FIRST DAY

1.
Who wanted me
to go to Chicago
on January 6th?
I did!

The night before,
20 below zero
Fahrenheit
with the wind chill;
as the blizzard of 99
lay in mountains
of blackening snow.

I packed two coats,
two suits,
three sweaters,
multiple sets of long johns
and heavy white socks
for a two-day stay.

I left from Newark.
**** the denseness,
it confounds!

The 2nd City to whom?
2nd ain’t bad.
It’s pretty good.
If you consider
Peking and Prague,
Tokyo and Togo,
Manchester and Moscow,
Port Au Prince and Paris,
Athens and Amsterdam,
Buenos Aries and Johannesburg;
that’s pretty good.

What’s going on here today?
It’s friggin frozen.
To the bone!

But Chi Town is still cool.
Buddy Guy’s is open.
Bartenders mixing drinks,
cabbies jamming on their breaks,
honey dew waitresses serving sugar,
buildings swerving,
fire tongued preachers are preaching
and the farmers are measuring the moon.

The lake,
unlike Ontario
is in the midst of freezing.
Bones of ice
threaten to gel
into a solid mass
over the expanse
of the Michigan Lake.
If this keeps up,
you can walk
clear to Toronto
on a silver carpet.

Along the shore
the ice is permanent.
It’s the first big frost
of winter
after a long
Indian Summer.

Thank God
I caught a cab.
Outside I hear
The Hawk
nippin hard.
It’ll get your ear,
finger or toe.
Bite you on the nose too
if you ain’t careful.

Thank God,
I’m not walking
the Wabash tonight;
but if you do cover up,
wear layers.

Chicago,
could this be
Sandburg’s City?

I’m overwhelmed
and this is my tenth time here.

It’s almost better,
sometimes it is better,
a lot of times it is better
and denser then New York.

Ask any Bull’s fan.
I’m a Knickerbocker.
Yes Nueva York,
a city that has placed last
in the standings
for many years.
Except the last two.
Yanks are # 1!

But Chicago
is a dynasty,
as big as
Sammy Sosa’s heart,
rich and wide
as Michael Jordan’s grin.

Middle of a country,
center of a continent,
smack dab in the mean
of a hemisphere,
vortex to a world,
Chicago!

Kansas City,
Nashville,
St. Louis,
Detroit,
Cleveland,
Pittsburgh,
Denver,
New Orleans,
Dallas,
Cairo,
Singapore,
Auckland,
Baghdad,
Mexico City
and Montreal
salute her.



2.
Cities,
A collection of vanities?
Engineered complex utilitarianism?
The need for community a social necessity?
Ego one with the mass?
Civilization’s latest *******?
Chicago is more then that.

Jefferson’s yeoman farmer
is long gone
but this capitol
of the Great Plains
is still democratic.

The citizen’s of this city
would vote daily,
if they could.

Chicago,
Sandburg’s Chicago,
Could it be?

The namesake river
segments the city,
canals of commerce,
all perpendicular,
is rife throughout,
still guiding barges
to the Mississippi
and St. Laurence.

Now also
tourist attractions
for a cafe society.

Chicago is really jazzy,
swanky clubs,
big steaks,
juices and drinks.

You get the best
coffee from Seattle
and the finest teas
from China.

Great restaurants
serve liquid jazz
al la carte.

Jazz Jazz Jazz
All they serve is Jazz
Rock me steady
Keep the beat
Keep it flowin
Feel the heat!

Jazz Jazz Jazz
All they is, is Jazz
Fast cars will take ya
To the show
Round bout midnight
Where’d the time go?

Flows into the Mississippi,
the mother of America’s rivers,
an empires aorta.

Great Lakes wonder of water.
Niagara Falls
still her heart gushes forth.

Buffalo connected to this holy heart.
Finger Lakes and Adirondacks
are part of this watershed,
all the way down to the
Delaware and Chesapeake.

Sandburg’s Chicago?
Oh my my,
the wonder of him.
Who captured the imagination
of the wonders of rivers.

Down stream other holy cities
from the Mississippi delta
all mapped by him.

Its mouth our Dixie Trumpet
guarded by righteous Cajun brethren.

Midwest?
Midwest from where?
It’s north of Caracas and Los Angeles,
east of Fairbanks,
west of Dublin
and south of not much.

Him,
who spoke of honest men
and loving women.
Working men and mothers
bearing citizens to build a nation.
The New World’s
precocious adolescent
caught in a stream
of endless and exciting change,
much pain and sacrifice,
dedication and loss,
pride and tribulations.

From him we know
all the people’s faces.
All their stories are told.
Never defeating the
idea of Chicago.

Sandburg had the courage to say
what was in the heart of the people, who:

Defeated the Indians,
Mapped the terrain,
Aided slavers,
Fought a terrible civil war,
Hoisted the barges,
Grew the food,
Whacked the wheat,
Sang the songs,
Fought many wars of conquest,
Cleared the land,
Erected the bridges,
Trapped the game,
Netted the fish,
Mined the coal,
Forged the steel,
Laid the tracks,
Fired the tenders,
Cut the stone,
Mixed the mortar,
Plumbed the line,
And laid the bricks
Of this nation of cities!

Pardon the Marlboro Man shtick.
It’s a poor expostulation of
crass commercial symbolism.

Like I said, I’m a
Devil Fan from Jersey
and Madison Avenue
has done its work on me.

It’s a strange alchemy
that changes
a proud Nation of Blackhawks
into a merchandising bonanza
of hometown hockey shirts,
making the native seem alien,
and the interloper at home chillin out,
warming his feet atop a block of ice,
guzzling Old Style
with clicker in hand.

Give him his beer
and other diversions.
If he bowls with his buddy’s
on Tuesday night
I hope he bowls
a perfect game.

He’s earned it.
He works hard.
Hard work and faith
built this city.

And it’s not just the faith
that fills the cities
thousand churches,
temples and
mosques on the Sabbath.

3.
There is faith in everything in Chicago!

An alcoholic broker named Bill
lives the Twelve Steps
to banish fear and loathing
for one more day.
Bill believes in sobriety.

A tug captain named Moe
waits for the spring thaw
so he can get the barges up to Duluth.
Moe believes in the seasons.

A farmer named Tom
hopes he has reaped the last
of many bitter harvests.
Tom believes in a new start.

A homeless man named Earl
wills himself a cot and a hot
at the local shelter.
Earl believes in deliverance.

A Pullman porter
named George
works overtime
to get his first born
through medical school.
George believes in opportunity.

A folk singer named Woody
sings about his
countrymen inheritance
and implores them to take it.
Woody believes in people.

A Wobbly named Joe
organizes fellow steelworkers
to fight for a workers paradise
here on earth.
Joe believes in ideals.

A bookkeeper named Edith
is certain she’ll see the Cubs
win the World Series
in her lifetime.
Edith believes in miracles.

An electrician named ****
saves money
to bring his family over from Gdansk.
**** believes in America.

A banker named Leah
knows Ditka will return
and lead the Bears
to another Super Bowl.
Leah believes in nostalgia.

A cantor named Samuel
prays for another 20 years
so he can properly train
his Temple’s replacement.

Samuel believes in tradition.
A high school girl named Sally
refuses to get an abortion.
She knows she carries
something special within her.
Sally believes in life.

A city worker named Mazie
ceaselessly prays
for her incarcerated son
doing 10 years at Cook.
Mazie believes in redemption.

A jazzer named Bix
helps to invent a new art form
out of the mist.
Bix believes in creativity.

An architect named Frank
restores the Rookery.
Frank believes in space.

A soldier named Ike
fights wars for democracy.
Ike believes in peace.

A Rabbi named Jesse
sermonizes on Moses.
Jesse believes in liberation.

Somewhere in Chicago
a kid still believes in Shoeless Joe.
The kid believes in
the integrity of the game.

An Imam named Louis
is busy building a nation
within a nation.
Louis believes in
self-determination.

A teacher named Heidi
gives all she has to her students.
She has great expectations for them all.
Heidi believes in the future.

4.
Does Chicago have a future?

This city,
full of cowboys
and wildcatters
is predicated
on a future!

Bang, bang
Shoot em up
Stake the claim
It’s your terrain
Drill the hole
Strike it rich
Top it off
You’re the boss
Take a chance
Watch it wane
Try again
Heavenly gains

Chicago
city of futures
is a Holy Mecca
to all day traders.

Their skin is gray,
hair disheveled,
loud ties and
funny coats,
thumb through
slips of paper
held by nail
chewed hands.
Selling promises
with no derivative value
for out of the money calls
and in the money puts.
Strike is not a labor action
in this city of unionists,
but a speculators mark,
a capitalist wish,
a hedgers bet,
a public debt
and a farmers
fair return.

Indexes for everything.
Quantitative models
that could burst a kazoo.

You know the measure
of everything in Chicago.
But is it truly objective?
Have mathematics banished
subjective intentions,
routing it in fair practice
of market efficiencies,
a kind of scientific absolution?

I heard that there
is a dispute brewing
over the amount of snowfall
that fell on the 1st.

The mayor’s office,
using the official city ruler
measured 22”
of snow on the ground.

The National Weather Service
says it cannot detect more
then 17” of snow.

The mayor thinks
he’ll catch less heat
for the trains that don’t run
the buses that don’t arrive
and the schools that stand empty
with the addition of 5”.

The analysts say
it’s all about capturing liquidity.

Liquidity,
can you place a great lake
into an eyedropper?

Its 20 below
and all liquid things
are solid masses
or a gooey viscosity at best.

Water is frozen everywhere.
But Chi town is still liquid,
flowing faster
then the digital blips
flashing on the walls
of the CBOT.

Dreams
are never frozen in Chicago.
The exchanges trade
without missing a beat.

Trading wet dreams,
the crystallized vapor
of an IPO
pledging a billion points
of Internet access
or raiding the public treasuries
of a central bank’s
huge stores of gold
with currency swaps.

Using the tools
of butterfly spreads
and candlesticks
to achieve the goal.

Short the Russell
or buy the Dow,
go long the
CAC and DAX.
Are you trading in euro’s?
You better be
or soon will.
I know
you’re Chicago,
you’ll trade anything.
WEBS,
Spiders,
and Leaps
are traded here,
along with sweet crude,
North Sea Brent,
plywood and T-Bill futures;
and most importantly
the commodities,
the loam
that formed this city
of broad shoulders.

What about our wheat?
Still whacking and
breadbasket to the world.

Oil,
an important fossil fuel
denominated in
good ole greenbacks.

Porkbellies,
not just hogwash
on the Wabash,
but bacon, eggs
and flapjacks
are on the menu
of every diner in Jersey
as the “All American.”

Cotton,
our contribution
to the Golden Triangle,
once the global currency
used to enrich a
gentlemen class
of cultured
southern slavers,
now Tommy Hilfiger’s
preferred fabric.

I think he sends it
to Bangkok where
child slaves
spin it into
gold lame'.

Sorghum,
I think its hardy.

Soybeans,
the new age substitute
for hamburger
goes great with tofu lasagna.

Corn,
ADM creates ethanol,
they want us to drive cleaner cars.

Cattle,
once driven into this city’s
bloodhouses for slaughter,
now ground into
a billion Big Macs
every year.

When does a seed
become a commodity?
When does a commodity
become a future?
When does a future expire?

You can find the answers
to these questions in Chicago
and find a fortune in a hole in the floor.

Look down into the pits.
Hear the screams of anguish
and profitable delights.

Frenzied men
swarming like a mass
of epileptic ants
atop the worlds largest sugar cube
auger the worlds free markets.

The scene is
more chaotic then
100 Haymarket Square Riots
multiplied by 100
1968 Democratic Conventions.

Amidst inverted anthills,
they scurry forth and to
in distinguished
black and red coats.

Fighting each other
as counterparties
to a life and death transaction.

This is an efficient market
that crosses the globe.

Oil from the Sultan of Brunei,
Yen from the land of Hitachi,
Long Bonds from the Fed,
nickel from Quebec,
platinum and palladium
from Siberia,
FTSE’s from London
and crewel cane from Havana
circle these pits.

Tijuana,
Shanghai
and Istanbul's
best traders
are only half as good
as the average trader in Chicago.

Chicago,
this hog butcher to the world,
specializes in packaging and distribution.

Men in blood soaked smocks,
still count the heads
entering the gates of the city.

Their handiwork
is sent out on barges
and rail lines as frozen packages
of futures
waiting for delivery
to an anonymous counterparty
half a world away.

This nation’s hub
has grown into the
premier purveyor
to the world;
along all the rivers,
highways,
railways
and estuaries
it’s tentacles reach.

5.
Sandburg’s Chicago,
is a city of the world’s people.

Many striver rows compose
its many neighborhoods.

Nordic stoicism,
Eastern European orthodoxy
and Afro-American
calypso vibrations
are three of many cords
strumming the strings
of Chicago.

Sandburg’s Chicago,
if you wrote forever
you would only scratch its surface.

People wait for trains
to enter the city from O’Hare.
Frozen tears
lock their eyes
onto distant skyscrapers,
solid chunks
of snot blocks their nose
and green icicles of slime
crust mustaches.
They fight to breathe.

Sandburg’s Chicago
is The Land of Lincoln,
Savior of the Union,
protector of the Republic.
Sent armies
of sons and daughters,
barges, boxcars,
gunboats, foodstuffs,
cannon and shot
to raze the south
and stamp out succession.

Old Abe’s biography
are still unknown volumes to me.
I must see and read the great words.
You can never learn enough;
but I’ve been to Washington
and seen the man’s memorial.
The Free World’s 8th wonder,
guarded by General Grant,
who still keeps an eye on Richmond
and a hand on his sword.

Through this American winter
Abe ponders.
The vista he surveys is dire and tragic.

Our sitting President
impeached
for lying about a *******.

Party partisans
in the senate are sworn and seated.
Our Chief Justice,
adorned with golden bars
will adjudicate the proceedings.
It is the perfect counterpoint
to an ageless Abe thinking
with malice toward none
and charity towards all,
will heal the wounds
of the nation.

Abe our granite angel,
Chicago goes on,
The Union is strong!


SECOND DAY

1.
Out my window
the sun has risen.

According to
the local forecast
its minus 9
going up to
6 today.

The lake,
a golden pillow of clouds
is frozen in time.

I marvel
at the ancients ones
resourcefulness
and how
they mastered
these extreme elements.

Past, present and future
has no meaning
in the Citadel
of the Prairie today.

I set my watch
to Central Standard Time.

Stepping into
the hotel lobby
the concierge
with oil smooth hair,
perfect tie
and English lilt
impeccably asks,
“Do you know where you are going Sir?
Can I give you a map?”

He hands me one of Chicago.
I see he recently had his nails done.
He paints a green line
along Whacker Drive and says,
“turn on Jackson, LaSalle, Wabash or Madison
and you’ll get to where you want to go.”
A walk of 14 or 15 blocks from Streeterville-
(I start at The Chicago White House.
They call it that because Hillary Rodham
stays here when she’s in town.
Its’ also alleged that Stedman
eats his breakfast here
but Opra
has never been seen
on the premises.
I wonder how I gained entry
into this place of elite’s?)
-down into the center of The Loop.

Stepping out of the hotel,
The Doorman
sporting the epaulets of a colonel
on his corporate winter coat
and furry Cossack hat
swaddling his round black face
accosts me.

The skin of his face
is flaking from
the subzero windburn.

He asks me
with a gapped toothy grin,
“Can I get you a cab?”
“No I think I’ll walk,” I answer.
“Good woolen hat,
thick gloves you should be alright.”
He winks and lets me pass.

I step outside.
The Windy City
flings stabbing cold spears
flying on wings of 30-mph gusts.
My outside hardens.
I can feel the freeze
deepen
into my internalness.
I can’t be sure
but inside
my heart still feels warm.
For how long
I cannot say.

I commence
my walk
among the spires
of this great city,
the vertical leaps
that anchor the great lake,
holding its place
against the historic
frigid assault.

The buildings’ sway,
modulating to the blows
of natures wicked blasts.

It’s a hard imposition
on a city and its people.

The gloves,
skullcap,
long underwear,
sweater,
jacket
and overcoat
not enough
to keep the cold
from penetrating
the person.

Like discerning
the layers of this city,
even many layers,
still not enough
to understand
the depth of meaning
of the heart
of this heartland city.

Sandburg knew the city well.
Set amidst groves of suburbs
that extend outward in every direction.
Concentric circles
surround the city.
After the burbs come farms,
Great Plains, and mountains.
Appalachians and Rockies
are but mere molehills
in the city’s back yard.
It’s terra firma
stops only at the sea.
Pt. Barrow to the Horn,
many capes extended.

On the periphery
its appendages,
its extremities,
its outward extremes.
All connected by the idea,
blown by the incessant wind
of this great nation.
The Windy City’s message
is sent to the world’s four corners.
It is a message of power.
English the worlds
common language
is spoken here,
along with Ebonics,
Espanol,
Mandarin,
Czech,
Russian,
Korean,
Arabic,
Hindi­,
German,
French,
electronics,
steel,
cars,
cartoons,
rap,
sports­,
movies,
capital,
wheat
and more.

Always more.
Much much more
in Chicago.

2.
Sandburg
spoke all the dialects.

He heard them all,
he understood
with great precision
to the finest tolerances
of a lathe workers micrometer.

Sandburg understood
what it meant to laugh
and be happy.

He understood
the working mans day,
the learned treatises
of university chairs,
the endless tomes
of the city’s
great libraries,
the lost languages
of the ancient ones,
the secret codes
of abstract art,
the impact of architecture,
the street dialects and idioms
of everymans expression of life.

All fighting for life,
trying to build a life,
a new life
in this modern world.

Walking across
the Michigan Avenue Bridge
I see the Wrigley Building
is neatly carved,
catty cornered on the plaza.

I wonder if Old Man Wrigley
watched his barges
loaded with spearmint
and double-mint
move out onto the lake
from one of those Gothic windows
perched high above the street.

Would he open a window
and shout to the men below
to quit slaking and work harder
or would he
between the snapping sound
he made with his mouth
full of his chewing gum
offer them tickets
to a ballgame at Wrigley Field
that afternoon?

Would the men below
be able to understand
the man communing
from such a great height?

I listen to a man
and woman conversing.
They are one step behind me
as we meander along Wacker Drive.

"You are in Chicago now.”
The man states with profundity.
“If I let you go
you will soon find your level
in this city.
Do you know what I mean?”

No I don’t.
I think to myself.
What level are you I wonder?
Are you perched atop
the transmission spire
of the Hancock Tower?

I wouldn’t think so
or your ears would melt
from the windburn.

I’m thinking.
Is she a kept woman?
She is majestically clothed
in fur hat and coat.
In animal pelts
not trapped like her,
but slaughtered
from farms
I’m sure.

What level
is he speaking of?

Many levels
are evident in this city;
many layers of cobbled stone,
Pennsylvania iron,
Hoosier Granite
and vertical drops.

I wonder
if I detect
condensation
in his voice?

What is
his intention?
Is it a warning
of a broken affair?
A pending pink slip?
Advise to an addict
refusing to adhere
to a recovery regimen?

What is his level anyway?
Is he so high and mighty,
Higher and mightier
then this great city
which we are all a part of,
which we all helped to build,
which we all need
in order to keep this nation
the thriving democratic
empire it is?

This seditious talk!

3.
The Loop’s El
still courses through
the main thoroughfares of the city.

People are transported
above the din of the street,
looking down
on the common pedestrians
like me.

Super CEO’s
populating the upper floors
of Romanesque,
Greek Revivalist,
New Bauhaus,
Art Deco
and Post Nouveau
Neo-Modern
Avant-Garde towers
are too far up
to see me
shivering on the street.

The cars, busses,
trains and trucks
are all covered
with the film
of rock salt.

Salt covers
my bootless feet
and smudges
my cloths as well.

The salt,
the primal element
of the earth
covers everything
in Chicago.

It is the true level
of this city.

The layer
beneath
all layers,
on which
everything
rests,
is built,
grows,
thrives
then dies.
To be
returned again
to the lower
layers
where it can
take root
again
and grow
out onto
the great plains.

Splashing
the nation,
anointing
its people
with its
blessing.

A blessing,
Chicago?

All rivers
come here.

All things
found its way here
through the canals
and back bays
of the world’s
greatest lakes.

All roads,
rails and
air routes
begin and
end here.

Mrs. O’Leary’s cow
got a *** rap.
It did not start the fire,
we did.

We lit the torch
that flamed
the city to cinders.
From a pile of ash
Chicago rose again.

Forever Chicago!
Forever the lamp
that burns bright
on a Great Lake’s
western shore!

Chicago
the beacon
sends the
message to the world
with its windy blasts,
on chugging barges,
clapping trains,
flying tandems,
T1 circuits
and roaring jets.

Sandburg knew
a Chicago
I will never know.

He knew
the rhythm of life
the people walked to.
The tools they used,
the dreams they dreamed
the songs they sang,
the things they built,
the things they loved,
the pains that hurt,
the motives that grew,
the actions that destroyed
the prayers they prayed,
the food they ate
their moments of death.

Sandburg knew
the layers of the city
to the depths
and windy heights
I cannot fathom.

The Blues
came to this city,
on the wing
of a chirping bird,
on the taps
of a rickety train,
on the blast
of an angry sax
rushing on the wind,
on the Westend blitz
of Pop's brash coronet,
on the tink of
a twinkling piano
on a paddle-wheel boat
and on the strings
of a lonely man’s guitar.

Walk into the clubs,
tenements,
row houses,
speakeasies
and you’ll hear the Blues
whispered like
a quiet prayer.

Tidewater Blues
from Virginia,
Delta Blues
from the lower
Mississippi,
Boogie Woogie
from Appalachia,
Texas Blues
from some Lone Star,
Big Band Blues
from Kansas City,
Blues from
Beal Street,
Jelly Roll’s Blues
from the Latin Quarter.

Hell even Chicago
got its own brand
of Blues.

Its all here.
It ended up here
and was sent away
on the winds of westerly blows
to the ear of an eager world
on strong jet streams
of simple melodies
and hard truths.

A broad
shouldered woman,
a single mother stands
on the street
with three crying babes.
Their cloths
are covered
in salt.
She pleads
for a break,
praying
for a new start.
Poor and
under-clothed
against the torrent
of frigid weather
she begs for help.
Her blond hair
and ****** features
suggests her
Scandinavian heritage.
I wonder if
she is related to Sandburg
as I walk past
her on the street.
Her feet
are bleeding
through her
canvass sneakers.
Her babes mouths
are zipped shut
with frozen drivel
and mucous.

The Blues live
on in Chicago.

The Blues
will forever live in her.
As I turn the corner
to walk the Miracle Mile
I see her engulfed
in a funnel cloud of salt,
snow and bits
of white paper,
swirling around her
and her children
in an angry
unforgiving
maelstrom.

The family
begins to
dissolve
like a snail
sprinkled with salt;
and a mother
and her children
just disappear
into the pavement
at the corner
of Dearborn,
in Chicago.

Music:

Robert Johnson
Sweet Home Chicago


jbm
Chicago
1/7/99

i have loved,let us see if that’s all.
Bit into you as teeth,in the stone
of a musical fruit.  My lips pleasantly groan
on your taste.  Jumped the quick wall

of your smile into stupid gardens
if this were not enough(not really enough
pulled one before one the vague tough

exquisite

              flowers, whom hardens
richly, darkness. On the whole
possibly have i loved….?you)
                                    sheath before sheath

stripped to the Odour.  (and here’s what WhoEver will know
Had you as bite teeth;
i stood with you as a foal

stands but as the trees,lay,which grow

Blow out the candle
Let it go they say
Watch the smoke dance up in the air
And the flames leave
with a simple dance
As the wax hardens leaving a warm spot full of scented memories
But I don't want to let go
They can't make me

Here we are just me and you our emotions boiling like stew for each other as we gaze at one another. I approach you standing before you in ****** thought. Studying your beautiful **** figure so innocent in your taunting  poise. I give you my crooked smile with a raised brow. Wanting to show you if not everything I know how. Everything that's not allowed. Now I take you boldly and without warning close to me.

Pressing my lips to yours overlapping each others. My lips almost curl to yours as I enclose over your mouth like a puzzle piece fitting in place. I close slightly to interlock our mouths passionately head tilted to complete the exchange. My tongue exploring your mouth teasing your tongue to play. Ever so long we kiss as we wrap our arms tightly around each other. Not wanting to let go.

Inevitably my arms loosen only to grab your sides my hand slipping down beneath your pants swaying slowly as a tree limb in the faint wind. Fingers expanding apart into your ******* like the tentacles of a sea creature over your patch of ***** hair above the sweet lips of your ******. Longest finger going threw the folds feeling your **** harden. You start to moisten with every touch I give to you playing with your *****. I stop only to have my lustful kisses go to your cheek, on your neck my lips as a suction cup feeling the warm pules of the blood beating in your jugular vain.  Tasting the salty sweat on your skin ******* the blood to your skins surface I leave my mark as a vampire on your neck. My **** hardens unbarring wanting to escape the enclosure of my jeans. I push you on the bed of seduction caused by your temptress ways!  We feverishly tear off one an others clothes all while caressing and pressing ourselves to each other.

My eyes exploring your **** body every curve and shape it brings so lovely in its beauty. It's form can not be duplicated. I stare into your eyes hands at each of sides the prettiest face I've ever seen on a girl. I left your head close to me as I lay over you. My lips going for more of you. My body nudging between your legs you spread them apart slightly I balance over you as if I was readying myself for push ups. We can't stop making out I go to your ear kissing your lobe flicking and nipping the bottom of your ear with my tongue.

My body slides down a little further as I explore you. Going to the finest breast Ive seen. Shape just right I circle  my hand around and over it feeling your ******* hard between my fingers. I massage them firmly and lightly. Kneading them in my hand I start to Kiss and suckle them playing with your ******* in my mouth. Teasing them ******* on hard and softly with the hot and cool air as I breath and blow on them.

I raise up a little kissing further down your body as your legs spread more before me. I adventure to your belly kissing your belly button in a playful manner tickling you. Hearing your cute giggles laughing so soundly sweet. Now at the entrance of the ***** I french kiss your ****** in a romantically way. My lips pressed to your *****. Licking you rubbing my tongue through the folds and over the pearl that is your ****. Turning my head back and forth as I bury my face more between your thighs as you push my face up to it wanting me. You lift up spinning around to sit on my face. Sliding your self to and fro as your ***** mounted on my lips. Thighs against my ears. I Lick and lick  kiss and kiss in all manner of ways I **** on your ****. Turning over you grab my **** kissing up an down the shaft of my ****. Kissing the head of my ***** your mouth engulfs my ****. ******* on me rubbing me squeezing my ***** with your hand playing with me only as you know how. I continue to make out with your special spot while grabbing your *** cheeks and spanking you playfully. entangling around like two serpents mating. I have you down back on the bed.

My **** hard as its ever going to be in this moment of lust, passion, and ecstasy. I insert myself and enter you sliding my **** in the entrance of the begging of life. Giving you my love and tenderness. Feeling your warm wet ****** around my hot ****. You gasp and moan inhaling and exhaling with every push and release of me in you. Faster and faster I go exploring your insides every which way probing you with every inch. We are at a rhythm of love making. Kissing caressing my movements are like a crazed caterpillar crawling in its way. I tug at your hair as I'm going back and forth inside you. Pounding vigorously against you more and more.

We spin around once more to have you ride me. Back forth up and down. I buck you like a wiled horse. Lean up to you kissing you between your breast. Playing with them once more. In the moment of ****** you ****** uncontrollably scratch my back. We turn over and I lay you back down once more. Never exiting you keeping that good rhythm inside you. Alas I pull out as you can't take no more only to roll you over on your back side and protrude your tight ***. My **** swelling once more. You tighten your *** cheeks while I'm inside you again. I rigorously pound against you as I did in your ******. My hands massaging your back as I press against you. Leaning over to kiss and cress your back with my face. I pull your hair with one hand playfully. With the other I massage your neck. Now with both hands I go to your shoulders and pull your body closer to mine. I *** in your *** as I came in your *****. Our breath exasperated from the pleasures of love we muster up the very little energy we have to shower and cleanse one another. So we can lay and cuddle in our bed of love with a kiss to fall asleep.

It is often when I tend to pause and introspect  on life, my experiences with in in general. It is in such moments, I feel  myself imbibed, yet  so stunned  at the realisation of the fact, that it is so knowingly, yet often most unknowingly that we affect everyone whose life's paths we cross through! It may sure be the case that  we don't mean too much to a person as the other person already does, but then, what we still are mostly unaware of at that moment, is how beautifully, intensely or pathetically does our little acts and attitudes may be already affecting others, and theirs to us. Would our  lives be okay as it is currently, when the same situation is just altered a little by deducting air from it? Would we still be sitting so patiently as we are now, even if everything was same, except the mere deduction of water from our life? The mere absence of shelter and food yet again are the elements, whose mere mention of absolute deductance would be good and great enough to stop the mere throbbing of our heartbeats which might already have slowed or rather started being too swift by now!
It is interesting, how some elements are just a trifle to be valued, before we realise how worse our lives could be
only by their absence, or well departure! Doesn't that same rule applies for us people too? Most don't value  the hardworking yet lowly paid people like a builder or the labourer who builds their House, or mansion, as much as they value their guests and inhabitants that get into it after it's finally finalized. The guest obviously are worth the praise but aren't those
labours?  ask this to yourself for a moment, that what would your house be like if there were no labourers to make that happen! The house that keeps us safe and cosy now, is but many  day and night's struggles of someone who worked hard to make it happen in reality. He, his soul deserves to be praised for making your dream, your dream home come alive! It often makes me smile at some kindered souls whose ultimate profession is working for humanity, it's wellness, It's enrichment, It's improvement, and it's best progress, therefore I can't help but smile wide, when I come across a truly  honest teacher, doctor, mentor, poets or writers ever. They have a spark that's so  refreshing, inspiring and contagioud! They indeed are those eminent souls who nurture and enrich the souls of others so piously and profoundly, and it is often that they are just  so unaware of this preciousness and the greatness they so majestically possess!They pour in us, the true essence of the goodness our world is made up of, and make us feel a like a viable part of it. They brighten our days. it's a blessed blessing to be in the company of such gems, truly!

Afterall, us humans are so alike the state of matter called 'liquid', that is known for its 'adaptability' .It hardens and softens with  the change in temperature. sometimes hardened by our outer world's that haunts us often, yet are very eagerly  inter-convertible. And it is hence, when  the truest, and enlightening essence of  eminent souls touch us, embrace us, we transform in their moulds, sometimes and little and sometimes a lot. Sometimes very finely, and sometimes too coarsely, built in a confined type with the advent of time, and it is then, years after years, we become a person and then a personality that we let time , and the people that tread through it, in our lives transform us into. Every little to large element affects us, in ways we often don't know of. Everything teaches and tells us of life it's stories, it comes with lessons, and our hearts, out consciousness perceives them too, from time to time. We  shape mysteriously, yet so mysteriously   in and into the vessel of life eventually, that we interestingly don't realise the intensity of the change until someone else remarks us of it, and makes us realise it. These changes are just this mystical and inevitable! And change is the law of time.

Before the gate has been closed,
before the last question is posed,
before I am transposed.
Before the weeds fill the gardens,
before there are no pardons,
before the concrete hardens.
Before all the flute-holes are covered,
before things are locked in then cupboard,
before the rules are discovered.
Before the conclusion is planned,
before God closes his hand,
before we have nowhere to stand.

Red paint dries on a tissue
Slowly
The same rush hue
Glazes imperceptibly
Gently losing shine
And carefully dulls without change
And softly hardens until dry,
When you can touch it without fear
of red fingers, red clothes, red smears
But still, wasted paint on a tissue
Will be thrown away without notice
And still dry red.

Soft pads glide over silky pale flesh
Deep pools of ocean green become darker with passion
Every touch brings the storm closer to the  couple
The raven haired God like man looks over every millimeter
Her face flushes at the feelings building inside

Her black waist corsette pushes her ivory globes teasingly near
the point of spilling forth
Dark red tendrils lift off delicate cheek bones tickling her face
Her belly flutters as tiny goose bumps rise upon her arms

The soft padded fingers begin to explore this creature who has walked
right into his trap.
Long lashes lift revealing startling violet eyes
His breath catches harshly
He does not seem to realize he is under her spell as she remains in his trap

Julia's body is burning as Allen's fingers and hands weave an inferno built only by his touch
Her body responds as she feels the moisture begin to gather between her sweet petals
Trying not to move lest she give away the affect he has upon her

Allen watches her eyes noting how they seem to change to grey
His thumb slides across the bud covered by material yet
It cannot hide the obvious desire as the tender flesh hardens and a soft mewl escapes pouty lips

Julia begins to blush as her body betrays her mind
Allen chuckles at her discomfort
His hands and fingers seem to set her on fire every place they touch
She feels his knee **** gently at the apex of her thighs.
Moving slightly his knee grinds against the promise land

Flames fall back as her head follows suit
Sweet moans reach his ears inciting his passion more
Her hips move against his thigh trying to increase the friction
Allen rips the cumbersome corsette and shirt free allowing cool air
to kiss her flesh where his tongue wishes to follow

Pressure builds within the lust filled redhead, she digs nails into his shirt
pulling him closer.  
Allen's tongue swirls around first one then the other swollen bud
Dragging his teeth hard over the delicate flesh
Julia cries out as desire spins out of control.

Allen begins pulling the ****** into his feverish mouth suckling
Then biting as fingers pinch and pull the other
Julia grinds down ******* His thigh not paying attention to the moisture that stains his pants

She stiffens when she feels his hand pull her dress up allowing his fingers
to slide through her dew laden petals
The smell of need permeates the air
As his mouth continues to suckle then bite his fingers slam deep inside her
silky soaked lips

Julia's legs quiver when his fingers fill her well it is almost her undoing her screams of pleasure fill the air
Allen brings her to the edge filling her deep with long thick. fingers
Releasing her ****** he begins to kiss and nip her neck, fingers coated in honey slow down

Julia growls in frustration and he bites her neck hard just as fingers pinch her *******
She holds her breath panting as the inferno increases hotter
Both are sweating now as she begs him to allow her to fly
Allen chuckles whispering "not yet Lil *****"

She grinds down on his fingers trying to take what she wants
He is wise to her movements stopping abruptly until she realizes he
won't continue unless she stops

Suddenly out of nowhere she is turned over his lap where he brings his hand down ten times fast and hard cross her ***
His  knee lined up so each swat digs into her wetness
Crying out she bites her lip willing herself to not release

He pushes her to the ground and starts biting the tender buds while pulling and twisting that hardened flesh that has swelled past it's hood
Pace becomes faster as he growls in her ear to **** his fingers
She does so with wild abandon

His teeth bite down ******* her neck licking the area he bites
His fingers curve up as she grinds
Allen growls out NOW as his mouth finds her lips
Crushing them to his, catching her screams of pleasure
Her well explodes in spasms gripping his fingers hard enough to break

Julia quivers all over from the massive release, blushing as she remembers
her response to all he did
Allen drags His well manicured nails across her blistered half moons
Hearing her moan loudly, knowing he could send her spiraling just by spanking her once more.

Julia ducks under fiery curls trying to escape his scrutiny
Allen knows what she is up to and pulls the silky curls away
Lifting his soaked hand from between gorgeous thighs
Placing fingers between their lips kissing sand licking her juices off
The taste on his lips brings a feeling of decadence through Julia

They will meet again Allen said
Julia watched as he left her there hearing a car start
Now nothing but silence and the smell from her traitorous body

Whispering to the darkness
"Please return to me soon"


Written by:  Jennifer Humphrey
May 23, 2013

Your white bosoms releasing that white serum.
That curvaceous mound feeds humanity,
That makes the biggest humanity via motherhood wisdom.

Your pink ******* arousing that tempest blood.
That soft hill becoming hard,
That hardens which heightens the adulthood.

Your black ***** taming sin.
That concealed shape popping out to provoke,
That provokes to **** feminism in mean.

The heart swells and swells,

a bit threatening. The heart hardens

and hardens, frightfully...

I am afraid for my heart.



I feel its mound beneath

the flesh of my breast, thudding

when it is tender, feeling absent when

it hardens...



The heart tries to soften when it becomes

hard, to keep thudding and rising, afraid

of the silence.



When the heart feels love,

it swells, enlarged with

blood and promise, anxious

for the sound of its own drum.

beasts made out of pieces of clay
my God is an artist
the reason he makes these beasts is to play
with the clay when it hardens

angels feel no danger in the throes
my God is so fearless
don't try to look his almighty in the toes
when his steps are so careless

Without the April wind to send their song,
The mourning doves of Middlesex are singing
And will be heard never again from long
Away, if graduation bells are ringing

And now November rains erode the nests
That mourning doves assembled in the gardens
From where their mild and wind-warm coos caressed
My ear, to quiet earth that cools and hardens

The injustice
either hardens or breaks the human mind
The mind
must choose how to fight against the injustice
The choice
of non-violence is not a sign of weakness
The knowledge
of why you fight is more important than the fight
The strength
to suffer is the time between despair and triumph
The ability
to turn the other cheek is the holiest weapon
The act
of vengeance is the weakness of a human being
The love
for the wounded is the reason they follow you
The memory
of the dead is the passion to believe in the vision
The revolution
in you ends when you no longer hate a stranger

Photographs by Avedon

This was written in a friend's home in the Berkshire Mountains, on a Saturday morning, a few years ago.  Up early, I went exploring their bookshelves and found a book of Richard Avedon's photographs of average Americans out west.  Google "richard avedon photos of the american west" - then read the poem.  Please, for without seeing the faces, for this will make all the difference.  In the Berkshires, it is always chilly there, even in the summer sun.  This and other obscure references are better detailed in the notes.


Join my warmth and
my chill,
as the nine o'clock sun,
a 45 degree steeplechase
warms,
but still not
strong enough
to dispense
the lingering,
residual, remaindered,
breezy chill
of the prior eve,
that hides in,
emanates from,
the shadows
of the
deep wooded hillocks
of the
Berkshire Mountains.

Join my warmth
and my chill!

Upright jolted,
head kicked awake,
entranced and revolted,
excited and repelled,
emotive, yet, stilled.

For oh so casually,
this heroic city dweller,
brave and fearless
bookshelf explorer,
retrieves a book,
to find a new route
thru time and space
to the center of his brain.

Photographs by Avedon,
of my fellow Americans,
the Have Nots,
his "Havedons"
of the
American West.

These uncommon people
with whom I share
uncommonly little,
these drifters, the carneys,
the would-have-been cowboys,
busted blackjack dealers,
rattlesnake gut n' skinners,
coal and copper miners,
the hay truck drivers,
dirt so deep in
their pores ingrained,
colors and bloodies their souls,
browns their veins,
are the ones that
too oft,
go off first to
fight wars
in my name.

Photos untitled,
words unneeded.

In this far corner of our
shared contiguous space
called the
United States of America,
top of the line here
would be
insurance agents,
secretaries and maybe even,
the waitresses.

But their eyes,
oh their eyes!

Words I do not own
to fair share with you,
the clarifying gaze
of measured dignity and
immeasurable ache,
heritage pride,
heretical heartbreak,
that marks and unites
these disparate and dispirited
vessels of humankind.

Disjointed,
the noon suns finally,
raises my body temperature
browns my surface...

Yet, nothing eradicates
this ******* chill
in my soul
or calms my consternation,
as black and white
eyes discolor
my comfortable existence,
as I ponder
Avedon's words:

All photographs are accurate but none tell the truth

Pass over,
pass by,
The Evil Son at Passover
asks ever so sly,
what have they to do with me?

It is the Sabbath.
We luxuriate in our rest.
Rest is the greatest luxury

What is this Sabbath?
Heschel's cathedral -
existant both
in space and time,
and one enters
when and where
one can.

Do my distant,
(both in space and time)
American cousins
share my Sabbath?

Are they allowed
this luxury,
or is it endless exertion,
severity and deprivation,
all and every day
of their lives?

Constant risk every day.

Who cannot fail to see the
precipitousness of life
edged in the lines of their
hearts and minds?

Day to day hardens them
and teaches the
discipline of
severity unended.

Is the prudence of
self-forgetfulness,
their morning bitter pill
they must swallow
to carry on?

Among the resolutions
I need
to claim a
life fulfilled is this:

How to end this poem,
close this can of worms,
accidentally kicked open.

Will sunset end these
troubling questions
of which you have
your own,
more personal variations?
(what about the ...)

Perennials flower everywhere,
in Auschwitz,
along the Tigris,
even in Kabul and Somalia,
along the highways
that lead
to the mecca of
Las Vegas.

Perennials flower everywhere.

In warmth and cool,
in time and space,
they flower in my heart and
my brain and in
my prayerful tears.
flowing down my cheeks,
as I lay me down to sleep,
to dream these of
impoverished words

Havdalah^^ thoughts,
separations celebrated.

Distinctions noted,
even celebrated tween
holy and common,
light and dark,
Sabbath and
the six weekdays
of labor,
between sacred and secular
and
between me and
my American Brothers
of the American West.

I know
just one thing
to be true:

The Sabbath Cathedral is
open to all,
whatever day
you choose to
abide there

I await you,
my American cousins,
with wine and bread
and the
holy of holiest words
of comfort and sooth.

I will wash your feet and
lay you down to
restful sleep
in the
Sabbath Cathedral
in my heart.

Together,
at last,
we will be joined,
in warmth and chill.



August 29, 2010
Lanesboro, Mass.

Volcanic Poet
Molten words, ash chokes the air
Hardens by the Sea

When you reach for the cold wooden board
your hands begin to decay
your skin peels back then hardens and falls off your scarlet bones.
A bright midnight flash struggles to push through to the other side of your mind
revealing that you passed years ago but are stuck in an actuality that doesn’t belong to you.
Life is all just a disorder, dead but you keep on living
a distorted mind trapped in an unborn child's head.
Or it could be a game from the further future that they play
controlling little beings within a screen.
The words engraved on the board now lay in your flesh and you cannot let go
from the reality within reality
but is the concept that hard to grasp?
You believe in God but not your own insanity?
We are the dead ones that are only able to perceive
they are makers of our madness
the creators of an urban fantasy
and they try to speak to us from millions of years in the future through a sharp birch wood board
but the lies we are told and the truths that this “world” withholds
does not compare to the unknown universe outside of this screen.

Trill of beak into birch. Dawn spooks
the graveyard into silence. A heart
hardens at God’s withered finger reaching
but not reached for. I trim the hedges
and the whir of ****-eater disturbs
a nest of yellow jackets into tornado,
dust devil, of translucent wings and sting.
I walk among the dead three times a week.
I am learning their language. They relearn
the mundanity of white noise above
and quietly forget, quietly forgive.
This hill is the crest on a wave of coffins,
each one a boat through the world below.
Submerged in a bloodshot morning
I listen to a woodpecker in its throes
of building a home out of the depths of bark.
In the chill, the soft fog rolling, it pecks
and it knocks. The doors to these lives
long closed, I hush. I do not believe God
will visit these grounds to reclaim his clay:
I plant flowers in it between the plots,
each name engraved of marble a blank stare.
The flash of red flushes from budding branches
and I return to work. No one answers.
I relearn the dead’s language, their silence,
relearn every day how to repair stillness.

I promised myself that I'd never share this.
Then I read it at open mic night in front of you and your mother.

Because the longer it has been
Since the last time we looked at each other
In awe
In love
In shock that we found one another
Amidst the **** in everybody else
The easier it is
To paint our story a hue of rose
To take the broken shards of trust
And make my mind weld them back together
Because as the days pass by and the calendar pages are ripped away from their future
I can’t help but regret not being able to rip those pages with you
Because when you held my hand and promised me your heart just at that very moment
But you couldn’t give me a guarantee of forever
I still felt that if every church caught on fire and burned to the ground
If every Bible was thrown into a fire and disappeared into oblivion,
I would still have faith
Faith in you.

Because every sweet nothing you whispered into my ear
Was written for somebody else
You recycle your lines
Your poetic lines
On girls you “can’t live without”
Oh
I can write stories
About a boy who writes poems
And thinks of himself as a tragic, cynical soul, whom no one understands,
Who falls in love
With an attractive whimsical girl with a “wild soul”
Who commits petty sins and dyes her hair wacky colors
And helps him reconnect with the beauty of life
And completes him in a way that nobody understands
Sorry it didn’t end up like that
I’d much rather look at reality just as it is
Yeah, you can write poetry
But I can write truths
And the truth is, you held my hand half-heartedly

Can I pry your fingers from the things that you hold onto
But have a bigger hold on you
They slowly dragged you down
Under the waves
And are drowning you without a sound
Can I try to make you smile
Can I block you from the rain
Can I stick you with a needle
And **** out all the pain
That permeates your bones
Travels through your veins
Pumps into your heart
And suffocates your brain

Every single day is just another gift
But if it’s not wrapped up with a bow
And handed over with a smile
Can it really be worth the thank you note?
They say anger eats you from the inside
And hatred burns you more than the one it’s meant for
I feel the ground underneath me shifting
Feeling less and less sturdy as the days go by
The anger surging through my veins like burning magma
Letting it drip into all of my cracks
And the madder I get
The hotter it burns
To the point of eruption.
Because lava can level an entire city
And once it hardens in my cracks
I’m going to just give up

Listen to what I am not saying
To the worlds I have yet to breathe
To the life I haven’t given all of my emotions
To the sound of me being weak
Listen to the scars I have carved
Less than gently down my skin
Listen to the pools in my eyes
Before they begin to drip

You’re fading like a bruise
Like the ones your mouth left on my neck and shoulders
With its loving pressure
Your lips, which parted to ******* mouth like it was salvation
No longer part to speak to me
You whispered my name like a prayer
Now you speak it like a curse

I kissed you like forgiveness
And you held me like I was hope.
We held each other like bandages hold two separated pieces of skin together
And prevent the source of life from spilling out.

You’re fading
Like a bruise
Like the one you left on my mind with your brilliant conversation and meaningless poetry
Like the one you left on my heart
When you opened it and poured your love into it
Only to draw it back out
Like a needle ******* the life out of me at the doctor
I wasn’t given a bandage to stop the bleeding
But I’ve figured it out.

I’ve never heard of a man
who can make flawed look so beautiful
the way you do
Forget-me-not green
But you have forgotten me
Left a bruise on my life
That I’m not sure
Will heal
But I’ll keep ripping petals off of flowers

Summer’s time has come and gone
The walls, floorboards release a yawn
With nine months then to recoup, recover
From being a home, just for the summer.

Eloquent memories freshly remain
Of friends who nestled within her frame
A cabin of bunk beds, cubbies, fresh air
Where girls unwound with little a care.

Her crevice now holds a left-behind letter
Whose parchment hardens with winter’s weather
Yet the season’s sleet knows the warmer reflection
Of late night secrets and encouraged imperfection.

Spring has sprung most slowly for some
The evergreens exclaim a harmonious hum
Her wooden steps defrost, and patiently await
The coming of campers to the cardinal state.

Fall, winter, and spring all pass
Warm rays have woken the mountains at last
Each cabin’s frame stands taller, *****
While girls, all ages, reconnect.

Anna Blake

We loved them because
they loved to create.
A tailor and a builder.
made art from nothing.
Left a legacy.
Constructed beauty
from seemingly nothing.

Oh boys,
Our tailors and our builders,
Without you, we’d be sleeping just fine.

He blew her mind
Made her consult
With her old dear friend
Jack
(Daniels)
At hours unmentionable to civilized people.
Who indeed made her feel better
but also made her feel
Worse in the end.

He could talk real pretty things around my head
And I was hooked like a fish
It’s been 4 years and I’m still not free.
I’ve never met anyone so broken
And yet so comfortable with his millions of pieces.
He taught me to take the lenses off
And embrace this life, this love, this way.
Everything that happened before
Is over.
Tomorrow is just what we’re calling 12 hours from now
And oh, won’t those 12 hours until then
Be ******* glorious.

He molded her
Into a volcano.
The kind you see in middle school art class
That the kiln hardens
and it becomes supposedly unbreakable
Until one day, you find it has been chipped all along
[You did that to her, you know.
Broke a piece off her without even knowing it.]

Now that we’re older
they suddenly saw us
When before we were just the backing cast.
Made things that belong in the deep
Accessible to us without fishing lines
Now that’s just a cruel game to play.

It’s funny that it was
a tailor and a builder
who gave us the courage
to not need
to be built or tailored
anymore.

I am made of infatuation, shame and forever gloom
You could not fall
This is not the chessboard of your dreams
No pawn makes—
No bishop makes
The queen takes, is taken an equal
This is not an aisle of rebirth
Or some sombre remembrance
It halts, it halts
The numbers lessen
I did not abandon, I am still here
Yet, a halt lingers
Like death stuck on the precipice of throat
A life of a single lifetime of a thought
I am energy, a little restless
But restless so out of the nature of self
Like the eye of a rook
On the king through a rook

A stupor unblinking
Like a sharpening of a dream
The knight-slide like an Arabian sword
The king scuttles
Rook takes rook, king takes rook

I fancied myself a manly dream
But it doesn’t work like that, does it—
The game writes, and children play
Now I wait the shameful minutes away
(And I watch you hands, so patient, simple
Say, are you dead or pleased?)
And I watch your hands
I should’ve looked up when I had the chance
Now the brooding leaves
And my eye hardens
Father, you have won
With a dream so well, you played just right
I should have not worshipped the pawns like that

Without worry I sit and wonder
When the next batch will come.
Dough rolled out, stretched and pulled,
Broken into pieces and stuck in the oven. Without the confines of an cookie cutter; natural in every way. An free form of emotional bliss laid flat on the pan.
I patiently wait, green plate on the table waiting for the oven to preheat.
The dough rises becoming smaller.
I only hope you understand
How lovely it is to be near someone you love.
Without the concealment of air tight bags they are free, the cookies that bake in the oven soon to be placed on a plate, devoured.
Introduced to the seduction of crumbs that come together; sweet, delightful
Before it fully hardens.
Soft, delightful.
Skinny dipping in an pool of cookie dough.
An illusion of things whole until broken apart by lips in full desire.
Drenched in saliva of deep need
Simultaneously becoming an memory
As well as a part of smiling lips.
The mistletoe that hangs above the heart.
Waiting for another batch made by your hands

The Autumn missal has arrived,
A fall reminder of the coming cold,
Strange slanting light to shift the maple
Greens to furious red and gold.

High above the myriad travelers chant adieu,
As on their sky-road paths they sing,
A chorus glorious to southern waters blue
Where winter marshes serve a warm retreat.

A liturgy of highest order drives the world
Beyond the ken of time-old cycles round;
Hibernal instinct now in feral life unfurls:
Flogs squirrels outward on their oak-corn bounds,
Plushes wealth of wolves' warm winter fur,
Hardens bone and antler, deepens feathered down,
Adds harvest fat to beast and fish and fowl,
Drives sap below old Frost's attempt to burrow down.

_____
Unspoken paen unheard by almost all,
A careless shivering passerby may dread
This ritual changing of the Fall,
But never mind, the liturgy is read,
And Nature safely tucks herself into her wintery bed.

You hear the vocals of my pores
Calling out for your ecstasy
Baby, will you answer me?
Annihilate my suspire
I'm craving for you to sojourn your lips unto my dermis
Floating in passion, your love takes me higher
With annimalism
Your death grip on my waistline severely quenches my skin*
I feel your thunder storming on my frame
Being pounded by my waves
Of this flash flood you made
I NEED YOU
To come and swim deeply into my ocean
Contain my legs from this uncontrollable wavely motion
Surf my waves at each convulsion
Your breath trickles down my spine
You haven't even reached your peak yet
And I have came here
And
Came
4
Times
This visit, I do not regret
I WANT YOU
To make love to me
Like there is a war outdoors
With nature and valley
A war between temptation and flesh
But wait
Not just yet
Because your cinnamon skin
***** my tongue passionately
Constantly
I melt, into a puddle
Full weight on the floor
That you lick up until  no more
I travel my lips up and down your masculine build
You feel my exhaustion
Invading your spine
Interrupting your concentration
At this hour, in this moment
You are mine
And I am yours
Finally tasting those lips I've always adored
My succulent tongues takes a moment and travel down your chest
Leaving my mist dwelling on your buff
Down to the strong man hood you possess...
You grab my neck
As you explore the soft walls
Of my saturating portal
Your head inclines back in full relieve
As I continually, savagely feast
You then explode in great fury
We collapse as if an earthquake violated our terrain
And then we lay....
But,
This is not the end
Welcome, to foreplay
With gratitude, your excitements hardens
And your eyes paint me, you feel extremely lucky
You begin to fill your lips with thanks
But  NO
Baby don't thank me
Just **** me...




                            Copy Right 2013
                                   ©Patty Ann

when a candle burns the wax melts into itself. then the flame gets blown out and the wax hardens; then the flame gets relit and the wax warms up again, tenets and takes more of the candle with it everytime. the candle does this until the wick is gone and the candle is no more. so do not let your burdens or your past be candle wax to you because it will eat you alive until you are no more. instead, when your flame is lit, blow out the match and glow on your own.

sacred
silent season
wrapped in silk
in your tall towers
imposed
with the
ambling sense
of reason
and ripe blossoms
bathed in ***** milk

never again
left to wonder
the aimless
riches of yesterday
and the golden
hopes of tomorrow
such are the joys
of a Norseman
pillage and plunder

I will rummage
your sweet gardens
let your woven path
lead my feet
free of chains
to your doorway;
and the Viking
stirs and hardens

alpha breath
against moist
misty white skin
my cobalt aquas
revel in the seas
of your chastity
now ablaze with
nordic sweat and
archaic sin

Let the games begin

(not a poem i guess but eh)


–

Space keeps falling to the sides. I try to concentrate, - I mean, I make a token effort every now and again,- but concentration, fixation is always in terms of something external, something I'm not sure I can deal with.  I roll over and go back to sleep.

–

'Where's the flour?'
'Where you left it.'
'Which is where?'
'On the table. What you want it for anyway?'
'Which table?'
'Haha. The generic maple with the ugly-*** spandrels. What are you making?'
'You think we could afford that? Nah, it's like, faux-pine or some ****. And like muffins.'
'Oh good, there's banan's that need using up'
'No no, like, other muffins. Crumpets and such. Got any golden syrup?'
'I think there's some maple.'
'No, it's like, ply, I swear.'

–

I haven't moved in days. I need to. He'll come eventually and I don't want him to see me like this. Plus, I need to locate that smell. I can't have guests over with it here. I'm just not sure where it is though. I  feel like it's on my left arm when I’m in the middle of the room, but off to the right everywhere else. It's.. acerbic, but fermenting, like vegetables on the onset of rot but not quite there yet. Not that I know; I haven't moved in days. I don't want to smell it again. Also garlic, definitely garlic.

–

We visited the inland sea the other day. The hundred years since last time hadn't changed it one bit. The beached clay was brittle under the midday sun, and the cracking footsteps fragmented it into a hundred hexagons.
               'I hear a strain of the pathogen is airborne. It's only a matter of time now'
A group of tourists park up by the shore. A child holds out their arms and runs in small circles.

–

The corridor keeps flashing. And maybe spinning. It's hard to tell, the colour change starts at a different point each time and there's no discernible rhythm to it. You keep pacing up and down. I feel self conscious that you want to leave, but then again, you did show up unannounced. You shake the snowglobe disinterestedly. The fragments burn like molten static.
'Stop that. I feel like I’m vomiting spiders.'
'You're being dramatic.'
'None the less.'
'Don't worry; you'll get through it. The world is transitioning, and this is just motion sickness.'
'I know that, I didn't say I was worried, I said I wanted it to stop.'

'sorry'

–

We'd always go for a walk at night if we felt we needed to talk. It was an unwritten rule. The veil of amber filter let our more timid thoughts breath in the nebulous darkness. Stark daylight was always too suffocatingly real, and that was the one thing we were never allowed to be; real. You'd always talk superficially if we discussed personal matters. That day you did a one-third spin clockwise and faced my side, and talked grandeloquently, hammed up like on a stage. You gave an embarrassed smile and blew a kiss for the invisible audience. I always felt jealous of those nothings, those non-existent beings, that got to figure into your world.

–

'Christ it's warm today. I can't think.'
'so don't bother.'
I spin in the chair. Whooosh. Whooosh.

–

It's the end of a 6 hour shift. A customer, a mother in her odd thirties, was angry that a sale item was out of stock, like sale items always are: She'd only gone out of her way to shop at this store because of the advertised deal, and we had taken time out of her busy schedule under false pretence. Her child stared at the ground intensely, his eyes watering. I tried to imagine the situation through his eyes, to try and ground myself; to remain both present, but stable. She insisted on speaking to the manager. It's a relief really; He's a skeevy ****, but he at least knows when the customers are just there to start ****, and responds accordingly. He comes over, asks what the problem is. It turns out I entered the code wrong and the item was still available after all. He gets one from out the back, handles the transaction, says have a nice day and apologises for me and everything, and I just stand there blankly; I’d had the graveyard shift the night before and honestly I’m beyond feeling right now, but when she mutters 'dumb *****' as she turns away a tight feeling still twists in my gut anyway.
I come home and leave the door hanging open framed in the setting sun and just drop my bags in the hallway. You're in the kitchen, hunched over a workbench eating out of a mug.
'Whatcha having?'
'Cornflakes.'
'….Cornflakes?'
'Yep.' you pivot as I approach. 'corn..flakes.' you hold out the packet.
'coooornfllllakkkkkkkeeeessssss' I start laughing.
'coooornfllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaakes'
we chorus the term in groaning monotone, and I grab the packet out your hand and throw it down and violently stomp it into the ground with every non-energy I have left. You just laugh and egg me on, repeating 'cornflakes! Cornflakes!' in crescendo, ostinato. The satisfaction of each crunch gives me the drive to smash them further, and corn dust spills out of the pulverised cardboard and gets everywhere. In the end I’m panting, my face is a mess of tears, and I collapse over onto it and just roll, bathing in the glorious fragments of reconstituted mulch.

–

'They say another ice age is coming.'
'They also say we'll be swallowed by the sun'
'well, it's true.'
'Yeah, but which'll happen first? I need to know to dress accordingly.'
'Tunnel's up ahead'
'I know, I see it.'
I deliberately swerve to the side and speed up, changing back at the last moment.
'You know I hate it when you do that.'
'What, don't you wanna die together with me? Here and now? Immortalised, as if our existences actually meant something?'
'like Diana and the nameless chauffeur?'
'******* exactly.'
We step out onto the hill, frozen **** tufts breaking underfoot. It's cold as hell but the skies glittering. You get out the telescope you borrowed off your rich *** sister.
'I think that's Jupiter over there.'
'Pfft, Jupiter.'
'What?'
'What's the blankest space you can find?'
'Hmm.. that way?'
You point it in that direction. 'Look'
I stare into it, but it's hard to keep focus while shaking from the cold. You keep adjusting and asking ,’See anything?', eventually some hazy distortion comes into view.
'See, no matter where you look, there's always something there.' You're trying to sound eloquent. 'Even when it seems like you're drowning in nothing.'
I stand back. 'That's terrifying. I feel sick.' I try to breathe but it's shaky and shallow. I stare into the ground, but I can still feel it; the blaze of the myriad innumerable heavens burn into me. Their judging gaze pierces through me and tears me to shreds.  

–

'You know, I think I read that Spinoza thought that consciousness is manifest in the ability of finite beings to continue persisting in and of their own will over time.'
'Doesn't that make a toaster more conscious than us?'
'Yeah, you don't say.'

–

We were twelve and at the department store. It was strange. I'd never taken the bus by myself to just hang out in town before. I always feel disorientated and light-headed in crowds so it had a strangeness; waves of apprehension cushioned by the homogeneity of it. one can be truly alone in a crowd; floating in a sea of otherness, where each gaze is no longer a signification of anything, but a warm static. We were among the aisles of a department store, in the toys and tacky house ornament section. Like, the junk you buy children and grandparents for their birthday. **** that you'd only attribute to people whom have no discernible qualities of their own. We were looking at snow globes. We kept trying to shake them violently enough so that the scene framed within would become entirely lost to the fog; it always felt so disappointing when clarity returned and things re-became what they were. I remember saying, 'I wonder if it tastes like real snow', I don't remember, It was stupid, I don't know why I said it, it sounded cool in my head. But you responded, that I remember, by taking the thing and smashing it against the concrete floor, and pouring out all the fragments into our hands. We tried them together and coughed and choked in laugher. It tasted awful, entirely unsurprisingly. On a rush you stuck one in your pocket, grabbed my hand, and we promptly left the store, and my heart was palpitating, it felt like all the rules, all the natural laws that had prefigured my world were crumbling, and I was terrified, trapped in the gaze of my mothers look of disappointment when we'd be inevitably caught, somehow watching me from its potential future, and I'd no longer be allowed to visit you but it was okay because I was here with you now in this moment and we were alone in this faceless mechanical place crumbling around us, and when we left, and no sirens buzzed, I felt sick with excitement at the unbounded possibility present in everything in every second. I cringe thinking back on it, and feel ashamed at finding such meaning, feeling such unabashed wholesale virtue in indiscriminate destruction, but sometimes, sometimes I still shake that snowglobe as hard as I can, till everything determinate is lost in haze, and I still feel a wave of comfort wash over me.

–

‘We’ve been walking for ages. you know where we’re going, right?’
‘It’s just up ahead. I swear’
‘You swear?’

‘I mean, I’ve only been there once before myself.’
‘****. This way?’
‘Wait-‘
‘What?’
‘Huh. Nothing. Sorry, I thought I heard a car coming.’
…
…
‘I think that’s the ocean?’
‘But.. aren’t we heading inland?’
‘You sure?’
‘Yeah, I swear.’

–

We're in your room. Your reading on your bed and I'm in the swivelly chair by the desk, pretending to work, but really we're just chatting, talking about.. something. Whatever. It was probably stupid, laughing at our own jokes, as always, catchphrases repeated till they loose all meaning. It's been a long day and honestly we're both too tired for coherence by this point, but the lack of effort lends the air an easy comfortability. But then suddenly.. Suddenly you stare into my eyes as if you're looking at me and it's somehow different, an intense gaze that I can't escape, as if you somehow found something located there, something fixed in those abyssal pupils. The feeling is overwhelming and terrifying. I am grounded, ripped into the prison of being and frozen static like a dumb animal transfixed in headlights: I am outside myself facing in, and I’m falling away. I pull you in and kiss you to escape; now, it is your touch that is fixed, your smell, your taste, and I breath a sigh of reprieve. You hold my back as I fall into you. I lace my fingers through the buttons in your shirt and feel the faint pulse of your flickering heartbeat. At once an ever-changing epiphenomena, and a calming rhythmic certainty. I vacantly tug at the buttons and your expression changes, gone is the feeling of suffocating questioning, but one of transfixed observation. Your touch is not a reaching out into something, but a continuation of yourself; I am an instrument of your lust, an extension. Holding me in your arm, you nervously run your hand down from my nape and trace my bra from the strap over the line of my breast. The lightness of your touch is a painful tickling and I push myself into you further, my thighs wrapping around yours. Your touch shoots a burning into me, not painful, but like glowing kindling, or the warmth of a blanket; an immanence, a retreat. I let my mind go blank and we continue; you fumble with my bra as I fumble with your belt. We're both shaking but too far gone to notice, too distant to care. The dry freeze of the night air contrasts your damp heat. You clasp me as you trace your hand under my skirt and I feel your arm brush my thigh. I tremble slightly at the sharp coldness of the damp cotton coming unstuck. After a stretching moment of awkward liminality, I feel you pass into me. It's a burning smoothness, distilled liquor. The rubber is an alien feeling, and for some reason I imagine myself as a giant balloon; a malleable featureless surface, filled with emptiness. I feel myself through the threshold of your presence and I am afraid; I am a boundary which encompasses nothing, and by your passing through I fear that I will be pierced; I will burst and out will flow an obsidian wind that will wither you to nothing, but it will keep coming, an endless torrent that will subsume the world and turn everything to desert, and the only way to save you is to keep it bound up as tight as I possibly can till my heart feels like burning metal, and I feel my tears land on my hand tightly clasping your shoulder. You ask through wavering breaths if I want to stop, but I shake my head; if you left now I would be caught and torn open; no, instead I subsume your undulations into myself; till the rhythm is as oceanic noise; a surface rolling located miles above a lightless motionless centre.

–

The pale green lamplight flickers. A nausea, tepid, but understated. The sentience of moss; an almost motionless drone, but the sense of unfolding. The corridor seems larger than it once was. Blank reflections harrowing accusations, mechanically indifferent but piercing; an alarm clocks wail. I lie still, I lie still. The buzzing repeats. I lie still. I am flowing, seeping through floorboards into the pores of the earth, into colonies of worms and I am lost and free, a motion, a multiplicity, pure form without the anxious drudgery of parts; pure alimentary canal, pure Elysium absolution. The flickering quickens and gets brighter. A pulsating light, a strobe, a beat frequency wavering behind vision. The liquid earth, saturated by light, hardens and dissolves. And 'I' am lost among the ruins, a vague memory of a sentiment. A nostalgic grief, an asphyxiated longing. I reach out to you desperately in the drag of the undertow, but you are the chalk of faded bones; cast to the winds centuries prior. A thousand years pass of blanket darkness, and a unitary bell rings. The flotsam batters against the temple gates. Debris collects in cracks, and my pieces are among them. I cling to retention, and return. I am cold sweat outlining the floorboards, the feeling of clenching before vomiting, repeated endlessly.

–

A few weeks after, turning off an avenue onto the main road, I see you. You're crossing, coming this way. It was bound to happen eventually. I bite back the moisture forming in my eyes and try to remain faceless. You suddenly change your trajectory, and hit the side of a car. It honks at you and you dodge around it. I allow a bitter smile to myself; the fact I can cause you such disorientating discomfit indicates I still mean something to you. Even if it's just a discomforting anxiousness, something beyond the boundary to be avoided, I have causal powers, extension; I can see my flicker of presence in you even now, even if I cannot for the life of me find it within myself. You run around and I walk straight. It's empowering; I can remain fixed, even if the torrent of the world flows around me. At that moment, I feel the indubitable strength to persevere. I am stronger than this world; I am stronger than you. But then, just as suddenly, the feeling folds upon itself and is gone. I felt solidified, just now, by the fact that I was the one that remained in this random encounter. I won, you lost. but Won how? With the ability to pretend that I can exist alone, in a world that means nothing to me? The ability to maintain a solid spectral façade, when underneath, scratching away under the skin, I contain nothing? To continue terrifies me. Knowing that I have the strength to continue terrifies me. That last thing I ever intended was to outlive you. I feel the world drain away from me, and yet I remain, left standing, alone, in a of realm of perpetual nothing.  

–

I feel sick

a hundred years pass in the cavity of the desert. Merchants make trade off raided materials and makeshift weapons. A library is burned. A soldier, wanders freely. An insect buzzes around his face. He darts about the place in annoyance, but it remains. He can't shake it. He closes his eyes. It's still there

I feel sick

the sun burns bright arrhythmic  clicking.  A late twenties couple go clothes shopping, however the child is hungry and will have none of it. Lunch is suggested. They are jocular about the decision, but feel an uneasiness about the indulgence. The air is saturated and dries

How exquisite it is,
Awaking day to day,
With many bills to pay,
Not a second to lay,
And many passersby,
Come and go my way.

What happened to Spring?
The cold, Winter chill,
Bothersome and bold,
Prolonging sunshine in May,
And a hopeful bloom of flowers,
Early on a Summer’s day.

No longer do I have the eye,
The once vibrant palette,
Has faded to shades of gray,
That vision of what could be,
Has drifted towards the wild cards that I play,
Merry and chipper, not ever,
Not today.

What keeps me at bay,
As my passion for trying becomes fray,
Is the internal defeat from external way,
Way of the ****** that seems to slay,
Every bit of purity in my heart that lay,
Formulating a misery that is here to stay.

All I aim for is to sleep,
That fine sleep on that lonely, inevitable day,
Existing and not existing, I’m sorry to say,
Is the only relief I feel as I hope and pray,
For God to bring me peace,
After a lifetime of disarray.

Mind molded like a block of clay,
Clay that never hardens,
Only my heart hardens like clay,
Youthful spirit and innocently gay,
Is a treasured philosophy,
I strive to regain some day.

The size of the world, on my shoulders that weigh,
Far from purpose and fulfillment I seem to stray,
Happiness is chosen, but not encouraged by they,
He or she of whom that continue to outlay,
My fragile, decaying soul,
I’m not okay.

Falling
This notion of the ground slipping away
Circumstances make people become-
Different
Hardens them somehow
Emotion takes its toll,
Wears you out,
Tires you
If you hurt long enough-
It’s easier to be hollow
Trust me
Falling
When you can’t remember which way is up-
Things like being more
Or is it less?
Of, well anything
Don’t seem to matter
Solid ground
Like cold, wet, cement after the rain
Something real to latch onto
To stop the dizzying spiral
Something
Someone
To ground you
Remind you who you are
To bring you back
From the dead
Or is it ******?
Knowing the breadcrumbs are there
To lead me back
Is how I know
I’ll survive the fall

SLAP.
My muscles tense.
SLAP.
My jaw tightens.
SLAP.
Sounds begin to dim.

Inhale.
One, two, three.
My pupils dilate.
Exhale.
Four, five, six.
My hands form fists.

Inhale.
Seven, eight, nine.
My heart hardens.
Exhale.
Ten. Ten. Ten.
It'll be over soon.

One, two, three, four, five.
Slow your heartbeat.
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
Be still, still as stone.

"You're basically a good daughter, but..."

Words can penetrate the stone hearted.

Words uttered a lifetime ago,
Yet I can't escape their ringing in my ears,
In my stone-hardened heart--
The center of this stone statue.