i.

Society keepeth their amour' in a box
Hidden, unrevealed, secretive, locked;
Me and mine Jane, shalt be open as a flame,
As on mine knee's I peck upon her toe's;
Again and again.

ii.

In the midday hour's when her back and neck get's sore
Mine fingertip's shalt caresseth her epidermis;
With sultry emollient, from her head to her feet.
I rubbeth in deep, as tis she shalt falleth asleep
As the best massage she's ever hadst,
Put's her into a trance in mine hold:
In peace she slumbereth,
Into a romantic kingdom
Stacked with ourn affection's gold.

iii.

Over an hour-plus thirty minute's,
Mine sweaty Palm's art tender;
Though it was all worth it
To mine queen mine soul surrendered;
Entering in her shuteye, I entered in locking ourn leg's, head's, arm's: closely cuddling-pillow's feathered.
Here at this moment, nothing else in the world mattered.



©Brandon Nagley
©Earl Jane Nagley dedication ( Filipino rose)
©Lonesome poet's poetry

My mother's soul: demonic voices. Shizophrenic whispers twined together...
A clump of burning sage billowing serpentine smoke into the still air.
What is she? A creature of regret,
Pathetically keening for pity to cater to a hollow heart,
and an empty stomach.
My shoulders wither, weeping willow'd, beneath her red-nosed, tear-glossed stare.
I'm nothing.
Exploited.
Made of love and guilt.
I try to get close to her -
but even touching fingertip to fingertip, there stands between us
a plate of glass.

I'm A Suicide Bomb.
A Nuclear Explosion Of Unexplainable Inadequate Ambition.
A Hand Granade, Pull My Pin And  Watch Me Self Destruct.
A Land Mine Beneath Seven Inches Of Soil, Tensed Like Piano Wire, Ready To Sing Under Pressure. Ready To Scream.
Genocide Of My Own Veins. Pull Them One By One, Out Of Their Homes And Send Them Off To Interment Camps, Built To Hold The Blood Of A Body That Only Betrays Me.
I'm Holding Each Limb Hostage, Each Finger A Prisoner Of War, Every Fingertip A Monument Where Everyone I Have Ever Loved Will Mourn The Tragedy Of My Own Destruction.
Gas Masked And Gagging, They Will Always Ask Why I Did It.
A Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Diagnoses To Give Them Some Closure. I

Know They Didn't Understand The War I Was Waging Beneath My Ribs.

Waking Every Morning, Clawing My Way Through The Wreckage, With Knees And Palms Painted Filthy Black, Ears Ringing, Like The Sound Of A Thousand Dead Voices Vibrating,

I Have To Tell Myself It Must Be Happening For A Reason.
I've Been Wearing A Kevlar Vest Made Of Lies, White Ones, Stained Red.
A Purpose Born Inside Me, I Have To Ask How Much Longer Must I Keep Running?
I Have To Believe The God You Pray To, Prays To Someone Like Me, Because Who Else Would Declare War On This Kind Of Humanity.  

Every Day Is A Battle, Every Aching Moment Is A Last Attempt At Redemption,
Every Bone In This Body Is A Bayonet Aimed To Splint Apart My Skeleton.
This Isn't A War Anymore.
This Is Terrorism.
Terrorized My Paper Thin Skin,
Handed Me Black & Blue ink, and Told Me To Write Out My Surrender On My Skin, Like Bruises

Branded,
Wrapped In Kelodial Bandages.

I Am Damage.

I Am Destruction.

I Am Savage.

I Am. Terrified.

My Home Is A War Zone, Scabbed Over And Still Bleeding, No Where Is Safe, Not Even Inside My Own Skull.
I Am Eyelid Explosions And Neplam, Burning One Hundred Thousand Degrees Above My Own Boiling Point.

An Open Wound. Bullet Bomb Shell, Left With More Holes Than Whole.

Had Spent 6 Years On This Planet, 2,190 Days Too  Short To Understand What It Meant To Watch Twin Towers Fall.
They Said The Word Attack.
Lived Eleven More Years In This Body, In An Existence That Seems To Only Be Fighting Against It's Own Skin, Cutting It Into Pieces, Cutting Corners, Cutting Edges, Looking For Answers Beneath Whatever Remains Of Me.


How Can You Win A Battle When The Only One You Are Fighting Is Yourself?

I Think My Violet Eyes And Indigo Insides Believed In A Peace Treaty, But I Have Shrapnel Wedged So Deeply Inside Me, That It's Become Difficult To Understand Existing Without It.

How Do I Fight An Invisible Enemy, With Kerosene Lips And Matches For Fingertips?

I Am A Solider.
There Was A Draft And It Consisted Of A Single Six Digit Number That Matched My Birthday,
Like A Bad Joke,
I Can't Remember When It Began, All I Know Is That I Haven't Lived in A Time Without Bloodshed.

Mental Illness Runs In My Family,
A Weapon Of Mass Destruction,
Built Into This Blood,
O Positive,
Unsure,
Yet AB Negative
Of Where It Will Take Me,
Except To Live A Life Wondering If I'll Catch The Family Flu,
They Call This Biological Ware fare.

How Do We Wash The Blood Out Of Our Own Genes?

Us. The Sick Of Soul, The Diseases And Dying, The Psychosomatic, Sociopathic, Undiagnosed And Overmedicated,

Must Tell Ourselves

That Atleast Suicide Bombers..

Die For Something.

I want to know what's on your mind, share with me your intimate time,
What turns you on and makes you tick,
What you really don't like what makes you sick,
Give me knowledge of your hopes and dreams,
Share with me what brings you to scream,
Make me know why you get mad,
Teach me the things that most make you glad,
I want to hold you close to me,
Your intimate space I'd love to see,
Wel hold each other and share embrace,
Your lips of honey I'd love to taste,
The subtle things that keep you calm,
I'd like to hold them in my palm,
To touch your cheek with my fingertip,
Your skin of gold I'd take a dip,
Run my fingers through your hair,
While in your eyes I deeply stare,
The trust and pleasure we would share,
There's nothing like this that would compare,
Innocence and purity when I'm with you,
Your hearts deepest pleasure il vow to persue.

You kidding

Lived a long time coming,
Picked up yesterday my three year old boy,
Third of a third of a third of a third
Of a half of me,
Who I only see once a year,
And we fell in love once again,
all over as is our style,
Annually, annuellement.

We belly kiss,
Fist bump,
High five, talk jive,
Tell each other grand stories
Of dragons in pizza parlors.

Each of us,
Trying the other out,
To ascertain just what
Stuff we are made off.

I love to put him to sleep,
My fingers, rhyme writing like Pradip,
To the turning tires of mom's Toyota van,
When the tired is a steady stream
Of word mumbles of which I understand
A word here and there, but an epic poem
He recites, a verbal dream, a slippage
To that place where three year old bones
And crying go when they pass the point of
Exhaustion.

Rub his cheek with circles of forefinger,
Stroke his head with full palm of my hand,
Close his eyelashes with gentle fingertip kisses,
Take the toys from his fists without any resistance,
Sure signal time for both of us to nap.

His surprises endless,
His cunning now legend,
Alternating disguises tween
I a big boy,
I a baby,
As the situation arises that will
Get him what he wants,
A masterful manipulator.

Which is funny cause I still do that too.

But when he stops me in my tracks,
It is when somehow the brain that has
Just crossed the thousand day alive marker
Says the profound, the uncanny, the
Philosophy of the world weary that is something
That I think just about every thirty seconds.

It is when after some particularly wild reverie
I compose, of seals that swim from his Frisco bay
Around the world to mine, on Long Island
Pacific to Atlantic, and after ten minutes of
Escapading with Batman and his mates,
He looks me and takes me down with this
Almost clear-spoke sabered wisdom,
But in the juvenile voice soft sleepy, of a babe of three,

you kidding(?)

Half statement of fact, half a soulful-questioning,
How does this three year old comprehend
The essential difference between dreams
And reality, that is separated, wheat, chaff,
Milk curd, cheese, the spider silk line that differentiates
All of life essentially.

Yes kid, I am kidding,
I tell that to myself every thirty seconds,
To keep me sane, straight, true,
But I whisper it to myself grownup style,

Who ya kidding?

So it appears that when they say
Out of the mouths of babes
They were talking about adults
Who are hoping they can still be three,
When wisdom and silly are just the
Same-thing.

You kidding(?/!)

Yes I am.
Just a kid,
Kidding you, kidding himself,
Pushing his very own stroller,
Writing crazy stories he calls
Poems, lovely little things,
As soft as your skin, stories of him,
That always end,
With belly kisses and a
you kidding.

He drew a figure eight on my spine, absentmindedly,
and traced the nape of my neck with his fingertip when he said,
“You are beautiful to me.”

But the ellipsis in the silence spoke louder than he did, and the look in his eye was not born because I was lovely;
It was not because he loved me.

A thing too small for love-
But far too large to be lust;

Simple. Ugly.

He looked at me like he was hungry.

So sweetly he critiqued each curve, every line, blurring my edges with the images of every bent perception pulled from the mire of his mind;

and I
could not
satisfy


Pretty innocence diminished in the grip of his vice,
Pressed tight against my body, despised in dark eyes.
I am not the inhuman creatures you contrived in the middle of the night.
I am not the feminine expression of your ******* pride.

What a wicked crime,
to take a woman’s body and leave the woman behind.

Poetry is sometimes easy like the wind rushing
to where there is not much wind, caressing in waves,
invisible and pliant like the air, as effortless as
breathing it. Poetry is sometimes impossible,
like turning the tumbler of a lock with your fingertip,
like climbing a mountain barefoot in a blizzard
of screaming, sliding sleet, like a tearing cry
that dies into a whimper in your throat as you
realize the futility of that which you do,
the implacability of the beast you fight.

Sometimes, there are no words that can describe
the machinations and the subtle ticking of a clock
that beats in time to the human soul. Not hearing
the rhythm, you forget the music until your heart
sings again and you dance free like a young ballerina
cutting ballet. No poem is a picture that captures
the fluttering, soaring and sinking in the heart’s chambers.
You choose a word that fits, discard ten of its brothers,
yet feel surprise when your sentences have no answers
for the questions in your chest. You mourn every phrase
you have lost as you fell asleep. Knowing not
what you forgot, you move on to new questions.

You cannot miss what you’ve never felt, but you can yearn for
something you’ve forgotten. What is the difference to you
if you cannot remember the difference? The embryos of
the heart and mind are fragile. Your heart sings of a country
it cannot see anymore now that your back is turned,
you cast fishing nets behind you into the past blindly.
You remember that you have forgotten, and you forget
what bears remembering. You remember a day long past
not as the day that passed but as the memory of its passing,
yet feel surprise when years later and many forgettings hence,
it happened to someone else altogether.

LET SLEEPING PTERODACTYLS LIE


Rusted scythe
perched on a nail


high up on a wall
a sleeping pterodactyl.


I can't stop myself touching
it to see if it is - real.

Smacks its lips
laps up my blood


from my foolish fingertip
deceived by shadows.


It's grin glinting
the smile come alive.


The ghost of a horse
whinnies in the stable


that's gone long gone
the then merging into the now.


Or maybe Mr. Death
too tired to go on

hangs up the instrument of his trade
time to retire the old bones.

“No way to make a living!”

I back slowly away
blinded by the sunlight

that screams. . ."Run!"

I need you to know, how I want you like I do.
I am afraid if I tell you I might lose it all.
I look into your eyes as you speak to me,  they seem to taunt me so.
I watch you move and my stomach cramps and begins to ache.
I have always dreamed of someone like you,
You remind me so much of someone else I know.

You're the perfect person for me, this I know.
Your touch, just one fingertip, and it fills me up.
If only I could touch your face and kiss your lips,
I have laid awake in my bed at night just dreaming of this.

If only you'd give me a chance to be more than just a friend,
You are my missing piece.
I know it got weird when we tried to be more than friends.
Maybe there was too much pressure from everyone else who knew us,
To do the right thing.
Can we try again?
We stopped talking for weeks at a time,
Things just weren't the same without you around.

As a friend, and maybe nothing more,
I am so comfortable with you,
I feel I could tell you anything and you would listen.
You really care, and you are always there.
I have told you so much already, more than any other guy that I've known for just one year.
You have a kind heart, a warm smile, with every "Hi" in the hall as you pass me.

I hear someone say your name and it burns in my heart.
I love talking and sharing with you.
We have stayed up many nights just talking about nothing at all.
It has been so nice.
You make me feel at ease, and we have so much in common.
We are alike in so many ways;  I have stopped counting when I ran out of fingers.
You, like no one else I know has the same disturbed sense of humor and we always seem to laugh at the same kinds of things.
We like all the same old classic movies, and have the same music taste.
Before meeting you, I thought I was the only one who still listened to Price, and belted out the lyrics to all his well- knowns.
We have so much to talk about, I feel that we could go on for days.

When will you let me know, if I am the one?
I know we are too good of friends to ruin it all.
But haven't you ever thought about it, or wanted it too?
It's too much like a game with you because you don't know what you want.
I will let you know I want to walk with you, hand in hand,
If you asked me to marry you, I definitely would.
I want to tell you things I've told no one else because the sound of your voice comforts me.
I've pictured us together someday.

I wished that day would come sooner as I know it will never be.
We've had some good times together anyway, that I will never ever forget.
I just think of the memories we could have if we could be even more.
Is that possible? I don't know?  Or would it change it all?

You leave me and your scent lingers behind,
I breathe it in and picture you making me laugh, as only you know how to do.
If I ever needed to find you I can always trace your path and where you've been down the hall.
I just follow the warm Polo scent, which you leave everywhere you go.

I want to be more than a friend to you.
But time and again you leave me for the desire of another girl.
I wait patiently for your return for I know it won't last long.
Days pass and I see you with another, you seem happy, and I guess I'm glad.

Then the day comes when there's a knock at my door,
I open it to see you standing there to say again that it was over, and that things didn't work out.
You always seem to come back to me after something with another girl went sour.
I don't know if you have just come to talk about it, or to say that it was over, will you be my second choice?
I realized it time after time that I always come in second with you after something with a girl had gone terribly wrong.
Did you beg for my forgiveness?  Or just wait for me to say, "I told you so."
I don't really know?

You are the nicest guy I think I have ever met.
Maybe you are too nice and that is what attracts me to you time after time.
Maybe you are too real and too close to me.
You are too good of a person to happen to me.
And finally I realized it by the end of the year, you would never happen to me.
You would always pick and desire another girl and that's not me.

I am glad I've gotten to know you like I have,
In just one short year, you became one of my best friends.
I wouldn't have made it through my first year of college without you.
You are a special guy to me, and always will be.
I'll never forget you no matter what happens in the future and what you think of me.
I think of you often and it always makes me smile.
You always knew just what to say to get me to laugh.
I just wonder what you are doing now, at this very second, while I am thinking of you.

I guess there comes a time when I would have rather had your friendship as a friend and nothing more.
Than not to have you in my life at all.
You mean a lot to me, more than you will ever know.
I couldn't stand losing you.
That's maybe why we've both decided in our own minds just to stay friends and not more.
You don't have to say anything,
I believe that we share a special bond that will never be broken or forgotten.
No matter what happens next,
I will never forget you "Fannie"
And all the times we shared.

How it is fickle, leaving one alone to wander
the halls of the skull with the fluorescents
softly flickering. It rests on the head
like a bird nest, woven of twigs and tinsel
and awkward as soon as one stops to look.

That pile of fallen leaves drifting from
the brain to the fingertip burned on the stove,
to the grooves in that man's voice
as he coos to his dog, blowing into the leaves
of books with moonlit opossums
and Chevrolets easing down the roads
of one's bones. And now it plucks a single
tulip from the pixelated blizzard: yet

itself is a swarm, a pulse with no
indigenous form, the brain's lunar halo.

Our compacted galaxy, its constellations
trembling like flies caught in a spider web,
until we die, and then the flies
buzz away—while another accidental
coherence counts to three to pass the time
or notes the berries on the bittersweet vine

strewn in the spruces, red pebbles dropped
in the brain's gray pool. How it folds itself
like a map to fit in a pocket, how it unfolds
a fraying map from the pocket of the day.

I am the ghost
of a girl you once claimed to love;
my dead hands

reaching,
asking,
begging

for a piece of your soul
to wallow in forever.

There will come a time when you are sick
of trying to understand my mind
and my wrists.

I was never myself when I did this.

If I were part of the ocean
I would be the shallows;
the cold tide that people walk all over

reaching,
asking,
begging

to pull people in
but never getting close enough.

I was never myself when I did that.

I plead,
help me live once again
as something new born and blind;
blind to the atrocities of humanity,
but all seeing to life and love.

Love,
the only thing that could ever constitute
as sacred;
a relentless, chemical energy
that turns you in to a fool in all the right ways.
A substance more intelligent
than any apparent genius.
Oh, how the love

reaches,
asks,
begs

to confine me,
and oh, sweet love;
how I let you fill my lungs.

I was never myself when I was with you.

I’ve held hands with pain,
kissed every frozen fingertip
and I found my worship in ethanol and ash
before I found it in between
your lips and mine.

You changed me in all the worst ways,
causing me to start a war with my skin,
causing me to see my own reflection
as something unrecognisable,
something I never wanted to be.

I was never myself.

I made the mistake of building a home
out of a human being
and he was so riddled with wanderlust;
a nomadic masterpiece who couldn’t stay,
but should’ve stayed.

I’ve never felt so homesick.

I’m tired of tearing away my skin
and revealing the heart inside me
to people that are incapable of loving anything
other than themselves
and their sadness.

I crave for someone
to look at me as though
they can see my soul
more than they can see my skin.
I crave for someone
to see
what I wish to see.

More than anything,
I crave to see me:

*strong,
magnificent,
and beautiful.

Have your nerves ever been so raw as when you sear your fingertips on a scalding hot stove top, flesh sizzling, the oils of your skin jumping up to meet your face, the lines of your fingertips so singed that they're nothing more than unrecognizable scabs? That's what losing a father is like. Or rather, that's what it's like to realize that he was never there, not for you, not at all.

a conscious thought stated:
don't write another love poem
but his words are vanilla to my ears
the smoothest silk texture
spun from his consonants and vowels
running from his lips and melting over my flesh
you can see where i get distracted...

because infatuation and intimacy intertwine
spinning a tangled web
woven from the strongest thread
and your fingers are musicians magic
strumming on my heartstrings
playing chords on my heart
carrying a tune that would make Celine Dion quiver.
it made me quiver
but there aren't six degrees of separation
from lust to love
there's one degree
but a thousand steps in between

the chemists couldn't explain
why our chemistry combined
in such an intricate way
and all the experiments were inconclusive
because only we are the mad scientists behind our insanity

and while the scientists tinkered
the mathematicians drew up an equation
insert me and you
into x and y
but x and y don't define hidden variables
that even we had to search to find
the eraser's been rubbed raw
against the paper with a hole in the center
they'll never solve their invented equation
because mathematics aren't involved

just a finely designed road map
tracing your veins and mine
from fingertip to fingertip
eye to eye
an artists divine sight
i'll be the paint to your brush
your lily pads to Monet
if your words are paint
my body's a blank canvas

i'm a writer
but even i'm struggling to find the words
that may as well be hidden in catacombs
but we don't need Edgar Allen Poe
to quoth the raven "nevermore"
nevermore shall i search for this unicorn of words
mythical in that they don't exist and yet somehow you do

we'll resurrect Charles Dickens
because he's the only man who would even make an attempt
but even his hands are trembling
with the pressure mounting of a lost word and a quivering pen

thunk

as we watched him dissolve into the pen and ink that created him

this conscious thought beckoned forward in my head
do not write another love poem just yet
for who will scribe the words to fit our facets
when the skins withered, wrinkled and dry
but our hands still twine like grape vines

maybe by then they'll have written another edition of the dictionary

This is the machine.

Tucked under necklaces, poppies and daffodils
calligraphic fingertip Xs
hurry across pockets.
Thursday morning job postings
markers on construction paper windows
exhausted by making parts.
Keep weddings in thunderstorms
to hide the sound of windmills in chests,
bittersweet directions to ticking clockwork.
Carbonated water can’t convince summer to stay,
musical breaths and tulip footsteps
remind me of the gears in my knees.
Always buy wallets used
daylily bank notes folded into stairwells,
the heels of my socks.
Blue collars in ochre wheelbarrows
soaking next to the white ones.

We are quiet machines.

With cogs in our wrists
battery powered bone and sinew.
Baby’s breath white in our hair,
tiny bunches piled into collar bones or concave stomachs.
You have stars in your hair
whispering in manufactured voices
to pull out your eyelashes.
Consumed by the concept of concepts
on ravine park benches,
marred with newspaper labyrinths
smelling of rolled up sleeves.
Hand held gummy bears
prompt me to check my fluid levels,
bubbly orchids in my left palm.
Sugar intakes and patterned pants
hide homemade pulses.

This is the machine.

Breathing dawn:
Cool breeze,
Quiet whirl,
Crumples in the purple cover,
Whiff of flowers from the wrinkled pillows,
Rumpled blankets,
Sleeping limbs stretching and awakening,
The call of feathered angels

Arising:
Bony copper-painted-toe-nailed feet
Slumping against a chilly wooden floor,
Burst of artificial light against reflecting tiles,
Water once smooth and clear in the bowl,
Red circular prints left on big brown thighs,
From lazy resting elbows,
The sound of a flush too loud,
Scalding hot water pounding,
Press of a thumb,
A minty blue worm

Preparing:
A wand and black coats from a baby blue bottle,
Soft white heads of cotton-buds turned black,
Timber home of nestling underwear,
Gray button,
Silver clip by the hip,
Spoon,
Chopstick,
Milk moustache,
Murmur of farewell

Starting:
Sliding elevator doors,
Buttons that light up with the warmth of my fingertip,
Then enters a stranger you’ve known all your life,
Awkward mouths moving,
Awkward Good morning,
Awkward lift silence,
Awkward who-goes-out-the-lift-first-and-who-holds-the-door politeness,
Awkward Goodbye,
Awkward realization they’re-coming-the-same-way,
Um, oh, hm? yeah…
Aversion.

Waking up:
Concrete walk,
Peeling red paint on rusty railings,
Moving figures,
Sunrays bouncing over murky polluted water,
Faces from a roaring water machine,
Same guy,
Same glaring pimple
White and yellow stripes

Bells the Dictator:
Piercing, infuriating shrill
Slamming doors
Pattering of running feet,
Instructive bossy voices,
Flick the switch,
Blinking electronic light,
Automatic finger exercise,
Droning lullabies,
Stifled yawns,
Quick chicken sandwich
Piercing, infuriating shrill,
Spark of inquisitive interest,
And there it… yes… dies,  
Remembering past mistakes are not always unpleasant,
Loud voices that encourage a fly-away imagination,
Numbers scrawled on a page,
Competition disguised as genuine interest and concern,
Inadequacy,
Arrogance,
Annoying shrill,
Stone steps,
Aching knees,
Clean plates dirtied with gravy,
Chilli specks swimming in soup,
Laughter,
Cluelessness given away by late laughter,
Fake un-sure smiles,
Laughter,
Pair of dark brown eyes,
Memories,
One secret hope,
A lifetime,
Big blue sky
Shrill,
Blanked-out,
Ashy stubble on a meaty discolored chin,
Shrill,
A boy with a guitar,
Mellow strumming,
That sweet earnest smile,
Another shrill too soon,
Lick of an eyelid,
Shiny shoes,
Squeaky floors,
Sweat,
Rosy cheeks,
The quick dance of a net with a ball,
Bruises blooming like inverted flower buds

Slowing-down:**
Clicking of plastic alphabets and symbols,
Dry patch of skin above the knee,
Itchy
Scratch
Scratch
Scratch
Big blue sky from the edge of a window sill,
Soaring, flying like an eagle up to the wispy white clouds,
Snaking through them like a sprinkler in the garden,
Blink of an eye,
Oh, a pile of homework,
***** statues behind glass,
Knocked down with a giant’s fist,
A great yellow eye with dilated pupils watching ferociously,
Sharp bob of my head,
Ahh, a pile of homework still waiting patiently
Give me a kiss and rest your hand on my head,
You know your love makes my day.

A little oasis occupied in a cafe
that approaches capacity.
Three opposite, two adjacent,
a couple at the windows to the right.
Six or seven more around the corner, out of view

Early twenties guy, has a slightly too-small zippered sweater,
with head down and a two-handed hold on his phone
the left relinquishes its grip for a minute to wipe across his face.

Late fifties man in a blue,zipped, baggy, sweat shirt
and early-nineties hair gone grey.
A phone too, but of a more palm-and-fingertip interaction
with pursed lips and an occasional surveying of the room.

A quiet girl at my right leaves and four chatty middle-aged yoga ladies
squeeze onto the table for two.
They obliterate my concentration
and I resort to a cocoon of headphone noise.
Their too-strong perfume forms a veritable blue cloud
and leaks into the taste of my tea.

You are so much bitter music you dancing devil
Like a last minute psalm for freedom
One that you have memorized so carefully
You don't recite it
You feel it
The buckle of your knees bends you beautifully in prayer
So many words in your perfectly timed gasps for air

Breathe on my neck again
Bitter sweet beer breathed passion
My fingers dance
Because I need so many ways to say unrequited
So many ways to say
Patience is something I can do without

And I stand still like a tree
Like the wrong tree
And I am barking up it

This is hot mess remix love
Through faulty filters
Burning up my coffee lung
Fingertip singe nailbite frustration

This is bitter music
Full of flavor for all the wrong reasons
A happy accident proximity
Of misunderstood gyration

Hands like dead tree branches
Fingertip curl to write
Sounds of late night windowpane taps

The songs dont match
Though the music ends at the same time
Shoulder shrug and careful backstep

My friends are waiting
It was nice meeting you I guess

You broken bone remix
Of passionate smile
Right foot forward fire
Perfect pitch like a ***** psalm for freedom

And bitter music

Demon from Depressed Depths
Horror lurking in the murk, squirting myself through liquid nightmares, paranormal animal portrait
The walls of my bedroom are black, the ceiling navy, ****** sun above me winks in mockery
My friends are few in this frozen almost-society; I wander the briny fog in boredom, purposeless
Eyes swollen from swimming, swallowing so much salt: dehydrated underwater, skin pasty and ill
I hide from starving sharks and their terrible tiny teeth, but duel the diving whale: he I can drown
I can ***** forth literature; the pens of Whitman and Carroll were filled from my blackened innards
From fingertip to toetip I am nearly biggest, in a world without fingers or toes, primitive appendages
I am all knowing: I commune with the dead: I can operate a Ouija board alone with all these arms
I was killed off by Tennyson after just 14 lines, but Lovecraft made me what I am: heathen deity
Wonderful creature, yet I find myself here: battered next to chips in a polystyrene tray: Beach food

I overstretched my arms into September,
you watched my limbs break off on the first day of November.
I counted the days until everything would come back together,
I ran out of fingers to count with.
I coughed up enough gun powder to finally go back,
knocked on your door,
dropped myself straight on the porch in front of me.
I rang the doorbell until my fingertip started to bleed.
Your neighbors are telling me to stop grieving over someone
who still has a pulse, but I can't stop looking at our pictures
like a finalized headstone after the engraver asks,

"Is everything spelled correctly?"

I'd tell him he carved in the wrong date of death,
that's not the day you left, you never left.
You're going to answer the door,
everything can come back together again.
I won't have to count the days anymore.

I'm still right here.
I know I'm here because the storm drain hasn't moved me yet.
It hasn't taken my head and shoved me under your debris,
because I haven't let it.
I spent so long trying to figure out where it hurts,
and wound up right here.
This is where it hurts,
I'm not on your porch, my fingertip breaking,
I'm laying right next to you,
your arm draped over my shoulder,
your groggy voice in my ear.
This is where it hurts,
This is where everything fell apart.
This is where everything will come back together.
Everything will come back together again.

"...Tell me, for Love's sake, what is that flame which burns in my heart and devours my strength and dissolves my will? What are those hidden soft and rough hands that grasp any soul; what is that wine mixed of bitter joy and sweet pain that suffuses my heart? What are those wings that hover over my pillow in the silence of Night, and keep me awake,watching no one knows what? What is the invisible thing I stare at, the incomprehensible thing that I ponder, the feeling that cannot be sensed? In my sights is a grief more beautiful than the echo of laughter and more rapturous than joy. Why do I surrender myself to an unknown power that slays me and revives me until Dawn rises and fills my chamber with its light?  Phantoms of wakefulness tremble between my seared eyelids, and shadows of dreams hover over my stony bed. What is that which we call Love? Tell me, what is that secret hidden within the ages yet which permeates all consciousness? What is this consciousness that is at once origin and result of everything? What is this vigil that fashions from Life and Death a dream, stranger than Life and deeper than Death? Tell me, friends, is there one among you who would not awake from the slumber of Life if love touched his soul with its fingertip?"

Maybe next time
It is not just your tablet
But, also, my chest,

When it is not just my tablet,
     But, also...*

© 2015 J.S.P.

vertebrae by vertebrae, I roll my way off of the couch
I need another beer before my steady buzz runs out
fingertip to fingertip, I state my stale story
typing out my words until my simple song sounds boring

blades of grass and lumps of hash make me a part of the planet
alcohol and distant falls make my feet barely land it
trips to bars in uber cars can make my brain all blurry
take me to the next stop, don't you know I'm in a hurry?

what day is it? Have you the time? My brain is lost and fuzzy
I've lost my phone. I've lost my watch. I'm feeling drunk and buzzy
my time is short, my days are long, I'm lost in time and days
I've lost the way, I'm confused as I wander through this maze

.
The sight of your femininity, beauty,
draws breath from your perfect form,
swaying, flirting, a stunning visual love,
with swoon fantasy and anticipated arousal.

The aroma of your perfume, honeysuckle,
drifts lazily from your elegant neck,
teasing, promising, a consenting floral love,
with delicate grace and scented arousal.

The tone of your voice, seductive,
velvet whispers from your deepest want,
lilting, singing, a desperate lyrical love,
with inviting sound and timbred arousal.

The taste of your mouth, sweetness,
drips honey from your delicate lips,
flowing, flooding, a desire sugared love,
with urgent passion and oral arousal.

The feel of your body, intimate,
drapes sensual from your soft skin,
clothing, wrapping, a flesh blanket love,
with spine tingles and fingertip arousal.

You fill up my senses, stunned,
conflicting feelings play with my mind,
heat, lust, a primal instinct love,
frozen in time and with frightening arousal.


© Pagan Paul (25/06/17)

one...

fingertip he traced

two...

to lips he'll taste...wet

three...

caresses; trembled haste

four...

cradles softness, plump derriere

five...

covers breast tweaking, lingering there

shuddering as tongue parts me, like a sweet eclair
breathless; fingers entangled in hair

he's says:

baby, straddle thickness, love me right here...ahhhhh!!!! yes!!!

He asked me to please not break your heart
and now he's tortured it
leaving you bruised and broken

I can fix it for a short time
with the warmth of my skin
and hearty advice that I cannot see
once it leaves my lips
and divides into four ears
that could benefit from listening

He asked me to please not break your heart
so I will not ask you to stay
when my own beating ***** is ready to explode

When did we ever say it, that we would always be together
Naïvely thinking, the world was our, taking it at our leisure
The harsh facts, life is ephemeral, fleeting swiftly on hinds feet
We deigned to forget our troubles, and doused ourselves in pleasure

Never thinking, only doing, we now see, oh how wrong we were
The time remaining is short and even now we are unsure
Remaining stunned, but grasping tightly to a future we could see
Only the myriad seconds passing, the time left passing in a blur

How hard I cried, fingertip to fingertip, the oceans of my soul
Dried out their loss upon the rocky shores and barren shoals
Crashing up high waves with deep longing and stronger emotion
Pleading to God, that he not put asunder, but keep us whole

Oh, that the glassy panes and starry skies were weak or untrue
That I would never have cause to forget, among all things, you
And that our days apart, however they be, be numbered
With all this, and more the same, flowing from your soul and heart too

For the long hours of night, and passing slower, dreamt of things
For all the pain, the heartfelt longing, and tears my torn heart brings
And for all fear, as separation dulls past, and the doubting
Let my sodden heart be turned anew, and hope a flow'r in spring

"Little lass with the pink parasol,
standing by the sea
where your face was forgotten
and your dress dirtied,
what can you tell me of the wind?
Have you noticed its paws
tugging at your parasol
and how it dances 'round your tip-toes
and freezes your eyelids
with icicle pins?
How it shields your drinking sight
from sunlight
by raising a blind of your hair?
Or
have you instead chosen to count the peaks on the waves?
How each pinch in the watery fabric
pistons up and down
in the oceanic mattress
with the nature sporadic
of a mad stellar twinkling.
What treasures belch age and air bubbles
under the surface
of a fingertip's breadth?
Of such sweet gems and precious metal
surely are the gifts of its deepest depths daring.
It has been counting the times you've dipped your nose under,
under fear of the fathom's fingers
finding your face to be pretty,
and withdrawing.
You'll catch cold, lass.
Standing by the sea so often; always.
At the least you will go mad
at the infinite sound of roaring laps
against the shore
and the gales born of sea and sky
scrubbing memories of stillness from your mind.
Little lass with the pink parasol,
what do you hope to find
standing here by thesea?"
I asked her.
She was silent.
And I heard every word her own,
though uttered tangibly
by winds of local overcast atmospheres.
In the wet soil 'neath my tarred heels
did a coolness rise,
finding my lungs dry and welcoming.
The horizon joined grey and blue
and she was eyeing the vanishing point.
My eyes joined hers in trek
and I found infinity.
Nothing was visible along the skyline.
Meaning anything was beyond it.
Nothing was visible beneath the tide.
Meaning anything was under it.
The wind suggested transparency
but a secretless wind is merely still air.
She said nothing
and I understood;
the sea seems larger
when you are close enough to be kissed by the waves
because you forget that the whole world is behind you.
I am right now
standing by the sea.
The little lass with the pink parasol.
She is here, too.

Traces of lassitude
Slow down to cruising,
Warmth of the whiskey
Ameliorates bruising.
Putting the feet up
Makes it inane,
That I'm subtly aroused
In mouthing your name.

Subtle arousal
In tracing the line
Of your thin cotton ******
With fingertip fine,
And watching the smile
Slide up to your eyes,
See the blend of your blushing
In murmured surprise.

Oh the glorious sunset
Streams in through the glass
And the shades refracted
Nicely contour your ***
And the whisky is mellow
The mood is sublime,
So the promise of evening
Improves with time.

With serpentine moves
And the grace of an snake,
You uncoil to your feet
And you make your escape.
Mouthing thin fabrications
And utter wee fibs,
You flee back to your hearth
And your husband and kids.

Solace alone Baby,
Solace alone,
With frustration and whisky
All the lonely way home.
As the penitent thoughts
Percolate through unseen,
My sad mind lingers
On what might have been.

Marshalg
@theBach
Mangere Bridge
27 January 2010

the brain and mind are not the same thing.

a brain floats, suspended,
down to the tips of my toes
and the blue rivers underneath my skin.

it is a box; simple tasks and quiet construction.

the mind has no such manuals.

it sees baboons in filtered skylights,
eyes as red as the blushing dawn,
gushing about over the hilltops of my shoulders.

it sees stop signs in the glass cracks
of my wooden closet door,
where the dark seeps around the green-light-go.

it sees fingertip to lip,
raccoons at rusty roadways,
Remus and Romulus locked in eternal combat;
preserved in the grains in the cherry tree trunk.

the brain is in the head,
but the mind is somewhere a little above;

hiding away in a doomsday bunker,
loud warnings burning the air,
bathed in cobwebs and blue lights.

away from people who haven’t quite learned,

that the brain and mind are not the same thing.

The fastest way to get to heaven, is to bring it with you. These are the words that flood my mind as I glance over at the little piece of heaven sitting in my passenger seat, brown hair flapping in the wind, her hands in the sky, a bright glimmer of happiness in her chocolate brown eyes. We fly down the coast and I watch my worries fly out of the open convertible top, our stresses disappear with the wind, our happiness getting caught in our teeth. I can hear our happiness bubbling and screaming with each of our laughs. So we laughed, the deep kind of laugh, the laugh that starts in your toes and travels all the way up through your stomach to your throat up to your nose and it makes your head shake. It is the kind of laugh that I live for, your laugh. Heaven is not a place, or a time. It is wherever you are, and whatever minute I spend with you. Heaven is a place that I go every time I look into your eyes, every time I hear your laugh, see your smile, smell your perfume in the air. You are my little piece of heaven. Winding down the coast of whatever state we are in, in whatever car we rented, during whatever season it was, none of that mattered, because winding down the coast with you is perfection. It is noticing the tiny flecks of gold in the corner of my eye as your hair catches the sun. It is feeling the wind whipping through our clothes and hearing your giggling whip through my eardrums leaving me giddy. As we drive, I feel something fall atop my nose, then below my eye, then on my fingertip, little droplets of rain. I look up at the nearly cloudless sky and wonder. Wonder how a beautiful day could yield such conflicting weather. I look down a little and wonder how a beautiful girl could yield such conflicting emotions. The rain falls harder, rain drops whipping against our faces like bugs on a windshield, I pull our car over. I step out into the pouring rain and smile. I smile the kind of smile that starts in your throat, the kind that rises from your throat and makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. The kind of smile that is contagious. On earth there is no heaven, but there are pieces of it. And I know as the droplets of rain trickle off of my head, I have one of those pieces in my passenger seat. I dance around to your door, droplets of rain bouncing off of my head and swing you out. Your hands close on mine and I know my piece of heaven is holding me. Holding me as rain engulfs us, drenching us from head to toe. Dripping wet, we fly down the coast of whatever state we’re in and wind whips through our drenched shirts and shorts. Yet, I am warm for I have a little bit of sunshine in my passenger seat. A little bit of pure joy, thawed out happiness, raw love, in my passenger seat. Now I sit next to you, in some car, some place, somewhere, sometime, but those things do not matter because it’s not just someone, its you. The fastest way to get to heaven, is to bring it with you. And I definitely have.