(The following doesn't promote anti-abortion sentiments but protests orthodox Christianity's 'abortion' of a legend about Yeshua's marriage to / child by Mary Magdalene while commemorating statues of The Black Madonna) I had an affair with the Virgin Mary and left her that way, legs crossed - emblematic of a killing tree - haunting our footsteps into the shadows guarding The Palace of Dreams, her hands reaching for the fabric, the texture of dawn, clutching, milking the teats of mother goats on the empty hills, the sun scorching her hair into threads of black beneath the nexus of crossed darkness, “My name is Mary, What does it mean?” she asked, “Peace, I think,” I said, “I feel the hunger of the waiting many reaching through his arms, their pain through his hands and feet - do they know what they want?” “Peace, hope, a chance to live and love a little,” I responded, “Yes, so speaks my heart” - she fixed me with her eyes, and mine followed her steps back through the goats, bending to wrench wormwood from the soil, her lips caressing its liquid essence for a heroic, hallucinogenic spinning of fantastic myths and tales swirling around his head, “They were cruel, not allowing us the baby we so wanted, Yet, the sand so accepting of his feet before They raised him up” - her whisper dissolved in her moment of transfiguration, etched in stone, black image on distant, rolling plains, At loss for words I stroked her marble hair and face - as cool or warm as the touch of my grieving hands, while unheeding, a parade of monarchs, nobility and soldiers marched past in the full regalia of war, peasants quietly bent beneath their toil in fields of waving grain, struck heat-tortured sparks from anvils with hammers of iron, Ecclesiastical judgements denounced her as unrighteous, ridiculed her wisdom, while grandmothers, mothers and daughters came in secret to worship Mother Mary, Goddess Earth, The Black Madonna before her stone-armed cradle as empires, states, dictatorships and democracies rose and fell around her watch beneath my caresses, until I turned back through the goats, afraid to wrench wormwood from between the rocks as she once had, heart heavy for the moment of his sorrow, pondering silly answers seemingly without reasoned questions, remembering the one I’d loved and left a virgin in the stone-embraced emptiness of her heart for the Child they wouldn’t let us have. Still, her eyes look across the distant plains, caressing the silence of the air with the meanings of her names: Peace, love, hope, The Black Madonna and my once and still-loved Mary Magdalene.
( * Financially, Peter (Pyotr) Tchaikovsky, the famous Russian composer, was supported by Nadezhda von Meck, a wealthy widow, for thirteen years. Without a romantic attachment involved, they exchanged a torrid correspondence throughout that period, and Tchaikovsky was deeply wounded when Madame von Meck withdrew her support, possibly due to financial set-backs, perhaps because she found out about Tchaikovsky's homosexuality. Despite her reasons, one version of the story about Tchaikovsky's death says that he repeatedly spoke her name while in a delirium during his final illness.) ... *Prince Kiyama boiling up stirring the featherless soup liquid brimstone black cat-bone stew seething omens of steam acrid Big Easy incense dervishing above the bayous fangs of the city time blue inoculation of sorrow clinging to the street car of Desire racing to the Cemetery and churches beyond with windows of dripping crystal, altars of Russian-consecrated delirium and sweet Pyotr Tchaikovsky's murmuring rending the veil of white requiem: ''Nadezhda, Nadezhda, Nadezhda!'' voodoo Nadezhda come back to me! - voodoo Nadezhda! I want to see the hem of your skirt flirting with your flashing ankles in your venom dance to a da-whomp, da-whomp yammering orchestra of owls, hyenas, jackals, cats, wolverines, coyotes, frogs, dogs and cathedral raccoons Nadezhda! voodoo siren! screaming the *B-Street tango along the barren ribs of night through the bleeding noon, chaotic twitching of feline tail sweeping the roof nadezhda-eyes staring at the *Union Depot across the street, yes! - yes! - want to see the hem of your skirt flirting with your ankles flashing like fangs in your venom dance, pearl flesh - and clack your heels on the marble floor of the White Nights palace! chickity chickity chickity tickity tick tock time glaring back at the B-street roof-top cat ready to spring to the roof of the street car Desire, cruising madly, careening sweetly toward collision with the street car adorned with announcement of Cemetery death warrant translucently glaring in dripping crystal - Nadezhda, Nadezhda, come back to me! lest the yammering be choked by essence of brimstone, Can you feel the veins of it? Halaboo-boo bobbidy creesh crash crickity crockity doo-whomp whompity oola dingidee donga bonga hola slappidy slippidy whippidy clickity click clack chickity tick tock booma bangadanga bong - bong - bong *tar-pants Madman with coal-blazing eyes teetering atop his conga drum with feet too mercurial to punch through its head: Bangada bangada bong bong bong B-Street blues hypnotized, baptized by dripping crystal enlivening Prince Kiyama's fingers stripping, ripping feathers from the chicken maniacal struts of demonic flight for coronation on his head caressing the coon-dick realms of beyond before stroking the feathers with one hand stirring the soup with the other tilting his ear toward the city chanting his name Prince Kiyama, Chicken Man! The King Of New Orleans Bayou Voodoo Magic! while a roar ripples along Union Avenue Give us The Blues Mojo Okie Snake-Oil Madman! the people of the city gave him that name! reverberations quivering away in thunder rising to a wail, Nadezhda, Nadezhda! I want to see your ankles flashing like the fangs of love igniting Bourbon Street! rattle the stones! shatter the silence! rapturous rupture through The Garden Of Bones! while above the bangada bong bong bong all that can be heard is: Chickity clickity click clack clack chickity clickity click clack clack yeah, oh, yeah, such stinging music ringing assault of rhythm! for white-haired Peter, sweet Peter is King of the Parade his magnificent head resting in the arms of The Nutcracker knighted Clown of Fat Tuesday, striding down Bourbon Street his tears coming to rest in Peter's hair silence white a coiling the roof-top cat launching herself midst the clanging of bells atop the street car of Desire reeling past the wreckage destination - Cemetery! mocked by fangs of love: Chickity clickity click clack clack haunted by the frenzied flailing of Madman hands: Bangada bangada bong bong bong bathed in ecstatic sighs Prince Kiyama, Chicken Man, The King of the Bayou New Orleans Voodoo Magic quaffing the limpid essence of black cat bones simmering omens above the bayous dervishing above the fangs of love - a yearning whisper: ''Don't stop, Nadezhda! Nadezhda, I'm getting close the silence is ravishing like your lips, your eyes, your face and your ankles, thrust the bitter fangs even deeper and I shall rest, and... now... now you can rest your weary feet until the dance's final call, but listen, Nadezhda, for one last time to my voice, to the clickity click of black cat bones, to the Chicken Man voodoo beat, to the blues rhythms of my lilting music the speaking thunder of my drum: Bangada bangada bong bong bong bangada bongada bangada bongada bong... bong... bong''... *** * Prince Kiyama Chicken Man: a colorful figure, now deceased, on the New Orleans voodoo scene *The Union Depot: former train station in Pueblo, Colorado *B-street; Union Ave: streets in Pueblo *tar-pants Madman: blues poet Tony Moffeit of Pueblo * * * By the time Madame Von Meck declined any more financial support for him, Tchaikovsky had become famous enough to sustain himself until he died in 1893, seven days before which he conducted the Moscow premiere of his 6th. symphony, The Pathetique, quoting the Russian Requiem and receiving a mixed reaction. According to a story propagated by his family and/or doctor, his death was a result of him treating indigestion by mixing soda bicarbonate with a glass of unboiled water during a cholera epidemic. Scholars, however, think there's good reason to believe that he committed suicide, perhaps with a gun, for reasons that remain unclear though possibly relating to his sexual orientation. Due to his being a beloved figure throughout his Motherland, the audience was reduced to tears when a repeat performance of The Pathetique was given nine days after he died - and the work is still considered a masterpiece.
... men and women of the night and doughnut shops where life crosses, in and out against after and before life mounted on sugary dough, where coffee drips for hearts of tin, guts of steel maternity stolen from everywhere, from halfway between here - and - I, there, seeing, hearing writing: "Heaven... often... not - writing things halfway between why - and - - "Heaven often is not found" while time shuffles tails and whiskers of itself, where the waitress stands in cotton print identity, staring, counting, pouring as she stolidly jockeys drops of acrid aspirations which seep through the seams in her hands to porcelain and beyond to shadows of echoes, doughnuts - - holes, the soul of hard lonely guesses and questions - - "Ya' need a refill?' "Naw,"... ... windows rattle the frightened night - - "Naw, don't need one yet,"- off-duty, now, and hanging over the counter his need hovers beneath her seams in hope as he speaks above a graying beard which seems long enough to tickle the bottom of the coffee pot when part-time, he, too, tends the doughnut shop - - "But phee-ewey! it really is getting' windy out there, ain't it! sho' wish it'd rain, though!" "You want rain and I want to know, do two broads have to live together or sleep together before they're lespians? Somebody please tell me, What's a goddam lespian?" "What a question, Denny! and it's lesbian, lesbian, not lespian!" ''Shee-it! Lespians, lapdogs, hussies! What's the diff?" ... the wind clutches at numbed glass and skin... "Well, if I have to match your ignorance with coffee refills, it's no skin off my back! you pay for both, but why don't you get a damned job instead of coming in here night after night and throwing a 'hard one' over those poor women?" ''Poor! my ass!" "You really hate them, don't you?" "Shee-it! Love, hate, lapdogs, hussies, What's the diff!" "At least they're really there," the *grocery-cart woman mutters, from her corner, unheard, without doughnuts, and how she does it, since she has no castle of her own and the sign above her vigil screams: "NO SLEEPING ALLOWED, EVER, NO EXCEPTIONS!" is a matter for those who play the odds on pain and guesses and the dignity still penciling her face beneath the streaks wintering her hair, a dignity as pulsing-real as the college girl passing in the street - - "Wha'dya think, Joey, ya' think she's a pro?" "Naw, Denny, too fresh-looking," and leering jabs of elbows into ribs fail to rupture the warp and woof of the bone and marrow which stretches between `lespians,' pros and college girls behind prison bars of grocery carts filled with the rich vomit of disdain. "Hell, you wanted rain, you've got it! Christ!" "Damn! You a weather prophet or somethin', man?" "I wouldn't be jackin' my jaw about nothin' if I was you, Denny, after the way the lady told you off a minute ago!" - seeking a refill, now, graying-beard steps behind the counter, "And that goes double for you, Joey!" - he returns to the barstool side of commerce. "Hell, you ain't no weather prophet! You're a goddam Pentecostal preacher or somethin', man! Who put your friggin' saddle on crooked, this morning, any-damn-way?" "Save it for the apocalypse, Denny, you're going to need it! Say, by the way, your shift is about over, isn't it, girl? - he leans toward her across the counter for they both jockey cigarettes and lighters when other bridges fail. She accepts the flaming: "Yeah, when the other gal gets here, When's your next shift?" "Five-goddam-thirty in the morning! Christ, I have a friggin' twelve-hour shift, tomorrow!" "Je-ezus, that's awful!" - her smoke forms rings of disconnection. "Ya' ain't ****tin'!" ... "five-thirty, that's when it was, at least I think so - a long time ago," the grocery-cart woman answers an inner cycle: "A long, long time ago - - my pen stutters: "Heaven... often... not".... then dipping and bowing to the pogo-ing of streeted raindrops, it finds stride: "Heaven often is not found in far-off places but stares us in the face like plate-glass windows" - - "five-thirty... yes, back when I was real," the grocery-cart woman's fingers tattoo time, tattooing "Tah-tee-dum, tee-dum-m, tee-dum-m, tee-dum-m," and falling, though not the pattering of rain nor thudding steps of souls beyond the edge, but the half-singing of She who's come to relieve the Other She who waits for a younger script of Self - Herself - - "tah-tee-dum-m, tee-dum-m, tee-dum-m, would you like a refill now or wait until I make a fresh pot?" "No, thanks, I'm fine," `My, she sure is pretty,' my mind wanders from my pen to the younger waitress, `A lot like piano-woman whom I cared for long ago, was perhaps in love with, I don't really know, She probably didn't know, I don't think either one of us really knew - - O muse of hammered strings O robin-breast of soul-mate deep connection! Where are you? I am waiting!" - but why are graying beard and She in cotton print still here, why don't they go home'?... ... black, acrid gulps of hope leap porcelain, my pen seeks delirium of ecstasy in that which has been, is, and will be: "Reflect Heaven in yourself, reflect and go in peace and all will be well, will be well"... "So, ya' leavin'?" "Yeah-h, gotta' be goin', girl. See ya' tomorrow night, You take care, now - okay?' And so, into streeted pogo-ing raindrops, Perhaps his graying beard will be long enough to tickle laughter from the sidewalk where life crosses, in and out against, after and before... ... and the coffee is meant for hearts of tin. * (The imagery of the grocery-cart woman was inspired by and is in tribute to a real-life homeless woman who lives out of a grocery cart at doughnut shops, the bus station, library, and often, by standing for hours in the lobby of the post office at night).
Manifesto) VIII … stop! - Skid! - Shift knobs, slide gears, vomit numbness, fondle!… the music of guillotines!… VII … unmannered retching! since everything is a percentage of death in motel prayer-nights separated from unholy echoes and junkyard dogs yapping the insanity by disdain mating hysterical drools with refried rectitude, masticating giggling shame: “That dog, there, lifting a leg, there, back-alley sodomy of wetness in air – Hush, mentioned for headstones only” strewn among graveyards, sweet-jeezus jukeboxes purple-trumpeting along the borders of Their juice: “Yes, Holy! Holy! Holy!” screaming down the Holy Ghost and Fire in prayer-gutters backbiting along time of choicely chosen madonnas weeping children dear-jeezus-glittering through open legs into angst, screaming tilted jigsaw puzzle pizza-glitzy jive for crumbling bridges back and forth between us and wrinkles of self-righteously disgusted divinity… VI … bloodcurse-running! V … in dark rain! Red Sea deluges of body burning with love or shame-delight while lightnings flash through babies’ mouths giggling thunder rattling screaming jigsaw puzzle dripping into gelled pots of leftover Judgement “Not here, not there, not any nor every when or now!” “Jilt the proper puke! Go with pyromania! Torch the Dogma State! – the pimps of puppy pimple-love!” who juggle governed durges of rote, “Save the children!” - lapdogs yipping the absurd reprobation of cloned devotion drowning unwashed questions, non-visa versa versus vice: “Dead business liturgy!… IV … confessing in whimpers while love returns unwashed by tears of joy with eyes unwept and blank - chameleon colors change with choice of sins - the tilt, undropped shoe, The Word beyond all words waiting in the hush of The Timeless Whisper, the sighing , yet, of a stinging sweetness: blushing dawn draped like a Bridal Veil! Hear it, touch the deep Hymnal-Wraith when the darkness yawns and Gypsy-Sun slips mirthy skyward with giggle of wind in birth - stallions chasing mares, babies playing the alleys of apple-cider autumn, Soon, amethyst-glittter of dusk and Gypsy-Sun kiosk-safe beyond; moon, then, perhaps, and lovers’ juxtaposition before rooster-purple dawn with All contained in all, III … and the why of how, when and where, the where of how, when and why… all we, here, in roads, fields, cradles, in streets… II … the rain! - the dark rain!… I … ascending silence like cathedral-chills of tomb up spine… O… oh sweet, snorting jeezus
for The Beloved, a night at Nedjima Bar (Ankara, Turkey) … hypnosis shattered by atomic jiggling, salivation of song on your brow, channeled chaos of body, spastic sound, tantrum of dark delight unbuttoned and flung over the up-ended chariot of the moon, vibration – stuttering – thunder of slap-happy bass thumping the roots of “sweet home chicago”, you and I beard-to-beard, the pomegranate purple of your breath singeing my whiskers with notes insanely bent in the blush of your voodoo blood and throbbing with “go, johnny, go”, johnny be bad in prickly heat needling a conflagration consuming my pores, revival of beat-howling preacher on knees of confession in harmonica valley, drumsticks masturbating the crazy, crazed hymen of rhythm ravishing sin and redemption in our eyes testing the high-wire between us, fluttering, fanning the flame, tongue-flailing the invocation: “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, do you have your dancing shoes, are you ready for some blues flames, some rock ‘n roll rantin’, Do you like dogs? You see, the boys in the band are going to let the dogs out, all the dogs, all the way out and it’s going to get scorching hot in here because hallelujah, amen and great balls of fire!” here is your raving medicine-man screaming joy through the microphone, alley-catwallering yowl uprooting our chakras along the silken storm of strings strutting, spitting, rattling snake-eyes of resonance along “route sixty-six” curving around our shoulders in the “t-bone shuffle” of your right shoe, my left one, black, red, “blue suede shoes” and “well, it’s one for the money, two for the show” neural earthquake, volcanic sermon shakin’, blessin’ and cursin’ down on “mustang sally” “uh-huh, uh-huh guess you better slow your Mustang down ’cause you been runnin’ all over town” lawd, “guess I have to put your flat feet on the groun’,” uh-huh, uh-huh “mustang sally” docidoing with “caledonia” mocking yo’ momma, teasing yo’ daddy and tell ‘em I’m comin’ ’cause your name’s caledonia dripping with “sweet alabama”, sulphuric scripture, reprobate weeping sugar, third eye of beer and limbo games under my scarf shouting, laughing, you at one end, me tracing the vale of “sad, so, sad” ’cause “I got a woman way over town” got a, got a woman way over, way over town, so promise me to love her first and me second ’cause “I’m the hoochie-coochie man”, not way over there, but here because we gotta’ get our feet right off the ground along the path of the soaring, skin-disdaining serpent probing our souls believin’ our believin’ eyes in askin’, do you be “secret agent man?” because they’ve taken your number and given me your name I raise in exultation of bone-bred pain screaming for a strangling of questions “in the shadow of the city” risen from scorched, grinning alleys strewn with fragile hope-seeds born in the spittle of fertility, ancient moments still watching over the sacred egg from which we came – and shriven of barrenness I throw back my head to yell, “you ain’t nothin’ but a houn’ dawg” nothin’, nothin’ but a houn’ dawg, houn’ dawg runnin’ tongue-led along my trail joined to your redolent thread, us sweetly inflamed with “bad, bad whiskey – and we’ve lost our home”, bad, bad, bad, bad whiskey, highway of liquid-burning sin and yelping salvation from heaven and hell to the beyond of the subway station confessed with “I love you”, and the only answer I need is redemption of the night steeped in the beautiful, bad bad whiskey of your eyes… … and the whispering hymn of the wind…
in honor of Anton Chekov … it came with a certainty, it seemed, and that strangest of times remains indelible in my memory: a half-sunny day during molting season when thousands of mother-flies lay their eggs and die. I sat on the bed, that spring afternoon, when one of them landed in front of me and slid nearly fifteen feet across the hardwood floor of the studio apartment. It flipped on its back, and buzzing, spun around for several seconds and died. Just like that, as they all did. Across from me on the other side of its inert form, an open suitcase lay on the plaid-covered couch. An auburn-haired girl sat beside the suitcase, watching me with eyes asking the questions in her pained voice. “Shall I leave, is that what you want?” – she, Connie, was my girl, or least she had been for the last five months. “No,” I said. “Shall I stay?” “I don’t know.” “You don’t know? “No,” – our relationship had become assumption by now, and oddly, this only our sixth real falling-out in five months, apparently hopeless, senseless. I felt trapped, mocked by memories from the past which burned distantly in the russet reflected from Connie’s hair in the late-afternoon sun. Another fly began its dance of death; Connie paused in her packing: “Well, like, do you still love me?” – the insect’s silence punctuated the plea in her voice. “Yes, of course I love you,” I replied. Her eyes remained unwavering: “What’s our problem, then?” As she spoke, I admired her, admired her citadel which seemed to hold her in contempt of looking for broken fingernails at such moments. For in her tall, young loveliness, she was neither ice nor all fire. “I don’t know what’s wrong,” I said. Connie raised her eyebrows. “You don’t know?” she prodded me. “Just what do you know, like, your own name?” I shrugged: “Of course I do.” “Uh-huh, and what year is it?” she nudged. “Nineteen eighty-eight.” “Okay-y, and what’s the date, today?” she continued prodding. With rising frustration I countered, “April the fourth, dammit!” “Uh-huh!” she triumphed, “So you do know something after all!” – a strangely seductive taunting had crept into her voice now: “So what’s our problem, then?” “I don’t know!” “You don’t!…” “Actually, it feels like it’s someone I don’t know, a missed connection.” “A missed connection? What the hell are you talking about? Have you been seeng someone else behind my back?… maybe, like, Melissa? - you kind of like her, don’t you?” “Yes-s,” I admitted. “… or maybe it’s Wendy. You think she’s kind of nice, too, don’t you?” – and Connie stretched her leg forward with ominous determination, smothering a fly with her shoe: “Is that who it is?” “No! I… I didn’t mean!…” “… or maybe it’s Joan, or LaTasha!” she interrupted me, “or Marybeth or… “ A knock on the door interrupted her. Connie stopped short of crushing another fly before looking toward the door: “Who the **** is it?” Her citadel had begun crumbling now. She’d also quit packing. “Oh, hell, come in!” she called out, “The door’s open!” After a moment of prurient hesitation, our neighbor Randy opened the door and thrust his lanky nose inside. He was the tall, brash, young painter from down the hall of our apartment building. “Yo, Tinkerbell and your better half!” he chimed, “I need help but not from you, her,” – and he directed a bony finger at Connie as he insinuated himself into the room without closing the door behind him. “Yes?” I ventured. “Oh, no big deal, it’s just that I have this important painting I have to finish before the end of the week, and I need a model. How about it, Connie? By the way,” he continued, looking condescendingly at me, “I promise she can keep her clothes on.” He fixed oddly impervious eyes upon her again: “Will you do it, girl?” Somewhere I felt lost seconds ticking over the edge of lost time; the tilt of Connie’s head, meanwhile, was articulate: “Wel-l-l, I guess… like… sure, I’ll do it while he decides what he knows!” and she pointed a long finger at me. Already, a sense of increased value had begun to inform her attitude as she rose to her feet. “Now, just a… !” I spluttered, suddenly smitten with a realization that something like this moment had always been between us through all the moments we’d occupied each other’s lives since Connie had asked me that college calculus question before class five months earlier. I felt her unawareness – of me, as she walked resolutely toward the door. My hand, raised in protest, fell to my side. “Jeez, that was easy!” Randy chirped, “Obviously a woman who knows her own mind!” The door slammed behind them, upon my mind – and I… I sat there on the bed, trying not to think how it wouldn’t do any good to think. Soon, the body of a deceased fly began teasing my vision out of the corner of one eye, and another out of the corner of the other. There were many insects, many dead bodies. For a brief, terrifying moment, I felt tempted to count them all. Instead, I decided to concentrate upon what I’d been doing. I continued sitting, thinking how it really wouldn’t do any good to think. After a while, I began feeling the weight of an uneasy oppression. I stood. I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. For the first time I realized that I’d never known, never understood the person I saw in it’s reflection. As though drugged by a deadening poison, I stood there. As I did so, I heard Connie’s shriek, perhaps of pleasure – sensual, recognizable, yet unfamiliar – down the hall. I bristled and felt the rise of a decision to ignore the sound. Instead, I decided to concentrate upon what I was doing. Transfixed with a numbness, that I might never understand, never know, I continued looking at myself in the mirror… looking and looking… The apartment door opened. Connie came in and I followed her into the living room. I almost reached for my suitcase – at the foot of the bed. Connie didn’t seem to notice. “Do you know any more than you did?” she cheerfully asked. “N-o-o-o, actually, yes.” “Like what?” “Wel-l-l”… “… good!” she interrupted me even more cheerfully. Tossing her head defiantly, she took her pink blouse from the suitcase. Turning briskly toward the shallow wall-closet, she hung it with a certain wild abandon. She hung her woolen sweater and gray pantsuit. Next, she placed two pairs of shoes on the closet floor, and with that same abandon, hung her blue dress. And her tight, faded jeans, and finally, her red dress. That was all. Oh, there was a fourth pair of shoes, her gray, suede pumps, which she laid on the closet floor. Then Connie abruptly dissolved into silent tears. Listening to her silence, I rose to my feet: “I just don’t know,” I softly said. As I began walking toward the door, the whisper of my self- dialogue, the sound of my footsteps, seemed overwhelmed. “Dammit!” Connie sobbed through her tears, “Gaw-wd dammit!” I felt her words through me like a shot. Engulfed by the sounds of death around me, I stopped as I reached for the doorknob while a fly slid across the floor, flipped on its back, spun around for several seconds, and died. Just like that – and then another one… and another… and another… I in mine and she in hers, we occupied our places… … Connie softly cried…
for The Beloved ___ We love dreaming hallucinations of ivory towers out of fear of tumbling truly asleep into visions of doghouses and nightmares of Tinseltown-Princesses falling in love with the dog in the backyard… * * * Alexander… they called him Great, loved a beautiful soldier and a beautiful horse, kissed one and the riddle is: Did he kiss both? which one first and with the most ardor?… ___ … pulsing… … our blood thick with us together oceans of each other in the salted mist, rapt, I hear your thunder and hiss am at sea in your siren call beckoning my shores cleansed of all else… … our anchor rocked in the umbilical rhythm washing through us ceasingly pulsing… * * * … my vision of you blinded me when you came to live in the irises of my eyes… … the ultimate, marriage of illumination and lustrous darkness… … perfection of vision – blind, yet still seeing… irises… * * * … there is a dark realm of every kiss as the kiss of death… * * * … I am dying even while I am living the death you handed me – music searching blindly for us in forsaken alleys, fractured, empty bottles of wine reflecting the winking of stars we hold in our hands… * * * … you send me artificial roses… … their spears mock my fingers, your ears hear my words, my voice, … are your guts listening to the inflection of mine trying to breathe life into the petals – and thorns?… * * * … I am spirit-Casanova a consecrated harlot of soul, boundless, my loves… … oceans envy my reach… * * * … ask and I’ll disrobe for the velvet storm of your eyes, barren but for your glance, not sleeping, reveling in velvet drunkenness to our core … … then again, you don’t have to ask… … I have been assailed beyond the illusion of my robe… * * * … in my drunkenness I don’t see double, I see the blurring of our shadows etched from above the clouds… … stumble… … fall with me… the floor is a place for us to lie inundated in stupor our stink rising from the floor as one… * * * … reach deeply into the quiver, your hand won’t get lost except in my flame… … come… … the arrows will follow… * * * … respiration… perspiring through the smudged windowpane that is us, indistinguishable from lost expulsions of the hidden sun, sacredotal robe, we hide in our nakedness unashamed to sweat raging pheromones of naked desire to live in, breathe one another until stricken by arrows of the moon and laid side by side… … who cares about the silly sun?… * * * … our love needs no tailoring, unclothed we wallow and play in the biting November rain tattering the warp and woof of our mother sea – - liquid muslin – too much clothing let us get more naked than naked, more than the earth the sky, all the tailoring we need in the ocean wind… … do you feel its sting shredding the veil of even the rain?… * * * … I felt my heart thundering in the grip of your satin-steel gloves lightning rods thrust inward to a bone-searing… … and still I am stunned, please let me sleep until the dawn of more thunder… * * * … I can’t mirror you, only hope to hold you in a reflection of myself, dagger of heaven through our pores screaming in a fever for a transcendent wound – alchemy… … madness… * * * … a chemical, my love enlivening the roots of you in the ash heap of all this… … and I encompassed by the reek, infusing myself with your incense incinerating all that is, with me firmly lashed to the acrid-smoking pyre… … our essence rising above the stench… * * * … when you leave there is no death no silence but soundless cries of chaos – living, nothing when you retrurn but heat raging between here and beyond, furnace-anthem struggling toward fusion … … my longing for a molten center … * * * … snarling beneath the despairing numbness shuddering trap of my teeth caressing your veins trying to strain you back into my recesses.. … hissing silence, blood-cadence, smoke and seething ice beneath the emptiness… … only a trash can to catch and love the debris… * * * … moon-stripped void of mine staring into the pre-time howling of wolves and sand through your hair spinning requiem - ours – in a cauldron of void, moon-watched, staring… unashamed… * * * … I beg your indulgence in rough, uneven rhythms, for my best refuge is me – with the door open to you, Come, jitterbug in gratitude, in that a stuttering heart is a heart alive… … stutter with me… * * * … how brutal!… I said ‘I love you’ and deepened was the pool of our blood-touched union opening to the most beautiful of poisonous flowers; we drank deeply, drugged we slept wide-eyed in each others arms… * * * … deeply where unfurl the petals burn the jarring-jagged points, the flourishes of our labyrinth beyond unraveling… … unsolvable riddle, primal, priceless, profanely scorching… * * * … trembling echoes – smoldering - our lava boils upward to singe away the scars… … ashes of newness… … the wind has never been more lost… … demons of joy are on the loose… * * * … love is blasphemy inherent, scripture… * * * … the distance between us – scorned by the glance of your eyes possessed by our nights flittering before the mocking dawn of your eyelashes… … sunrise disheviling darkness has never been more replete, as close as our clutching fingernails eyelash to eyelash, skin-of-skin… * * * … a bright shadow casts our darkness - never more luminous… * * * … suspended, I languish in the wantonness of your shadow, breathless, watching you kick it around… … lost… found … lost… … I don’t live on the edge, we are the edge, you and I… … the exit is the way in… * * * … give me your cheek and I’ll slap your blood to your roots, stunning them, shouting them awake, the dance thereof will never die and resurrection never sleep except to dream… … us… * * * … you came down from Mt. Olympus and my head suddenly spun with your olive scent, craning my neck to look up at your tangled hair searching to fathom our connection crowning the summit holding our olive branch torn from your sacred grove… … anointed snare of our depths, dirt-scented vine of Olympus… * * * … shards of laughter strew some alleys, shattered grace of bridges, haunted sacrifice of cathedrals, hovels, our temple… … strewn… stinging grace of laughter aching to remove the shards… * * * … no wound is deeper than that laid open by your eyes and I bathe in the salt sweat to immersion, never crying out for a ceasing of the flood riding mercilessly toward our immolation… * * * … I once was prenatally afraid of your eyes, now luxuriating in the exquisite excruciation of terror renewing the womb of my being… … I can only beg for bliss of the nightmare evermore… * * * … the raven spoke: ”Nevermore!” and I wandered into the raven-soul of night casting about for wings… … my face was smitten by the feathers of yours soaring through the musky dark, and it rained! ”nevermore!” … our wings are locked together… * * * … numb satin intoxication arising to awakening epiphany of anguish, expectant grind of waiting, ecstasy of desperation to fall unleashed for flight… … let me see into your eyes and I shall lose my grip, … linger for my plunge… * * * … before you pull the trigger ask yourself if there is any love at the point of a gun… … or anything but… ___ … staggering, I fell on my face in The Ineffable One hidden rawly in the smell of your feet lifting me back to mine, staggering, still, but wrapped in the musky perfume of Ineffable Oneness… … forever – lost – ecstatic…