i just remembered when it all began to fall apart i was in mid-thirties weary of taking advantage of women i wanted to change grow become better person more compassionate find loving respectful relationship maybe marriage i knew i needed to step away stop

chicago 1985 Odysseus is a stranger to himself living someone else’s life does he really want what Mom Dad Chris want? is he lying to everyone else or himself? he snorts another line of ******* moves on to next girl in dizzy way he is having time of his life so much occasion to waste doors to open slam rooms to pass through “In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo, and time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions” thank you t.s. elliott his ****** liaisons carry on from several weeks to several months begin with him adoring some girl or she adoring him little fires that burn themselves out for his part infidelity is rarely in question instead typically he or she feels let down by some personal response or character trait and simply stops calling in actuality no girl ever bothers to stick around they follow his lead and evaporate his mind draws a blank he wonders what do girls want? Deep inside he knows nothing in life is greater than the love of a woman he would have liked all those girls to be just one girl but she is missing where is she? occasionally he will run into one of his ex-lovers on street she wears an expression that hints why didn’t you phone me back? why did you stop calling? he suspects she is playing victim in self-satisfying charade in fact Odysseus crosses into new territory it is difficult to go back he hones his edge no longer is he wonder-stuck child possessed by curiosity for girls he requires **** and kink longer buildups then urgent bursts of effort drawn out climaxes nameless girl wearing tight jeans cowboy boots braids whom he meets in drake hotel elevator pushes stop button she ***** him off he has **** *** with tan-skinned french-canadian female tourist in telephone booth on north avenue gorgeous longhaired creole girl from new orleans ***** him on fire escape stairs **** *** with skinny punk girl in dark alley dutch foreign exchange student gives him ******* between parked cars on clark street weird awkward *** with goth girl in graveyard ****** by older blond woman who positioning herself underneath table in ritzy restaurant he has *** with chatty college sorority girl in jet lavatory he goes down on nerd girl wearing thick glasses in criticism section of depaul’s library he gets ****** ****** by perfect stranger in lake michigan each evening before he goes out prowling he looks in mirror wonders what strange female he will have *** with tonight it always surprises him what a person might not admit to or accept but allow or give in to if the right moment or if the right person is there not that he is particularly the right person rather he stumbles onto an astonishing streak there is the paris/milantokyo fashion model with stylish french haircut who possesses astonishing beauty perfect ***** and haughty temper after night of too many ***** martinis and ******* she announces “you and your friends are going nowhere  you’re all second-rate artist losers! and your cousin and his group are obnoxious *******” she flips him the finger then shoves him he shoves back resulting in dual arrests and domestic violence charges there is the tall blond stripper who totally fulfills his ****** desires once she lets him insert garden hose up her **** laughs uproariously as stream of water shoots out on another occasion she requests he *** in her *** he begins to believe he will marry her she insists she is too low class for his family one night she drunkenly hurls champagne bottle gives him black eye drives away crashes her car there is blue-eyed sweetheart with divine ****** loving touch who after months of sleeping with Odysseus confesses she is ******* some other guy and swears she will be faithful in the future she begs for his forgiveness as he loses it pushes her out door throwing her clothes after her one girl lights candles gives him full body massage ******* another girl holds him tight cries pushes him away one girl writes confessions with permanent markers on walls of closet another girl slaps him yells why? why why why! one girl runs to toilet pukes passes out on floor another girl sits up all night talking teasing never relieving him another girl falls asleep snores while he is in conversation one girl makes fun of small left ******* later gossips to her girlfriends he meets girl who will do anything except allow him to enter her ****** he meets girl who is professional escort she offers to do him for free she has lots of toys videos he declines they mess around she gets him off with ******* he meets girl whose ***** hair grows to mid-thigh she incessantly calls for her dog Bertram! he meets girl who shivers moans furiously cries laughs when he climaxes he meets girl with self-inflicted scars on arms legs who only wants it up her **** he meets girl who likes gagging deep-******* him to skull-**** her harder the better he meets girl whose ******* are so fierce she loses complete control drenching him sheets with her fluids excrement he meets girl who wants ******* squeezed so tightly he fears he will draw blood he meets girl who likes to talk ***** slaps his face as he is reaching ****** he meets girl with gargantuan ***** ******* as large as thumb she gurgles hot breaths later tries to steal string of beads he meets girl who enjoys lactating on his thighs while she gives him head he meets girl who knows how to contract vaginal muscles so tightly all he does is sustain ******* inside her in order to reach ****** he meets girl who pees tiny squirts while he penetrates her **** she laughs wildly he meets girl with furry mound who requests he **** on her as she masturbates he declines she reproaches him accusing you’re not nearly as freethinking as you pretend to be in fact you’re full of ****! he meets girl who wants him to act out **** they struggle he meets girl who desires to be ******* whipped he is not into inflicting pain he meets large strong girl who forces him he never tells anyone about incident he becomes mindful many females are more depraved than him women remain puzzle to Odysseus he is repeatedly astounded shocked can never predict about girl what her ******* ****** will look like whether she has eager *** or what are her secret desires he is explorer women are vast mystery he wonders are females as sexually driven as males? are they as vulnerable? is their **** like tiny *****? he speculates if completely unknown attractive woman walks up to any average man grabs his crotch many possibly most men will willingly allow it are women that weak? more than anything what most excites Odysseus is female lust handjobs are test of adequacy distinguishing character having masturbated thousands of times he thrills in having girl do it he delights in watching her arousal just staring at his ******* is captivated by method of her fingers hands revitalized by degree of her determination throughout he needs to ****** her ******* ****** *** titillated as she licks lips after swallowing ***** he realizes if he were female he would be total nymphomaniac yet he finds it difficult to imagine desiring men are all so like him women are so strange fascinatingly different he craves their otherness Odysseus loves women more than they love themselves smell sight of them sends him into frenzy problem is he fears their power over him

it’s been 25 years since those days i live alone for many years in tucson arizona have not been with a woman for long long time last relationship 2001 with crack ***** i hang my head cry wish for love wonder do i deserve to be loved pray to be forgiven

In the mid-1990s I worked as a bartender
on the second floor of a local hotdog joint
near the University of Pittsburgh.
I poured beers and mixed simple drinks
for working class drunks.
The felons always had a game or a magic trick
they’d use to milk rubes for a free gin and tonic.
College students mostly stayed away,
but the ones who stumbled in ordered drafts,
paid for by daddy’s allowance
or the petty drug rackets they ran on campus.
In the summer, the best ***** came around,
**** pushed out of their tops,
*** cheeks crept below their skirts.
They knew how to find action
every single night.

Except one overweight girl named Susie
from the all girl’s school down the road.
She’d come to the bar alone,
her lips caked with dark red lipstick.
Like many students, Susie wanted to be older.
She’d order ***** martinis,
drink quietly, and she’d patiently wait
for one of the older drunks to make a move.
It never happened.

Sometimes Susie complained to me
about other girls at her college,
that they were aggressive lesbians.
All of them wanted to eat her ******.
‘Those ******* are as bad as the men,’ she’d say.
But then she’d laugh it off.
‘I really love ****,’ she told me.
‘I think about **** and *** all the time.’

One night Susie owed the bar $27.50.
She always tried to flirt her way past the tab.
I never let her get away with it.
‘Do you like me?’ she said.
I laid down my trademark response,
‘You’re the best.’
‘No, do you really like me?’
I figured she deserved a real compliment.
‘You have the sexiest lips here.’

She climbed off the barstool
and walked to the backdoor, the fire escape.
She then curled her finger at me to join her.
Outside on the small rusted iron landing,
above the roach-filled dumpster,
Susie crouched between my legs.
Both of us worked to unbuckle my belt.
A swarm of hands pulled down my jeans.
I looked up at the few stars between buildings
as those red lips and soft tongue became my drug,
a back alley escape from a ******* life.
When I unloaded, she refused to let go.
She swallowed it all. $27.50 paid in full,
plus tip.

That’s how we went for a while.
I gave Susie small escapes from lesbians.
Susie gave me small escapes from life.
Eventually, she stopped coming around.
I figured she graduated.
Perhaps her classmates finally got their wish.
Either way, I never saw her again.

You always read about it:
the plumber with twelve children
who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.
From toilets to riches.
That story.

Or the nursemaid,
some luscious sweet from Denmark
who captures the oldest son's heart.
From diapers to Dior.
That story.

Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,
eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,
the white truck like an ambulance
who goes into real estate
and makes a pile.
From homogenized to martinis at lunch.

Or the charwoman
who is on the bus when it cracks up
and collects enough from the insurance.
From mops to Bonwit Teller.
That story.

Once
the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed
and she said to her daughter Cinderella:
Be devout. Be good. Then I will smile
down from heaven in the seam of a cloud.
The man took another wife who had
two daughters, pretty enough
but with hearts like blackjacks.
Cinderella was their maid.
She slept on the sooty hearth each night
and walked around looking like Al Jolson.
Her father brought presents home from town,
jewels and gowns for the other women
but the twig of a tree for Cinderella.
She planted that twig on her mother's grave
and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat.
Whenever she wished for anything the dove
would drop it like an egg upon the ground.
The bird is important, my dears, so heed him.

Next came the ball, as you all know.
It was a marriage market.
The prince was looking for a wife.
All but Cinderella were preparing
and gussying up for the big event.
Cinderella begged to go too.
Her stepmother threw a dish of lentils
into the cinders and said: Pick them
up in an hour and you shall go.
The white dove brought all his friends;
all the warm wings of the fatherland came,
and picked up the lentils in a jiffy.
No, Cinderella, said the stepmother,
you have no clothes and cannot dance.
That's the way with stepmothers.

Cinderella went to the tree at the grave
and cried forth like a gospel singer:
Mama! Mama! My turtledove,
send me to the prince's ball!
The bird dropped down a golden dress
and delicate little gold slippers.
Rather a large package for a simple bird.
So she went. Which is no surprise.
Her stepmother and sisters didn't
recognize her without her cinder face
and the prince took her hand on the spot
and danced with no other the whole day.

As nightfall came she thought she'd better
get home. The prince walked her home
and she disappeared into the pigeon house
and although the prince took an axe and broke
it open she was gone. Back to her cinders.
These events repeated themselves for three days.
However on the third day the prince
covered the palace steps with cobbler's wax
and Cinderella's gold shoe stuck upon it.
Now he would find whom the shoe fit
and find his strange dancing girl for keeps.
He went to their house and the two sisters
were delighted because they had lovely feet.
The eldest went into a room to try the slipper on
but her big toe got in the way so she simply
sliced it off and put on the slipper.
The prince rode away with her until the white dove
told him to look at the blood pouring forth.
That is the way with amputations.
The don't just heal up like a wish.
The other sister cut off her heel
but the blood told as blood will.
The prince was getting tired.
He began to feel like a shoe salesman.
But he gave it one last try.
This time Cinderella fit into the shoe
like a love letter into its envelope.

At the wedding ceremony
the two sisters came to curry favor
and the white dove pecked their eyes out.
Two hollow spots were left
like soup spoons.

Cinderella and the prince
lived, they say, happily ever after,
like two dolls in a museum case
never bothered by diapers or dust,
never arguing over the timing of an egg,
never telling the same story twice,
never getting a middle-aged spread,
their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.
Regular Bobbsey Twins.
That story.

The girl with purple hair is sitting at my bar again.
I think she is beautiful. And not in a way that I wanna have awesome *** with her but in a way that I want to drink chocolate martinis with her
and go shopping for christmas vests that have tinkly bells and possibly polar bears with hats on them.
She is having a full-body cry. I am the worst bartender, simply
because I don't know how to counsel people without crying back at them.
She is crying about the state of women.

I know that we come from the same rotting wood, so all I do is nod.

"How is it that three quarters of the women I know have been ***** or molested?
What does that say about the men that I know?
**** is not a man behind a bush with a knife, she laughs
It's kissing you on the mouth like whiskey at a nice bar."
The girl with purple hair and I are holding hands now,
"I only wanted an apology,
an acknowledgement of what occurred."
Grappling as artists, as girls, as ships in bottles,
how do we change any of it?
I tell her I am going to write a poem.
She says no one wants to hear a **** poem.

And I know she's right.

Have you ever seen a stampede of horses?
Do you wonder what the hooves look like from underneath?
Have you ever tasted the blood from biting your own lips because you couldn't say no enough?
"I never fought back. I kept my thighs tight and
closed, but once he's inside you, you wish you were the streetlamp, the
store clerk, a street lamp, a bed of calla lilies-

anything but a woman.

In that moment, our eyes glaze over, and they stay that way for years.
That's when you've lost.

I'm sitting here in a club that's very
Well it's dark,
But it's not a place for women.
And who knows,
I think it might be the thirties.

I'm surrounded by men,
All in impeccably fine suites,
I'm drinking countless martinis,
I never have to light my own cigarette,
I know this is what I do every single night.
Everyone fawns over me.

I know that I'm very powerful.
I have the power of a man.
So I act like a man.
Not *****,
Just unashamed.


Maybe I have a rich father?
That sounds right for the time.
I can tell that I am very powerful,
I already know that I am
"Breathtakingly gorgeous".

Everyone eats out of the palm of my hand,
I am fun.
I am free.
I am the untamable soul.

You know?
The one they right novels about.
The one that "got away",
Because she was a song bird,
And one that wouldn't fit in her cage.

And I am to be a married woman.
Someone will disburse my power.
I will become a miserable housewife.
I will have four children.
I will bake apple pies,
I will let my husband
Please himself using my body.
I will help with church bake sales.
I will drink.
I will drink.
I will drink.....

Overthinking is like waking up in a labyrinth.
Its like mental war.
Its a sea where, you cant float on your own,
its getting lost in a foggy path
Overthinking made you a killer of your own mind.
You are now wanted.
Questions like when, how, and why ?
Becomes a rope around you neck.
Whats your escape plan?
Do you got one?
How many walls do you got to hit,
Till you meet a solution.
Maybe another position will perhaps
Give you a new perspective of life
You not a bartender
Don’t make martinis with all these lemons thrown at you
You’ll realize
The twisting part of it all is that the only way out, is to overthink.

Martini glasses chime with floating olives,
Cocktail dressed, and music playing,
Clamoring voices and velvet hands.
Will I measure my life in coffee spoons? -
Or plastic sticks where olives used to be.
Salty sweet like the sweat of angels,
You hand me my drink,
Electricity passes through your fingertips.
I am shocked.
You sweep me into your arms,
We glide over the floor,
The rock songs play but we waltz.
“Take your time, Love”
I tell you but you never listen.
Will you ever learn,
Or will I?
We do this dance around
All the questions we will ignore,
Just for one more moment.
One more dance.
Just one.
The martini glasses clank.
Cheers to the moment,
It hangs in the air,
Wafting, dispersing, infecting our clothes,
it lingers.

This was last Saturday night. We were at a rooftop party in downtown New Haven thrown by ‘DocHouse.’ Doc-House is kind of a frat-house, owned by Dr. Melon, where he and seven doctoral students live. My BF Peter lived there once - before he graduated and took a job in Geneva - that’s how I met Dr. Melon. I think Peter asked Melon to ‘keep an eye’ on me - because he texts me an invitation every week and people with multiple doctorates and doctoral students don’t usually hang with lowly undergraduates.

The invitation said ‘rooftop’ but we’re mostly on the third floor - not on the actual roof - because it’s about 39°f and windy out there tonight. The floor space was about seventy by a hundred feet, there were pillars but no walls. The space was lit by a million strings of white Christmas lights.

The party was packed and loud - so loud I was wearing ear plugs. Beach chairs and card tables were the furniture. There were foosball, pool and two ping-pong tables (one of those being used for "Beer Pong"). A karaoke machine patched into two Marshall amps and speakers acted as a DJ.

Of course, there was a bar. Everyone was supposed to bring something. We brought two bags of ice, two magnums of Gordon's gin, two fifths of Cinzano vermouth, a jar of large green olives and a box of toothpicks, because there’s always room for the proper anesthetic. Martinis aren’t a shiny, new hobby with me - they’re a lifelong passion that I only indulge in on weekends and in psychologically safe environments.

There were 7 in our party - Sunny, Lisa, Leong (three of my suitemates), Lisa’s BF David (a Wall Street M&A man), Andy (a carrot-topped chain-smoking divinity-school undergraduate friend of Sunny’s), Charles (our escort, and driver) and me.

We’d been there about 30 minutes when Jordie, a guy I’ve been sort of crushing on for several months, showed up - alone. Lisa turned to me and yelled, “Uuu, lookie lookie,” when she saw him - I barely heard her - but I read her lips. I’d never really talked to Jordie, but when I looked at him, through the warm, martini mist, my tummy felt like Jello-excitement.

As the night wore on, Jordie and I started hanging out. We lost at foosball, 8-ball and ping-pong before we went up on the roof to get some air. The silvery ½-moon crescent was obscured, off and on by clouds, like a shell game where the moon was a jewel on blue velvet. You could almost hear the operator’s smooth, practiced patter, “now you see it, now you don’t, place your bets.”

It was quiet up there, so we actually talked. Somehow, the vast night seemed intimate. As we talked, the conversation was delicate and careful, like the words were made of crystal.

A while later, Jordie and I were back downstairs dancing. The entire floor was coated with that gray-speckled covering - so you could dance anywhere - but a rectangle of police tape in that flooring defined the official ‘dance floor’.

Two hours later, we were watching Sunny sing karaoke while holding a fuchsia martini (just add raspberry liqueur) in one hand. When Sunny goes, she totes commits and belting out an angry, screamo version of ‘Ain’t it fun’ by Paramore, she tried for a Beyonce-like head-spin (don’t try this at home), and slung half of her drink on the crowd - but it didn’t slow her, or them, down. After finishing, to huge applause, she took several bows and coming back to our table, she asked Andy, “How was I?”
Andy held out his hand and lampooned her by waffling it, in a so-so gesture.
As Lisa handed Sunny a replacement cocktail, she told Andy “You don’t get it - it’s supposed to be awful.”
“Then it’s the best version of the song I’ve ever heard.” he replied, holding up his hands like she had a gun.

Jodie and I danced some more and after a while, someone played a slow song. As we moved close together, his subtle, boy musk was torturous and intoxicating. How come guys smell better when they’re all sweaty and I smell like a horse? Eight weeks of lonely boredom and three martinis (4?) were almost enough to churn the sweat of desire into the intoxicating liquor of consent. In my secret heart I wanted him. Badly. I wanted to take him home and smash against him for hours. Alas, I have a (missing) boyfriend and I don’t believe in oopsies.

At that very moment I saw Charles, standing silhouetted in one of the dance floor lights - he had our coats in hand. I swear, that man can read my mind. I glanced at my watch, 2:30am. I stopped close dancing with Jordie and stepped back. “I gotta go,” I told him.
“It was fun,” he said, shrugging and smiling.
“It WAS fun,” I agreed, taking my coat from Charles who’d come over. “(I’ll) See you next week,” I added, as everyone in our little caravan started to move.

for Sylvia Plath
O Sylvia, Sylvia,
with a dead box of stones and spoons,
with two children, two meteors
wandering loose in a tiny playroom,
with your mouth into the sheet,
into the roofbeam, into the dumb prayer,
(Sylvia, Sylvia
where did you go
after you wrote me
from Devonshire
about rasing potatoes
and keeping bees?)
what did you stand by,
just how did you lie down into?
Thief --
how did you crawl into,
crawl down alone
into the death I wanted so badly and for so long,
the death we said we both outgrew,
the one we wore on our skinny *******,
the one we talked of so often each time
we downed three extra dry martinis in Boston,
the death that talked of analysts and cures,
the death that talked like brides with plots,
the death we drank to,
the motives and the quiet deed?
(In Boston
the dying
ride in cabs,
yes death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)
O Sylvia, I remember the sleepy drummer
who beat on our eyes with an old story,
how we wanted to let him come
like a sadist or a New York fairy
to do his job,
a necessity, a window in a wall or a crib,
and since that time he waited
under our heart, our cupboard,
and I see now that we store him up
year after year, old suicides
and I know at the news of your death
a terrible taste for it, like salt,
(And me,
me too.
And now, Sylvia,
you again
with death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)
And I say only
with my arms stretched out into that stone place,
what is your death
but an old belonging,
a mole that fell out
of one of your poems?
(O friend,
while the moon's bad,
and the king's gone,
and the queen's at her wit's end
the bar fly ought to sing!)
O tiny mother,
you too!
O funny duchess!
O blonde thing!

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

Moving amidst my Ramona chapter books,
I make out your movement, M, the moody turns
Of your mounts and valleys, the moniker of

Family names, you marked me like a maternal
Emblem of the generation’s matriarch,
You mingled amid reminiscences of former matrons  

Maria Helena from the Midwest,
Who crossed the mountains in a wagon,
Madeleine, a migrant from Marseilles,

Who baked warm loaves in San Francisco,
And her own daughter, my Mimi,
Who muttered merde while she drank martinis.

In my own time, you materialized in
Marjorie, my nana, and Maria, my mom,
The women in which I knew you growing up,

Then Molly, who made dreams out of
Magic and Movies and Marie Antoinette,
You embellished my most favorite things.

In my monogram, you aimed my impulses
in your masts’ diametric directions
Towards competence, towards imagination.

In your middle ‘s mysterious compartment I make snug
With magazines and novels and mugs of hot milk.
You nuzzled me in moments of melancholy, then motivated me

To meander among your fundamental family,
The sumptuous L of melt and mélange,
The meticulous N of man or monk or money.

Even W, which matches your mien in mirror
It warped wicked witch while you
Milled maidens and damsels, so I imagined

The mutilation of those two majuscules formed
My image of womanhood. M, Molly Smithson materialized
From a meek mademoiselle into the mistress of mischief.

As the café fills
with youthful chatter
and screechy laughter
I wonder
what it’d be like to have a friend.

At the billiards
hip teens lovingly roast each other—
their style and form
bring warmth to my lonely day.
Would I ever play billiards
or is that game
reserved for people who have friends?

I sip my strawberry tea
and imagine
having a good friend
To unwind with storytelling and gossip

We'd drink pink martinis
and be so chic in black.
And we'd be loud and open.
I'd be so happy
That I'd never have to write poetry again.

As the fantasy fades
I smile into my strawberry tea
Not too pink, but plenty of sweet.
This is alright. This cold drink is a friend.

250 Surf

And into the driveway it takes it for a ride, come on take on this lifeline, and feel it from below, moving up and moving jag, one more for free when I buy nine won’t you put it in the bag- the people are freezing, the zig is at the zag, all the people are screaming, won’t you let them in the back? Come on won’t you feed them, and tease them with a zap, catastrophe seething, relaxing in the bath, suffering or maybe ******* squeezing, pick me up from the airport we’ll go driving in the Jag, you’re already mostly in the bag, I light up a square and light a second for you man, light one up for the girl whose sitting in the back. Her hands are freezing, her lips are turning black, a lamp standing on a suitcase, Earl Grey and Lavender, she’s got ***** packs and sunglasses, she’s gotten ready for morning class, it’s a gas, a blast, from the past, trash and she’s ******* reeling for a squeeze, she just wants a taste of the past, I laugh, I laugh, I laugh. Put a stamp on her legs, touch them and turn up the volume on the amp. She’s got it, she’s not it, she’s winning playing tag-

Come on won’t you feed them, and tease them with a zap, catastrophe seething, relaxing in the bath, suffering or maybe ******* squeezing, pick me up from the airport we’ll go driving in the Jag, you’re already mostly in the bag, I light up a square and light a second for you man, light one up for the girl whose sitting in the back.

We’ve arrived wearing new things, they think we’re in the band. We order tater tots and martinis, and get our gear so we can get ourselves together in the van. It’s a plan, let’s advance Peter Pan, lift off, touch-down, get a spotlight, and then let’s have a dance. I’ll hop out of the pram, catch a lamb, with just one single hand, greet the grand, then do three somersaults, before we go on tour from 250 Surf Street and perform our second jam, we’re the coolest of the new acts streaming from Japan.

Come on won’t you feed them, and tease them with a zap, catastrophe seething, relaxing in the bath, suffering or maybe ******* squeezing, pick me up from the airport we’ll go driving in the Jag, you’re already mostly in the bag, I light up a square and light a second for you friend, light one up for the girl whose sitting in the back.

In the movies, monsters chase the heroes down. Is there a series of numbers that will release our hunter so she can catch those monsters by the horns. It’s a storm moving forwards, a disaster itching to come back, it’s the sound of a nightmare kicking dirt and bounding down the path. They’re alone but I hear her, the dangers coming fast. This olfactory mainstay, of juggernauts searching for something of a snack, even just a pack of peanuts in their sacks. A sample coming quickly, a set of kissing wizards sniffing cotton candy from a bag. The ache of a Tuesday, where seduction leads our pack. This is merely an act, this is merely an act, it’s just merely an act. Tombs enacted, coffins still they can’t resist, feeding sorceries and eating whims.

But then this is nothing, their stories quickly held in suspense. Their fingers numb with the words, they continue to forget. The strangers are wanting for this alphabet, the laws of the marshal that summer soon upsets.

An alert for the clouds,  across the sky to the stains on their affair, her man ******* pleading, love please put back on your underwear. The girl is screaming, in the governments’ undertow, and the ache of her sexuality can bring her skirt back down. Then there’s this season sweeping, there’s this garden you remember from back home.  the flowers topped upon the stem, thorns dipped in poisons, they keep our heart rate in suspense. Into the river  a surge of disbelief, where the cranberry serums overtake those 15th Century reliefs.

Then there’s the neighbors of evil, they’ve brought up the bags, pairing off with a 40oz and a joint of sticky hash. They carry their guns, and they carry with numbers. The master of art dying on a chariot or gurney. A satyr boost by easy flow, dances for tips at a Go-Go. Drinking up with idle stars, smoking cigarettes at outdoor but covered bars. Drinks for her friends. Drinks to get rid of the bends. Something to carry them through, something to carry after them too. Pleased and pleasing.

This is just the story of easy. This is just the state of disbelief. This is just the nuisance of riding a cable car, and performing with a chisel some religious affiliates relief. Then it’s the garden, 64-bit software coming down. He passes the lighter back to the girl sitting quietly observing, while the minister’s teeth are quickly falling out. So please me please me. Please me appease me and send me out. If the bagel is 99 cents and a drink is a dollar ten, we should have enough to sit on the bench before we start to go. Just *** and please me, just scream and shut the doors up top. I spin in circles riding Brooklyn rooftops, while the neighbors try to stop us from jumping down. I guess somebody died last week from jumping down, I guess somebody died from jumping down. I think he died from being alone. You and I wont die from falling down, we’ll never die from being alone.

Come on won’t you feed them, and tease them with a zap, catastrophe seething, relaxing in the bath, suffering or maybe ******* squeezing, pick me up from the airport we’ll go driving in the Jag, you’re already mostly in the bag, I light up a square and light a second for you man, light one up for the girl whose sitting in the back. She asked me if I was gay, I touched her leg, and put my lips to her mouth. We sat in the car past morning, whispering and never coming down.

Tomorrow morning they are going to take them,
what am I going to do?
He says it doesn’t matter to him, because I have a pretty face.
In all the years we've been married, he’s never told me I had a pretty face.
I don’t think he’s going to be able to handle this.
Hell, I don’t think I'm going to be able to handle this.
God ******, I am going to loose my hair,
I am gonna loose my beautiful ******* hair, then everyone will know.
People will put sanitizer on their hands after they shake mine.
All my friends and family will treat me differently.
They’ll feel sorry for me, they won’t know what to say.
And then there’ll be those who will say too much, or the wrong thing.
"I’ll pray for you", some will say,
But I know what they are thinking, they think....
"that is what she gets for drinking her martinis and smoking her ***".
Some will even say it is God’s will.
**** God!
He is stealing my beauty,
my wonderfully gorgeous ****, my hair.
They are a part of me.
I don’t give a **** what a man thinks about my *******,
that they are **** or voluptuous,
they are a part of me.
And now, like a side of beef,
they are going to section me up and take them from me.
What will they do with them?
I mean after they biopsy.
Can I have them to bury?
Sorry, I know that wasn't necessary, but I am mad.
I am mad and afraid, I am so afraid.
I know my husband, he will never be the same.
He doesn’t **** me with his eyes closed, my **** turn him on.
But then any woman’s **** turn him on.
When he reaches to touch them, there’ll be nothing there.
I’ll look like a little boy, nothing.
Maybe I have identified with them too much,
I have made them a big part of my personality.
I've fed my children with them, my boyfriends fought over them,
they have got me into and out of trouble more than once.
****, I am going to have to get a whole new wardrobe.
And now, in the morning
they are going to cut them off of me
and put them in a stainless steel operating room bowl.
Like chicken fat.
Why do I feel like this,
I didn’t cry when the dentist pulled my wisdom teeth?
What if he told me I had to or else I would die, I’d pulled them myself?
I trim my nails, and get my hair cut and dyed.
I exfoliate my skin.
I lost 10lbs last year and I didn’t shed one tear,
my ******* will weigh more than that.
But I am loosing something else,
I am loosing normal.
I'll have to find a new normal.
I am loosing myself
and replacing it with a different person.
I’ll be one of them,
I’ll be a survivor,
a hero.
I'll hold hands with other survivors and walk 10 miles
and wear a **** load of pink.
Hey, but I don't look too bad in pink.

*later this week a friend is going to have a double mastectomy.  These are just a few of the words I have collected from other breast cancer survivors. I had to do something for her. My hope is that we become more aware of the fear and pain that breast cancer victims go through.

Seemingly contrary,
but the cognitive contrast
lends to the ironic truth
that two parts Gin to one part Vermouth
and some pimento stuffed Olives
in very slightly copious amounts
lend themselves well
to the playing of
Heavy Metal.

Be not immoderate
about thy moderation!

I LOVE YOU, HE SAYS
LIKE A TWIST ON A DRY MARTINI
LIKE A GEM ON TIRED SANDS IN NEVADA
I LOVE YOU
HE THROWS HIS WORDS
LIKE HE THROWS HIS TONGUE
DELICATE YET TRAPPING
SOPHISTICATED YET PRESERVED
I GIVE IN
FOR THE SIMPLE PLEASURE
TO GET OFF
BECAUSE IN SOME HEIGHTENED FORM
I'M GETTING OFF
ON YOUR SIMPLE WORDS
ON YOUR SEARCHING SOUL
AND ON YOUR SWEET BROWN EYES
I'M GETTING OFF

Bellabloom
Co.2000
London ghetto poets

I come face-to-face with my Shadow
hungry
devouring
depraved.

The lupine
before a full hunter moon
bristles.
Hot saliva
falls
from hurtful pointed rows
in pearls.

This
in Goodge Street Station's
Underground
where a poster
promotes
The Hunger
a page-turner

The Clown in Soho:

3 Chocolate Martinis
4 lagers
1 gram of *******
300 press-ups
7 mile run and
1 sachet of Kamagra

… the night begins …

I howl with delight
- that’s me -
cracks open
a smile
yellow eddies swirl
in thrawl
to that shadow beast o’ mine.

This monstrous
I
can never satiated be --
a beast to straight jacket under the influence of the waning and waxing moon
and on the night of the carmine moon
release

My phone rings
(Excuse me, while I take this).
‘Hello, am I speaking to Ashley?’
‘Depends on who’s asking,’
I respond
licking my lips.
‘You Ashley Chapman?’
I like this kind o’ game.
‘Like I said,
who’s asking?’
Frustrated he repeats, ‘Confirm your name.’
I yawn and tell him as savagely as I can:
'No!'
Wolves
know 'no'
to the pack.

But as in Beauty and the Beast
(the Cocteau 1946 version, of course)
beneath that thick molting hair pelt
beasts have culture
and feelings, too
(a lion's heart?)
and mostly
(occasionally not)
given
space
food
The Den
a willing mate (or two)
we’re okay
affectionate dogs.
For when all is well with my shadow
-- no problem
   in peace
   in chains
'til the looped moon!

Surrounded by friends
A welcoming hug lingers
Filled with what ifs
Uncomfortable for some
Warmly welcomed by others
Conversations fueled by
Wine, beer, and martinis
The comfort of acceptance
Non-judgmental reception
Imagining what’s not said
Some thoughts you can read
Others arise unbidden tongue-tied
Accidental truth shared
Sheltered by laughter
We retell our practiced stories
Not noticing the kind
I’ve-heard-it-before looks
Oh to hear the late night summaries
The evenings score card
We sway from oh so silly to
Pugnacious
We may have crossed lines
We never saw and wouldn’t have cared
If we did

Maybe the deterioration of my mind
Is worth the temporary freedom
From the walls I've built
Around my thoughts.
A loosened tongue
And no fear of tomorrow.
I wish I could live every day
Like I've been drinking all night.

Lisa and I finally tested covid-free! When we saw our results, we began an impromptu dance that felt like levitation.

Although my covid case seemed much milder, Lisa’s been nothing but supportive. Why just yesterday morning, before we tested, Lisa said, “If you test covid-free before I do, I’ll **** you.” She was holding a spork which gave the threat a specific gravity it might otherwise have lacked.
“Back off, Sweeny,” I said.

We worked the next day, masked - just in case - and I’d swear that Rebecca, my surgeon, almost smiled when she saw me. As funny as Rebecca is, off-hours, once she puts on that white coat - forgetaboutit - she goes to some other, humor-free zone.

That night, we went out to our favorite bar to celebrate our Lazarus-like resurrections.

In the club, as we were walking to the bar, Lisa asked me, “What if we get carded?” I gasped. Never, have I EVER been carded. To even suggest the possibility is to risk breaking a spell that has lasted since I was fifteen years old and first walked in the adult-bar world.

It’s not that I look old, I’ve been told I don't look 21 (although I’m almost 20) - but in dark, bar-light - I just look “right,” like I belong. And let's face it, no bar turns away college girls or charges them a cover - we’re good for business.

I put a hand on Lisa’s shoulder and stopped us in our tracks. “Turn around three times,” I said.
“Why?” She asked. “To break the god-****, bad luck, vu doo you just put on us!” I said exasperatedly. She shrugged and started to turn in a circle. Again I took her by the shoulders, “Counter-clockwise,” I instructed, “don’t you know anything?!” Once she’d broken the jinx, we were free to go on.  The next part can only be poetry.

Behind the bar were shelves of bottles, brightly lit,
with pastel glows that shame the merely silver moon.
Red rums, golden bourbons, begging you to commit,
elixirs that dull every pain and brighten every mood.
Give us your tired, your lonely, and like Houdini
we’ll invoke fun with mystical treats like martinis.

We were basking in those lantern-like glows, like tourists, in heaven, when a bartender said, “What can I get you?” How generous those words were, how open and inviting.

“What’s your name?” I asked, he was wearing a name tag but I leaned in and gave him my friendliest smile. It’s important to establish a personal connection - but you can’t get carried away. He might be gay and decide you’re trailer.

“Brian,” he said. Brian was talking to me, but then he’d noticed Lisa and suddenly, he couldn’t take his eyes off her (Lisa’s an adriana). This bartender wasn’t gay at ALL.

I handed him my black, Centurion, American Express card “Can we set a tab for us?” I motioned to include Lisa, “and please include a 30% tip for yourself.” I smiled. He smiled.
“Oh, and there’ll be a gentleman joining us as well (Charles).”
“Sure.” he said, as he swiped the card on his iPad, adding, “now, what are you having?”

I’m a bit of a bon vivant, where cocktails are concerned but tonight, we’ll keep it vanilla.
“We’ll start with a Cherry coke (for Charles) and,” I looked at Lisa for approval, “Two American Martinis?” She smiled, “Please,” I added, putting my card away.
The coke is psychologically important; it gives the bartender what’s called 'plausible deniability.’
“Do you have a menu?” I said, as he turned to go. “Coming right up,” he said.

We were on a rooftop terrace that overlooked the Boston skyline. To the left, there were tables enclosed in glowing, geodesic bubbles that changed colors and off to the right, a dance space where couples were dancing, and a DJ was spinning ‘Sorja Smith’s - Little things.’

Our drinks arrived and Lisa and I laughingly toasted our covid survival.
At that moment, at least, everything seemed right with the world.

The US will drive like the rest of the world,
And declare peace on the Middle East for all times ahead;
Good films and books will be successful;
And punk’s not dead.

Justin Bieber will bottom all the charts; Pink Floyd'll be back together;
Bond will like his martinis stirred, not shaken;
Race, gender, class and orientation will be nonsense words;
And there’ll be no sequels to Taken.

Teenagers will fawn reading Tolstoy and not Meyer;
Old, black men will order the "extra whip, non-fat, caramel latte, venti;"
Art galleries will be closed to people over 21;
And poets will feature in the Top 20.

There will be equal jobs and opportunities for everyone;
Humans will give up on colonising mars and the moon;
We will bring down the imperialistic, capitalist, racist, misogynistic hetero-patriarchy;
And you will love me, tonight at noon.

"Just the tip. Just the tip." Initiation. Fourteen years old, fourteen year olds don't know the just the tip trick. It hurt like hell but the sound of his panting was well...worth it. Just the tip, then just the shaft. Just a lick, what a champ…the other half. Gigi was born, de-flowered then flourished. Naughty by nature. Fed and *** nourished. What a **** I was, what a ***** I am.…just slap my ***, grab me and pull me in. Choke me, bite me...squeeze, pull my hair, look me in the eyes, cuff me to a chair. Quiet ones you have to watch. I moan louder than I talk, nice rock in my hips....do me real good and I'll wobble when I walk. The club is my home, but not where I belong. Under my hijaab they can't see my laced thong. Taught to cater to the men and serve them martinis. Not dance ***** naked in heels and bikinis. Allahu Akbar. Don't let my family find out. Allahu Akbar. They'll **** me. Allahu Akbar. But if they do. Allahu Akbar. I'm still me.

My name is Neha,
Stage name GiGi however so complex, Stripper in silence,
And I'm strung out on ***.

1.
Mother, my Mary Gray,
once resident of Gloucester
and Essex County,
a photostat of your will
arrived in the mail today.
This is the division of money.
I am one third
of your daughters counting my bounty
or I am a queen alone
in the parlor still,
eating the bread and honey.
It is Good Friday.
Black birds pick at my window sill.
Your coat in my closet,
your bright stones on my hand,
the gaudy fur animals
I do not know how to use,
settle on me like a debt.
A week ago, while the hard March gales
beat on your house,
we sorted your things: obstacles
of letters, family silver,
eyeglasses and shoes.
Like some unseasoned Christmas, its scales
rigged and reset,
I bundled out gifts I did not choose.
Now the houts of The Cross
rewind. In Boston, the devout
work their cold knees
toward that sweet martyrdom
that Christ planned. My timely loss
is too customary to note; and yet
I planned to suffer
and I cannot. It does not please
my yankee bones to watch
where the dying is done
in its usly hours. Black birds peck
at my window glass
and Easter will take its ragged son.
The clutter of worship
that you taught me, Mary Gray,
is old. I imitate
a memory of belief
that I do not own. I trip
on your death and jesus, my stranger
floats up over
my Christian home, wearing his straight
thorn tree. I have cast my lot
and am one third thief
of you. Time, that rearranger
of estates, equips
me with your garments, but not with grief.

2.
This winter when
cancer began its ugliness
I grieved with you each day
for three months
and found you in your private nook
of the medicinal palace
for New England Women
and never once
forgot how long it took.
I read to you
from The New Yorker, ate suppers
you wouldn't eat, fussed
with your flowers,
joked with your nurses, as if I
were the balm among lepers,
as if I could undo
a life in hours
if I never said goodbye.
But you turned old,
all your fifty-eight years sliding
like masks from your skull;
and at the end
I packed your nightgowns in suitcases,
paid the nurses, came riding
home as if I'd been told
I could pretend
people live in places.

3.
Since then I have pretended ease,
loved with the trickeries of need, but not enough
to shed my daughterhood
or sweeten him as a man.
I drink the five o' clock martinis
and poke at this dry page like a rough
goat. Fool! I fumble my lost childhood
for a mother and lounge in sad stuff
with love to catch and catch as catch can.
And Christ still waits. I have tried
to exorcise the memory of each event
and remain still, a mixed child,
heavy with cloths of you.
Sweet witch, you are my worried guide.
Such dangerous angels walk through Lent.
Their walls creak Anne! Convert! Convert!
My desk moves. Its cavr murmurs Boo
and I am taken and beguiled.
Or wrong. For all the way I've come
I'll have to go again. Instead, I must convert
to love as reasonable
as Latin, as sold as earthenware:
an equilibrium
I never knew. And Lent will keep its hurt
for someone else. Christ knows enough
staunch guys have hitched him in trouble.
thinking his sticks were badges to wear.

4.
Spring rusts on its skinny branch
and last summer's lawn
is soggy and brown.
Yesterday is just a number.
All of its winters avalanche
out of sight. What was, is gone.
Mother, last night I slept
in your Bonwit Teller nightgown.
Divided, you climbed into my head.
There in my jabbering dream
I heard my own angry cries
and I cursed you, Dame
keep out of my slumber.
My good Dame, you are dead.
And Mother, three stones
slipped from your glittering eyes.
Now it's Friday's noon
and I would still curse
you with my rhyming words
and bring you flapping back, old love,
old circus knitting, god-in-her-moon,
all fairest in my lang syne verse,
the gauzy bride among the children,
the fancy amid the absurd
and awkward, that horn for hounds
that skipper homeward, that museum
keeper of stiff starfish, that blaze
within the pilgrim woman,
a clown mender, a dove's
cheek among the stones,
my Lady of first words,
this is the division of ways.
And now, while Christ stays
fastened to his Crucifix
so that love may praise
his sacrifice
and not the grotesque metaphor,
you come, a brave ghost, to fix
in my mind without praise
or paradise
to make me your inheritor.

“22½ euros for a Martini,” Peter remarked, when he first scanned the menu.
“It’s not like we aren’t going to get them,” I said, “we’re not going to cheap our way to abstinence." The waiter came and I gave him my card, “Put that table on this card too, please,” (pointing to Charles’s table).

It’s a cool night in Paris and doof-doof music’s slammin’ from a stack of Mackie DJs. It’s about 53°f, but they have those umbrella heaters at every table and other heaters that blew warmer air on the dance floor (maybe not a great idea). Peter and I have a table on the terrace, out under a muted, light polluted starfield.

We danced, we debated the issues of the day, like, when will Taylor dump Kelcie and what were the best Oscar movies? (We chose ‘Poor Things’ and ‘Past Lives’). We ate Steak au Poivre with Red Wine Sauce and then we danced some more. We were having fun.

But when a party turns into ***** mayhem it’s time to leave - or is it? Watching the shadowy edges of things, I asked Peter, “It’s getting CrAzY, wanna go?”
“It’s just getting interesting,” he answered.
I squinted at him, was he serious? I couldn’t tell - martinis scramble my amygdala.
I decided to flow with it. “Ok, freak, get me another then.” I said, calling his bluff, and sliding my glass his way.
As he left for the bar, I glanced at my watch, 2am. It felt like 10 pm to us American east-coasters.

I looked around and Charles and Chinthia (Mrs.Charles) were laughing and chatting away.
‘You GO, old people,’ I thought - not unkindly.
Peter came back, two martinis in one hand, snapping pics with the other.
“Stop!” I barked, holding my hands up like I was fighting off paparazzi, “stop!”
I’ve learned things, like how, in early pics, when we arrive at a party, I look like Mary Poppins - but in end-of-party pix l look like Norma Desmond. Peter doesn’t see it  - but I do.

I sipped at my new drink - It tasted sour and bitter as sin - I made a face. Peter cackled like a villain in a low budget flick. “It’s a Winston Churchill,” he reported knowingly, “they were out of vermouth.”

When the bar runs out of vermouth, it means something. I pressed the walkie-talkie app on my watch and asked Charles, “You guys ready to go?” He didn’t look around but gave me a thumbs-up just before they rose.

My mom and (step)dad have joined us, at Grandmère’s, for this vacation. I was gleeful, at first, but it’s like my mom hasn’t noticed I’m not in high school anymore - that I grew-up in their three-year absence. I get pressed when she thinks I’m slouching, rearranged when my hair’s out of place and shown a pained, icy face if I order a martini.

She’s piercing the membrane of my privacy and expecting obeisance! I tried to explain it, like an adult. “There are multiple value systems,” I gently reminded her. My Grandmère even suggested Peter move into his own room. Luckily, Peter and my rooms adjoin and she put my parents on another floor (in the suite she grew up in).

I’m secretly afraid they’ll be up when we get in, that it’s 10pm for them too and I’ll get ‘the face.’ I told Charles about my situation and he said, “Look, she’s missed you, she’s just lavishing you with attention, she’ll relax,” but his oceanic optimism seems.. hopeful. We’ll see ??

I have switched to mechanics
The pen and the paper are morning my bemuse
The organic matter is dying just
Artificial forced relationships
With penetrative remarks

The tiny prism in the back of my mind
Where I can not stake out the feelings
It is forcing me to convulse on this awful thing
Those white walls are suppose to fool you
Repudiating that they are of silence


Do not placate me young sir
I know that’s were things come to a halt
You enlist them into your nihilistic theories
They can not see cyclical processes
The influxes of hysteria
that inevitably ward out the insurgency

No you claim them among the broken
Make them scared of large boxes with no windows
But does it even matter
The black matter had cast them to the seductress anyhow


The very seductress, whose embodiment of good and evil fools even me
Can she not see the rampant fires?
The cages that are cracking
As the mice turn on each other

Or is it calculated
Politically over dramatized to fool even the most sincere
You remind me of my mother
and the United States government

The will call my a conspirator
But ill know you never landed on the moon
And even if you did
You didn’t caress its very surface  

You didn’t risk your life
to just inhale the fumes of a memorial
It was nothing more then capitalist foot hold in outer space to you
No matter how much you sing about it

And what for me?
I could fix you in one splash of a recall  
But that wouldn’t change the fact that the gears are all out of whack
And the turnstiles
can’t see color anymore

I am growing blinder everyday
But I can never find my oracle under all this *******  
He has possessed me that
Flying gingerbread monkey

Before this I liked solidarity
Juggling my own fortunes
My own soggy breath fill up the window signs  

Now I am a menacing
Ravished house beast
Revering for him to make me categories and pie charts
This isn’t the competition that he enlisted for

But maybe will make it just five weeks and completely meaningless topics we will become the foremost informant
Populously used factoids over martinis
God know me and the monkey are socially *******

As this thing of forsaken design
has morphed into a manifestation of everything wrong with my punitive inception
We must talk about the alcohol.
Dwindling alone a poor and empty bottle
no worries it will have friends

Should I be concerned about my physical stability?
Not really I rather like bisecting my liver
and pouring to the brim
No its that I don’t enjoy it ,,,,,alcoholics are suppose to be a jolly breed
Why else would AA be so giggly?

I have tried to reform and it won’t be in vain
I won’t give up the dream
and succumb to a lobotomy
Just cause I Cant hold my liqueur

This is worse then the torah
A bigger degradation then the bible
If only I had cried for the proletariat
Then I would be famous

But even though the trances are fun
And the posterior eradicating
OH dark and shifty friend I have missed You!

And I do mourn in some postulated manner
for the orphans
But they would have made it out of their capsules
if you just gave them time

Collaboration with
Arcassin B

SS
There's someone
On Capitol Hill
There amongst the
***** and swill
Got your number
On a bill
They've SOLD OUT
For a thrill
Every vice
Martinis chilled
You are just
View to a ****

Someone up there
Privatized
Someone up there
Just said "Aye"
Someone up there
Told some lies
Someone up there
Has some eyes
Someone up there
In the skies
Someone up there
Wants to pry
Someone up there
Makes you cry
Someone up there
Makes you die..

AB**
While the toetag still
Keeps you alive,
All the unfairness
Becomes deprived,
Exposed and identified,
What's the Pentagon up to,
They about to have
New nation full of immigrants,
What are you gonna do,
Plotting the demise,
Subliminals in your eyes,
You wonder how the people
Broke off pride,

Someone up there
Demoralized
Someone up there
In disguise
Someone up there
Serve without pay
Someone up there
Love one's die
Someone up there
Don't act surprised
Someone up there
No time to be shy
Someone up there
Don't want this life.

Hemingway once wrote, “Nobody ever lives their life all the way up but bull fighters.”
An alluring career path,
but I know bulls are color blind.
They can’t even see the red,
and that kills it for me.
Hemingway also said, “Write drunk, edit sober.”
I can drink myself into a state,
but words don’t flow as easily as gin.
I’ve taken a liking to martinis lately;
there are 13 different ways to order one.
There are a million better things I could do with my life than google how to order a martini,
but I’m no bull fighter.

live in the 'C' section of dictionary
rated 'R' for too much intimacy
a coil of contradictions
a casual act of snapbacks and lingerie
a date with coffee and ***** martinis
it's the nothing good after two a.m.
but the same that will take a good man
you'd get lost in those pages too
if you knew the feeling of the craving
trouble loves a rainy sky
for it provokes the feelings of a darkened night
the moon always has taken hold of our emotions
ebbing and flowing like the breath filling your lust
a tide is just as powerful by any other name

While i was guaranteed eternal advice and happiness in my exclusive group of friends at our tri-weekly lunches and weekend clubbings, I simultaneously indulged myself in the pleasure of being surrounded by an erroneous kind of couple, the lesbians.  Stefanie and Andy were the token lesbians in our group of friends.  Token lesbians proved to be a great asset to our group for warding off unwanted straight guys looking for a way too easy lay.  My friendship with Stef and Andy would give me my way in to all of the lesbian and gay bars in the city notorious for their ***** ***** martinis laced with desire and chilling excitement on pretty girls drink free everyday.  Whenever i needed that "unique" night out on the beautiful New York town, Stef and Andy were right there to buy my first beer.  Everyone has to have that one token gay couple, no matter man or woman.  Some of us choose to flaunt our outrageous choice of friends all over the most elite restaurants and parties across Manhattan as a way to boost our inner self-esteem; while others specifically keep them around to ******* our conservative elders who refuse to give over our much deserving trust funds.  Stef, Andy and i had been friends for nearly eight years.  I met Stef on my first day of working at the Times, she was a fellow new employee fresh out of intern training hell.  From day one, we stuck together like glue knowing that if we played our cards right and made friends with the archangels of New York literary heaven, eventually we'd see the light of God.  We had thought the hazing of interning at this stress packed **** hole was horrifying but we had only experienced a slit of what true work was.  The slaving over deadlines and editorial reviews had cut our souls in half and drained our eyes of tears.  Stepping out of one of the most powerful buildings in New York, the fresh smell of cigarettes and brandy flowing through the opening and shutting doors of the nearest bar half a block away.  Given the name and outer decor was a huge signal that this place was not somewhere i would usually find myself after work on a Friday night, the offer of "first round on me" boggled my thought process.  Stef persuaded me to walk alongside her as we paraded our way through the busy rush hour traffic of guilty hubbies simply wishing to get home and bang the life out of their trophy wives in hopes that their women would forget the minor incident involving someone else's lingerie ending up in the ***** clothes on Wednesday morning.  Boredom had overtaken me personally as well earlier that week when i overheard Stef confirm with someone named "Andy" that she'd be at "The Heel" as soon as she could leave this "constipated place of crap".  Much to my surprise, my third eye skills lacked as I was under the impression that A) "Andy" was a boy, B)  Stef was straight, and C) I would end up going home with one lucky bachelor tonight who made the wrong mistake of being able to order a ***** *** and coke on ice and dance like his *** drive depended on it.  Fortunately, I was wrong on all of the above and while i was repeatedly hit on by pixie cut after pixie cut, i lost my gay bar virginity, gained my token lesbian couple, and went home tipsy as a homeless man on Fifth Avenue.

In a phalanx of four: Peter, Lisa, Dave, and I, descended a waterfall of marble stairs - pilgrims to another time - as if we’d punched through a wormhole.

It’s a five-star bash at the palace of Versailles - a grand ball - and the air itself seemed to vibrate with a feverish energy. As we bottomed the stairs, something whisked by in the air - was it the ghost of beheaded Louis the 16th?

Naah, it was a multicolored, donkey-headed, Cirque du Soleil creature. They swung everywhere, like gravity defying bugs on silken tethers, ring-swings and thin, web ropes. They flew, tumbled, unicycled, breathed fire and were shot out of cannons like fodder - all against a prismatic sunset backdrop.

A surprisingly chill Parisian wind clawed at our costumes of silk and broadcloth finery. The sun, a bright pink and yellow crack, low on the horizon, cast long, dramatic shadows on the flourish of chaos, as people arrived.

As night asserted itself, light became a living entity, blooming and dissolving in a mesmerizing multicolor-laser ballet that bathed the milling, costumed throng in fluorescent kaleidoscopes of kool-aid colors.

The day before, we had final costume fittings, earlier on the day, we had our hair and makeup done by artists who specialized in 17th/18th century styles (like we’d have known the difference).

From the salon, we were valeted, from Paris, directly to a ‘theme studio,’ setup in the Grand Trianon (the small, side palace where Napoleon lived in the summer) where, for €250 each, we got 10 glam shots on an elaborate, fantasy set.

Then we were escorted to the ‘Extravagant’ (a VIP area next to the stage) - passing through the envious glares of queued, lesser mortals.
‘Ahh, Privilege’, I thought, smiling brightly and waving royally - ‘just like Marie Antoinette used to do it.’ (before being angrily beheaded).

In the heart of the masquerade, tables fairly groaned under a buffet to shame the Roman emperors. There were open bars where rivers of martinis, champagnes and chocolates, the very essences of the celebration, flowed freely.

Elaborately constructed, elevated stages of polished aluminum pulsed music and life. LED light-panels painted fleeting hieroglyphs on the crowd, teasing the edges of perception and bands performed their own sonic wave-magic, swamping the crowd along in currents of booming, euphoric, Frenchcore club-music.

Dance, dance, dance, rest. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a more delightfully fragrant crush of humanity.
Our gilded, white clothed table was an island where we could retreat for cooling refreshment. I have two important words for you 'watermelon martinis’ - you’ll thank me later.

Versailles decadent past was alive that night. It was a young crowd, in general, so, of course, G was there, with Molly, K and Ice - but we were, like, ‘no thank you very much’. In several areas, costumes became fairytale slithers, as partiers became increasingly uninhibited.

After about four hours we caught the ‘exclusive’ light show (Hollywood bathed in unclothed decadence) before moving, weary limbed as zombies, toward the whispered promise of breakfast.

About 45 limousine-minutes later, waiting tourists and a crowd of locals outside a posh Paris restaurant hushed as we passed, colorfully costumed, like ghosts of an indulgent, hedonistic past - to our reserved table.
“Quatre, café et croque monsieur, s'il te plaît,” I told the waiter (four coffees & breakfast sandwiches, please).

I’ll admit to being a bit jaded. I’ve been to more than several ‘Parisian Haute-Couture Extravaganzas” but Lisa seemed genuinely impressed and I think the boys (Peter and David) had fun too. I was lavished with kudos as if I’d thrown the thing.

The atmosphere had been pure romance - in an upscale, Disney, mass produced sense and while it was, perhaps - like last summer's trip to the Ascot races - something not to be missed, it was also a one-time fling - something to look back on - when we’re 40 or whatever.

My eyes are roving, clever and playful
In the tensest moments I don’t lose my cool
From my fingers the bullets fly
I dive deep and jump from the sky.
I do hide behind occasional beard
I want my martinis shaken not stirred
My mantra is only one word ‘win’
The only car I ride is Aston martin.
My name turns my enemies morose
They’re pinned down by my gizmos.
Women just madly fall for me
Clad skimpily in alluring bikini
Chiseled figures slim and tall
I choose the good but go for all.
I am pressed for time so much
I can’t do without my omega watch
Though I’m not stuck in a brand or two
Rolex and Seikos will also do.
I feel instead of lengthening the list
It’s time for me to clear up the mist
A suave smart and fearless guy
I also happen to be a timeless spy.
I play with the villains dangerous games
Love to be called Bond without James
With me the baddies can never get even
You know the world knows me by 007.

scavenger bride,
she counted periods
before the children came along,
but never suspected
eyes like bottles
beginning to blue,
a tangle of scars
hermetically sealed,
the new order of
a broken romance,
dead love cassettes
in the glove compartment,

her cold and empty
constellations,
like cold breath
passing through a beam of sunlight,
grid of points, pendulums,
the ratio of freckles to stars,
no subtle countenance,
martinis and bikinis,
soft ******* and ice cream,
slight, elusive things, on a beach
with no more meaning,

the repeating pattern of
her mistakes and reliefs,
a preservation of decay,
sustained by the tiny
human fault line
in that oneiric hinterland,
between dreaming and waking,

she draws around the noise
and the clearings,
she creates within that sightline
the way her sadness can feel
comfortable,
an extension of loss that turns
her ruins into a home.

i have found myself while dancing,
grinding against walls scribbled with
martinis and broken ideas.
i have seen myself through others,
the girl who wobbles through neon colors,
the girl who shakes until sweat paints a fresh new coat.
i have heard my gospel,
through the thunderous speakers,
the screams of people who want a warm bed.
i have lost myself while dancing,
falling to absent galaxies,
trying to find a light to guide me home.
relying on the touch of unknown men,
to **** this star wallowing deep inside of me.
i do not know who i am
when i am dancing.
i want to think i am the milky way,
or a black hole,
gasping everything entirely.

that should be the name of a song
or a poem
or a memoir of a man who remembers nothing but
danger that passed him by,
ruffling his hair as it passed,
ignoring his pleas:
stay please stay please stay
i just want to mean something,
he would say
(that could be the subtitle
or the blurb,
something to draw the reader in; if floating bodies aren’t enough)
i just want to mean something,
and near-death experiences are the flavor of the day.
i’m not brave enough to do it myself,
i’m not a hero
or a villain,
just a lonely boy, undefined individual,
and your 350 teeth can help me mean
so much more,
350 individual teeth that float above my head,
falling out one by one as you bloat with seawater
(and here the first chapter would end,
here we would break for intermission,
audience smiling over martinis.
only 32 teeth, did some fall out?
too many maraschino cherries will do that to you.
too much sugar on the rim of that glass)
dead sharks in the current and none glance twice
i keep yelling but they just
deflect my bubbles,
and the surface swallows them like the heartless ***** she is
i keep yelling but they just move farther
i keep yelling but stay please stay please stay
i just want to mean something.
i just want some blood on my hands
is that so much to ask?
i just want some of my blood in the water,
to be a survivor
or a victim
(whichever gets more press coverage;
who cares about a memoir that nobody reads?
who cares about a memoir where nobody gets hurt?)
i just want shark teeth in my heart,
he would say,
i don’t want to make a mark on the world,
i want the world to make a mark on me.
that should be the name of a song
or a poem
or the eulogy of a boring man.

The three little pigs had it easy
they were destined to be blown away
into oblivion
But,
expectations weigh me down in my sleep
and I have to greet the sun and the moon
with open arms,
and I'd rather be curled up in my bed of rocks
that I made with my own wretched hands.

My nails have dirt under them
so when they find me
when they dig me up
they'll realize
I was more alive than dead.

Perhaps perhaps that is true,
but I'm unsure at the moment if I can breathe anymore
without the man upstairs jumping on my chest
and rattling my bones like
windchimes in a blizzard.

They forgot to take me in from the porch
so now I am covered in ice.
Hypothermia is contagious.
I learned that the hard way.

My mother doesn't know any lullabyes
so I fell asleep alone all my life
there is no such thing as love in a world where
doors are always sewn closed.

My brother doesn't know the meaning of the word death
so he doesn't know who I am
or where I came from.
It's a divided house with splintered shutters
hanging only on one window.

My grandmother handmade the curtains so my mother
wouldn't have to spend any money on décor.
It is important to be fasionable yet frugal
she said.
Know your odds and ends
and always sweep the dust under the rug
at the end of the day.

Clean freak.
Everyday.
Shine the house. Shine her shoes.
I think she mistakes them for her soul.
But, it's okay
because ***** things teach important lessons in life
like who can bring the most to the table.

Honesty is the best policy.
I lied to my aunt so I could go smoke
her cigarettes and drink her *****
while she was gone on vacation.
She doesn't know I've slashed wrists
and doused pills with beer and dry martinis
on Sundays after church, but
Honesty is the best policy.

It's hard to explain to someone that addiction's not
addiction because you sound like
you've been shot
when you ask for the stuff you've been dying
to hold.
And they look at you as if you were the one
that ran over Princess Di.

Back up.
Back up.
Sit down. Breathe clean air and tell them that
you're not
suicidal
you just like the way the word sounds
on your tongue.

Aftermath is fear.
Intentions
always change last minute and as they
stuff the tube down your throat
you question if you are you
any longer.

People like that shouldn't rely on such
demeaning ways to be found,
but I can feel my skin rotting
and I'm terribly afraid
someone is going to cover me in
buffalo sauce and swallow me whole.

I was drunk
but does it still count
I've never truly known a woman
because I know the one for me will be
unknowable.
I am drawn to the things I can't have
and oh god
I can't have you.

I hear that if you lick the alphabet
they will fall in love with your tongue.
No one has made me fall yet,
that is no one I have tasted.
I don't trust they are worthy
if they can't look me in the eyes.

I pray to god no one ever inhales the carbon dioxide
I contain.
It is spoiled rotten with ash.
In fact, I am confident the dioxide
has turned black
by now