“kitty”. sixteen,5′ 11″,white,*******.

ducking always the touch of must and shall,
whose slippery body is Death’s littlest pal,

skilled in quick softness.  Unspontaneous.  cute,

the signal perfume of whose unrepute
focusses in the sweet slow animal
bottomless eyes importantly banal,

Kitty. a *****. Sixteen
                            you corking brute
amused from time to time by clever drolls
fearsomely who do keep their sunday flower.
The babybreasted broad “kitty” twice eight

—beer nothing,the lady’ll have a whiskey-sour—

whose least amazing smile is the most great
common divisor of unequal souls.

Even though you know some tea, you aren’t automatically pressed to spill ALL of it. Today’s tea features our roommate Sophie and two grody flavors of betrayal. BTW, I’m being magnanimous by changing the names and not doxxing the creeps.

To set our stage, a doe (we’ll call her Britney) high-school friend of Sophie’s is a Yale freshie this year. They were buddy-hollys back in the day and they’ve been clinging since their reunion.

On another track, Sophie’s been talking to a guy (we’ll call him Cory) in her English class recently and it was clear they were “in-like” but their clocked-up schedules were corking their algorithms.

Sophie and Cory finally got a shot last weekend when they attended a party together. However, it turns out later, at that party, Britney snuck off with Cory and smashed him (they were observed, and everyone carries a camera these days).

So, poor Sophie suffered two betrayals in one night. Cory went-hiking on her and Britney - who she'd told about Cory - did the other woman chisel.

Of course, Cory (just another dog-boy) is already forgotten but the broken friendship drama will live on forever. Why Britney chose to betray Sophie we’ll never know, because that ***** is dead to us.

Touch me not say the morning due to the sunrise disappearing as the sun grew
Touch me not say the coconut tree with its fruits hanging aloof,
Touch me not say the frog with bright red spots corking under the Buttress roots,
Touch me not says the indulging and then eluding dreams.

Touch me not says the maiden, playfully resisting her lover’s every move
Touch me not say the open shore to the teasing ocean waves,
Touch me not say the blood colored fruit to the naive traveler,
Touch me not say the blazing sun to Icarus, son you can’t fly to the sun,  
Touch me not says the peeved kid pouting and showing it’s irk.  

Touch me not says the volcano, feigning to be at rest
Touch me not says the deranged dog, to anyone who dare to come nearer
Touch me not says the humble cosmos, hiding all its beauty on a dark and cloudy night  
Touch me not says the hissing cobra, I can **** an elephant.  

Touch me not says the steaming ice
Touch me not says the thorny bushes,
Touch me not says the porcupine,
Touch me not says the diffident butterfly
Touch me not says the poet, can’t you see i am working i can’t be in distress  
Touch me not, touch me not I am fine ……

'Twas a balmy summer evening, and a goodly crowd was there.
Which well-nigh filled Joe's bar-room on the corner of the square;
And as songs and witty stories came through the open door,
A vagabond crept slowly in and posed upon the floor.

"Where did it come from?" someone said, "The wind has blown it in."
"What does it want?" another cried. "Some whisky, *** or gin?"
"Here, Toby, sic him, if your stomach's equal to the work -
I wouldn't touch him with a fork, he's as filthy as a Turk."

This badinage the poor wretch took with stoical good grace;
In fact, he smiled as though he thought he'd struck the proper place.
"Come, boys, I know there's burly hearts among so good a crowd
To be in such good company would make a deacon proud."

"Give me a drink -- that's what I want -- I'm out of funds, you know;
When I had cash to treat the gang, this hand was never slow.
What? You laugh as though you thought this pocket never held a sou!
I once was fixed as well, my boys, as anyone of you."

"There, thanks; that's braced me nicely! God bless you one and all!
Next time I pass this good saloon, I'll make another call.
Give you a song? No, I can't do that, my singing days are past;
My voice is cracked, my throat's worn out, and my lungs are going fast."

"Say! Give me another whisky, and I'll tell you what I'll do
I'll tell you a funny story, and a fact, I promise, too.
That I was ever a decent man not one of you would think;
But I was, some four or five years back. Say, give me another drink."

"Fill her up, Joe, I want to put some life into my frame --
Such little drinks to a *** like me are miserably tame;
Five fingers -- there, that's the scheme - and corking whisky, too.
Well, here's luck, boys! and, landlord, my best regards to you!"

"You've treated me pretty kindly, and I'd like to tell you how
I came to be the ***** sot you see before you now.
As I told you, once I was a man, with muscle, frame and health,
And, but for a blunder, ought to have made considerable wealth."

"I was a painter -- not one that daubed on bricks and wood
But an artist, and, for my age, was rated pretty good.
I worked hard at my canvas and was bidding fair to rise,
For gradually I saw the star of fame before my eyes."

"I made a picture, perhaps you've seen, 'tis called the 'Chase of Fame.'
It brought me fifteen hundred pounds and added to my name.
And then I met a woman -- now comes the funny part --
With eyes that petrified my brain, and sunk into my heart."

"Why don't you laugh? 'Tis funny that the vagabond you see
Could ever love a woman and expect her love for me;
But 'twas so, and for a month or two her smiles were freely given,
And when her loving lips touched mine it carried me to heaven."

"Did you ever see a woman for whom your soul you'd give,
With a form like the Milo Venus, too beautiful to live;
With eyes that would beat the Koh-i-noor, and a wealth of chestnut hair?
If so, 'twas she, for there never was another half so fair."

"I was working on a portrait, one afternoon in May,
Of a fair-haired boy, a friend of mine, who lived across the way,
And Madeleine admired it, and, much to my surprise,
Said that she'd like to know the man that had such dreamy eyes."

"It didn't take long to know him, and before the month had flown
My friend had stolen my darling, and I was left alone;
And, ere a year of misery had passed above my head,
The jewel I had treasured so had tarnished, and was dead."

"That's why I took to drink, boys. Why, I never saw you smile!
I thought you'd be amused, and laughing all the while.
Why, what's the matter, friend? There's a teardrop in your eye,
Come, laugh, like me; 'tis only babies and women that should cry."

"Say, boys, if you give me just another whisky, I'll be glad,
And I'll draw right here a picture of the face that drove me mad.
Give me that piece of chalk with which you mark the baseball score --
You shall see the lovely Madeleine upon the bar-room floor."

Another drink, and with chalk in hand the vagabond began
To sketch a face that well might buy the soul of any man.
Then, as he placed another lock upon the shapely head,
With a fearful shriek, he leaped and fell across the picture -- dead.

I am learning the art of forgetting.
I am learning the art of letting go.

I am rising. I smash at you like high tide. Reminiscing about our tidal waves and yard arms, wrapped around our throats like business suit neckties. You see, I got lost, one more time, in our complicated little world and remembered that womb is not synonymous with ****. But rather with mother. And we played house together awhile. While the moon peeled off half it's dress. And I laughed at your 3rd grade poetry. And we regretted nothing, like Edith Piaf, on your couch, in the dark, entering worlds we'd torn apart.

It is worth mentioning that you were the first to ask me to your bed, rather than taken to mine, which proved prophecy wrong and wrong and wrong.

I was waiting for the kiss, like crimson stains, to ask me to say. But we muted them with burgundy.

I was willing to pay.
I was willing to show you.

But instead, we let wine separate us and bottle us up in action we didn't take, corking something perfect now, with the lie that it will be better in time. And I bought it.

Like hands raised in prayer.

And kissed oceans off of your cheeks, one.. salty.. drop.. at a time.

That was our crime.

And you. You came back, figuring you could pollute my stream. A virus set about my heart, freezing me like cold wet days when the wind cuts like goodbye. Come to sound yourself like a siren. But I can't hear your song. It no longer plays on my ears. I have forced it back into the foam that crests the waves and have drown myself in flesh and flesh.

So go ahead. Go ahead.

And we. We would have our night and it would drive you to an assumptive dissidence. Our harmony corrupted. Now an awkward, fumbling minor chord. Bleating like a lamb to slaughter.

I never wanted your soul.

I just wanted you not to leave right after we'd arrived.

Which is becoming less and less true as I run out the lines on my face and hands.

I wanted one, just one, to be there in the morning and then gone.

But I am folly.

And Gods teeth shake like parishioners in a collapsing church as I find my way back to the ******* poet I've become.

Consider these words like mercury, temperature rising.

And how I have made mistakes.

In darkened deserts. In hands on small of backs. In rain littered parking lots. Fireside. Ringside. In cold, cold water. In cleverness. In repeated attempts. In repeated attempts. Inrepeatedattempts.

I have made mistakes.

But take me in spite of my faults, Love.

Just until dawn. But be careful. Dawn breaks so easily. So lay quiet with me.

When the sun fills this echo chamber it will translate all this rich to ruin. My staggering meter to a retched stumble. And how should I finish? With a dying fall as my mentor would have me? Ragged claws and turpentine? No.

You see, I am more now than I was before.

And yet, I have never been what I could be.

Don't.

Don't let go.

Lest I forget.

there has been enough capped blue pens, half-chewed/.then
parisian grey mists--open windows, & markets, have you come
along in the cufflinks to take my hands? no, it's nothing

some days,i;d like to be kissed lonely, to sit at the preening
jut of your hips and **** songbird sketches into your neck,
thick swells. as rain comes within, just a teaspoon of salt to the water
and i hope it boils over. because i want to be burned, now

i want to be loved,; like silver lipped queens dipping ring
fingers into cyanide;. like the tumbling of lucifer from heaven
where he was the first shooting star--remarkable, god's favorite

there have been so many coffee rings on paper place mats,
and chances to go dancing when instead i cut to see myself bleed--

i dont want to be the lonely wing that tears against the wind,
the pale, wailing woman waiting on the side of the highway
to be taken home and put to bed. just grant me the white lighter,
or else let me step into the warm marshes with the wheatgrass.

let me turn to hay in the wintertime; ill hold you when you come
inside to sleep here. we just keep corking the bottles and putting
them in the fridge;when's the last time you wove flowers inyour
hair?, were you just a boy then who could afford to make those

mistakes? i swear i'd like to know those ways the welts twisted
your gut hotly--because they did for mine too, only in the ways i'd
never been touched at all. they write books on the women who
refuse to be loved. we stand against walls with our champagne

throats curved back, waiting/for a man to get his hands on it
but it won;'t do, it won't do. if you come closer, see, i'll make you
laugh to that pretty throat-bobbing way, while you're looking at
the mouth that leans forward to **** a quiet songbird;then tear

up the flesh of your neck. i want to be blood-soaked like that, a
white boat, a marsh field with the blue herons, their lonely wings.
where is the legend of lilith on the bookshelves of the innocent?,

don't tell me you can't find her. she;s here--in my mouth, look inside
i bite down on the pen cap. the water moans and spills over. they want
to be loved where love is ****** & the crime scene is the first

sunday of forever: this death more beautiful than winter; my surrender
the smallest collapse of the star--in your arms,yes,that's an alright
place--the black hole love a blank space, a long sunday. now that's

what i want, with you: fold the blanket, let's take a drive, let's go
to the field where god kissed lucifer to the ground. i want to be loved
like you know how the story goes: we become who we always were,
and then it kills us both.

"While at the beach you decide to write a message in a bottle. What would it say? Who would you like to find it?"

My feet pushed into the soft yet rough sand, I held the thick parchment and heavy pen in one hand and the bottle in my other, the glass shining slightly as the sun began to set. I sat down, waves crashing on the shore one after the other. The note was already written, all except for the ending. I was never good at goodbyes. I read over my message to someone I would never meet, maybe to no one at all. But I wrote every single thing in my life that I wish I had said. Perhaps a stray mermaid would find it and deliver it to Poseidon himself and he would give me a thousand second chances in a thousand different scenarios where I don't deserve it. Maybe I should have personally told each person these things, but perhaps they had lost their meaning through Time that only the Ocean itself could swallow the weight they bore. "I love you's" and "I miss you's" that I was too scared to utter in the night, only to be stuffed in a bottle never to be heard or seen again. I held the smooth pen in my hand as a rather large wave hit the sand. I began to write my goodbye, my farewell to my should-have-done's and should-have-said's.

"I am sorry that I let my own fears become more important, you are worth so much more."

I rolled up the parchment and put it in the bottle, corking it before hurtling it far into the ocean, the sun combusting into hues of orange on the horizon in front of me.

Take a glass of August, to sip at harvest time
a vessel overflowing, with a stem of wilting vines
the final press and corking up of summers cheapest wine,
too sweet, too ripe, too seasoned, with the changing year’s decay,
overblown and blousy with the taste of yesterday

I drift off, twisted and fixed on a fable.  
This rip off tale of a giant slain and laying on a table.
He used to feed a thousand families.  
but the needy, greedy couldn’t wait for the mans day
to come round, and for it to end naturally.
so they started hacking with their forks, corking
bottles left and right, feasting amply for a single night.
The sport of slaughter calmly done in spite.

Contra's
introductions to rebellions
hellraising rapscallions
juvenile unthinkwits.
Delinquents
produced by the century destined to become the toe tags in the step up society.

Who would you rather be?
would you rather be you with all that we know and nothing of the things that you thought that you knew?
Would you rather be me?
I'd rather be him
I'd rather be her
I'd rather imagine that together we'd share some emotional turmoil,
coiling around each other, limbs moving in time and then together in time we'd be
linked to the universe,stars in the stars, corking the moonbeams in glass stopper jars.
Rebelling
telling the rakes
informing them
all that it takes is
a little patience.

"While at the beach you decide to write a message in a bottle. What would it say? Who would you like to find it?"

My feet pushed into the soft yet rough sand, I held the thick parchment and heavy pen in one hand and the bottle in my other, the glass shining slightly as the sun began to set. I sat down, waves crashing on the shore one after the other. The note was already written, all except for the ending. I was never good at goodbyes. I read over my message to someone I would never meet, maybe to no one at all. But I wrote every single thing in my life that I wish I had said. Perhaps a stray mermaid would find it and deliver it to Poseidon himself and he would give me a thousand second chances in a thousand different scenarios where I don't deserve it. Maybe I should have personally told each person these things, but perhaps they had lost their meaning through Time that only the Ocean itself could swallow the weight they bore. "I love you's" and "I miss you's" that I was too scared to utter in the night, only to be stuffed in a bottle never to be heard or seen again. I held the smooth pen in my hand as a rather large wave hit the sand. I began to write my goodbye, my farewell to my should-have-done's and should-have-said's.

"I am sorry that I let my own fears become more important, you are worth so much more."

I rolled up the parchment and put it in the bottle, corking it before hurtling it far into the ocean, the sun combusting into hues of orange on the horizon in front of me.

Corking in the gaps
Filling in yesterday's cracks
The world looks pretty

Surrendering to a folly worse than evisceration, apologetic Germans pay for premisal crimes of ancestral bureaucrats...o tal vez: Germans embrace criminal Arabs who search for ermine women to disgrace. Given to folly worse than evisceration, apologetic Germans pay for conjectural crimes that haunt long-dead politicians. Homogenization & assimilation = miscegenation which destroys diversity because: spooning leads to swooning as forking leads to corking while: each Christus Mass we celebrate the sacrifices of Jesús (God's son) with fir trees in glitter; roasted fowl denuded of innards & stuffed with stale bread, chestnuts, celery & shell fish. Our children are ingratiated with baubles by the ancestors of the ancestresses who were mistresses of fathers who afforded them wifely status. These celebratory 12 days grant living men opportunities to exhume & inhume harlots; to replenish larder stock; to avenge treachery. Earthen waters slake thirst while the 3,000-mile-wide sun remands darkling. Who is a Jew? Jews populate each of the 4 anthropological designations (races). Self-proclaimed/self-anointed Jews know little of the Tora, the Talmud, & the crickets & the locusts that are Kosher under the Kashrut.

All my bro’s wanna be more than friends,
but when I fall silent, I’m the villain in the end.
Too many thoughts in my head, so I can’t speak the truth;
Instead, I weave lies ‘cause I’ve never trusted a single one of you.

Whispers and rumors
my name on your lips,
So I keep my distance, tighten my grip.
They say I’m the one who’s slipping away,
but I’ve been carrying the weight of their words every day.

I’m the problem, they say, always pleasing the crowd,
But who’s there for me when my world gets too loud?
I’m the one sparing their feelings, putting my own on hold,
Corking my emotions, while their stories are told.

In a world where trust is a fragile thing,
Where loyalty’s a word that doesn’t mean a thing,
I’ve been looking for brothers who’d stand by my side,
But all I find are shadows, where the real ones hide.

So here we go again, another trusted friend,
But when will they stop walking out or leaving me in the end?
I’ve learned to speak less, let my actions be heard,
‘Cause no one ever cared to listen to my words.

Let’s talk about it
how I put others first,
But in this game of loyalty, I’m always the one who’s cursed.