In a playful vision sent
Your ****** homologue
Of amber shins and pale phalanges
Weaves four-leaved clovers.

In response,
***** spurs
And protean winged descent
To float into your kaleidoscopic star:
Gliding,
Freely falling,
To rest in lace extremities.

There in our bed of sensual feet,
Sunflowers breath,
Whose burnished rotating petals
Gather me in wisps,
Each spiral frond,
Gyring
Before death's voids
Is drawn in purls.

And in pleasures held,
Cossetted in latticed limbs,
A ***** lustrous rich embrace;
Denuded and alive!
And with abandon kissed:

    Bony toes
    Tendons
    Deep arches
    Shins
    Ankles,
    Sweetmeats,
    Light and delicate.

As here between pretty shins
And fleshy silken feet
Our ascent begins
Rising,
From low regions,
To scale new night,
And crown our heights.

This lovers' leap into prismatic
reproduction
In the empty Cosmic wastes
     In a web is caught!
Where feet and toes inspire
Continuity for pointed stars.

As material possibilities collide
The lust for life
Is born in non-existence:
So in our nest of feet,
Mating in the game
With heads thrown back,
Of lust drink deeply we.

i have been telling this story for years
most people think it's a made up joke
but let me show you the high relief
fingernail scars on my ******* and
back let me take you
back to the basement made of music
back to the beat of the drums
back to the bumping grinding and *******
back to the girl i fingered on the field trip bus when we were 14
jesus christ i'm sorry okay we were only kids then
playing an obsessive tug of war game with
her wrists weighing my handlebar collarbones down
while exhaust fumes belched warm through the floorboards
her ankles wrapped sinuously around my ankles
the sun peeling through the windows like a nectarine
she straddled her first white stallion ******
buzzing like a wind up toy on my teenage knuckles
two years later in high school she was my tutor but
we learned more about *** than computer science
she showed up ***** in a corset get up
to my best friend's halloween party
where i was dead set on getting hammered
she set me on fire with her feral hair
and her feline eyes begged to become the nail
i was drawn to her like a planet being pulled
into the orbit of a red dwarf star and after she
danced the boogaloo with her hips
sequestering my glittered face
i became a deep sea diver on the dancefloor
facemask and snorkel full of sweetmeats and sap
her thighs covered in salty drool and
shrieks cutting through the *** cloud atmosphere
building into a honking goosey crescendo
we took a steamy cold shower together afterward
and i really saw god's big face when
her eyelashes licked the fog off the bathroom mirror
and she proved to be a balloon knot artist
with grape sized ******* and a soda straw
tongue like a butterfly imagine me squealing on tiptoes
in the bathtub clawing toward the shower mouth overhead
with her laughing underneath creating a complex layer
of parrot echo-thunder tapping my lowest vertebrae
internally in a sophisticated cole porter rhythm
i've slept trembling crooked on the bed ever since
with beads of sweat arranged on my upper lip
remembering the gleam of the baby oil bottle standing
proud in the corner of the shower receiving window starlight
and waking up with smears of wet lipstick embedded
in the secret tender spots of my body and the leftover
sound of her fingernails raking through
the stubble on my sensitive cheeks

she finally told me her secret flippantly
the night before i went to jail
in the safe shadow of
soft candle flame snuggery

oh just pure mdma and ******* sprinkled on my tongue

Breathe, calm down, sit, what happened?
Your eyes are twitching,
Their color, it's switching.
Fear, joy, surprise?
Tell me, what is your demise?

The rays enveloped my eyes,
I drifted down, down into
That tunnel. Gold sparkles and
Poison silver in the air.
Are there goblins waiting, doting on
The scraps of my batted eyelashes?

The monsters, though,
They're bumpy and glow.
Green smiles beckoned and flirted,
Giggled and grinned,
Eyes winked and cheeks pinked.
Spiky hearts of jelly dominated the city.

Offered and given
Blue-brown daises and frogs, small kingdoms and bogs,
Rotted maps, never-ending shoulder taps,
Starched butterflies and broken cats,
Grass blades that cut clouds and dirt mounds,
Drowned fish with no fins, humans without sins.

Stricken with panic when
Asked for by King Gink,
My hand were misplaced.
My fingers desperate, grasping, crying,
For anything'd be better
That meeting the devil.

King Gink bid his men to **** the Cat. "Pick off all the ants, and
Feed them treats, bits of paper and sweetmeats.
If they succeed, I will take Alice as queen."
But the ants were too fat, too satisfied, and died.

Triumphant and vengeful, the Cat kidnapped me Without panting or pause,
Cat zipped off his skin, revealing
A mask remarkably like yours.
A devilish grin and a snickering sneer,
it was you, it was you!

Stop! Let me go! I swear, I swear,
I swear the umbrellas are birds, and that red burns!
Don't sit on that chair,
A porcupine left his spine there!
It's not as it seems, I'm not who I was.
I'm melting, I'm melting….

Breathe, calm down, Alice, you're safe now.
Mr. King Gink is in jail,
The cat put to sleep.
Not one more frightening thing.
Now, lay still, this won't sting.

My Dearest; Darkest Devotion,

Ah, but what a long time it's been!

And now, it is with a slender paled sliver of hope this letter finds you before I arrive at your chamber, for I must solicit your heart with the contents of mine.

This night I ponder upward to the twinklings amid the void and my thoughts do turn to that time we first met, before I knew you, and how you let me know you, and eventually I let you know...me.

Having learned the truth of my true vampyric nature, your reaction was not as open a reception as I would have it. I concede I have not been the same sense you drove that plank through my chest and deep into my very still heart. There stayed I until, alas...

A hapless young wanderer, a splendid morsel of a group of people on a retreat from the town, rummaging through nature to find kindling for a bonfire, took grasp of the parcel of wood that protruded from the shallow earth where I was left forsaken, and in his misfortune did un-stake me.

I assure you, at this very moment, I feel quite quenched of my thirst.
My hunger for the sweetmeats of revenge have yet to be satiated, however, I will see you very soon, My Pitch Blackness. And you. too, shall see me.

Eternally yours,

Vladimir Tepes.

P.S. Happy Halloween.

SANDOVAL
            Your brigs of bustling pilgrims light at last
            On this sweet-scented isle called Cozumel.
            Depopulating half of Cuba’s farms,
            The skills of our six hundred souls, or so,
            Erupt now in a pitched activity.
            We’ve confiscated idols, and our cross
            Now overlooks the rising ropes and tarps;
            Our cannons hedge the campground, with our horse,
            As secret weapons, hidden in the ships.

ALVARADO
            Now what a breezing cakewalk will it be
            To pacify this docile flock of lambs!
            Let’s ****** the sweetmeats from their trembling lips,
            And wean them to the yoke of servitude.
            Vassals alone make masters out of men.

CORTÉS
            Not yet so fast. For Cuba’s stewardship
            Forbids such a carnivorous regime.
            Father Olmedo warns us not to tease,
            Much less ******, the native nymphs.

ALVARADO                                                        Cortés,
            We trust that you, like all stargazing men,
            Crave glory, fortune, and above all, fame;
            That royal favor and divine accord
            Will light on those who quell idolatry,
            And carve new lands for God and His Castile.

CORTÉS
            But like a gentlemanly pirate, I.
            For Cuba’s governor deceives himself.
            His pure concern for human chattel, gold,
            And bandying the Indies as it were
            A distant annex of the Moorish war
            Has wrought a desert from a paradise.
            Long-term success requires a colony.
            And with what wherewithal! These islanders
            Stand head and shoulders o’er Carribbeans,
            With their rich-painted books and towering keeps,
            The graceful girding of their modesties-

SANDOVAL
            Their slave trades, and their binding bright bouquets-

ALVARADO
            Distilling liquor: Culture’s surest sign.

CORTÉS
            Our prime directive is to baptize them,
            Not march before their eyes the Seven Sins.
            But how to learn their Tower-of-Babel tongues?

[Enter Marco, a young Milanese courtier.]
It is he, is it not, whose honeyed barbs drip with sweet condescension, and whose kisses taint fair Bianca’s lips with similar speech? Behold, how he frames her vision to reflect his own and directs her preferences accordingly.

Fie, I have been April’s fool in believing Antonio my ally. His encouragement was as sweetmeats to a greedy child; but I have chipped a tooth on that candy-coated morsel and found its centre to be flavoured with deceit.

My cousin Bianca, whose name speaks directly to her nature, whose light once made shadows dance for joy; how extinguished she appears now. For as Antonio sparkles and splutters at her side, her brilliance flickers and fades.

Lo, how he has seeded his untruths within her honest heart. His lies smuggled like contraband, his blandishments the articles of his trade. God’s wounds! Such a purveyor of frippery and falsehood I have never met the equal of.

It is high time to confront this sneak thief in his lurking-hole and to uncloak his creeping connivance. I shall bottle my rival’s words and choose carefully the occasion for their uncorking; then pour for the crowd a rich liquor of ripe requital.

~ ⚪ ⚫ ⚪ ~

This one's for Maya
Monolith of the black voice
much love rest in peace

All life is sacred
I dare not cage the sweet birds
because of their songs

The cage is a veil
Watch bejewelled hands touch and play
the sleek piano

The bird trills in sync
ivory and ebony
now weep of lost dreams

As we humans laugh
eating sweetmeats from rose-bowls
and drink mead from glass

~  ⚫ ⚪ ⚫ ~

Birds look to the sky
How she yearns to ride the wind
soar and touch the sky

But it is a dream
She is caged by luxury
by rich human glee

None dare lift her veil
She eats and sings, it fools them
But her soul it aches

She knows they see her
Broken in all her beauty
Her mistake not theirs

All life is sacred
I dare not cage the sweet birds
because of their songs

~ ⚪ ⚫ ⚪ ~

Our annual
Puja- worship days are here!

We worship a goddess
Who kills an evil demon
And spreads prosperity.

In India
This worship goes on
For ten days
With drumbeats
And sweetmeats.

In America
Indians congregate
And pray to the goddess
For several days...

May the goddess
Spread joy
Throughout the world

May she **** the demon
And once again
Let humans prosper!

You fool! thought I, ashamed; embroidered tunes have caught you
By the tail so quickly. The flitting seraph wings
Wrought and plucked by harpists, and soaring snowy strings
Enjoined and swiftly snatched you; cease, you truly ought to.
The hearty ******* hammers, they hardly must have fought you
Yet now you lie as wounded, ensnared by petty things
Which melt the ice inside you, once the cello sings.
You faint ere damsels swoon; old scars, they scarcely taught you.
Wars and wives await you; vast views beyond all measures -
Don your trusty sword-strap! Embrace the woodland quests;
Unearth the knight inside you; inter the pallid flesh.
You fool, thought I again, those pearly unreal treasures
Entangle all right reason. In truth, those tuneful guests,
All sweetmeats to my ear, will rule my home afresh.

Sanitation's abhorred as tattoo-parlor linen suffices for clean sheets
among hygienists oblivious to the extermination of oral spirochetes
who love to run in hosiery pushing pocked ***** for tricks & treats,
whilst sashaying towards oblivion on hind quarters and sweetmeats
to perform bankable acts upon appendages as bona fide dental feats

Sanitation's abhorred as tattoo-parlor linen suffices for clean sheets
among hygienists oblivious to the extermination of oral spirochetes
are apt to swish in hosiery peddling pocked ***** to tricks for treats
whilst sashaying towards oblivion on hind quarters and sweetmeats
to perform bankable acts upon appendages as bona fide dental feats