Viscera / Ephemera

The perfect blossom is a rare thing,
you could spend your life looking for one
and it would not be a wasted life.
The Last Samurai

Such silly flesh
for such luminous minds:
white steel of the skeleton,
red cords of the muscle.

We are all born of star matter,
conceived in heat and passion.
A fusion explosion kept
by a web of neuron and synapse
contained and focused.
Like a lantern,
I shine light in these pages.
These bits on the screen
like shadows in Hiroshima.

After the slow burn,
when I am carbon, salt,
and assorted heavy elements,
take and make of me a cherry tree:
blossoms beautiful and ephemeral.
"They are all perfect."

La (Petite) Mort

Cocktails and house-beats,
we neck in the velvet booth,
disco-lights and candle-smoke,
sweat-sheened bodies
like stars on the dance floor.

On your lips I taste
the gin of a martini.
Through your stretched cotton camisole,
the smooth curve of your breasts
interrupted by your hardening nipples.

Your long-nailed hands in mine,
we pass through the crowd
and out the tinted glass doors
into the steel canyons of the city,
riding whitecaps to the door
of your apartment, keys freed
from your black clutch.

Every moment since our eyes
slid across each others
has come to now,
our bodies sliding across each others
with ever-greater skin-tingling
moments and kisses
onto the black satin sheets,
bared flesh ready and flush.

There is no magic
in the hypnotic depths of your eyes,
just hunger.
You lick your lips and offer
eternity in your arms
and as I penetrate,
you penetrate,
these shards of ivory
and an orgasm…
la petite mort…
la mort….

Before long, an expectant darkness,
the taste of copper and your wrist.

My eyes open to the alabaster
of your breasts,
skin cool, heart still,
but the passion…
no lessening of ardor,
nothing to ease the hunger
for your touch.

Only your gasps in the long night,
fucking on the marble slabs of biers
to show that we have cheated death
of its payment.

Only a deep bass more felt than heard,
my hands pushing against
your leather pants;
we are galaxies on the dance floor;
every moment in the long night
we drink ecstasy.

Off the Wye River

We ride hard through fields of barley
to the river and the
copper-edged cliffs above.
Horses, loosely tied off
to the nearby white oak,
feed bags liberally supplied,
keep without attention
for our next few hours.
We strip down to skin,
folding our clothes
into the saddle bags
and leap from the cliff
screaming as the cold river-water
parts beneath us.
The splashes echo along the river
in the golden afternoon,
day given over to lazy floating.
The current carries your hair
in a chestnut streak,
but is too slow to carry us.
With the fall of twilight,
the fall of temperatures.
Back into our clothes
and wrapped in a quilt
we eat the sweet breads
and drink the wine
we provisioned ourselves with,
then ride home by starlight;
two wishes apiece
after comets flash.
With satisfaction,
I nudge my horse closer,
hold your hand for the ride,
give my wishes to the world.

More potentially equine efforts at http://totallyoptionalprompts.blogspot.com/

Wild Hunt: Variation

Barbed wire, strawberry kiss,
Heady sips of dark wine
As the moon tracks the sun
Like a patient hunter;
Arrows loosed without aim
Pierce the Cupid's Bow
Of your smile-
-Sweet huntress
Am I to be tamed, kept
Like a pet, a play-thing?
The sensation of touch:
A collar and choke-chain,
Chocolate liqueur taste
Of slavery, indeed,
For this love-
-Warrior
Queen who vanquished my might
With a glance and a wink
Between satin bedsheets;
The passionfruit of your
nipples, tongue-ringed and flush,
The first wave, shock troops, breeze
before gale, citrus zest gate
Held by Maenads and
Lions, all of whom are
Ferocious and hungry.

It is your will, Lady,
That spares me. It is you
That is spared: solace found
In the unknown spices
Of surrender to your
Self, self-imposed desire
Filled, wanting stilled as the
Sweat of sex slowly dries.
The tired moon tracks the sun
Like a patient hunter:
No chain stronger than love.

Dichotomy

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To feel that I have lost you
but to know that I never really had you;
Each soul-deep kiss as one-sided as the dawn.
Your physical distance so much smaller
than the emotional:
fingers slower to hold,
phone faster to hang-up,
orgasms sooner faked.
I see your silhouette in the clouds
passing before the moon,
Love is a skewed perspective
where the day we met is as clear
as the day the you left
but the hours in-between,
a microcosm of agonies and bliss,
are smoke in the wind,
like the smoke when in a sad hatred I
burned our wedding album
so there would be no trace
that, once, we looked at each other
and smiled.
The night's wind carries my lament:
one minor-chord dirge for each
second our marriage lasted.
In losing you I have lost myself,
racked with legs tied to devotion
and arms stretched with
cords of hatred and resentment,
the levers cranking hard.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines:
I hate you, my love
And I wish you were here.

Hotel Room in Tokyo After a Friend's Wedding

You and I, drunk on plum wine,
with these two, lush, cherry trees
blossoming in think lacquer
on the doors of the armoire,
bridesmaid's dress previously
kissed down the curve of your back
then carelessly pooled, waved like
a sea of wine-dark satin,
are perched, giggling, on the bed.
The first empty bottle spins,
leaving maroon-on-white stains,
unerringly finding you,
lips already pursed, waiting.
A brief moment of laughter,
then I let my tongue find yours.
Our hands eagerly caress
and with that sweet skin-on-skin
we forget the wine, the stains,
and the two, lush, cherry trees
and tangle ourselves in sheets.
After, as you gently sleep,
I gather and hang your dress,
collect your bra and panties
and your carefully dyed shoes
in a neat, burgundy pile
on the top of the dresser,
then slide beside you in bed.
You rouse for a moment, smile,
and one more kiss in the dark.
Morning finds us intertwined,
woken by the sound of trains,
flush with the awareness of
expensive sheets and close flesh.
Our lovemaking is gentle,
a placid tide of kisses
and slow-built satisfaction.
It is not absence, but this
forever-in-a-moment
that engenders fondness.
Your walk has a languid heat
as you go start the shower.
A quick glance at the menu
reveals "English Muffin" between
the Kanji for "Plain Waffle,"
and for "Korean Breakfast."
I decide to wait for lunch,
then head into the shower
where, amid the steam and the
bubbles, we do manage to
shower in-between kisses.
Later, fully dressed, we go
to enjoy the city's life,
holding hands as we wait for
the downtown train to arrive.

None So Pretty

after McCarthy

Forgiveness the last thing on her mind, her tongue otherwise occupied with his, the stranger for the night fetched from the corner cafe over a caramel machiatto and biscotti, almond. Birds of paradise cooing in the nearby aviary to attract breadcrumbs; the many built bowers laced with floral scents like the lilac-mango body wash washed over her as she came to godlike proportions in her self-assurance, or bitterness, or a twisted sense of cat's away chasing the parakeets the id left in charge with a stern warning. Wings clipped and confined, she exposes her back and his, both tan, toned, his lacking the red stripes she will incise, mark her property, leave a souvenir. Him, the other, the raptor, was a sweet kiss like a liqueur in a cordial glass: tonight she drinks a bitter gin, but one sweeter for the betrayal. Nesting cranes that stood singlefooted among the incoming tides they collapse, nest filled, eggs carelessly exposed. Forgiveness the first thing on her mind once the coffee americano interrupts the next morning, mourning fidelity for her part, the part of her like the birds of paradise mating for life in the mango-scented bowers like the bathtub she soaks in when her raptor returns, having hunted alone.

A Villanelle at Melville's Tomb

after Crane

Our lives a question about death and scar;
Vain chance to win or fail. Gods watch us play;
And silent answers crept across the stars.

Some acid tears will fall, some puckered mar
Upon cheap skin that punctuate and lay
Our lives a question about death and scar.

Wracked! Torn! Kissed, then thrown across the bar
Of indeterminate near spaces. Pray!
And silent answers crept across the stars.

We patch our minds with pitch and tar
As ash leaves, rank and cold, a grim assay:
Our lives a question about death and scar.

Yes, love has light, that dim glow from afar
'Cross shale and crack untrod, and holds no delay
While silent answers crept across the stars.

No answers found, nor these ideas we are
To know, they then present without allay
Our lives a question about death and scar.
And silent answers crept across the stars.

Pergola Romance

"In the distance, someone is singing, in the distance."
-Pablo Neruda

The nightingale in the jasmine tree coos its sweet, enigmatic song for lovers. The moon is coy, showing half her face as if peaking around celestial corners.

Gauze curtains like morning mist obscure the pale glow of your body, naked, simple as light through darkness. Tendrils of your hair climb across the bed, growing on wishes and heartbeats.

Four pillars holding the sky encircle you, frame you as all of creation, in which creation occurs. Like the descended night I come upon you, enshrouding inch by inch the skin too delicate for sun. Smooth plains and gently rolling hills move like the tides at my touch: shiver, retreat, advance.

Our hearts find an allegro rhythm as the chords progress. My hands joined by your hands in the exploration of your world, the search for secrets, treasures and ancient wisdoms. The grace of mystery torn as the robe on the floor, shyness before experience lost as you roll me to my back and take spoils. Victor, woman, lover, you wash over the beaches and carry the sand and stones back to your seas, to the wondrous gardens too delicate….

Too delicate for such desire, you plateau, subside. The calm of the passing storm is upon us, flesh still leaping like lightning strikes, but softer, softer, softer. Weak, you lean forward, breasts against me, head on my shoulder. In the distance, the languid sounds of a guitar, six ill-tuned strings turned to wooing. In the distance.

The title taken from a song by Jim Harbourg.

Unauthorized TSA Announcement

Smooth-tongued break-beats skipping like stones, like leaves, like billboards at the side of the taxiway,

Unseen worlds swirl above and around and rush at us like we're launching an invasion,

The plane is my flotation device stored below and someone has pulled the red cord and UP! we shoot through stratus currents and cumulus waves and surf aluminum boards on the whitewater fairy crests beneath the sun,

Zero7 PassingBy passing by like each mile between here and Atlanta; this flight held to a standard higher than speed, I measure in beats per minute,

Incipient Night! Deepfried Toguma! The captain is a drum machine!

Clouds rush by in 4/4 cymbals as the programmed vox humana samples coke-diet-coke-water-coffee-coffee-coke-snore,

Crescendo! Updraft! Wipeout! There is no motion but in Time,

The early arrival is unlike the disappointing sexual experience; using a condom may violate federal aviation requirements; sex in the lavatory must not be steamy enough to ignite the smoke detector but let the screams ignite the passengers,

In case this is all too much, push the call button and a flight attendant will arrive and give you a diazepam,

Be sure, upon landing, your seat backs and tray tables have been coaxed upright and all personal items are put away.