filled barns. What the place might look like after all this time. With her right hand she sought the frame of the bed, found it, rough chips of paint flaking. Slowly exhaling at once Nora lifted her iron legs over the edge, thin-socked feet found the bedroom’s planks. Cold air. November hopelessness. With spider-sensitive fingers she plucked her way around the room, imagining violet dawn spilling through her screen window. Stood before the poker-faced mirror out of habit, ran her brush through hair that must now be silver. She felt the satisfying tug on her scalp and loudly past her ears. If her dresser was in front of her, to her right was the window and the pine-scented boxes where she kept his clothes, behind was her rumpled bed, and to her left then was the bathroom. She felt along the door-frame, the sink, the toilet, and sighingly she settled onto its seat. Relief.
Rain drops on her roof were like the “shh” breathed to an infant. Warm blanket of rain over the cold farm. The breathy wind was driving the rain towards her house, cranky knees told of a storm to come. The boisterous wind had the sound of laughter and strife, of voices: the twins arguing somewhere, Edgar probably with them over-enthusiasticly ******* their footsteps. The bellowing wind made the house creak more than usual, but there was something else. A distinctive groan from the foundation up the east wall to the roof-tiles. Someone was in the kitchen. Constance, just like it used to be. Connie was here and the twins were outside: they had arrived closer to dawn than Nora expected. Heavy truck’s tires in mud, headlights had pioneered dawn darkness. Smell of soil. Massaged her own back, kneaded the the flesh on either side of her spine, then wiped and stood from the seat letting her nightgown fall all down around her knotted ankles. Washed herself, and a short shower before the water turned cold. Dried her wrinkles feelingly, smelling soap, and pulled her soft nightgown back on. Socks.
Always a joy whenever Constance came to call — less frequently these days it seemed — always a joy to be with her grandchildren though little Bastian was still mistrustful of her. Always a joy to see her daughter’s family… but she never got to see Matt’s. An image of her son’s face, a red haired ghost of the past, flickered in Nora’s memory. He couldn’t stand this place since he was young, hated his full name “Matthias,” maybe hated Nora too. No reason to stay after his father died. He fled to the city. Must have a wife, several children by now. Well. At least Constance kept coming by. The rain grew heavier, played on the roof like the roll of a snare drum.
Out of the bathroom and bedroom, feeling the planks of floorboard with her soles, hand by hand and foot by foot she traced her steps down the rickety stairs. Uneven. Nora knew the chandelier she once hung here was red; she pictured the color as hard as she could to envision its reflection on each surface of the stairwell. Smell of pine. Like the smell of his clothes safely preserved in the boxes by the window. Jagged nostalgia. Nora had met dear Rowan back in another world: a world of whirling sights and colors and beautiful ugliness and ugliest beauty all. To America when she was nineteen, leaving behind all Germany and studying her new tongue. Had still devoured books then, was able to become a school teacher. When twenty-three, met in a chance cafe Rowan who worked the docks. Red hair. Scottish but of many American generations. Nora grabbed blindly at a face just out of memory’s reach. Her hold on the bannister revealed the places where varnish had been rubbed away by her wringing hands. From the kitchen, acrid cigarette stench and shuffling. Inflamed knees hating her meticulous descent, but better this ordeal each day than to abandon the bedroom they had shared. When the two met, Rowan still sent money to his agricultural folks in New York (“Upstate,” he protested more than once, “Not that awful city, but in the countryside!” and he’d pantomime a deep breath) because of the expenses of running their farm. Nora’s now. From the cafe he had bought her an almond pastry, triangular, smaller than a palm, its sweet crisp flakes made her think of Mediterranean forests, and when the two were married they worked this hereditary farm. Nora knew all the animals, when they still kept livestock. Now Nora’s farm, whose after? When her little Matthias was born they had praised him as the farm’s inheritor. Unwise.
Last step. Sound from the kitchen of Connie shifting in her seat, rustling papers. Smell of strong coffee. Strong cigarettes. Composed herself, quietly cleared throat. Sauntered down the hallway, monitoring expression and tone. Nora said, “Hello Constance. When did you three get here?”
“Hey ma,” said the woman’s voice when the elder crossed into the kitchen. “For christ’s sake don’t call me that.”
“For christ’s sake, don’t take his name,” Ma scolded, but then traced her way past the table to the countertop and felt about for utensils. “I’ll make you something Connie.” The counter was in front of her, bathroom to the left, stove to her right and along that same wall was the back door. ”How about some nice eggs and toast like how you like.”
“No ma, I handled it already.”
“And what color is that hair of yours this time?” Ma asked, carefully inserting slices of bread into the toaster. “Seems like months you haven’t been by.”
A patronising, sarcastic chuckle. “…it’s orange, ma.
Listen—”
“That is so nice. Your father’s hair was just that shade of orange.” Felt around inside the refrigerator. The styrofoam carton. Small and cold and round, her fingers seized four of them. “Do you remember?”
Pause. “I remember, ma.”
“What I don’t understand,” said Ma swallowing a cough, expertly igniting one gas burner as practiced and putting on hot water for tea, “is why you don’t fix to keep it natural. I love our nice fair hair, very blonde, very pretty.” Back home in Germany Nora had been the favorite of two men, but many years since engaging in the frivolous antics she in those days entertained. “Best to flaunt your natural hair color while it’s still there: orange like Matt and dear Rowan, or fair like you and Lorelai got.” Memories of her own face as she remembered it. Relatively young the last time she had seen. What wrinkles there must be. What a mask to wear. No wonder Bastian. Nora ignited another burner. Tick tick tick fwoosh. Smelled gas. Sound of the almost boiling water complaining against its kettle. Phantom taste of anticipated tea. Regret. The contents of the vial hidden on the top shelf. Today maybe the. Sound of heavy rain. “And how are your bundles of mischief?”
Connie sighed. “I told Lorelai to get her little **** inside the house, as if she hears a word. She’s playing with Ed somewhere in the fields I don’t wonder, rain be ******. That girl is such a little — well she’d better not be down by the creek anyhow. Could get flooded in a downpour like this. Bastian was out with her, but he’s playing in his room now. You know we don’t have time to stay long today, it’s just that you and I got to finally square this business away. No more deliberating, ok?”
Swallowed. “Course, Constance. Just nice to hear your voice. You’re taking care?”
“Care enough. Last time I was — oh! Jesus, ma!”
Ma’s egg missed the pan’s edge. She felt herself shatter the shell into the stove top, in her mind’s eye saw the bright orange yolk squeezed into the albumen. The burner hissed against liquid intrusion. Connie made a strained noise and scooped her mother into a seat at the table. Movement. Crisply, the sound of two fresh eggs being broken and sizzling on the pan. Scrambled as orange as Connie’s guarded temper. The table’s cool surface. Phantom smell of pine wood polish and recollections of Rowan at his woodworking tools building this table once. Other breakfasts. Young Constance, young Matthias. Young self. Her left hand massaged her aching right shoulder, then she switched. The sound of plates being readjusted with unnecessary force.
“You know,” said her daughter, “living in one of them places might even be fun. Might be good for you instead of moping about this place. But like I’ve been saying, we got to make our decision today: sell this place or pass it on. I know you don’t take no walk, cause where would you go? What’s the point in keeping all this **** land if you’re not gonna do nothing with it? You can’t even ******* see it!”
“Constance! Language!”
“Come on ma, just cut it out! This is great property, and you’ve let it get so it’s bleeding money.”
“…But Constance I can’t sell it, not like your brother wants me to do. He’s always trying to get rid of this place and turn a profit, but someone needs to take care of it! You know that this is the house that your f—“
“‘That your grandparents lived in where your father and I raised you…’ Yeah I know, ma. And I get it. Believe me. But what you’re doing is just plain impractical, why don’t you think about it? All you’re doing is haunting this place like a ghost. Wouldn’t you rather live somewhere where you can make friends? Things can’t go on like this.” A plate was placed softly on the table and it slid in front of Ma. Can’t go on like this. Egg smell. Salted. Toast, margarine. A cup of tea appeared nearby. “Anything else you want? Here’s a fork.”
“What will you eat, Constance?”
“I ate, ma, I ate already. Have your breakfast, then we can talking about this for real. Ok?” Then, the sound of her daughter’s body shifting in surprise, a pleasant unexpected, “Oh,” before Connie said low and matronly, “Hi baby, how you doing? Are you hungry?” But only the sound of the downpour. Orange eggs still softly sizzled. The wind pushed the creaking house. “Sweetie, you don’t have to hide behind the door, it’s ok. Come say hi to grandma… don’t you want some scrambled eggs?” Refrigerator’s hum. Barking echoed, coming over the hill. But not even the little boy’s breathing. Grandma had met the twins two years ago, following the **** of Constance’s rebellious years and independence. Nora was reminded of her german gentlemen and her own amply tumultuous adolescence. She could forgive. Two years ago Lorelai and Bastian had already been too big to cradle and fawn over, but they were discovered to be just starting school and already bright pupils. Grandma hung her head. Warm steam from where the uneaten eggs waited patiently. Edgar’s approaching yapping. And, fleeing from the doorway, a scampering of feet so light they might have been moth wings. Down the hallway back into his room. “Sorry ma,” said Constance.
Shrugged. A nerve flared in pain up her neck but she didn’t react. Only fork scrape. Ate eggs. On introduction, poor little Bastian had burst into tears and refused to go near her. Connie had consoled: “It’s ok baby, she’s just Grandma Nora! She’s my mother.” But poor little Bastian inconsolable: “No, no, no! She’s not!” What a wrinkled mask it must be. How hideous unkempt with silver hair. How horrible unflinching eyes. “She’s not,” would sob the quiet boy in earnest, “she’s a witch! Don’t you see?” And he never would let Grandma hold him. Lorelai was always polite, hugged warmly, looked after her pitiable brother, but her mind too was far elsewhere. Edgar alone loved them all unconditionally and was equally beloved. Barking. Yowling. Scratches at the door. Downpour. Door and screen door opened, wet dog happy dog entered, shook, and droplets on her cheek.
And there appeared Lorelai, a star out of sight. “Hey mom. Hi grandma!”
Grandma swiveled for cosmetic reasons to face where the door. Grinned, “Hello Lorelai. Wet?” Envisioned yellow sunlight entering with the excitable girl in spite of the deluge.
“Oh it’s so rainy out there grandma, I found little streams through your fields and big mud puddles and Edgar showed me where your secret treasure was, we found it!”
“Stop right there, missy!” commanded Constance. “For christ’s sake you look like you took a bath in the mud and the **** dog with you. Come on, your filthy coat needs to be on the rack, right? Now your boots.”
Warm nose found Nora’s palm, excited lapping. Slimy fur, smelly fur. A cold piece of egg dangled in her fingers, then dog breath came hot and licked it up. Satisfied, he trotted off elsewhere, collar jingling out of the kitchen and down the hall.
Little Lorelai lamented, “I couldn’t help it mom, the mud was all over the place! When we got past the motor barn and the one alfalfa field that looks like a big marsh frogs went ‘croak croak croak’ but Edgar growled and chased them and then we made it all the way in the rain to the creek and it’s so much—”
“Now you just hold on. Hold still!” Sounds of wrestling. Grunts of a struggle. “That creek must have been overflowing! Didn’t I tell you not to? You didn’t take your new phone out there did you, Lori?”
“No ma’am.”
“**** right you didn’t, cause I sure ain’t buying you a new one. Didn’t I tell you not to go all the way out there? Didn’t I? Now you get into that bathroom and wash your **** hands!”
“But I’m telling Grandma a story!” huffed little yellow haired Lorelai.
“Well wash your hands first and then we’ll hear it, Grandma don’t listen to misbehaving girls who are all muddy and gross. Not a squeak from you till you look like you come from heaven instead of that nasty creek.”
A profound sigh, a condescending, “Fine,” a door closing and a squeaky faucet running. Muffled hands splashed, dampened off-key ‘la la la’s.
“Who knows what the hell that one is ever talking about,” said Connie. “It’s everything I can do to get her to shut up for five ******* minutes. You done with your eggs?”
Ma fidgeted. The plate was scraped away, and a clunk by the sink. Licked her lips, mouthed a syllable, about to speak. But then her house creaked three strong along the east wall. From deeper within bubbled a suppressed sob: “Mom,” little Bastian wailed, “Mom, come quick!” Constance sighed, Constance cursed, and Constance swept off down the hallway struggling to refrain from stomping.
Sound of washing. Wind. Rain. Alone. Cold. Picking out the paint for this room, listed in gloss as ‘golden straw yellow.’ Rowan hadn’t liked it and chose himself the bedroom’s color in retaliation. The loss of the home they had built together. The contents of the vial hidden on the top shelf: do they see it? Bathroom sink stopped flowing, door wrenched open. Smell of soap, clean smell. Grandma said to her, “Your mother went to check on Bastian,” Taste of eggs still yellow on her tongue.
“What a *****!”
Stunned. “Lorelai!” she snapped. “Don’t you dare take that language!”
“But mom does it all the time.”
“Then Lorelai, it’s up to you to be better than your mother. When I’m not around any more, and your mother neither, you’ll be the one who keeps us alive.”
“But as long as you’re alive you’ll always be around, you’re not a ***** like mom. And remember? I got all the mud off so can I finally tell you can I what we found? Well actually it was Edgar found it. Oh and I’ll describe it real good for you grandma just like you could see it: when we pulled up we were just wandering in the blue rain, Bastian and me, and silly Edgar joined us but Mom tried to make us come back of course but I told Bastian to stay with us at first, but later I changed my mind on it. It was he and me and Edgar were hiding in the old motor barn where it smells like a gas station remember grandma and he was so excited to see the sun when it rose and made the morning violet sky he started clapping and Edgar got excited too and was barking ‘bark bark’ and howling so I told Bastian to go back even

this is where you
own our love
purse your lips and
twist mine
because I am the one who has
to sleep without
you no compromise
you said
as I ran my feet
over
the smooth 12,000
threads but no
body

even the patter of the
rain can’t soothe
it hits my face
in horizontal
crosswind and I sit in
that same fold out
chair on the porch
looking out across the park
at the children playing
in puddles

now when I think of
your highlighted jaw line
I am truly gaping at
the mirror that shiny
shiny reflection where my
eyes pop blue
and I’m magnetized at
your breathy yawn

what’s in your head?
what caused this
boiling
this cream that
settled on my coffee?
actually
already
easily
I am forgetting
interestingly
intriguingly
amazingly
you still taste sweet
when I blast music
in my car and then I hear
myself uttering
*thank you.

there was no poem neath my pillow

no poem on my tongue, none from eye envisionaries, no dew gift from my grassy emissaries, parting residue of an unknowable finger touch

nothing stirring, the mother muses mushing their shushing noises,
only breathy quietude, an airy surround sound tissue,
the cadence of intermingled hearts, the mother and the child

two awakenings, one instantaneous, the other restless unhurried slow, but within an impatience to intersect,
the overlap is love stars crossing,
impatience weaponized to make
momma aware her companions refreshed status,
a needy for love’s suckling,
embrace of fresh baked smiles from hot heartedly hearth furnaces

thus a-born a new poem, a welcomed well coming, in words,
the alliance of alliterated words from the interlacing of the mother’s chest heaving and the sniffling joy of a five year old boy reimagining the dreams that crossed from mother to son, and back again, requiring composition and joint authorship of them

the only and only true authentic authorship,
mother and child, their owned unique
duality of singularity

seeds spread by whirlybirds
couples who take on thirds
love flying everywhere
trusted not and the scared
a puff, a blow, and then you go
fuzzy flight to and fro
**** ball picked and his wish
to feast upon a dreamy dish
yet a breathy breeze decides
where scattering of seed shall hide
in the fields, or cracks of pavements
lovers bound in their enslavements
to one another's dreams
dandelion dreams it seems
always never completely fulfilled
dandelion will be tilled
from immaculate and pristine lawn
or in a forest by a fawn
nourishment it is for me
its root bound deep, not free
like those dandelion seeds
rest my head upon cement
men I've met will not lament
sprouts doubts of dandelion's needs

she was more than just the stuff of storybooks, she was one. hair long and light and breast-grazing, star-gazing wisteria-eyed girl. a mystery on spindly legs. a fawn I looked at once and never looked away from. her lemon-meringue demeanor, breathy bubble-bath speaking voice and short white dresses, sandy bare feet and a crinkled, secret smile were all I saw and I saw them as many times as she would let me, new eyes for her driftwood shell every day. she wasn’t from where I was, nor was she going where I went, but when I said hello, she flashed her sunstorm smile at me and buckled my knees. I loved her before we even met, and I knew she would never do the same because she didn’t need to; she didn’t need me and she didn’t need anything, she was freewheeling, she was everybody’s sunrise, she had that smile.

but I wrote the book on living impossible dreams and she told me her name one day, as the horizon painted her gold and stood her still in front of me. she told me where she came from, and where she was going, the gift of gifts: unwrapping her storybook from linen scarves on the sand that evening. this big and beautiful myth shrank to size: she was real. she was flawed. she had grown from sadness, she was scarred, and for that she was more beautiful still. she didn’t need me and she didn’t need anything and, what’s more, she wouldn’t have it. her doors were closed because she wouldn’t need anything, she couldn’t need anything, she was scared of needing anything like she wasn’t scared of anything else, and for that she was more beautiful still.

but I wrote the book on living impossible dreams. as I came around more often, she fell for me right back—my far-off wisteria sunstorm was quiet against my shoulder, breathing in sync with me and drifting off wrapped up in me, driftwood-intricate and real as no storybook before her next to me. she needed me, now, so new to her and laying her bare, stripping away the mystery on her gazelle legs and casting a fearful desperation on her long light hair. instead of needing nothing, she needed me more than I was there, just like she was afraid of. she couldn’t get enough. wrapped up in me so tangled she couldn’t see the horizon anymore. she fortified her quirks so they could stand alone, they grew overbright, she became them, they became all she was. a pretty driftwood shell, a mystery covering nothing but the hole her heart hides in, scared into paralysis by its own fevered motion.

what do I do with this new shell? this new shell that looks exactly like the first one but isn’t—her eyes are still wisteria and her laugh still air-light to the untrained ear, but my hands are too strong to touch her without cracking it. what do I do with this storybook I wrote myself into without permission, this fawn that refused captivity but now can’t remember she was ever free? what do I do with my hands? do I make them weak so I can hold her or do I leave her to herself? what’s the end of the story?

I wrote the book on living impossible dreams and sunstorms aren’t real. she smiles but now it’s only hollow. I can’t look at this beauty I destroyed. I walk away because I have nowhere else to go and I can’t watch her shrink. she was never mine. now she’s nearly nothing.

Today is Tuesday, November 19th, 2013. And I want to talk about you. I want to talk about the clenching and fizzing in my stomach right now as I imagine wrapping you up in my arms and having you close again. I want to talk about the ache in my chest when I think about how it's been ninety days since I last kissed you, since the day I saw you cry as I let you slowly drop from my arms, then hands, then fingertips, and drove away, looking out the window to see you let your head fall into your hands. It's been ninety days since I sat on the floor of the airport and felt my entire being rebelling against getting on that plane and recrossing the thousands of miles that separate us. I want to talk about how I tuck those thoughts away and instead smile as I think of giving you piggyback rides through the park, and kissing in front of churches, and diving into cold pools, and touching you softly as we lay unclothed in your bed, and laughing so hard at your jokes that I'm sure I'm making a fool of myself.

I want to talk about you. I want to talk about you and me. I want to talk about you with me. I want to talk about how you say things that stop me in my tracks and make me reevaluate the truth. I know you, but I can never quite predict your opinions or reactions. You surprise me in this really heart stopping, sometimes refreshing, sometimes eerie way.

I want to talk about how beautiful you are, god, let me please talk about this. Your mind is an intricate, thrumming place that I love to get inside and peek in its dusty corners. I'll try not to leave fingerprints, but I hope you'll forgive me if I do. I think I'm the first person to see some of these places, and I respect them with a reverence. And your heart, your heart... it's an open space that fluctuates and adjusts around me. I know it's learning how to make me fit, but considering that, I'm very comfortable here. It's not a maze, not a grand palace, but not run down either. It's warm in here, slightly musty in the back rooms but in a nice way, while the front is breezy. It's cryptic at first, it's easy to question where one is when first entering. But it has an essence so very you that it's impossible to lose your way completely. I've wandered enough to memorize some of the walls and walk around with a timid freedom. I don't think I would ever dare stride through with arrogance, but I hope to gain confidence the more I explore. Your outside is just as breathtaking. Sometimes I look at the pictures of us together and I stare at your face like it's a puzzle I can solve, because you are indeed the prettiest girl I have ever seen and it astonishes me that yes - you are real. You have this smile that I try to coax out as much as possible, and eyes that are pleasant and warm. Have I told you how much I've always loved brown eyes? It's a colour that suits your irises, that suits you. The image I get when I imagine looking into your eyes is that of wrapped up in soft blankets in a field at dusk. You have beautiful hair that you love to complain about, but I am forever adoring of how it sticks every which way and makes you look - yeah, I'm going to say it - pretty **** cool. Your body is fit and perfect and I'll tell you again, I am so, so jealous. Shadows reach around you to try and feel your shape, rain trickles across your smooth skin to try and kiss as much as it can reach. And when your body tangles with mine, it's magic. You are warm and soft and my fingertips can't help but want to trace a map over you, pressing into their favorite places and trailing across your frame as lightly as a sigh. Your voice, if I had to pick, is the thing that best represents you. Its most frequent setting is this strong, hardy tone that gets your point across with as much bluntness as the words you choose. When you're sleepy it becomes soft and drawling and muffled. When you have to act professional, it heightens and becomes cheery and sweet. When you're touched, it turns lovely and breathy and exquisitely feminine. You are embodied by these sides of you, and there's more I'm yet to hear and learn from it. All of it is beautiful in a way so uniquely you that I smile just in Knowing.

I want to talk about knowing you. I've always wanted just to know you, from the day we met. That was the prevailing thought: How to Know You. Now every day I am given glimpses into you, and every day I'll know a little more, and I couldn't be happier.

I want to talk about you. I want to talk about how much I love you. I love you the way lights love to pool on the sidewalk. I love you the way ink loves the abstract. I love you the way sand loves seashells. I love you the way trees love sunlight. I love you the way airplanes love the sky. I love you with a ferocity and a tenderness and an affection it halts the motion of the world for moments at a time. You bring words and metaphors to mind in a way no inspiration could, and the next second you stop all thought dead and leave my head buzzing pleasantly empty. I used to refuse to write of love; now my hands know of little else. You've changed me, profoundly, intensely. What did I spend my thoughts on before? Now, I just want to talk about you.

when I walked in my stomach was screaming nerves,
my heart felt fluttery from my first of many iced black coffees.
I fixed my eyes fixed on the black hightops I stared at everyday during first period,
the peeling rubber toes pointing straight at me.

I looked up, meeting eyes with the spitting image of Kurt Cobain
who smirked at me curiously, then lifted a finger, and turned into the kitchen.
I busied myself untying my boots, even though they had zippers,
promising myself I wouldn’t loose my balance.

The high tops returned, followed by weathered leather moccasins,
who murmured through his teeth “hmmm, designing with materials girl” .
I grinned through my eyes, attempting not to make myself intimate with the floor so soon,
expertly faking breathy laugh to cover up how utterly freaked the unfamiliar title made me.

High tops grabbed my waist and twirled me into the kitchen,
offering a cigarette before disappearing through the screen door and leaving me
in a room filled with music that ran through my head like a brush
combing out the tangles from driving with my sunroof down.

I was surrounded by people with purple hair and overflowing hearts
who floated around the room singing and talking and dancing
while I wondered how I should fill the shoes of my new title
and what kind of shoes I should even be filling.

out of the corner of my eye, I saw high tops march back ;
he didn’t seem to float but parade, his ponytail not quite matching his muscle shirt arms.
He waltzed right up to moccasins and kissed him proper on the mouth
hands holding his jaw, eyes closed, and balanced on his toes.

Satisfied, he stormed back out through the screen
pulling a pack of blacks and a white lighter from his back pocket
(he would soon tell me he didn’t believe in luck,
even though it was in his pocket when he was arrested over a houseplant).

Moccasins just smiled, eyes rolling up into his brown hair
and with his hands out palms ceilingward in a silent offer, he locked his eyes on mine
Before I had a chance to overanalyze,
he decided for me.

Maintaing eye contact, we danced to the 22 year old boys screaming through the boom box
while I tried to integrate myself into the scene,
tried to float so effortlessly too,
like the cigarette smoke oozing in from the patio

he pulled me into a hug that resented gravity
effortlessly lifting all six feet of me off the ground,
pressing my cheek against the cutoff edge of his tie dye tank top,
my blonde hair tugging between his chest and mine

So with fuzzy lemonade on my lips
and bass players hands on my hips
I figured out I didn't need shoes
if i never touched the ground.

A long time ago
Unicorns roamed the earth

They were ugly
And dumb
And did not know fear
Did not feel the need to use their horns for anything

They were fat
They smelled bad
Like an open wounded staph infection

They did not even taste good
To other animals or humans

But there was this boy who loved to watch them graze with his pet turtle Rusty
He watched and listened

The Unicorns did not neigh so much as they screamed high pitch and breathy
Into each other’s mouths
They made no sense
It was beautiful to him that things that made no sense
Could exist without reason
And there be nothing wrong with that

Rusty would walk around them
A turtle’s pace
And graze
Occasionally bite at an ankle
It made him feel strong
To cause such a big animal pain
And slink away unscathed
No one will ever see the way such a proud turtle walks
As the way Sparky did
Head so high
His neck did not look like ******* skin

The boy also watched them die
Watched as the men in his tribe led them to a nearby valley
Where they would smash the unicorn’s head in with rocks
The animals just stood there
Not understanding what was being done to them

The boy felt like a unicorn then
When his father hit him
He felt dumb
Dumb in the heart
Dumb in the brain
Dumb in the body
For continuing to stay

The boy cried as the last unicorn died
His father said that soon everyone would forget that something so ugly lived
The boy understood
So he went to nearby caves
Where all the gay tribe boys go
Because in hunter gatherer societies
Boys who did not work were gay
They did what makes them happy
That is why it is called gay

In the caves he would draw the unicorns
He made them beautiful
And intelligent
With blood that healed wounds
And horns that if stabbed you
Would cause the most beautiful death

When all this ugly is gone
People will tell stories about us

Christian0 and Juanita

A Single Act: Three scene script by Chris Chance- April/May 2010

Prologue:

There love took place over a decades  time on the island east of Manhattan and in the valleys between the northern tip of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Tuscarora Ridge of the Southern Pennsylvania Appalachians.

He- no saint at all, felt in his heart a hero but ultimately hid behind svelte armor that protected him from a fickle and judgmental world.

She- a creature worthy of the lead lady in a classy novel- pure and once so very innocent. Statuesque and of absolute sense- commanding her world but building high walls around her red heart as she went.

The fields spoken of in this tale were accurately planted and lovingly nourished long ago and they still grow, multiplying their essence year to year. What great hope the author holds in his blue heart for their harvest. What great hopes he has for us all.

It is understood that the sins of the original garden have heft upon us, as a civilization a life of confusion, doubt and pain. It is with faith that one carries on believing in the goodness of a divine creator and master of all that you know.

Said in this story, it’s believed that he or she, the divine that is lives in two places simultaneously.

First; among the stars painted in the style of Rembrandt meeting Picasso, laughing the way Chaplin must daily at the absurd nonsesilogicalness of it all, crying like the poor ******* who’s let his whole future slip through his foolish little fingers.

And the Divine, the great source of energy in the universe also lives in a certain part- or nook - or cranny- of all things that breathe and/or return with the spring.

It is the voice you hear right now in your boney skull. It's the feeling you get when you forgive. It is the obligation you have to reach up and hold steady your fellow man.

As the author of this tale drops to his knees seeking guidance from that hidden, divine and breathy spiritualness he silently cries out in his pain.

A pain he never knew existed. He’ll silently ask to be prayed for now
and at the hour of his death.


Act I Scene I:

She could snare me in a trap by my ***** and hang me to the cherry tree. Yet my love for her wild flower remains – growing stronger- gathering and harboring the strength of welded tycoon steel.

This love you see- is no ordinary love.

It’s a love of passion and flame but one that culminates with no possible conclusion.

This love does not merely flow - but in actuality rages deep and wide- flowing so deep and so wide that the queen herself could traverse it in comfort.

And now alas, her love.

The love of ours- alone, no longer vast enough in its capacity: to carry on.

And it shall be furthermore, that I now- and I alone: will carry the weight of our time spent as one.

Our time spent as one such as the sand and the sea- Spent as one just as the mountain and valley.

Spent as one the way the very soul itself: on its own palate- feels and tastes true, sweet-sweet love.

This love I feel built around me like a velvet dream, a love now burning footsteps in my ears and setting fire to the nether regions of my soul has been banished and broken. But against better judgment still beats in my senseless and tortured eyes.

And in my anguish, I berate myself with guilt and deeply scour avenues of the past- for better directions we might have chosen.

Alas and in the end- amidst tears of fallen dreams: all roads lead to you and where your heart began and where- your heart ended.

So I ask you, all of you that bear witness before me. Whose heart is it- that still beats true and free? And whose heart is it that beats dark as the stormy cloud.

Whose heart I ask?

Or better yet- a different conundrum of a similar variety.

Can any heart be free?

Free to consume its desire- whether the sun shines or not? Free to love and never to be forgotten. Free to breathe without the threat of mortality?

I challenge you my friends to define this- and to thoroughly answer my questions.

To see into my future: regardless of what must be seen and help me- please make me believe again. Make me in all my shattered and tired bones and aging skin truly, truly believe again.

To teach my sons that it is safe to love in this hard and ruthless world.
To see my love as better,  more pure- unscathed by the devilish nature of the standard human ego.  

To once and for all see love and all life- as hopeful and not bereft of commonality and truth. To see her again- my fair love.  Smiling the notion of a better tomorrow.

Act I: Scene II

Our sins derail us its true. Over time and a plethora of vanishing precepts we wash along the rocks liked laundry.

Shall we neatly and quietly burro underground in the neighbor’s green space, with fleeting air- void of light and color?

Should we swing by our necks from the orange groves it would be in vain as life is so precious and out there lays undeniable hope that there is more of life’s holiness to drink in with each passing storm?

Impossible. That is not who I am. This is not who I was. That is not who I will be.

So vanquished cries muffle in the night against vicious and angry winds and the low weeping moan is constant as I look ahead while looking backwards.

Wondering how from my grasp it ever slipped so far?

It all, each and every golden ounce slipped from my tongue in sorrow in truth I must say.  Unfiltered neurosis and faltering fear are guides that  will fail to bring you home safely.

Nefarious tides of anxiety and reflection blinded me- blinded me from the sun.

But yet still she knows or understands that the bird song of redemption is an actual place where hearts once emptied , now gather to refill that same heart with love again and again.

It is the wound of her life open, crying out and bleeding through her lonely eyes and ears. It is with shame that I admit my long standing ignorance and tardiness to the cause of her heart.

Now with the backing of angels I see the landscape and all its divine nature but yet I am unable to enter. Unable to rejoin the garden and fight a snake who speaks my unholy name off split tongue and evil notions.

Where, where my love is it that I should go from here after having come from there? Where shall I drink my clean water, where shall I rest my weary head?

And oh, the head of a sleepless and love sick man. Heavy with burden brought on by his own lack of mastery regarding the most important issue and god given task of them all, but as once ailed Mercutio in his quest for and of allegiance to Romeo. Time is of the essence.

When I lay my head it is in sorrow and the pain of real passion. Passion for remaining one as a quarter  that makes up a whole- such as the corners of the cross and the earth, air, water and fire itself in a single beating heart.

For  one hundred and eighty ****** and arrogant days and their resident risings of the sun I've been reborn- sworn to never let evil destroy good in my heart.

As you must do- you will do.  

But the tides that flow in my veins do not flow from you they flow from the divine, a divine that will protect me and forgive my trespasses as he’s surely forgiven me of mine on others.

It’s only the growing fields of our past love that concern me now. How will we harvest the wheat which together we’ve sewn? How will we slaughter and eat the meat of the heard. When will any of us drink the wine from the grapes we have grown?

The entities I’ve stated are my future and will remain  my future until arc angels guide me from this earthly tomb. The blood of our fields will reign supreme.

The harvest of our youth will produce.  Standing together or behind our backs- as we run from it. The bloom of our responsibilities as care taker of these lands will be upon us in time.

So as your heart sails to foreign shores I awake from my rage and see the sun, feel the air, breathe and seek guidance for my purpose. To continue to plow the field and fish the harbor while I settle for meager tastes.

May the work I’ve done. May the work we’ve done be a strong enough foundation for both fields to nurture, endure and produce.

And as you for my fleeting love: may the beans of your coffee be rich and plentiful, may your heart find its way back to where it once was- where ever that may be.

Between here and now, let the days shine upon you like spring light. Bathing you until your soul feels safe and fresh. Keeping you where you need to be to feel free.

But alas leave knowing that the flame I still hold- as I have from day one. For the mystic and mysterious love brought upon us by the three so many, many years ago.

How long that can burn, I know not: but as the skies bolster the heaven- my heart once black, has returned to life. To love you is all that there is. I will share my heart and tormented soul and every last breath I breathe until graying and dying days. For you and only you exist.

Act I Scene III:

The sun came out after a snowy and emotional winter but the air never seemed to warm through the long days of April.

And so in the absence of all that is left , we set off.  You, in the direction that I lived in for years and me in the direction that you lived for years.

Two lovers, one point, two stories. Proverbial ships in the night is what we are- and the passing simply destiny.

Oh but for how I will remember thee. The raven hair and olive skin, deep eyes batting only in such a way as to swell my heart, that equisite eyebrow raised in point, the witty acronyms of our secret family language.

The warmth of your parent’s hearth and the surrounding family. A safe and wonderful place to even a man such as I, who took it sorely for granted along with the other neighboring fields planted and stamped with our communication, our love, our example.

Time is a tempting and vicious confidant, one that will surely lead you astray and bring mischief and havoc to your very door step.

Tread lightly if you dare to tread at all in love. Hear the heart you rest against, listen to the subtle tick tock of its rhythm. Hold a stone as it were a diamond, train the mutt as a pure bred champion, shape your mud as if it were the finest of all clays from the earth.

The whistling train only passes through the station once. Get on get off, make up your mind – change your mind – ignore your mind. Look into your heart and soul then move forth.

To where it is you should be.

Where it is you’ll be forgiven and nurtured even more revered than ever before. A place so familiar you might even call it home.  A bed so all knowing that it could only be ours. A life so new it could never be as it was.

Know this before you part my love, know that I am true: as I say- is as I pray. But your choice is your choice and yours alone: to rise or recede.

My heart pines like the losing persona in an old film. For I see the sun rising. Shining and setting in your eyes.

I see the fields as they grow under watchful eyes, I hear the wind begging us to move but I stand grounded upon all that is pure and sanctimoniously holy. Definitively tattered- but braced firmly at the center of the storm.

Waiting for the love we loved, Once. The love that we may squander if we have yet to do so already.  A love that can be repaired and grow larger and more consuming then ever imagined.

A love never to slip from my grasp again.

Narrative Ending:

So the fella in this case is condemned to be a shepherd without his flock. Sending signals by smoke along the telephone wire to complete the rendering of the fields. With mercy on his side- may he succeed in the light of the world relentlessly embittered in the dark?

Or will all in life just as after a close death, quietly move on?

Completing revolutions of the sun: that fiery ball of light, wider than the distance from here to Mars and back, with us random like ebbing and flowing on the tides lengthy pull of the moon?

Or is the strength to muster what one wants, really possible?

Can he climb the highest mountain? Could his faith be tested in lava like pits of hell? Can his heart be branded clean after so much life?

And what of her beating heart?

What of her search to dissolve the fears of her own making? How has her beauty helped or failed her. How will she look herself in the eye?
How long must I day dream of meandering through a sweet and enjoyable song with her one last time.

Unknown answers-

More unknown then I, as the player in this drama, would care or dare to admit, but hopeful ever more like the humming bird buzzing summer honeysuckle in rainy times- I shall remain.

I shall see the sparkle of her soul rent the eyes- if only for a time.
Taking both yonder to another space and time, where she’d admit she lied in vain fear and exasperation when she said:  surely she could find no love true and could simply offer no more.

When my flesh gives way to bone cover me in roses. Walk me out in the morning of your mind as a man who loved without knowing how to love.

A male clearly guilty to the highest degree, in any court, of any land: of being careless with a precious gift.

And sadly for the ones who have loved and lost- in the end  life offers only so many windows into the soul of a lover.

These kinds of stories are hard to find.
I posted up in a bar between
nowhere and a town named Ida
(probably named after some
sweetheart, that old southern name),
and in the characteristic openness
that I can only find during my travels,
I decided to say,
"hey stranger."

It was early in the evening,
he was a traveler too,
but of the trucking sort,
ashen eyes and
pale breathy skin,
we got talking amid
electric neon glow and
the pale blue light
that shown in through the rain.

His name didn't matter,
I won't tell you his name,
but the truckers know thumbers
(there are 5000 or so
across the country
at any given time),
and so he told me of a thumber.

This thumber was in the thunder,
clothes torn and eyes wide,
and with a mind that was,
at that point especially,
oblivious to the solidity
of the dry towel that was
set on the solid truck seat,
and, what a mess this boy was,
so by appearance, I presume,
it was easy to ask,
"what in the hell happened to you?"

It went like this:
the thumber turned those
wide open eyes
(I imagine he was shivering),
and told of how he was
walking, backpack and all,
and of how he smelled a storm
approaching, how when he
saw the treetops bending,
he expected the rain and
pulled a waterproof cover
over his pack just in time,
it started pouring.

This time the thumber,
he said he knew he had to
keep going,
he said he didn't like rolling
dice, no, he said it was a cheat
because if you knew enough
about throwing die the die
land the same, they land
the same enough.

So,
listen, have you ever
walked through heavy rain?
You get dizzy, but
in some deep part of your mind
in the spray, the insurmountable
lukewarmness stealing
a little with each blow,
you lose yourself,
and that's what I imagine
happened to this thumber.

At one point, the thumber
knew ground no more,
that's all he said. He said
he landed one county
over, that's all he said.

And by the jingling
of the die hanging
from the truck's rearview mirror,
one of the truckers laughed
and said *******
as the story of the thumber
came around,
what in all hell else could
you say?
And the thumber wiggled
his head and gave a queer
sneeze.

Against the neon glow
I peered at the trucker,
you can't tell an honest
man by his eyes but
you can tell it by his breath.
I shook my head and said,
"that's a kind of story that's
hard to find."

Your expert fingers gently
    strum and pluck at my strings                
Making every inch of me sing.

My body thrums
    With each staccato beat
And goosebumps ***** my skin as we race towards the crescendo.

The music peaks
    And beautifully tuned notes entwine
In heart-stopping harmony.

Your bass blends
    With my soprano
In a perfect balance of tone and pitch.

In the stillness that follows
    The music fades
Into a duet of breathy sighs.

And then we :||

In the orange cream dying sun's half light
swaddled by blankets wrapped in ***** clothes
I open my lips wanting your taste
eye to eye, mons *****, warm fragrance
To offer myself and soul over completely
When we were young did you ever think
we'd drown in the ocean of flesh between legs?
She smiled brightly, made noises
overjoyed much more than confused,
though that's not the story now, is it?
In an instant passion rises up with steam
gone again before I wipe the mirror and
brush my teeth, and once again I see
blackened debris, they're rotting out
from misspoke verbs
All that's sweet now is the imagining
of diabetic what once was
Two closed eyes reach back with a breathy sigh
withheld truths and well meant half lies,
cannot inspire lift again that left me,
but that doesn't stop the faithful
Has the tide this whole time been sending
waves of false hope, on which I'm floating?
Daydreaming, heating oil, she wants dinner,
and I hunger for satisfaction in new pictures
A hand for a finger, a tongue from both mouths
comforting by grabbing hungrily
until heads get thrown back, abs tighten
when pressed to relax, on the rack
stretched but both floating
Why does she want to drink my blood?
I don't ask just imbibe in return
Those days are long gone
Times when the worst thoughts could not undo
whatever flicker remains in the waning brazier's ember

Hundreds of words lived inside of me,
Swirling about my brain.
I wanted to spill them at your feet, truly I did.
Adjectives burned my tongue and
Tiny verbs danced about my stomach.
They laughed furiously
Until all that was left were encrypted sonnets,
that dug down deep,
Burrowing inside a place they were sure to be safe.

You wanted to read them,
Instead I swallowed them whole.
I did tell you once.
I told you everything through breathy prayers
But you never heard
Because you were asleep.

I stepped into the house and removed
my rain-soaked shoes on the grizzled entrance mat.

No one in the kitchen.
Though the aroma lingered, the coffee *** had turned itself off.
I touched the glass -- cool.
No one in the living room.
Half a pair of sequined flats were in the dog's mouth,
half a lady's pantsuit -- the black legs -- lied on the floor.
A soap opera on the screen, the volume low, the gold-tipped ceiling fan oscillating,
and Serge Gainsbourg's Histore de Melody Nelson played down the hall.

I followed the breathy vocals and wandering baseline to my room,
and there she sat.

The blinds open, veiny rain running along the pane,
on the beige carpeted floor, next to my unmade bed,
criss-crossed Jessica.

"Hey, sweetheart," I said.

Jessica smiled.
When she smiles, her cheeks go flush,
she lowers her head slowly, embarrassed,
but yet when she laughs,
she laughs loudly, boldly.
I've never understood that.

Jessica was wearing a white, spaghetti-strap undershirt
and blue cotton *******.
Her brunette curls -- down, reaching past her shoulders.
Her toenails -- painted purple and chipped.
Newspapers lied strewn about her,
with puddles of acrylic paint atop them.
In her lap,
a white canvas stapled to a wooden backing frame.
She sang,
"Princesse des ténèbres, archange maudit,
Amazone modern' style que le sculpteur,
En anglais, surnomma Spirit of Ecstasy."

as she painted two lovers growing together
like curious oak trees.

I sat behind her on my bed. Pushed aside the tangled sheets.
She craned her neck to kiss my cheek sweetly.

"How was your day?" I asked.

"Oh, who cares," she responded.
Her eyebrows lifted, her fingertips traced my thigh,
"Tell me something beautiful."

"What?"

She dipped her paintbrush in red, in white and applied them
to the lovers' lips.

"Tell me something beautiful."

"I can't think of anything," I said.

"Try."

we are two trees

lilts of speech
and
soft tapping tendrils played on
stringéd instruments
that is our water supply

intense lashéd eye contact
wrapping our long legs and aching arms around
each other's anatomy
that is our sunshine

heavy, breathy sighs
and long, slithering love-making
that is our photosynthesis

grow with me

Hair adorned
with rainbow glee
good tidings brought
to noble thee

Bones are weary
thoughts are cloudy
heart is heavy
sighs are breathy

But on this day
the snow is thick
the days are long
with brightening sun

And your radiance gleams
like dragon's treasure
tucked away in secrecy
your beauty and its measure

For love you have
to share in oodles
soft as silk and satin
warm, like labradoodles

You give of yourself
and want for nothing
so here it comes
a day of wonder

For today you were born
and continue to live
continue to fight
continue to give

So receive instead
these joyous words
to thank you for you
for being a friend

Though life is heavy
and the snow layers thick
your smile lights the world
and in our minds, stick

i. reward ten thousand dollars
it scares me to think you will drive me home one day, one night, one night when i am very drunk and the stars do not glisten because there are no stars left! i am sure of the reason:
upon being conceived you swallowed them all whole. this is not purposefully clandestine so much as misunderstood knowledge:
in our lifetime these celestial objects will be mistaken, much like a well-intentioned teratoma, for
cancer
countless times you will be plucked, yet unripe, from the fire that will as soon liquify your flesh and cleanse your soul

ii. wanted, dead or alive
psychosis is not a watershed.
it is an amalgamation of the bugs who have crawled up your legs and gorged themselves on your fruity blood before hibernating
it is a room of walls plastered with ******* of nauseating pale cadavers, of empty homes, of longing hands, of breast buds and tied legs and virginal lips and bare ***** and stained sheets
it was in you forever and there is nothing to blame but an imbalance, for
you are the duality of...girlhood.
you are soiled ******* and unkempt hair, abused plush dolls and sticky hands, infected wounds and sunburn sting, stale cereal and coloring pages
you are satin veils and vain slumber, tired tears and starving entrails, hesitant touch and static vhs, shrill laughter and breathy song
you are itchy bug bites. you are snow in my eyelashes.
you are a lissome angel pregnant, god bless you, with a fetal (fatal?) evil; perhaps my fear begins here, or perhaps it greets me when your aura bites my eyelids...alack!
it must be so. **** orange light suffuses my thin veins. the sun exudes apprehension and abruptly the car is totaled and
this is why you cannot drive me home. even when i have become quite inebriated:
it is not natural for the air to be so warm; only ere our galactic body closes her eyes.
surely you will **** me. you are no creature of the night. run me over; crush me between your toes; let my nectar grow trees in the cracks of this, our, every godforsaken town.

iii. have you seen me?
her neotenous thighs stick, like sap, to the concrete floor, water seeps beneath the cinderblock. dust collects between her fingers in which she clutches, with the brutality of youth, a softened - if garishly colored - carton of apple juice. four-o'clock sun pierces the thick glass window (if one will call it such) and she feels listless; rather than squint she pores over the illumination with intent that, in her unsuspecting naivete, she is not yet aware she holds. before she ***** in enough light to blind her she hears a voice that feels familiar:
come upstairs
soon enough it will be ruefully forgotten
soon enough she will realize she was bagged and thrown in the trunk
too late she will wish to exact her revenge

I hear you on the radio,
driving to work.
I swear, I almost get sick in the car
at the rush of memory
sometimes.
I remember firelight flickering
across your face,
a dark corner of a bar you wanted
to get away to
after you played a show,
when everyone wanted a piece
of beautiful you
except me, blushing.

Passion Pit was blaring overhead.
I told you about my family,
we're beekeepers from Ohio.
You watched me as
friends of friends approached me,
flirted, I was sultry.
You asked me
if I was warmed by the beers.
Made eyes
like you wanted
to get the hell out of there.

A customer from work, some
rich investor shmuck,
texts me today.
"What are you wearing?"
I'll tell you.
How many ways can I say "remorse"
before it sounds ****?
It does nothing for me anymore.

But no jokes come to mind,
no evasive, coy replies.
Just a flashing cursor on my
telephone
as I remember summer *******
and someone I left behind.

Make outs in a photobooth
that lasted all night
as they swept the floor to
close up shop.
Only our shoes peeked out
under the curtain
threatening to blow our cover.
You wouldn't be thinking about
our cover.
You'd be thinking about what
I was wearing.

You remember
the color of my tights.
You've told me.
The way my sweater fell off my shoulders.
Saltwater-sealed
sandcastle collarbones.
The more you were obsessed
with me,
the more I didn't need you.

You placed my
hand over your heart
that night in the photobooth,
so I could feel the butterflies
surging through your chest.
They ruptured in rhythm
with each flashbulb
of light
at the magic, calculated touch
of a girl who had learned
to trust no one.

I didn't want any
attachments.
Doesn't everyone always leave?
No, recording in Richmond,
touring across the country,
passing through Brooklyn,
sleeping on a friend's
floor in Denver,
You still asked me what I was
wearing.

A sly grin watching you, breathy and
raw, finish yourself in front
of the camera
late nights when you were away,
listening to you beg for me.
Just the way you'd say my name
And all the words when
we wouldn't speak.
You brought me back honey
from Honduras.
Told me about beekeepers there
and scuba shops on little islands.

I was afraid to start my life
again with someone.
Too young to plan to
run away with you.
The unspeakable distance
I never told you:
I was sleeping with a man I had
loved once
the week before I met you.
He had stopped loving me
long before.

I left you before you could leave me.

It was some cheap hotel off I-75.
A Korean movie with subtitles
was playing in the dark
and we were slushing wine
and sliding bodies
Your sweat was like nectar
and you gasped as you entered me.

I didn't know when I met you
there was nothing left
of me to offer.
Isn't timing half the battle in life?
I never explained it.
Couldn't bring myself
to drive your nice car like you wanted
while you were away.
Drink your honey in my tea
without grimacing at
the bitter taste of grief to it.

I got tired acting confident.
I got bored telling you what I was wearing.
I got angry that you had never been hurt
by someone
not wearing anything.
You were
empty
and easy and
looking for something I couldn't give.

You brought me with you.
I don't know how,
VIP passes and interviews,
always on the road.
We stopped talking,
but you reinvented me
so many times over
different in your mind.

Maybe it was my aire
of not needing you like
the other girls.
Not remarking on
the contour of your jawline,
Your firm muscles,
clenching
and pulsing for me, leaving you
crawling, still
now,
remembering
what I was wearing.

I saw her at the diner
She caught my eye right from the start
It wasn't too long after
That this woman caught my heart

She didn't fit in with the people
Drinking coffee , eating up
She was drinking with her pinkie out
As she held her coffee cup

She's was high class in a low class world
That was plain as plain could be
I wanted to be in her world
And I wanted her with me
She was queen of somewhere
I don't know, and I wanted to be king
She was high class in a low class world
And I wanted to be king

She had her napkin tucked
Just so, you know
Not all scrunched up in a ***
And she only dabbed the corners
Like an Angel sent from God

She was crisp and pressed and perfect
Not a hair was out of place
And the light just made her eyes shine
She had such a lovely face

She's was high class in a low class world
That was plain as plain could be
I wanted to be in her world
And I wanted her with me
She was queen of somewhere
I don't know, and I wanted to be king
She was high class in a low class world
And I wanted to be king

She was sitting in our diner
although she belonged far uptown
Most folks here all wore ball caps
while she deserved a crown

When she spoke, my heart just trembled
Her voice was breathy, like a wisp
And she spoke like she was Royal
So cool and cut and crisp

She's was high class in a low class world
That was plain as plain could be
I wanted to be in her world
And I wanted her with me
She was queen of somewhere
I don't know, and I wanted to be king
She was high class in a low class world
And I wanted to be king

She was someone from a movie
Full of mystery, intrigue
And I knew from looking at her
She was way out of my league


I wouldn't know just where to start
She was gold and I was tin
She was High class in my low class world
And I surely wanted in

I stood there in the kitchen
Washing dishes in the sink
And I knew I'd go home lonely
What else was there for to think?

She's was high class in a low class world
That was plain as plain could be
I wanted to be in her world
And I wanted her with me
She was queen of somewhere
I don't know, and I wanted to be king
She was high class in a low class world
And I wanted to be king

Her prayers are
Breathy I love you's,
Warm and pained against your skin.
Your body is her altar,
Her temple,
The cathedral surrounding her
In her heartbroken worship
As she unravels,
Crying,
Shaking,
Clinging to you with
Everything
She
Has
Left.
The shattered pieces
Of her heart are the broken winged swallows,
Flocking in fluttering storms
In your bell tower,
Nesting in your rafters
Alongside the owls you've let be
To this point,
Content to allow them to roost.
Her hands are your bibles,
The creases telling a thousand stories
Of the girl who weathers the fiercest storms,
But falls apart at the seams
For love of you.
Your laughter serves as her hymns,
Ringing through the expanse of you,
Singing in her ears.
Sometimes she tries
Laughing alongside you,
But her voice cracks
Like an untuned piano
Whenever she opens her lips
To add her laughter to
Your songbooks.
You each find a different kind of heaven
In the stained glass windows
Of the other's eyes.
Hers are the ocean,
Deep and stormy,
Only ever calm
Just before lightning shakes her frame,
Rain and froth
Pounding
Against the glass,
Breaking it's way through,
Trying to flood your halls
As the tempest carves new legends
In her outstretched hands;
New biblical stories to lose yourself in.
She finds summer nights in your gaze,
Bonfires dappling damp grass,
And a boy
Laying on the hood of a run down car,
Staring too intently at the stars
To truly register their fragility,
Their mortality,
Even as they plummet from the sky,
Bursts of white light
Reflecting gold through green glass.
The comet-light ripples,
Climbing to the rafters,
Startling the owls from their perches,
And you can feel them thrumming,
Beating their wings against the ceiling of your ribs.


k. f.

voice in whispered tone
like breathy saxophone
I hold a longing moan
within

fingers through my strands
ruin all my plans
the way your calloused hands
grip skin

lips that taste like truth
of gin and dry vermouth
pierced by sinking tooth
and sin

I memorize your face
as I fade from this place
forgetting all that time and space
has been

Sing me to sleep
With gentle soul inspired lullabies
With warm phrases that sound like your smile

Beautiful and inextinguishable
Even if I can't hear your voice
I'll feel the breathy ghosts of your words
Against my skin
A soothing reminder that you are still here
When I close my eyes

Sometimes it feels like this life fades away
When I close my eyes
Just like the illusions fade away when I wake

How can you be sure
Can I be sure
Which reality is a dream
Which one lulls me to sleep
Which one beckons for me to awake

Your breathy lullabies contradict it all
Because when I awake I'm in a dream
One in which I never want to wake
Because when I dream I only want to wake
To find you humming lazy perfections
Full of lukewarm undecided inhibitions
And love

His teeth brush her skin and she flinches.
Breathy gasps on shifting eyes
Slide across the icy air, and inches
Of separation mark porcelain lies.

Porcelain teeth mark crimson brands
And whiter still the skin where wedding bands
Rested not long ago
Upon skin that recoils from his perfect hands.
And choices that only she can know.

Night was falling, a full bright silver moon was rising, and Seraphine’s hunger had become unbearable. She needed to feed, had to have young fresh female blood, to stay alive and young.

Science had caught up with the reason vampires needed to feed on the youngest, preferably baby’s blood. In 1866 a Frenchman named Paul Bert had conjoined rat’s circulatory systems in a process called parabiosis, and thus the Prize of Experimental Physiology from the French Academy of Science.

In 2012, Cambridge University’s Julia Ruckh found old mice cojoined to young mice physically and mentally rejuvenated, becoming younger, smarter, and more energetic. Subsequent research discovered proteins in the plasma caused the rejuvenation. News outlets had proclaimed, “fountain of youth discovered in ordinary plasma.”

Seraphine needed the youngest, which has the highest concentration of rejuvenation proteins and hormones;  the purest, which is virus-free, and female, which has the highest levels of estrogen and progesterone.

Ideally, a baby girl’s blood would be best, but in today’s modern society, killed babies drew attention. The next best and the pragmatic thing was a 15-year-old runaway girl. L’ Association Assistance et Recherche de Personnes Disparues (ARPD), estimates 1000s of Parisienne girls, ages 10 to 18, runaway each year due to ****** and or physical abuse, ending up on the street, and having survival *** in 48 hours or less for food and or protection. And few if anybody cared. They disappeared, never to be found, presumed dead from a ****** overdose, or stabbed in a fight for food, money, or drugs.

Since runaways had high levels of disease due to survival ***, ****, and ****** addiction, Seraphine focused her attention on young troubled Arab girls living in the Habitation à Loyer Modéré (HLM) or projects of the 93rd, the department number of Seine-Saint-Denis, the poorest, predominantly Maghreb Islamic Arab banlieues of Paris.

Seraphine would undo her ponytail, letting her raven black hair cascade down around her shoulders, so she could fly around and into the projects at night landing on rooftops, listening for arguments, yelling, or shouting of eahira (*****), waqha (****), or haram (forbidden). When she heard those words, she knew a father was forcing old-world customs and religion on his born and raised in France daughter. The daughter, going to secular French public school, knew neither Arabic nor Islam, rebelled, wanting to live a secular, feminist rather than a submissive religious life.

Seraphine had found this month’s mark. She focused her superhuman hearing and sight on a tenth-floor open balcony window of the building across the street.

She could see an older man dressed in the traditional white dishdasha tunic, and taqiyah skull cap worn to evening prayers, yelling and throwing his hands in the air. Further in the flat, Seraphine could see a girl, crying. The man yelled waqha, waqha, then slapped her, and she fell to the floor. An old woman pulled the man back, as the girl got up and ran out the door.

Seraphine knew how this would play out and where the girl was headed. Four blocks away was the Lycée Général et Technologique, which housed a 24-hour crisis center for teens facing physical and or ****** abuse, pregnancy, homosexuality, ****** addiction, or homelessness.

As foreseen, the girl burst out the front doors of the HLM, running, crying down the street. Seraphine leaped from the 13-floor building into the air, silently following the girl like a bird of prey. The girl walked down Rue Bonnevide to Rue Guy Moquet, taking a shortcut through a wooded park.

Seraphine flew down to the ground, landing without a sound, and followed the girl from a distance. She could smell her youth, see her round hips and long shiny hair. When the girl had walked deep into the dark and silent park, Seraphine sprang forward like a puma, tackling the girl to the ground, and slitting her throat before she could scream.

Seraphine savored the ****, drinking the squirting blood from the carotid artery, relishing the warm fresh blood. The girl, in shock, blinked rapidly, trying to process what had just happened to her. She tried to speak but gurgled only blood, tears of fear started streaming down her cheeks. She knew she was dying, was afraid of dying, and wished her father was here to protect her, and make it all go away.

The blood slowed to a trickle. The girl had bled out and her body died. Seraphine continued to drink, ******* harder to get the remaining blood. The girl’s body convulsed then stilled as her brained slowly and finally died.

Seraphine had fed and would be satiated till another full moon.  She got up and licked her lips of residual blood. Her clothes were drenched in sweat and blood. She looked at the girl’s dead body, admiring her clear complexion, and big brown doe eyes, but felt no remorse for the ****.

She picked up the girl’s body in her arms, jumped into the night sky, and flew 65 kilometers northeast of Paris to La Foret De Compiegne in la department d’Oise, a secluded and rural part of northern France. Dead center in the forest lies Saint-Jean-aux-Bois, a small, and forgotten farming village of septuagenarian and octogenarian.

Seraphine flew to a farm a kilometer outside of the village. As she neared the farm, she could smell the putrid stench of pig ****. She started her descent, dropping the girl’s body, which hit the ground with a thud, in the barnyard, as she gently touched down.

The farm was dark, the only light was that of the full moon. She heard a rustling coming from the farmhouse. She saw an old man walking her way, holding a dim flamed oil lamp. He did not look at her, only at the ground, afraid of what would happen if he looked her in the eyes.

Seraphine grabbed the girl’s body by the hair and dragged it to the main pigpen, and threw the body over the fence and into the pit of sleeping pigs. The body hit a pig, startling it out of its sleep, squealing, waking up the other pigs, and realizing they had been fed fresh meat. The pigs sheared the flesh off the bones, then chewed and ground the bones. Within a couple of hours, there would be no trace of the young girl’s body. She was just another disappeared runaway.

Seraphine turned her attention back to the farmer, pulled out a brick of Euros from her coat, and threw it at his feet. He didn’t dare pick it up. He was too afraid of her. He knew what she was. And she knew, he knew what she was.

He’d seen the countless girl’s bodies come through like chicken carcasses at a processing plant over the decades. He knew he would die of old age soon, and only hoped God would forgive him for helping a monster.

Seraphine turned around, jumping into the sky, and disappeared. He was trembling and relieved that she was gone. He won’t see her for another full moon. He painfully bent over and picked up the brick of Euros. His hands were shaking.

******

Seraphine got out of the shower and wrapped her hair in a towel. She looked in the mirror and admired herself, the flawless white skin, the blood red lips, the pear shaped figure, but most of all her firm perky *******. She was brushing her teeth, when the doorbell rang. She rinsed out her mouth and wrapped a towel around her, walked to the door and opened it. It was Damien. She mischievously and alluringly smiled. He grinned back, knowing why she’d called. “I was so glad you were still up when I called,” she said poutingly.

She took his hand and led him to her bedroom. It was softly lit, a low yellowish light, not unlike that of a candle’s. The walls were decorated in red damask wallpaper with gold crown, base, and chair moulding. It was very elegant, very French. The bed was a large four posted red ruffled canopy, covered with a red duvet and pillows.

She got to the foot of the bed, turned around, unwrapped herself, sat on the bed, and shuffled herself to the headboard. She looked at him and spread her legs, showing, offering herself to him. Damien took off his clothes and crawled to her, over her, and leaned down to kiss her. She rose up to meet his kiss, wrapping her arm around his neck, then dragging him down in her.

She kissed him hard, ******* his tongue into her mouth, biting his lower lip. She stopped. He looked at her, a questioning look on his face. Then she pushed him down towards her *****. She had a trimmed and sculpted bush, just enough not to hide her full lips.

He started kissing around her bush, her tummy, and inner thighs. He could feel her squirming, as he circled around, edging closer to her *******. He kissed her lips, sliding his tongue up and down, then penetrating her.

She was wet, and tasted fresh, like sweet spring water. How amazing he thought to himself. I’ve never tasted a woman like this before. He went deeper with his tongue, pulling back the lips with his hands. She pushed his head hard into her. He licked her splayed ******, as she moaned in pleasure and approval. He moved his tongue up till he got to her ****, and lightly rubbed it then stopped, kissing her tummy. She relaxed and sighed.

He kissed his way down to her ****, kissing it softly then circling it with his tongue. She arched her back as he vigorously rubbed her **** with the tipe of his tongue. She moaned, then yelled stop, stop, in breathy gasps, then fell back into the pills. She took his head in her hands, and pulled him up to her mouth, and gave him deep, passionate baiser amoureux.

She took his hard **** in her hand and guided him towards her *****. She slid his **** up and down her *****, lubing up the head of the **** with her wetness. Then she let go, and he penetrated her slowly, as she gasped then moaned. He felt her wetness and heat as he slid deeper into her.

He started to pump rhythmically back and forth, slowlying picking up speed, as she moaned and groaned as he bottomed out his **** into her. He was going to *** and started to moan, when she yelled, “choke me, choke me.”

Taken back, he slowed. She looked up at him quizzically. “Choke me,” she said sternly. “You're a big boy. Choke me,” she repeated with a bit of irritation in her voice. He placed his hands around her neck and lightly pressed and started pumping. He got back into the rhythm and was back on track, getting close to *******. “Harder,” she said, “hard like you mean it.” It turned him on, and he clamped down harder as he pumped harder, animalistically.

He knew she was getting close to orgasming as she moaned and writhed under him. “Oui, oui, oui,” she screamed, and in a blink of an eye, she’d flip him on his back. Her hands on his chest, holding him down, as she rode him hard. She screamed, “ah, ah, ah,” then collapsed on his chest. His ****, still hard, inside her. She slowly rolled over, taking him with her, till he was on top, then rocked her hips, wanting him to continue, to finish.

He started to moan. She hooked her wrist around his neck and pulled him to her mouth, kissing him hard and deep as he came. He convulsed collapsing  on top of her. His **** still inside her, as she wrapped her arms around and rocked him back and forth, kissing the top of his head as if comforting a child.

He rolled over, crashing into the bed with exhausting and fatigue. He looked over at her. She was staring up at the ceiling. He saw the reddish purple strangulation marks he’d left on her neck, and slipped into a deep sleep.