ERGO SUM
Smiles spasms and sufferings–
I feel, therefore I am.
Regrets over recent long agos, in the winds and in the sun, regrets over the lost and missed. Appreciation of some pasts, nostalgia for the futures.
Wharf odors of salt and gutted fish. Paint and bait, oil and rust. Clouds scudding overhead, heat miraging up.
Channels’ changing, the bedlam of soundtrack evolutions.
Limbs and torso shake and stretch, my body hinges into starting block, toes knuckle against chocks, fingers pyramid on starting line to lift the earth on edge, ears alert themselves and eyes ahead; a gunshot accordions our tsunami of feet forward, bellow elbows explode intense rhythms in lungs and heart like heated Bismarck batteries firing from iron ribs. And. then. finish line. Momentum ends, and the broader world returns to regular order and the runners pant and slow.
Baby’s first words and steps, crushes explored and wrecked, defiance and surrender on every side, alliances of privilege and power shift from This to Tomorrow.
Geographies of hills and hollows / skin on skin, lips on lips and nipples, tongue on organ / the old cock and pussy polka to the strain of gasps and moans.
The Grand Canyon oranging dawn from rim to bottom. Frozen Niagara’s cinder mist.
INHERENT
Your universe is no anarchist,
absolute liberty is a myth.
So cherish the space among those chains.
Infinity also has limits.
So treasure your time in the gibbet,
embrace your inch before that flame.
Though existence may be flexible,
shackles, ropes, and fires are metaphors
for reality’s innate constraints.
YOU ARE DECIDUOUS
Your branches in winter
spider like wrinkles.
Where’s
your paper birch skin
with its inner pink,
your spring
-leafed hair?
HUNTERS
My bridge is narrow, but your park is lush.
There is a peril for the ones who rush.
A hundred hungry hunters got lost in your bush,
their thousand-throated thunder silenced by your hush.
There is a peril for the ones who rush.
My careful arrow finds your hiding thrush.
LIQUID
I thought I was lucid in Patpong, though maybe I was hallucinating when I thought I saw this maiden blowing the vagina smoke ring blues. She came up to me when she was through and said, “Do you smoke?” and I said, “Well, not like you.” And then in my ear she whispered, “Let’s get liquid. Ooh ooh, let’s get liquid.” So we went to her pharmacy upstairs. She took my prescription and filled it.
She had that electric texture of velvet when rubbed against the grain, and I felt it.
The room filled with her flower and I inhaled it.
Lance shivered against shield as we tilted.
My farmer found her furrow and tilled it.
I opened her book and I shelved it.
Her passion a pink open pistachio, I unshelled it.
My sausage she fried in her skillet.
She made my Johnny Walker Red and then she swilled it.
She raced my engine and derailed it.
She measured my beat and she held it.
She climbed my steeple and she belled it.
She stamped my package and she mailed it.
She blazed my sequoia and she felled it.
I plugged in my tool and I drilled it.
I hammered her board and she nailed it.
She read my fantasy and fulfilled it,
applied my blueprint as she built it.
She fitted my Nino and she sailed it.
over the edge of the sea, she propelled it.
Oooooh ooooh I heard her shout it
(or maybe that was me)
and then our substances melded,
congealed together, we were welded,
but that was the moment we melted.
The orchid exploded and wilted.
And she slid loose, she slipped free.
And we drifted. Oh, we were liquid!
And I thought I was lucid in Bangkok. But maybe I was hallucinating.