the hallway painted green
sizzles in midsummer heat
i look down the descending stairs
to the sounds of her fighting with boyfriend vinnie
her loose shirt clings to her lean body
her hair a warm brown tangled in a ponytail
pieces of it cling to her sweat soaked skin
i reach down and gently run my hand along her cheek
she looks at me
then at my girlfriends closed door and she kisses me
i lean into her kiss with a lustful passion
we cling to one another in a moment of stolen loves
late that night she comes down the street
standing beneath my window calls my name
it sounds like beauty
it sounds like a gift

Drain The ***** Water First

By Risa Ruse

I celebrated my victory over persecution.
I did this by sharing my story of resolution.

I retorted my discovery.
It was related to work done to my gutters in recovery.

When on the latter burling a hole in the gutter the water kept pouring out.
I could not finish my goal of making a spout.

I realized that I needed to stop drilling the hole.
The matter needed time to drain the ***** water to complete my goal.

Like the gutters needing to drain--
So did my brain.

I had to get rid of all the old hurts.
Otherwise my heart was sure to burst!

Now the ***** water was all let out.
I give thanks for the new spout.

Not only that, but my life has taken a turn-about.
I throw up my hands in praise and give a shout!

Sleep circles
with wide wings.
Pages vanish down the eye's well:

Napoleon burns Moscow,
French detectives fry onions,
Lorca dies in the greenest green.

Rain spits into the room
crooked, dark. I'm alone.
The gyre closes, soft as a net.

Dreams hunch on the furniture.
The mirrors broadcast
the Venetian blinds croaking

and rattling against the screen
like creamy swords
in enamel scabbards.

Book-addled eyelids
are rusting into blinks
of burling dusk.

Each dying thought
is a sleek Deco Bugatti
lead by a shining path

from teardrop headlamps
whose fingers pry the night
moments before tires

sing rubber to blue.
The rain gathers into serpents
in the channels of the floor.

Above you hangs
the fat black branch
of sleep's truest face.

errant skies, orange like sherbert
clouds of grey slowly move by unfettering my ear,
lost times i couldnt heal,
i break free on the taste of ice cream on my tongue
as the clouds around where i fly form a pond
in which i soak in.
the stillness of water. calm wave
in the shallows.
whisked to a burling bastion of a blue school of fish their
scales shining the new found suns light reflecting off my eyes as sparkles
that happen to fall and turn to purple soda and land on my tongue.
whisking around in my form of glee, a new scape of snow and snow
covered grass and snow
falling amid twirling streetlighted paths.
As I fall and I land too and then stand in an old jacket and in my old fleece hat.

The cold of those nights.
Like taking a breath mint but it always stayed somewhere placed within your head. The core, i guess. If you placed yourself right, snugged yourself tight, you'd be an unstoppable machine against the cold.
And with it came the power of being in that ubiquitous beauty.
Every single snowflake.
A present.
I bask in it
It might be bad right now i think to say at THIS moment in THIS time,
That it tastes a little like you
But I don't deny the truth