I was outside shoveling horse **** considering the more **** I piled up, the less you'd deal with when you came home.
2.  I woke up every night at 2, unfamiliar to having the bed all to myself, curled around a pillow like a buoy far from shore, sea sick in the choppy water, my vision reduced to abstract smudges. I focused on what must have been your silhouette as I gulped cups of salty water half a mile into the ocean, exhausted and drowning.
3. Medicinal marijuana alleviates  anxiety. I won't swear on depression, I believe, there are four types of depression. Blue dreams are most desirable, every day for 8 months.
4. You've probably seen this desktop orb that captures electrical currents, so when you touch it with your fingers violet bolts ignite against your glass fingerprint. With this light, 2 a.m. I scoop the sandman's hash into my pipe so i can get some rest from my past who caught up to me a few days ago.
5. Dreamer. Heartbreaker. Deep thinker. No harm has come -- to--- you.
6. When it gets dark again, run baby run. Spin around with my eyes on his, reveal the wreck behind my lids, at the thought of losing him, not to another woman, but to Fate. Hold him tight. Make love like you mean it, not to ****, but to tie two hearts together as they bleed. It's bloodstains on the white sheets, two people loved here like death sat by the dinner table, waiting on his appetizer.  
7. The cruel morning illuminates his naked body as he slept. I cried because I didn't know if dreamed of pleasing me. Why did I let things I couldn't control worry me?

a giant's eye
the sky
a fingerprint
in time
a pale blue dot
in view
part of God
and You.

The pleasant lingering smell of rose hips,
feels almost healing,
as we tread through the garden -
together barefoot and vulnerable.

I won’t shy away from the prickly green grass,
then in the same way,
let me tickle you with my stubble as we laugh -
together joyful and crude.

One has to be careful not to lose themselves completely
to rub your intricate fingerprint away into another's skin in patterns,
because although the body feels heavy when weak kneed -
the weight of another’s soul is too much to bear alongside your own.

I won’t hold your head underwater in the fresh lake
then in the same way,
let me breathe when we lay by its side -
together entangled and safe.

The passing time made you my involuntary complex,
feels nearly daunting
as I adore this so shamelessly -
us together - balanced and in love.

i hate to break it to you kid,
i'm not mindful of narcissus'
economics that's all oh so very modern...

but women are their own orbit,
more chance to find a single mother
than a single father...
it's against nature to make the man
without god,
as it's against nature to make the woman
with god...
thus we have the tectonic plates
making man with god, accepting
or doubting, church or laboratory...
and woman... an eroticism of jaw eaten
faces... but a kiss to be a fingerprint
likened to erasing the dangling of the bitten
jaw... erased only once by the aphrodisiac of sirens'
wail of aquatic opera so damnable that only
one man heard it, while others scolded
being in audience with beeswax...
and by second chance, erased, indeed,
but only by the suffragettes as the new nuns...
as the new nuns dare comply to change,
like every male become female and
vice versa,
and the popes disclose their continual
loss of matrimony in their misogynistic
involvement in ******; if i'm not the pope
and do no encounter such practices,
i'm not a pope at all!

only a ninth spoke as the necromancer,
and of the nine spoke clearest,
as it spoke, it dawned on me
that sauron was invisible for the sword
to strike, a gravity enveloping,
a gravity envelope, rather than a skin
of infinite diadem sharpenings,
for nine rigs unto men,
seven unto dwarfs, three unto elves,
but none unto the orcs... strange....
ORC ARKHAN MORDOR ARRAC!

We are big.
Like mountains.
If I am the mountain side, you were the wild fire.
Hot. Piercing.
Rendering my solid flesh to molten liquid and then to dust.
But only that I might grow again.
And more beautiful than before.

We face our compulsion. Spinning like mad children, in a ring of rosies, dangling dolls in the infinite black of space.
My binary star. My coupled light spinning my opposite.
Twice as bright.
Twice as beautiful.
But from a distance, we seem as one.

Perhaps this soft light I imagine surrounding you are our gods. Mouths open. Shamed by your beauty, that they could not have created you. Only dreamed you into being. They seem like fate, don't they?

And I am consumed with the constant reminder
of your absence. It plays on my tongue like bitter wine.
Leaving me drunk with want and yearning.
And so much more.

And this madness. Like a force undefined. Hurling our bodies. Like freight trains destined to collide. We can be bigger than mountains. We can be the trees and the sky and the pulse and the moon. All lit by twin stars spinning.

Your lack of light is desperate. A quiet void.
If I were a black-hole. You would be the event horizon
of my unmaking.
A voiceless abyss.
Incomplete.
And slowly growing.


If my eyes were moons. You would be my eclipse.

And this pulse. This landscape caught by rhythm. This thump. Like beating bodies. In carnal rhythm. Remembering each caress like history.

You are my legend. Your touch has written confession on my body, that I read like litany. Cuneiform.
Your fingerprint, an ancient code, written on my eyelids. Spoken on the tip of my tongue that I eat like Eucharist. That I drink like communion.

And my morning prayer is a mourning dirge.
Sung like a sailor for your return.
That you might find the wind of my breathlessness
And return to me
once more.
For I am motionless without you.

Yet.
I am mighty. Like wild beasts. I am stronger then before. I grow wise. I expand my eyes to encompass the horizon, that I may see every curve of your landscape. That I may feel every burn of your wild fire.

My longing is armor, that I wear. To conceal my beast. Like desire. Hungry. Waiting.

Tame me.

I miss your mane.
I miss your smell.
I miss your pulse, beating opposite mine.
I miss your light.

My shadow was massive. Stretching to the corner of maps.
My arms, a wingspan, that crossed time. Waiting to encircle you to me.

I have no light to cast a shadow.
I have no reason to fly.
My heart is barren.
Kept vacant for your return.
If not for you then always.
A singular place that once held your step.
A precious palace that you once danced in.

Spin.
Spin, Wildfire.
Devour my skin again with your hungry touch with your wanting kiss.
I wish to be reborn as yours.
Again.

Circle me that we may light the sky again.
And grow our horizons to outstretch the corner of our eyes.
Until we are blind.

Give me sight.
Let me see.
Let me see you.

That we might see our own light.

As one.

As yours.

Burn brighter than before.

SHOPPING LIST

after the funeral
your fingerprint lives on
in a jar of Pond's Cold Cream

a shopping list
dug out of a drawer
now a precious artifact

I an emotional archaeologist
unearthing a smile
buried in the past

all our I wills
become the past
tense

the touch of your skin
still so real to me
a teardrop trickles into my ear

Death
unreals you then
makes you more real

I call your mobile
just to hear you say
you are not there

when words are few,
or stuck in dictionaries
unused or unknown
like
compassion,

tyrants and wife-beaters
scream
with iron fists,
silencing fluent lips
in clotting streams of  blood

...and machetes,
severing lucid limbs
from able bodies
in active states of articulation

...and guns,
the kryptonite of cowards
and buffoons,
the callow voice of philistines
and goons,
blasting cogent words
and vocal women
into oblivion

....and laboratories
where forensics of
fingerprint and dna
scream loudest,

sending tyrants and wife-beaters away
to sleep with the devil
in a shallow cell
on earth
or
hell below...

~ P (#Pablo#OTAWB)

(8/11/2013)

Katherine writes songs about wheat fields and her father’s blisters
From the four-by-six closet beneath the staircase.
Aaron doesn’t write anymore.

Katherine draws music notes to record
The tune of footsteps and creaking oak,
While Aaron feels the rough grain of maple window frames
And avoids his reflection in the double-paned glass.

Katherine holds tight to her pen
Like a man who’s lived a good life holds on to his final breath.
Aaron, he never found it that hard to exhale.

Katherine knows love like she knows the Sun,
While Aaron, who once flew wax-winged,
Stopped studying mythology
And found trust in extinguished light bulbs.

Katherine draws stick figures in the collected dust
Of cracked-cloth book covers
And embraces every particle that kisses her fingerprint.
Aaron wears black leather gloves
Like a desensitizing second-skin.
But they both close their eyes
When the wind brushes their cheeks.

When Katherine cries it’s wet and sloppy
And when it’s over she usually giggles
At the feeling of being human.
Aaron’s eyes are desert moons;
If he believed in a god he’d pray for rainstorms,
But instead he picks tumble weeds from his teeth
With the ribcage he found when the vultures were through.

Katherine webs outlines with plot twists and foreshadows
While Aaron knows some stories
Are made up as they’re written.

Katherine collects crushed asphalt from both sides of divided highways
And mixes it with ****** wax to varnish her innocence.
Aaron drives the back-roads and keeps one eye on the rearview mirror.
He finds solace in sharp turns.

Tonight, Katherine curls her toes as she writes a song about
loving up until your very last breath
And caresses her lips.
Aaron chews on his and slides open the window.
They both recall the taste of someone else’s skin from the salt in the air.
Katherine’s candle flickers and pops when she moves
Her hand through the light to cast stories on the wall.
Aaron crawls down the shadowed side of hallways
And feels the grey grow in his hair as he starts up the staircase.

Step by step by step by
each breath is
step by step
loved a little bit less
An all but silent cacophony of creaking oak.

Katherine etches a treble clef but her pupils dilate
When she senses the unfamiliar feeling of a second heartbeat.
With stitched silk stockings
she tip-toes up the same song.
Aaron hears music for the first time in so long
And turns to see where goose bumps come from.

Katherine crescendos at the top of the stairs and
Stares into two full, bright desert moons.
Aaron finds it hard to let go of the breath it takes to say,
“Don’t be afraid.”
Katherine tumbles like fingers down piano keys,
But for a split-second in the moment their eyes met
They both forgot the weight of loneliness.

oh right... i thought i was on a ****** nod for a minute,
what, a, blank...

she thought i looked like Jim Morrison when met,
i worked out, played squash,
a really healthy example of zoology -
is that, the logic of caged animals?
a bit like the logic of soulless animals
with a god, soulless animals without one,
and the other two 90° variations of the square?
they're inspereble (blah) / momentary
dyslexia, naturally with English - inseparable,
pairing, ah! but isn't much of modern
psychology a bit like zoology? i mean the cages,
the untested theories, stemming from
roots of Jungian and Freudian *******?
Edward Hopper sketched himself with the joke
on visual inferences from these two
molesters of fair game - Michael Myers
just walked in and smashed their heads in...
win win scenario... but psychology is very
much like zoology - keeping a caged animal,
reverse baby onomatopoeia from what the adults
equate mama with... ego... that's their childishness,
babies say *mama adults say ego,
as if no dead Latin bureaucrat is listening
with a chisel in hand to double-fold missing
the concept of handwriting - it wasn't alive
back when it was all on papyrus, or stone,
it had a brief existence in aristocratic circles
when we wrote with quills and connected pretty well,
we soared with geese! we soared with swans!
we perched on trees like jerky crows!
god, it was beautiful, but then digital came in,
newspaper print, we felt claustrophobic connecting
letters, like jigsaw puzzles put together
some things didn't connect - unless it was a case
of a familial affair, ******, less game of hide & seek
and more a game of lookalike...
we even had perfumed paper back then...
right now you read a newspaper for too long
and you're ready to stamp your fingerprint in a police
station... and i thought money was *****,
newspapers are second-best... ***** currency of
the omni-literate populace - starving journalists
who parasitically feed of of celeb culture,
provided with excess stimulation by paparazzi
nudes... but zoology and psychology are alike,
cages in both cases, restrictions: either no god
or no soul, either some body or nobody -
trained cognitive monkey... does a fanciful trick
sometimes: yep, gets up onto a table in a nightclub
and does a cancan interpretation of the goose step
(stechschritt - all those in favour of the ministry
of simply silly get drowned in the Thames)
as if jogging on a treadmill, in one place -
the mantis in a game of chess - the mantis in a game of chess -
a game kings believed having the earliest known
satellite image from way way above - the best
way of looking at the abstraction of insects.
still, zoology is very much psychology, or vice versa,
cages and prior theories with their guillotines of
Aztec like sacrifice - i told you! those pyramids were
built for capital punishment, excess on architectural side
of what a scaffold could look like, fear inducers,
deterrents, but at least not Egyptian tombs!
and how many bars in this cage of yours can you can
with psychology: the logic of having soul, in practice
the logic of not having a soul, i.e. treatment of thinking -
the behavioural study of a man sitting in silence -
after an hour he folds a leg over the other and continues
sitting in silence - psst... it's called listening therapy...
or talk... 3 hours pass some rain falls... neither patient
or the psychiatrists is any wiser... but the latter gets paid,
the former just looks like a **** clown without makeup.
so she hooked up and wanted to start a band...
she had keyboards in mind... that was already a bad idea...
she thought i was some sort of version of Jim Morrison...
well, if i was, or if i am... i'm doing this thing solo.

We did not ask for agreements or signatures
even a due diligence, check out each others
entrails, internet outcomes, criminal records
social security numbers
marriage licenses, children's ages, moles
on our mountains of doubt
even a fingerprint on a bare breast
phone numbers, mates and mistresses
drinking and smoking habits
salad preferences, vegan, bogan or  whatever.

We did, however, listen to that heartbeat
the words we spoke, the pictures we drew
finished, the colours that we painted
between rainbows
and the children we dreamed
who would look like you and me
if ever born
and how smart they would be
and as naughty as those little titters
of laughter, that cleared every checkbox.
on this shopping list for a mate!

We knew that this partnership existed
there was nothing we could do
to unbreak this bond that grew
from a tiny little seed
into this one big giant momentum
of togetherness.

That's a worthwhile partnership
several levels above commercial simplicity.

Author Notes

The romance continues.......
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, a month ago

i miss your lips
the way they'd smoothly dance
like a genie in a lamp
as you'd sing
and speak

how sweet your memory tastes
though the reality has long since faded

i cling to my effervescent exaggerations of our tangled past
replaying time to time
on the dream-screen of my mind
as i snack lightly on the salty remarks of my youth
and i laugh

it hurts
but it feels so healthy

you fade through the moon-mist
and dismiss your own existence
once again proclaiming that you are nothing
but an extension of it all
a fingerprint of the wilky-way
just a strand of DNA
swimming through the wake of infinite expansion

i miss it

the beer-breath incantions you'd softly slur after dark
the kisses you'd plant along my edges
like the vines that trace the hedges
in the front lawn of that dusty place we'd fake our love

nostalgia always begins so inviting
untill you're finally feeling sea-sick
from the over-ingestion of false sweets
and pure imagination

now we're so far gone
living in a different reality entirely
i don't think i'd even know your face if i saw it
i know you only by the way your shape fits in the frame
another handsome man
trapped forever in the reels of film of my mind

but i'll remember you
you're woven into the wood works
    
     drunkenly dancing through a serendipitous sea of names
     stands the lamen's term for your current shape
your birth-given name
credited with a handfull of scars
left behind by a man who forced me to grow

as a dreamer, in a particle splits the path of thought,
like mud under my fingernails and crystal shells.
Arkansas is driving me insane
come one come all she's the
fare-st if you fall.

neck burned as a fingerprint, itches sore in trash days,
conspiracies and deputies
looking still more strange.

can determined minds build a staircase of reason?
up to a future, teasing
me out in the open
with your temper words.

Scars
Raised lines of white puffy flesh
Scattered across my body
I cannot tell if they contain the demons or release them.

I know very little of you or of love
But I know that you should not have to hold my hand
and feel every battle the I have lost with my demons
Contained in white puffy flesh.

And when you put your hand on the small of my back
You should not feel useless carved across my skin
Written in my white puffy flesh.
You should not trace the thoughts of a girl who finds solace in secret sharpness.

So run.

Run.

Before I trap you in my Infiniti.

I do not have a fingerprint, you see, only scars in the shape of my life.

My secret sharpness.

My hair runs down to my ****, so that I can hide my back.
But what of the times that we rest side by side.
And I crack you toes and you fear arthritis and boredom.
I'll put my hair up is that I can trace your bones.
I am exposed.

So I will run.
Before I latch my veins to you heart.
Hurry!
Before we become one.
Before my scars stretch and envelope you.

I can't tell if our white puffy flesh contains or releases my demons.

Every night I empty my heart, but by morning it’s full again
Slow droplets of you seep in through the night’s soft caress
At dawn I overflow with thoughts of us
And aching pleasure that gives me no respite
Love cannot be contained
The neat packaging of desire splits asunder
Spilling crimson through my days
Long languishing days that are now bruised tender with yearning
Spent searching for a fingerprint, a scent, a breath you left behind.

– Shamim Sarif, “I Can’t Think Straight”

"fingerprint tracking technology"
articles are so foolish.
They can seek my fingerprints,
all they like
but it's my footprints
along the ashphalt by the shore-
it is those which will never fade.

They'll lead you to my place,
through my visceral dreams
and to the darkest places on earth.

And if you'll walk my path tonight,
you may also see the sea
looking black.
And if you've the right sorta soul,
At dark ocean waves
it'll wave back.

The sky yields no stars
but don't fret;
this was never to be a poem of beauty.
No, just of darkness,
and stars
that a midnight sky lacks.

I am less than honorable
My intent less than clean.
And the canker of my life?
Greater than you've ever seen!

Virtues; I have none.
Morals; I have none.
Light: I have one.
It's in the nightlight of her heart.

She follows me around
like a sweet haunting ghost.
Sometimes, i forget she is there
watching me, without thought.
I am a blank space to her;
For her.
A blank space to stare into.

I was her greatest gift, she once said.
I remember the way she said it,
All the words tender
and running together.
Yes; and with no voice. Only
the movement of lips
into silent sleeptalking mumbles
in my sleepwalking hours.

So my nightlight,
won't you come with me
and haunt me beside the shores once more?
My darling, remind me of how worthless I am
And let me rot in your arms.
(without fingerprints or footprints,
i could never touch your heart.)
Always, in her arms.

aristotle and plato were convinced that the circle was the heavenliest shape in all of creation. it was eternal. but, see, the ellipse is that much better. the oval is the imperfect circle, the imperfect shape that instead of having one heart has two, the sound of an open mouth as you gasp, the shape of fingerprint bruises.

the earth moves in an ellipse. all of the planets do. as we spin around the sun, you and i are planets. no wonder when i see you from afar, i can't breathe; we're just in space.

you are neptune. you are deep blue and stormy sea clouds that look like sweat and work, but you are mysterious and beautiful and so far away. when you are neptune, i am uranus, being pulled by the way you move.

sometimes i am saturn. i am swollen with the dust and dirt that make up my outsides. when i am saturn, you are jupiter: a friend who is bigger than i am.

we're space stations and metal, too cold to touch until we get hot from the movement of each other. we're satellites and moons and space-time fabric.

aristotle and plato were convinced that the circle was the heavenliest shape in all of creation. i think that they're so wrong. the shape of your hips, your words, your kindness, your taste, your mouth, your body, your creativity, your sweetness all end up tasting like eternity and heaven.

my heart beats in circles sometimes. but, when i look at you, my heart beats like you and i and ovals.

blurred through the mumbling atomic cafe
i thought i heard you say
i am become deaf
destroyer of words
but you were breath
become butterfly effect
spiraling within the stereophonic white-noise drone
of a static radio station
tuned to the music of the silent colossal rotation
of the planets, stars, sun and moon
behind the drawn curtain of a vanished polaroid

still these beating hearts to a murmur
slow these breathing lungs to a whisper
and attach the cello strings of your bloodstream
to that glittering confetti cloud of satellites
strobing, circling the sphere of our atmosphere
strung out on geo-synchronicity
the turning tunnel of the tides
the aeon-spanning volcanic swirl of magma
subsonically writhing
beneath the magnetic pull of the ocean floor
and just...listen...

can you hear the flaming  crackle
of the fire burning in our bellies?
if we slit our stomachs open
the flames that spill from our hari-kiri'd entrails
will fill the darkness in the corner of our closet
and burn it to ashes

in a dream
i saw us laughing together many years from now

when the blast-furnace of our blood, sweat, tears and acid dreams gapes wide
we will laugh in it's face
at the absurdities
of death and taxes

and as the years push through
we will laugh
as we go blind in our old age
growing brighter than the glow
from within the dollhouse home we assembled
from sticks n stones

and we will grow gray together
and fill the soles in our shoes
the holes in our soles
with the dirt, rust, ash, concrete and angel dust
of these city streets

and we will laugh like pyromaniacs
as we **** on burial plots
soil our own graves
and erase our fingerprint smudges
from the blueprints
of our jailbreak escape plan

flames will erupt from the holes in our heads
consume us
spread in a tectonic shock-wave
and lick the pale toes of angels and dreaming junkies
hovering on ghost clouds of ***** soot
just above the foot of our bed

the outlines of our bodies will liquify, disintegrate
and reform as the jagged teeth of a cityscape skyline
crowned crookedly upon the head of a crippled pigeon
ascending in a stuttering climb
towards a heaven
that does not exist
for us

shaking ash and bone-dust from twisted feather
our flames will spread further
devour prehistoric forests
**** roots and tree trunks to bare bone
and march in a coronation parade
upon the city gates
behind a revolutionary brigade
of angry red army ants

finally, those flames
will surround a broken boombox
lost behind a landfill-mound
of moth-chewed cardboard moving boxes
containing the soft stains of dream and memory
tagged, painted, and graffitied
in white out, in sharpie
duct tape peeling from perforated speakers
the flashlight-sized battery compartment
an empty coffin

i didn't cry the day you died. i'm sorry. the reality that you had passed away at barely twenty-five didn't really hit me, even at your eulogy and that still haunts me. they say that denial is the first stage of addiction but I assumed that you knew that death was a possible side-effect of your prescription. about two weeks after your wake, it hit me like a train. i was riding the n judah to the end of the line at ocean beach when I passed a throw-up piece that you had painted a few years before in the train tunnel near haight and cole. it was a big letter "a" in lowercase with an exclamation point next to it. i once asked you what it meant. you shrugged and said, "i just like the shape of it," and something clicked. it was then that i realized (that)

the flames of our light, love and laughter
move faster than the speed of life
and those flames pass us by in the blink of an eye
if we're not quick enough to catch 'em
and return the letters like stars
we borrowed, typed, stole, scribbled and scrawled across the pages of the sky
back to the sprawling library of the night
where they belong    
where we belong

When I was nine
My mother asked, “What do you want to do when you’re older”
And I told her
Honestly
With my nine-year-old smile
As wide as an ocean
My nine-year-old heart
As deep as infinity
I told her, “mama, I wanna touch the stars, I wanna find pirate treasure, I wanna climb mountains and live in the treetops”
My mother,
She looked at my nine-year-old smile
She held my nine-year-old heart in her hands
and she whispered,
“Baby, how are you gonna do all that?”
I didn’t have an answer
You see,
At age nine,
I didn’t think about practicality
Or actuality
Or logicality
Or any big word with an -ality stuck to it
At age nine I had aspirations that I rode like angel wings
Dreams that would carry me to the stars I longed to hold
I was nine years old with a mind full of colors
And a mouth made to love
My heartbeat was the drum I marched to
The melody to my song
I told my mother once again “mama I wanna touch the stars”
Flashforward
I am a freshman in high school now
I stand before you,
Age 15
A year and a half away from driving
3 years from applying
4 years from finding what I’m gonna do with my life
Since then
My nine-year-old smile has dwindled
My nine-year-old heart has shriveled
These dreamers shoulders have hunched
Under the weight of textbooks and GPA's
The fingers that spewed color like a 64 pack of Crayola crayons
Aimlessly type out the final paragraph of an essay
The cavern in my chest, that was filled with infinite possibilities and wonders and questions that I longed to answer
Now sits
Empty
Instead of looking for mountains to climb
My aged nine-year-old mind
Searches for the college that will accept me
Not even the real me
Not the seeker of possibility
Not the tree climber
Not the wannabe fingerprint artist
They will take prim and proper not-nine-year-old me
the one who tells her mom she’s gonna major in finance but she hates math
The one who’ll have a steady 9-5 that’ll numb her skull and make her contemplate if death can come from boredom
A coffee tainted room of pencil skirts and high heels
Instead of her favorite blue jeans and Chuck Taylors
A nice job that’ll pay well but only for the price of her nine-year-old originality
But she only tells her mom that because it sounds like a real job
A not nine-year-old treehouse living
Cave exploring fantasy
I mean, I have to move on from that dream.
It's time to be practical
Actual
Logical
Now instead of making up new words
I learn definitions of the ones that already exist
Instead of painting with my own colors
I use the ones handed to me
Because its practical
Actual
Logical
Its how it should be.
I am no longer nine years old
Far from it at that
And yet,
I still long to touch the stars,
just a little less
I still want to search for treasure
But just as an afterthought
My eyes are still glowing with wonder
Just a little bit duller
Nine-year-old me isn’t dead
She just
grew up

why and how should you know?

behind beneath in between the teeth

my fingerprint whorls and whirls

under other's names and
my secret identities

a word a phrase a hatchet a blade a
pruning knife,
a confession of confusion,
relieved by my cutting saves.

my stamp secreted my ***** implanted

my style unseen yet bidden,
my name hidden, my children born
but still is my heart,
like the parent that
has given up the child.

but you love my
screamed and un screamed, and my undoing of
the doing you not see me named

nature in paces and means
admit pleasure at my scrivinings
there but for the grace of whom

but to me

for am I but the
editor
o'er my bones that
*nobody knows
nobody sees,
nobody knows,
but me^

you tread,

crunching my invisibility
to smoke and smithereens,
the pimple on the poem
lifeless turned luscious,
yet, gnome gone the next day

Read more.
Words are the map fragments of wisdom you need to navigate your way in a world constantly sending you searching for that which you don’t yet have a name.

Write more.
And don’t keep it to yourself.  Your voice deserves to be heard too so scream in cursive and whisper in all CAPS, bleed through paper and heal through the spines of notebooks
you’re spiraling onto something, breathe in commas and step over periods because you’re not over
you’re the most beautiful run-on sentence

paint more.
You’re an artist whose perspective warrants an audience,
so leave cerulean fingerprint traces in your titanium touches,
mix gesso with mars and be alizarin against charcoal

stand out. And stand up.

Find adventure in the every day.  Skydive through small talk, zip line through steps up stairs without an end,
life is the ellipses in silences your eyes seek to make stories,

explore.
This world. People. This city you’ve landed yourself and take calculated risks.

Tiptoe through moshpits and stomp through meadows.
Cartwheel into concrete conversations headfirst eyes wide open,

be vulnerable, to those who deserve to see the rawest parts of you.
And leave the ones who’d rather exploit them behind

leave others’ opinions behind.  Let them be the ones collecting dust.
You are stronger than you’ll ever know and ten-fold what they’d ever expect.

So let them guess.
Be the question mark in the corner they can’t place.

Your story is complicated.  But that makes you interesting.
What doesn’t challenge you doesn’t change you and you’ve been challenged each and every day

you get out of bed and speak when so easily you could’ve lost your voice the night you lost your body.
It took you some time and a few nameless faces to claim it again and you’re still working out what that means,
you’ve always had your own way
but all the ****** assault pamphlets name this normal.

[For once it’s a label you don’t detest.]

So this year be normal if you so choose, but also be weird.
Be loud, not small, be confident, and not sorry.
Take up space.
You deserve to.

You are Woman and you are Strong.

Push, but don’t ever shove.
Love unapologetically and fiercely.
But don’t force what a boy is not willing to give.

Find someone who will pay your heart the same attention he does your body.
Scratch that,
find yourself.

Read your body’s brail, your chapters of goosebumps, and play chess with checkers across your skin.
Unlearn and relearn and unlearn and learn to remember you are enough and it is your turn.

Look in the mirror and accept the pieces looking back are in progress.

Keep writing.

Watch the moon make way for the sun. Be brighter than both.
Let your irises draw constellations across galaxies unwritten.
Move so far forward, you stop having a reason to look back.

Forgive that which you cannot change.
You’ll make more mistakes, scrape more knees and trip on chainlink chokers, your jewelry limbs you haven’t yet untangled.
But forgive yourself.

Kiss the boy. Kiss the girl. Kiss no one.
Live in the present tense and with future declaratives.
Appreciate the thousands of little moments still looking to be made yours. Make them yours.

You are worth all the struggle.  Don’t forget.

Be kind but don’t rewind.  
Stay authentic even when you don’t make sense and your words aren’t oil enough to separate

paddle through the waves eyes closed if you have to,
the salt may burn your scars and you may lose your bearings, but keep going.
Maybe this is the year you’re going to learn to swim.

When he entered the room, she was naked. She sat stripped of her mythology and the bare curves of her hips made his hands shake. He hid them in his pockets like seizures in winter and told himself it was just the morning coffee.

"Jesus Christ..." His jaw slacked and tightened and he waited for a response; something witty like, odd time to pray or not quite, but maybe his cousin or oh, honey, he moved out years ago, but we still get his mail.
But soon waiting gave way to waiting, as waiting is wont to, and things became uncomfortable. Her deadbolt eyes. She blinked in slow motion, no lash out of place, and he felt foolish.

See, he never expected her to be a woman, and he almost said as much, had the look on her face not shut him up beautifully. Besides, at this point he was pretty certain that cities definitely don't speak--not English anyway--and even then, his concrete dialect was, at best, as atrocious as cracked pavement. He lisped with too much wind and not enough asphalt.

He looked around for somewhere to sit but the only chair wasn't even really a chair, it was a stool with a questionable third leg that sat over-turned and tucked in the far corner and he found himself at an impasse. Retrieving it would not only involve taking his hands from their linen hideaways, but she hadn't even offered him a seat and he didn't want to be rude; he being a man of manners with the cotillion lessons to prove it. On the other hand, there was a more-than-decent chance that his knees would buckle at any moment. He cleared his throat.

"May I?" he motioned and crept around her with a weird, dainty tip-toe. He would later reflect on and regret this odd step choice because it was undeniably ladylike, unlike this lady whose face seemed carved from marble and gave nothing away; she just cast her eyes slightly downward. He uprighted the chair that wasn't really a chair and checked the sturdiness of the questionable leg and shrugged in questionable approval and dragged it back to where he was and returned his hands to where they were and felt, aside from the girly walk, that went surprisingly well.

So it was in silence that he was left to sit. Sit and think. Think about small things, trivial ****. He thought about the small stain on his pants and hoped to God it was toothpaste. He thought about the itch in the dead center of his back where he can never scratch without looking like he has a severe case of cerebral palsy. He thought about his pockets, full of trembling leaves that fluttered with spare change winds and hung delicately from his autumn tree arms. He thought about bigger things too, like how if two people on exact opposite ends of the earth simultaneously each dropped a piece of bread, for a brief moment the whole world was just a really big sandwich. But mostly he thought about the difference between hard and mean.

Hard is the bottomless tumblers of American dream fathers, breathing scotch like fire and promises that were only ever half-way held true. But mean... Mean is a different kind of machine entirely. Mean, he realized, is one solid kick in the nuts past hard. Hard is when your ice cream drops mid-lick and falls in the cinematic drama of a-hundred-and-twenty frames per second to the unforgiving pavement, and even though there is a split seconds chance to reach out and catch it, you don't because, let's face it, sticky hands are gross. But mean is the little junior sonofabitch dog that comes a-waddling on in, laps up your deliciously sweet sidewalk treat and stares you right in the face while he does it. Mean makes you realize the sticky fingers would have been worth it. And before he could decide which category this Angel City would fit in, she stood, with a slight smile curling at the corner of her mouth and one hand behind her back. She slinked over to him with snake ankles and reached out and ran her fingers along his jawline and hooked his chin upward and kissed him.

It wasn't the delicate, thin-lipped kiss of embarrassed virgins and ex-stripper-turned-born-again-Christians. It also wasn't the Californication kiss filled with carnal tongue that he might have expected had the idea that she was going to do anything but intimidate the utter **** out of him even crossed his mind. It was somewhere between the two. Between shelter and apocalypse.  Viperous with a tinge of motherly protection (which, actually, gave him some confusing feelings). When she pulled away he felt the slight clink of metal against his teeth.

A bullet. Round and smooth, he rolled it between his thumb and forefinger and watched his fingerprint peel off and mark the lead skin with little, oily mazes. He looked up to her, unsure of what to say or what to make of whatever the hell just went down. She stared silently because, you know, that's her thing and he felt he had to say something because, you know, manners.

"I thought we said no gifts." He laughed. She didn't. He felt like an idiot immediately. Then, like the other half heart of a best friend necklace, she drew from her back a snub-nosed revolver. Her thumb flicked with outlaw elegance and the empty chamber rolled open.

"Let's play a game."
It was all she said. He didn't pay attention to whether she spoke in impeccable English or if the words were lit in the electric neon of Sunset Boulevard. It didn't matter and he didn't care. He didn't even notice when he took the gun and slid the round in until after he spun the chamber and slung it shut. When she lifted his arm without touching him and he felt like he was her marionette. When the snub nose found it's way to his mouth, he was certain of it. The feeling of the metal barrel against his bare teeth made his skin crawl and his stomach turn, yet even still he grinned.

He grinned because he saw his hand and his hand grinned because it wasn't shaking, not anymore.

He grinned and cocked the hammer back.

Your little finger met mine
and I died a little at your touch.
Your ring finger twisted around mine
and I shut my eyes in pleading prayer.
Your ******* joined
and I held my breath until I saw stars.
Your index finger entangled my right hand in your left
and I let a tear slip from the corner of my eye.
Your thumb brushed the back of my hand
and I went - quietly and in my sleep.

Fingerprint upon fingerprint my sadness drifted into your grooves.

A gentle pull on my sleeve
and your arm enveloped my entirety.
A brief moment passed
and I slipped my hand on to your bare chest.
My pieces fell into place.

With the last piece comfortable,
the tears came rushing out.
This is where I belong.

That is where I am to be only once.

It is
a single blood-red rose,
Lounging in a field
of Sunday morning daisies.

It is
a venerable novel,
ripe with life and adventure.
Love splattered across the pages.
The binding,
begging and writhing to free the secrets
coddled between the lines.

It is
how your mother takes her coffee.
A little cream,
no sugar,
and the promise of
9 AM jitters.

It is
Expecting a hurricane,
only, having to recover
from a day in the sunlight.
  
It is
a tiny footprint in the sand,
a greasy fingerprint on a doorknob,
the intricacies of a fragile snowflake.

But above all,

It is
You.

Someone may look like me but that's
as far as it goes: no further, no less
my own DNA, biometric reading, oh! yes
A genetic fingerprint all of my own

My characteristics definitely home - grown
I wish I had thicker eyebrows, more
muscular body, more intelligence and
behave less oddly, but I think of the

good things and rely on others to tell
me what they are - not too many, I don't
really want to be a star, just me -
sort of reliable, sort of always there

I' m glad I have the time to stand and stare
you may think I'm odd - but there's only one me -
thank God!

..........  I believe that killing has perhaps always been in my blood. Once out the womb I was forever drawn to the fascination of death. As a kid I'd tend to **** bugs, which turned into birds and other rodents around my yard. My mom thought it was disgusting but could never get me to stop. On the other hand, my dad figured it was just a boy thing and it was good that i enjoyed being outdoors.
      My father was always an outdoors type himself. He enjoyed taking me fishing on the weekends. As well as the gun range to practice my shot for when hunting season rolled around. Now that was heaven on earth to me. I'd never miss any shot i took and my dad was glad to be carrying a legacy down to me.
      It still haunts me to this day that my parents were murdered in my own home. Why wasn't I there to save them? Why couldn't it had been me? So many questions and very little answers. There was only one answer I could ever think of.. Revenge.
       Asking around only made the people suspicious of me. Being an 18 year old kid trying to solve my parents ****** seemed stupid at the time. So i joined the military to learn all the aspects of war. ******* the enemy, traitors, even fellow soldiers left for dead. If i ever had a soul it was gone by now.
   Returning back to my home town was nostalgic. Twenty years older and I had one mission on my mind. My old house was sold in auction to a bank but based on the gruesome murders nobody had yet to occupy it. Perfect chance for me to scope out for clues. Any evidence I could find that could help in the search would be worth it.
     Lucky for me, nothing was touched in that house since that day. Felt off that it wasn't cleaned up and labeled for sale. The realtors had visited the house and left nothing disturbed. Was the bank covering something up?
        It was easy for me to find blood that had never been cleaned up but testing old blood was rather tough. Fingerprints were numerously left by the detectives, my family, the realtors and me. After a few weeks of searching over and over i came across a dusty old bandana. Why it was never in the hands of the cops , puzzled me.
     A few hours later i had found a partial fingerprint from the corner of the coffee table. I picked it up with a piece of tape and put it away. Something about  finding those two things together after weeks of nothing sounded rather fishy. I figured i'd give it to my old friend in the force but I wondered if he was someone I could still trust.  Could it have been a setup to throw me off my vendetta?

     Over the phone I had asked my old buddy from the force to meet me at the Moonlight Diner. From there I had asked if he could return an old favor. I was able to get his troubled son a job at the base and that shaped him up pretty quick.
         " Hey Dan, long time no see, how's it been?"
         " Hell of a lifetime ago, thought you forgot about me."
         " Nah, i'd never. I just got into town and been getting stuff together y'know how it is."
          " Excuses," he says and points to the table to sit.
Our waitress than approaches us with menus and asks us about our drinks.
          " Mm, some sweet tea would be lovely, you Dan?"
          " Sweet tea? Hell nah my diabetes would wake up and **** me. I'll just have a coffee. Black."
  He readjusts his hat and looks back at me.
         " So, what caused you to want to meet up this late at night?"
         " Well, i'm here to call in that favor you owe me."
         " Favor? ****, well what is it?"
          " Well, I've been looking into my parents ******..," and i stare at him awhile to see if he budges. " and anyways i'm pretty sure i found some evidence."
          " Evidence? You must be a **** fool, now you know its been decades since that happened. You need to learn to let that go. I understand it's still tough after all these years but the only thing you're going to find is dead rats and a bunch of dust in that place."
         " This bandana wasn't here a few weeks ago when I searched. Isn't that fishy? And look, I found this fingerprint. Maybe if you can test this on the low we can find a match."
       " The military done got into your head didn't it? You think I can just run evidence like nothing? Even if it was real, someone would catch me."
        " Look, it could probably be nothing. For my own sake Dan, this is all I got to go on."
        " I can't just reopen a case because you are feeling desperate."
        " You don't have to reopen it. I just want some tests , that's all. If nothing comes up I will personally back off and you won't hear about it again."
  He looks at me with discomfort. Shuffles around a bit, and after a long pause opens his mouth.
       Sigh. " I guess I can try and tell  the nerd geeks to take a look. I know they'll keep things hush hush if I offer them some food. Those suckers never stop eating. Got **** endless pits."
      " That's all I ask," and I hand him the plastic bag and the fingerprint entrapped in tape. " Please, guard these with your life."
       " I will," he says. He stands up and grabs a few bucks out of his wallet, tips his hat off to me and walks off.

        Daniel Castillo. Been a cop as long as I was in the military. He was friends with my father but back than he was just a young rookie learning the ropes. Originally, he was from Amarillo ,Texas. Born and raised a southern cowboy he ended up coming to college here in Colorado and ended up working the force straight after.
         He took me in for awhile after my parents died but once i left to the military, i became out of reach. Still, a phone call away, he was the only one I trusted at that god forsaken time. Even had offered for me to join the force once I got out but the law never seemed to agree with me.
         At the time, I was renting out this worn down apartment. It was just temporary so I wasn't worried about living expenses. Not everyone knew I was due back in town so it helped that i remained quiet. I had all my leads scattered over the counter, newspaper articles, names of suspects and police reports.
    Eventually I set them all up on the wall, some with yarn leaking to certain leads.Still, unanswered questions kept me up all night binging on coffee or energy drinks. Reading and re reading until i'd end up passing out. Until, one day I saw a glint of light shining through the curtains and conveniently landed onto a name.
       Charlie Rivers. Female. It had appeared to me that her name was Charlotte not Charlie. Why had i missed this before? Had I driven myself to overthink and overlook simple matters? And if this person was female, why was her prints discovered at my house?
      Pulling out my laptop i searched for a Charlotte Rivers here in town. There were three. One deceased, and one was literally born yesterday. The last one was a 26 year old girl who worked for none other than the famous Glass Industries. My parents never partook in that company so what was she doing at my house?
     I clicked on her name and seemed she was an assistant to none other than Alexander Glass. Clicking on his name gave me his profile.

        ' Alexander Yuri Glass. 35 years of age.
          CEO of Glass Industries.
          Mentored by Professor Luka Glass & Rose Glass.
          New York Times mentions how "innovative and forward thinking", this company is. Ascending to a billion dollars in a matter of 5 years, Alex is the youngest CEO to do so within his own company. Originally transcending from Germany, he set his sights on tackling USA and has done remarkably well.'

        Hmm, seemed he was quite the entrepreneur. Or he just got lucky when his parents handed down the company. Perfect spoiled brat came to make money living off US soil. How lovely. I assumed I'd try to get in more in touch with this Charlie girl so i searched more in depth and found her social profiles.
Seemed her favorite hangout was a local cafe about 15 miles north, so I set my sights on making that my second home.
      My approach was to appear romantically interested in her. It seems she was unmarried and had no trace of a boyfriend ( or girlfriend), so this was my one shot. Looking myself in the mirror i saw a train wreck of a hot mess staring back at me. She might end up thinking i'm homeless, i thought to myself. After a quick shave and haircut, I set out in a fitted suit and headed to town.
     Steuben's Diner was a retro style diner, seemed like an easy appeal. Although, I had come to the realization that i may have been overdressed in a suit. The setting was more casual style, crowded with families and young couples.  Quickly I settled down at the bar and ordered a club soda.
       I stayed doing this every day of the week coming around happy hour and sometimes even staying till closing. Even the waiters came to see me as a regular. After the third week, I had begun to give up putting my things away and turned to see her walking through the entrance.
     So eloquently beautiful. Luxurious blonde hair tucked behind her ear, reached down her back. She had pale skin and a small body frame, didn't look a day over 25. She sat at the corner of the cafe, opened a book , and later her waitress came back with some type of alcoholic drink. Casual drinker.
       I sat and watched for what seems like hours but merely 30 mins. had passed. Figuring out an approach was one thing , getting her to stay interested in the conversation was another. My waitress saw me staring at her.
" You should buy her a drink, and your in luck.. I know what she ordered."
I give her the nod to go ahead and try to adjust myself to seem more approachable.
       I see the waitress point at me and smile. I wonder if she's working me up. She then turns around and raises her glass at me and smiles.
      " If you don't talk to her you're going to regret it," the waitress said to me and left.

You owe me nothing but to breathe.
To remember how I tore my heart in
Two rendering a

Blood Eagle to stretch its wings and
Tickle our souls with its sticky feathers.
When I think of us, I see us as we were.

Other people than now.
Memories framing themselves like a
Fantastic painting the artist

Stepped back to admire, then died.
Hang me. Hang me before i hang
Myself.

Dramatically opposed to drama.
Uninterested infatuation.
Broke billionaire.

Mortal gods shaking divine hands
With decomposing composers,
Thanking them for the silence.

We were lovers and enemies, and
I'd still give my life and afterlife to
See you worship another as if I

Never left a fingerprint on this
Planet; resting as safely in arms that
Love you unendingly,

As we all lie sleeping; dreaming
In our own, stronger arms,  
Forgetting that even our loving

Is imaginary.
Death is awakening.
Rubbing the

Eyes of our souls and yawning,
We look up and smile at that which
All of this is a bleak and fleeting

Shadow of.
Plato knew.
When I wish to die, I do too.

This love is not Love.
It's all mud and air.
You owe me nothing but to breathe.

I think I love
with every cell of my being,
with every drop of soul in me,
with every breath that visits my lungs,
with every fingerprint I’ve ever left,
with every laugh that parted my lips,
with every language my tongue pronounces,
with every way I know how to love,
with everything, yet I end up with nothing..

I never thought of fragile as an insult until I saw the way you spat it through clenched teeth
"God you're so ******* fragile"
hissing barbed wire insults like they'd cut your tongue if you held them in any longer
before, I thought of fragile as the ultimate compliment
a sign that my concave stomach was home to fingerprint bruises
that you were afraid to hold me too tight lest I break
but then I heard it dripping slow dark molasses off your tongue
coating every syllable with thick syrupy tar

it didn't make sense to me that your voice,
petal soft and pitched for laughter
accustomed to slurring my name on dizzy nicotine breaths and over crackling long distance calls
could wrap its fingers around my lifeline and
crush it
until long after I chose to stop being your answering machine sounding board yes man lap dog

you never cared about my hollow birdlike bones or the blooming violet footsteps beneath my eyes
you said I was too ******* fragile
that my eyes were leaky taps and you had no plumbing experience
that my heart was a pincushion voodoo doll and you didn't know how to protect its satin softness from daily wear and tear
I got hurt too easily and playing tag with someone else's insecurities isn't fun

I never thought of fragile as an insult until you choked it out from behind your own iron voice box
and I realised it wasn't so much an insult as a burden
now there is leather binding forming around my cotton stuffed heart
and I'm doing my best to tighten the valves in my tear ducts
I'm still fragile
But it's not your job to hold me together anymore

The fingerprint of life
Sounded very good,
And the flash of death
Appeared very dim,

Yet the sparrow led me
To the mighty stream
That has no source,

Yes, the appearance of the
Stream was very good,
Yet she came around
With her immaculate ***,

Yes, she was in a flabby
Kente cloth which looked very dense,
Yet she came around
With her pleasant beacon,

Ah, look again,
This mighty tree has no roots
The shadow that can quench
The darts of the true enemy,
Has created a new wave of love,

See how I have grown to read
Between her apron white teeth,
For her bark looked black,
Because white was not yet beautiful,

This story must be told,
Oh yes, she must be known
By the ancestors and the Gods,
She is indeed the true
Likeness and image of Kabutuwaa,

Stir straight down the valley
And observe how beautiful
Her emperor Majesty of Ethiopia is,

Indeed, Montewab , She that bears
The eternal edible fruits of Africa
Is the fir of life,

Now that I have found
Empress Berhan Mogasa,
I am assuaged to rain against drought.


© PRINCE NANA ANIN-AGYEI
Email: nanaspeaks@gmail.com

We hold these truths,
there is a Zebra tree on a tiny island
in Lake Wanaka on the relatively large island
called New Zealand.

Nation is not a valid variable to sort on.

So here, we sort worth on agreeing
we are equally
Natives of Earth. First yes.

More yeses follow.

Learn what you have done.
Know what you are doing.
Be good,
let the bruised flesh not rise in hot pride,

see we all are involved in evolving into ever
better,

so we think, perhaps,
others aboard my ark also think.

We are equal in this realm, each mind joined

junction branch root, not from
billions and billions of
Jahre zuvor,
წლების წინ
ts’lebis ts’in { Georgian script looks magic, eh}

Secrets in tongues died with the last word,
spoken toward unhearing ears,

… is it reality interrupting or
knocking needs gumming up the works…

--------


Field-wide signal, crisp and clear, some fell on idle minds,

that's fine  , signal how are you.

You say, responsibly, My side is winning.
No one ever asks what that means.

The field the world,
war is the only story, Walt imagined,
he was infected, Whitman,
with a known' opinion
-- some wise and well-known
-- being arisen from behind the ivied walls
- I heard this in passing,
- anonymous did not say this:
the function for the sublime is to free us from the slavery
of pleasure
- on another vector, I heard this:
the need to heal violence, forces life into idle words
used maliciously, in tests of conscience-useness.

Poverty never hears the highest minded reasons
for the states of mind attempted by the
most curious among us

--- empty of the wy. ha… I don' know I glanced away
stat tic… what's missing?
--- its like any other day, it ends with me entranced
by the play of winds with dust and smoke and water
droplets too light to fall,

I take instant HDR images as the time passes and the art
appears, as if for me alone,
I am the only mental
being seeing this,
I have proof,
I'll show you, someday, maybe…
but today,
I got took t' school, behind the gated mental institution,

geni-used magi-like instinct-gut spirit-vapor
-- rumor has it, I went mad
caused
by you or me, I can't say.

But just the other day, I was thinking, you may remember
my sunsets,
you would have noticed them
when you stole my weedeater.

--------

No school of the prophets foresaw my death,
so far as I may know,
I am by chance, bon chance,
living in lines of consequential events.
And my birth was a quirk of circumstances.

As special as any multi cellular creature,
if the statisticians are aiming at
the proper means of measuring.

There remain professors who teach man is the measure
of all things, wrong, in my opinion.

Ha. I said that. Like to Cambridge, it's image in my immaterial
realm where all things men agreed to use for ever after,

are similar in effect to the Ghostbusters Marshmallow role.

My fingerprint is less than nine points similar
to your fingerprint, no matter who you are.
We are equals in that regard,
our self is commonly unique, as we are.
Our kind.
We, the people of Earth. The native species,
Whumo Sapient Sapiens is us.
Knowers that know.
Thinkers that think we know. There is no
they
behind the curtain
knowing anything that  you may not know
as much
as you can swallow,
a bit per quantasec, after chewing fifty years.

In this medium,
it's me and you, object, subject, reject defect
if then or else
find that more perfect
union,
that knot that binds our minds in agreement,
this is that
which has no religious name, save good and plenty…

not the candy, but that's cool, I thought that, too.

We, me and you, since we think alike,
we could make up a mind and invite others

to take parts in grand epic dramas of ever
learning,
war never has arisen on a reason that reasons
rationally valanced toward life,
and that,
more abundantly…

Now, see those greedy folks,
look real
close,
see. You never see such a one, with a satisfied mind,
ever learning, never knowing everything,
happy as hell from a Sisyphean POV

Unfurling ancient drift
current sifted
sand grit mantling
diaspora effulgent
thumb humbly probing
tossed carapace niche

briny patina
shifting into fingerprint

I – request approach to thine
sodden curve
licking my thumb,
I'm enchanted with your gilt