"The question should not be in what ways writing and utterance trope each other, but how both are involved with number. Without relating the technology of writing to number (as opposed to sound or drawing), it is impossible to discuss it meaningfully as an aspect of versecraft."

          Courage to write and courage to not write. Read
          The great poets and highly accomplished letters
          Of leaders. Yet the war and the book have lives
          Of their own. Vacuum house, analyze mankind.
          His idea of himself. Ideas subsumed by
          Better ones unite people in melting pots.
          I watch from my little bowl of nuts. Watch
          The one red squirrel and the many gray.
          Watch the nuthatch pair, platoon of chickadees.
          Here is what I say: When we can go
          From planet to planet on nothing but air,
          Leaving behind a drop of water,
          No burger bags blowin’ in the sun,
          I’ll love my sons, and my dogs will be happy.

"What is needed is a way to pry apart the polar, mimetic fiction that undergirds discussions (even sympathetic ones) of writing and versification, and see how we can relate writing to measure. Roy Harris’ investigations into the origin of writing make this connection possible."

          Electronic millennium. A long silence
          Wouldn’t hurt. Not that the national debate
          Should cease, it should proceed, passionate
          And furious. Those who have studied the matter
          And have something to say should write cogent
          Opinion pieces on the totalitarian
          Tendencies of minaret Islamists,
          The terminal contradiction of advancing
          Democracy with the unitary military.
          George Washington would not have approved
          And even Lincoln vacillated between
          The practicalities of preserving union
          And the ideal of freeing slaves. The president
          Carries his burden of matter, the physics
          Of existence cannot change our aloneness
          Or the butterfly’s importance, the very
          Last insects at the screens of August.
          It is life we face and death we meet.

"He argues that the origin of writing did not lie in the drawing of figures, or attempts to imitate speech, but in the recording of number. According to Harris, the oldest ‘writing’ that we have, like that on the 11, 000-year-old Ishango bone, is in ‘lines.’ The surface is scored with rows of short, parallel strokes, which probably served a numerical function. We still use such scoring systems today on occasion."

          OK, different strokes. But reading North’s poems
          And his predecessors’ in which noun and verb
          Are so far separated by modifiers,
          Post-positioned prepositions, diversions
          Into ditches, gardens, heavens, I don’t know
          What to do laugh or put the book down and eat
          Several cookies. In other words, anything goes,
          There truth resides. 1/3 life in suburbs,
          1/3 on the subway, and the last third
          On the mountain. A fourth hallucinating
          In heaven. That’s how it goes. You get what you believe.
          Bones in mud. It’s always possible I suppose
          That for nine months analogous or symmetrical
          With gestation our souls wander call it limbo,
          Doing the limbo and harassing the living
          With unanswerable questions, finally accepting
          Free molecular rent in a cubic meter
          Of interstellar space, a rose hip.
         
"Harris speculates about counting by scoring:"
'What is relevant for our present purposes is the fact that counting is associated in many cultures with primitive forms of recording which have a graphically isomorphic basis... The iconic origin of such recording systems is hardly open to doubt: the notch or stroke corresponds to the human finger...'

          Partridgeberry, mugwort, mats of raspberry,
          Cranberry, bearberry, autumn eleagnus,
          Autumn Nocturne, Autumn Leaves, the changes
          To the tunes and the scientific names.
          When it doesn’t matter what you do
          You’re probably doing something new.
          That’s a woodpecker. That’s a moth. I’m bounded
          By my surroundings, I feel at home.
          Could be Schenectady. Could be Troy.
          One of many small cities in which to
          Await my anonymity. Be specific.
          Not asphalt but impermeable surface.
          Not trees but mature stems. Quercus rubrus—
          Quality veneer. Into such a garden
          Have a victor and a fool penetrated.

'In short, the rows of strokes are graphically isomorphic with just that subpart of the recorder’s oral language which comprises the corresponding words used for counting. It makes no difference whether we ‘read’ the sign pictorially as standing for so many fingers held up, or scriptorially as standing for a certain numeral.'

          In a crowded world every action results
          In an equal and overwrought reaction.
          Yet, all the energy recycles
          And there is not one thermal unit more or less
          When all is said and won. Even when the tribes
          Were isolated behind mountain ranges
          And rushing rivers, they sought each other out
          For trading and for taking. Humanity
          Is lonely. Humor is the only remedy
          And going to your daily discipline
          The only way past Monday. Join the torrential
          Flow of words, emotion, wit and erudition.
          It is embarrassing to see a good writer
          Work himself into a lather, having
          Something to say. A system of beliefs
          To illustrate, characters dressed accordingly.
          Gardens and wilderness in which to wander.
          A cave with a view. The plumbing problem never
          Resolves. But we will do what we can and
          Some things we shouldn't because that is human.

"Along with other evidence, this leads him to argue that the invention of writing–or the division of writing and drawing into separate functions–occurred when the graphic representation of number shifted from the token-iterative system that appears on the Ishango bone, to type-slotting."

          Electricity is occult enough for me.
          Excessive classifying could be fascist!
          Yet how else can one organize people
          Into contexts. By their associations.
          Family, work, habits, each assigned
          A day of the week, moon of the month.
          Poets rhyme, jazz musicians count time.
          There is more than one way to make war. By
          Declaration, by punishing offenses
          Against the law of nations, by granting letters
          Of mark and reprisal, by making rules
          Concerning captures on land and water, by
          Suppressing insurrections and repelling invasions,
          Erecting forts, magazines, arsenals,
          Dock yards and other needful buildings. Today
          I face the blank page between the finished pages.

"Harris gives the following example of what he means:"
'The progression from recording sixty sheep by means of one ‘sheep’ sign followed by sixty strokes to recording the same information by means of one ‘sheep’ sign followed by a second sign indicating ‘sixty’ is a progression which has already crossed the boundary between pictorial and scriptorial signs.'

          When my grandmother considered it favorable
          That I would be a writer, she had in mind
          Clear commentary from which many people
          Would derive meaning. No such luck. My writings
          Are like the flicking tail of that flycatcher,
          And I am the flycatcher, weighing but an ounce.
          My grandfather’s rough-hewn peasant chairs
          Are well known by my sons though they never knew him
          And the chairs were not hewn, just owned by him.
          One is in a corner of the room and two
          Are scrimmaged around a computer screen.
          Computers post-date him and cars post-date
          His father and so on. If the grid collapses,
          The crops fail and the roads close, some will be forced
          Across boundaries among boulders, naming snakes
          And stars according to memory.
          They will be hungry, mortal and strong.

'A token-iterative sign-system is in effect equivalent to a verbal sublanguage which is restricted to messages of the form ‘sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep...’, or ‘sheep, another, another, another...’, whereas an emblem-slotting system is equivalent to a sublanguage which can handle messages of the form ‘sheep, sixty’.Token-iterative lists are, in principle, lists as long as the number of individual items recorded. With a slot list, on the other hand, we get no information simply by counting the number of marks it contains.'
"When this change occurred it opened ‘a gap between the pictorial and scriptorial function of the emblematic sign’, which had been previously inseparable in the counting represented by rows of slashes."

          No book I know tells if blue cohosh
          Caulophyllum thalictroides—a barberry—
          Is edible. Other barberries are
          But that blue berry looks risky to me.
          And May-apple—Podophyllum—other
          Than the fruit itself which is definitely
          Sweet. So I read, not sure of myself.
          There is a patience with which to wait out anger,
          And a patience with which to endure ignorance.
          The job is everything. It is freedom
          And purpose and religion. It is acceptance
          And shelter and sustenance. Last night
          We were watching Tweet’s show: groveling before
          The rich pharisee’s judgements. I said no
          Amount of money could make me grovel
          Before that guy. His toupe’s gayer than his lisp.
          But who am I? You think bullets won’t ****?
          I’m the guy they put before a wall and shoot
          Then eat lunch. But that feeling passed quickly.

"This semiological gap, made writing possible because it meant that signs could be manipulated to ‘slot’, or identify, anything whatsoever. The open-ended quality of the scriptorial sign was a necessary precondition for the development of writing systems."

          Lately I’ve been copying wholesale
          From the great poems, lines and ideas not my own
          Or owned by all? It’s ok, I can be ignored
          Or appreciated in a future city,
          By a future shore. The honest man can
          Only recognize what he loves and point to it.
          That Borges poem called In Praise of Darkness.
          Emerson and snow. A meditation
          That bumps serenely, with acceptance,
          Between things and thoughts. It is said one should
          Know for whom, to whom one is writing.
          These are letters to those who love letter writing.

"As Harris points out, no writing system is accurately phonetic. Even the alphabet only highlights certain phenomena in the speech stream. The reason for this is that alphabetic writing did not begin as a simpler or more accurate way to record speech than other writing systems, but as an easier way to write."

          A possible cancer had taken me
          To the edge of my endurance. Pokeweed,
          Poisonous, became attractive. Red stems
          And juicy black berries. I had packed warm clothes
          And pain killers. Why the warm clothes if this
          Was to be my last walk? To die in comfort
          Without a fly’s buzz. Overlooking a ravine,
          Sea of mountains, dawn. But it proved a false alarm.
          Now Sunday will be a holy day of plant
          Identification. Nothing better
          Than lying in leaf litter, skin drying
          To a taut drum. Ravens stay away!
          Until cougar’s had his fill! Instead
          I showed the boys pokeweed growing among blackberries
          And taught them the differences and uses.

"Through a radical reduction in the number of signs, the alphabet simplified the scriptorial system in and of itself. The evolution of writing therefore may look like this: simple forms of counting preceded the complications of pictorial representation, which in turn led to simplification of the writing system in cultures that adopted the alphabet."

          I was running uphill, parallel to
          The Taconics extending northward into
          Vermont (I find Vermonters in their jalopies
          Annoying but admire them for planning
          To arrest the president for war crimes) when
          I happened upon a flock of cedar waxwings—
          Said to be a gentle and politic bird—
          Sharing—very orderly—dried frozen grapes
          On the vine. (Rose hips, buckthorn, ash, pokeweed.)
          I tried one, too, the two seeds in my mouth
          Keeping me company down the mountain.
          I see no downside whatsoever
          To compensating for global warming,
          Constructing the green energy economy.
          New inventions may facilitate
          Our transportation to other planets.
          Yesterday a young man, Barack Obama,
          Won Iowa. I’m hopeful he will
          Articulate an international vision,
          A world order in which each neighborhood’s
          Good as another. I have no particular
          Love for writers; they’re a dime a dozen.
          But so are chickadees and I love them!

"Discussing the power of inscriptions of number, Harris points out:"
'Counting is in its very essence magical, if any human practice at all is. For numbers are things no one has ever seen or heard or touched. Yet somehow they exist, and their existence can be confirmed in quite everyday terms by all kinds of humdrum procedures which allow mere mortals to agree beyond any shadow of a doubt as to ‘how many’ eggs there are in a basket or ‘how many’ loaves of bread on the table.'

          True, nature would be a stern, unforgiving
          Mistress too, and man is but her right hand
          Acting on her command. How cold! How hot!
          The individual doing what he loves or not.
          Trees and cities. Herons, hawks. What we fail
          To govern in ourselves, nature will.
          We caught the killer and his gorillas,
          Now let’s go home, let the “innocent” choose
          Up sides. A good thing was done but the tyrant
          Should’ve been undone through global governance.
          Writing is divination using rhymes
          And estimations. Words like mammals
          Come near your sleeping head. Last night I emerged
          From the hum of our refrigerator
          Under a hazy, phaseless moon. The peepers
          Were an exact expression of my happiness.

"Or, one might add, for how many stanzas there are in a poem, or lines in a stanza, or stresses, feet, or syllables in a line, or occurrences of particular syntactical or grammatical patterns, and so on. As every serious student of versification has always understood, versification is about counting language."

          5:30-6 write poetry,
          6-7 ****, shave and shower, stretch
          Then get dressed, 7-7:30
          Clean house, 7:30-8 drive to work
          8-6 work (except Monday and Friday
          Work 8-4, basketball 4-6)
          6-7 drive home, shop, help make dinner
          7-8 eat dinner, read paper,
          Watch McNeil-Lehrer News Hour,
          8-9 play trumpet, study plants, type poems
          9-10 watch TV Mon: Murphy, Cybil,
          Tues: Frazier, Grace, Wed: Roseanne, Ellen,
          Thurs: Seinfeld, Friends, Fri: go out to dinner,
          10-11 read, except Tues watch
          NYPD Blue, Fri: Friday Night Lights,
          11 sleep. I could send this to the networks,
          Get a gizmo in my box. I hope my
          Schedule won't be interrupted for war.
          My dentist asked had I seen this morning’s
          Press conference, didn’t it just scare the ****
          Out of you. I said your bill is what scares
          The **** out of me. But here I am, writing
          And the sphere’s still turning. Or should I say
          Burning. As long as you write one poem per day
          You’ve left a little litter in the world.

"The reason to write verse is less to score the voice than to imbue words with the magical quality of counting. That is why meter, or measure, is at the heart of debates over all verse forms, including free verse."

          Vigorous wind, voracious ocean,
          Many merciless hard frosts, hurricanes.
          The bed of a human, its smell and warmth
          36 teeth, 46 chromosomes, 2 feet, a loose dime,
          61 summers, some soot, some sand,
          Thunderstorms. I wake up to a lightning strike
          And my dream incinerates. When they say
          Life is but a dream, that’s what they mean.
          The writer working hard, telling the story
          Of what happened yesterday or yesteryear,
          A man’s born to a country not his choosing,
          Let labor flow like capital, of mere being!
          Pomegranate juice, broccoli, arugula,
          Brussel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower,
          Collard greens, kale, radishes, turnips,
          Garlic, leeks, scallions, onions, 2 lbs
          Swordfish, tomatoes (8 medium),
          3 cups almonds, carrots, a sweet potato,
          Winter squash, cantaloupe, mangoes, watermelon.
          2 daily writing exercises,
          50 words on any subject: complaint, headache.
          The imagination applies a
          Countervailing pressure to reality.
          Writing badly is the best revenge.

"Number is one of the creative grounds of poetry, and the idea that writing grew out of counting is the missing link in studies of the graphic in versification. It is almost uncanny that lines of verse look exactly like the most primitive ways of counting–parallel scorings that can be numbered."

          What you do to one side of the equation
          You gotta do to the other. Isolate
          The variable. Combine like terms. Metaphors
          And analogs are reduced to least common
          Denominators. Multiply through (parentheses).
          Write a new equation after each operation.
          Inscribe neatly. Check your work. Imagine
          That if you’re wrong, the astronauts burn.
          Change the signs which will avoid going
          The wrong way down the number line. Zero
          Is the middle of your universe.
          There it is, calm, comfortable as an egg
          On a spoon. That is, before possibilities
          Become probabilities. This is just
          Another equation manipulated
          With opposable digits. For at the ends
          Of your guns is the earliest calculator
          A magical machine which converts
          Numbers to words and words to numbers,
          Measures the mists, frequency and wavelength,
          Of the material penumbra.

"Verses are countable in exactly the way that token-iterative digits are countable, from either end of the sequence. Each one indicates only its singularity, not a number. Every poem in lines effaces, or predates, the distinction between writing and drawing in the same way as the lines on the Ishango bone."

Slotting into geological time

"As a man thinks, so is he", ferillergood ye may
as well add as subtract.

Am i right or am I wrong?
Dexter, yeh, that'n
or Sinister.
Being left or right,

That's jest sided-ness, a sort,
a me-trick-able stackable thing,
with an in
side and an out
side and a top outside and a bottom outside
and a front inside and a front backside
and a back frontside with its own inside.
Like you.

Value pends 'pon sorts of things
into similarities of singularities,
if I got that message un occluded or
unveiled of sacred meanings.

There seemed to be no code
"if a man (voice) says a thing that is true, but
I did not say it: does that make it untrue?"

I answered, "Lord, you are truth."

Wow. Look what I said. truth you are lord.

Punctuated equilibrium humm white noise of wonder
can it be?
'Think so.

When I met you, I was merely an average girl who used her pen to scribble the words that couldn't ever leave her lips.
I hid behind slanted handwriting and poorly structured sentences, rusty metaphors and my pathetic namelessness. I could paint snow-frosted trees and lakes that reflected and distorted your face without even touching a single paintbrush, and make people's hearts feel as alive as if they were ten.
But you didn't fall in love with me, not in the sense I wanted you to.

And so began my obsession with you. I hated you and wrote about how your eyes were bloodshot and how your smile was slanted and how you made my heart physically hurt. I loved you and wrote about your body perfectly slotting into mine. I made you my muse, and created dozens of metaphors and made up various words; to try to describe how you made me scared and nervous and warm and fuzzy.
I hated how I loved you and loved how I  couldn't hate you.

Months later, I'm still smitten over you, unable to get over your sad smiles and witty comments, so I beg you, just let me have a chance to show you how together we could be king and queen of the endless words I can create with my pen, how we could wear upside down crowns and dance along to the beat of my half-broken heart.

Eyes wide open,
mind tightly shut,
we play victims to the postman
slotting news and letters
where little light filters through,
only as he sees fit.

Grotesque, gross manufacturers
spewing out page after page after page
of page three scandals -
of rich brats waxing lyrical,
American hip-hop DUIs,
fat cats cat-fighting.

Media
breast-feeds her gullible men
and milks the misfortunes.

We are part of the orchestra -
synchronised puppets looking to our
Master
to tell us
how
to read the notes.

Outside
there are flimsy flyers
advertising freedom
that have morphed into paper-planes,
but are impenetrable of ignorant masses,
flitting around the heads of the blind -
like cartoon characters after
being beaten up by
fists.

It is injustice.
Peel the scales from your eyes
and open the flood-gates, let forth the criticism!

Ask why an American singer's ten minute jail sentence
is more important than an Afghan girl's sentencing to be gang-*****.
Ask who the ten percent of the South African population are that receive sixty percent of our gross national income and how to alter that socio-economic gap.
Ask what is to become of learners who pass with thirty percent and if that is even possible when books aren't being delivered to schools.
Ask where one can find manifestos instead of accusations from each political party.

Do not let them dictate
your truths as
CAPITALISED LETTERS
with no urgency.
Do not let them confine
your insight to the ink on a page.

We are worth more than glossy sensationalism.
We are worthy of urgent honesty, transparency and enlightenment -
herein lies true freedom.

The liberation of the mind.
The uncoiling fist of a freedom fighter revealing the truth held within.

Amandla awethu.

fishnets grip my thighs
With the commitment of no other
Clinging to my skin
In a way that reminds me
Of how I cling to you
Threads of affection
Catching on loose nails,
And tangling themselves
between your fingers.

Red string
Criss crossed against my calves
A pattern of faith
And soul
Inviting glances
When I only desire your gaze.

Stretch marks line my hips
Tights leaving holes
Where your hands should be placed
I desire the rough skin of your palm
Slotting against mine
I want to gaze at you
And freely show my reverence.

My nails trace
Patterns into soft, translucent skin
The thin inner muscles of my forearm
Flexing underneath a milky abyss
Of fluffy feelings,
Twirled into light pink candy floss

I sleep easy now,
With the sweet residue of sugar
Coating my thoughts
And your floral being
Is the lavender bath soap
That helps me rest easy.

My shoelaces tie themselves together,
And when I see you I stumble
Words tripping
Across my freshly shaven skin
My s's slip into
Thhhhhhhh
The soft whistling of songbirds
Tilting my world
Until I'm upside down
Legs dangling in the air

The fat on my body
Feels light
Like a tub of fresh cream
Whipped into soft peaks,
I feel as if I could melt into you,
And your bones could become my haven.
I feel as if you could become my haven.

the fabric of my skirt
Catches on door knobs
And I fear being bare
I fear being vulnerable
I hide my intimate thoughts
Tucked away underneath
Layers of thick fabric

Philophobia,
The buttons on my blouse
Make my fingers fumble
I shake with
The fear of love.

Fishnets grip my thighs,
With the commitment of no other.
I admire their perseverance
But I fear
That they will eventually rip to shreds,
And fall away.

All I can ask
Is that You please
help me glue them back together.

watching the sequencing is a regular thing
this pattern never fails to deliver its best score
they who follow the method will be profiting

many times one has seen this eventuating
they're slotting into the bay's ideal shore
watching the sequencing is a regular thing

utilizing a placements good calculating
is not for them an overly arduous chore
they who follow the method will be profiting

success coming with each prized offering
being educated about this niche's core
watching the sequencing is a regular thing

it appears to be in the model's situating
this their station known as precision's store
they who follow the method will be profiting

on working out a program's functioning
none received counts which would bore
watching the sequencing is a regular thing
they who follow the method will be profiting

fall out
from the back of the van,

scuttle away
like animals made of leaves.

They’ll come back
as if letters in the mail

without any crinkles
or a slit down the middle

or a welt of ink
like a bruise nudging the margin.

I’ll pick them up
and taste every syllable

before slotting them
inside empty yoghurt pots,

deserted notebooks,
ready to be revived  

so I can swallow them anew.

I have a hole
Inside my chest
I slowly fill it up.
With laughter
With inside jokes
With love
With positivity posts.

Something heals.

Like puzzle pieces slotting,
I am home.

I'm on my way to see you. Sailing through the in between parts of our state. Hay bales and horses. small town auto shops. Men and women with tired eyes. I'm on my way to see you. Open up the box wine. Open up the *****. I'm on my way to see you. Remember all those times that I never measured up? I track my progress by the path of raindrops. You are the only person I think about on a daily basis. The only person to have ever left me tongue tied to the train tracks. Play me my favorite song. Sing me to relief. If I had the courage to be everything you wanted - believe me I would. But day fades into night just as I fade into my many costumes. I've never felt less than the sum of my parts, but you are the missing piece to the jigsaw I've been slotting together since puberty. I come on strong. Only because I need the warmth of your bravery. Generally, I avoid the mushy stuff. However - I'd be just as mushy as you want. This rant doesn't come close to the thought left under lock and key. And yeah I do want to get into your pants, and yeah I do want to get under your skin, but I'd be the parasite you wouldn't be without. I'm on my way to see you, and I don't want tonight to find the full stop.

This being poetry day here in the UK
poets being the original rock stars
even Viking warriors were versed first before learning the art's of war
slotting into one of the oldest crafts
is one of the greatest adventures one could hope for
in my poets heart opinion, of course, backed up by personal and shared experience.

i am not made to be the counterpart to your fantasy
slotting in where you see me necessary
falling in line like a shadow,
substance held only in light of your form

i am not made bent at the altar of your suffering
stagnated by the sulfur at your mouth
pleading, pushing,

i am not made to be waiting
for your apathy to dissipate
into twitching palms

i am not made of you
not woven of your neuroses
not built from your judgement
not felled by your weaknesses

you want someone to be you, fit you, please you, hold you, soothe you, be you, temper you, cherish you, enrage and excite you, be you, be you, be you

i am not made by your hands,
nor the sin of any before you

i am not made to be suffocated
in the shape of the woman
you want to hold

I thought I saw you reflected
In a passerby's sunglasses
The other day
Of course I knew
It couldn't be you
I see fragments
Of the wish of you
Most everywhere I go
I know it's not you
Couldn't be
Still
My wayward mind
Will insist on slotting you
Into every half-seen corner

sometimes i hear your laughter in my head and it sends shivers down my spine
it’s two am and i’ve lost count of all the ways to say “i love you” with the swell of panic throbbing in my throat, my chest
i love you and i’m not ready to try again
i love you and i’m not sure about the proximity, how much distance i need to keep so adoration doesn’t devolve into dispute
i love you and i can’t quite figure out the ways in which i do
i love you

it’s half past two
there’s a war trapped behind the bars that jail these flower spitting sponges i call lungs
and someone is dangling the key a touch too far out of reach, my heart a nervous flutter of don’t-break-in and
wow-your-head-feels-right-on-my-chest even if i can’t breathe properly
i have roses in my windpipe and my lips are stained rouge
you’re playing loves me, loves me not with the thorns clenched between my teeth

we swapped slurry sentences in a smoke garden haze and
i remember the exact path from your brow to your mouth, travelled by my wanderlusting eyes
the shape of it slotting sweetly against mine, nicotine and gin and the relief of feelings freed
so now, in sober sunlight, away from drunken darkness, i am afraid

your eyes hold storms of unspoken conclusions that you’ve yet to say
but my anxiety has already heard and i am afraid;
when i shift my centre of gravity to sit down to earth with you, lines of my body aligned with yours
the unyielding firmness of your limbs makes my head ache and i am afraid

i look at you and fret that all those feathery words, softly spoken and taboo
were just old thoughts, splintered fragments of a past affection reminisced into a fantasy by one too many and close proximity,
just retired comforts woken from sleep in the wake of recent heartbreak

please, muse, tell me about the girls i have known.
the sweet, drunken collision in late summer.
that second, drunker moan in early spring.
it wasn't real until they pressed their soft, wet lips to my own
and gave me the deed to my own life.
it wasn't real until i realised i could kiss back
wrapping my arms around her waist
stretching my hands up her back
feeling baby hairs at the tips of my fingers
slotting my tongue into her mouth
feeling my teeth clashing
gums sliding
like my back, up the wall.
it wasn't real until another begged me to slide into her bed, giggling,
pressing her nose to mine
slowly turning her face making me feel like i am plummeting
until i am caught by her sigh into my heavy mouth.
she pressed her body against mine and dug her hands into my thick hair
begging me,
begging me to remember it all tomorrow, to not forget.
i may have been buzzed,
drunk,
wasted,
but how could i deny her this gift?

You were sitting there,
Golden like a goddess,
With your eyes wagging lazily
Between the clutter and clatter of
Four jagged edges that made up
One sticky bartop.

The piano bounced in heavy thumps and steps
Like six inch heels
On a graceless girl
Who is dragged through the streets
Only by the sweet bait
Of a lover's giggle
To a hotel room that feels
A lot like home.

Your hands and face and eyes
Are pink as they pick through the pile,
Slotting in and out of Coach and Lucky
For a little black dress.
The thinning hallway smells like burnt cigarettes
And used condoms.

Arms folded like laundry,
Hair falling like linen,
I can smell the Coco and pushed out ahs
Fogging up my sight, dizzying and sultry,
As you dive beneath what feels like a thousand white sheets.
Sticky, wire-lashes sink
Under mountain-high, colored-cotton threads.

Your eyes are the glow of a casino.
You look right at me,
And I've won the lottery.

doing it
something
     something
the best word
for the indescribable

the way we dance
in the parentheses
of our love but not quite
     love
is what we have
never poked our toes into

oh it’s beanie hats
and plaid shirts
and your pearly body
in the bathtub
forgetting to sleep
     sleep
with our faces
against the 5am light
on the pillowcase
that cradles your smell
like treasure from the deep

     deep
into it
a game but not quite
slotting ourselves
into what we’ve said we want
     paint pots of want
and not the calendars
of our next time on

on we sail
coffee-shop babble
wet Wednesday afternoons
timid ****** of rain
on the windowsills
our twenty toes
fluttering in front of the TV
     TV’s a bad box of doom
we blot it out with our breath
the excitement that follows
our hundredth comma

fingers corrugate
wet footprint runes
waltz on the floor
L word
is lunch not love
the way it’s look
and not touch

dancing is dancing
     is dancing
is daffodil petal hair
is the half-smile of midriff
is the half-filled cup time to top up
is the knot of a hug
is dancing

strange hands
familiar cities
it is doing it
indescribable

haven’t mastered kissing
love
the way we imagine it
     imagine

need a budget and a rhyme for that
in a flow don't wanna fudge it
all I know is I've had my hunches
back at it on some crutches
can I get some dutch-ish
what it be
i am the dutchess
wearing many crowns
all on it slotting, allotting
the Budgetress

bottom lines
miles wide
when it's all flowing
bottomless lines
I don't know what its  all for
just some of it
and if I do say so then
that's progress
and I do

Proximity becomes the balm
welcomed shelter from the storm
when two people drop the walls
finding peace in their arms

when the space has given way
walls no longer separate
between the souls needing more
than the speech from vapid tongues

it’s more than body parts
slotting A to match B
fireworks in a moment’s bliss
then comes darkness afterwards

instead the fruit is more sweet
confirmation that we exist
this is forgotten even when
intimacy is only ***

in each moment of embrace
another waits beyond time’s veil
the supply that buoys lives
treasures found none can deny

the nearness fills my life with love
affirming I should stay above
when two people drop the walls
each finds comfort above all else.

© 2018. Sean Green. All Rights Reserved. 20180519.