Tempera

Query feels like a brand though it comes with veil

the doctors say, phantom pain becomes step mother

to fragile veins

first one to freeze come a cold snap

ready for tindering a bristling fire

at noon I want to eat warm eggs from your palm

touch your vermillion paint brush to my own face

feel the render of tempera against parchment

without any contempt for you, I wish you gone

but ink dries fast in the cold, it’s a myth it takes a warm day

to run a bath and slit your wrists

they never ask why, only how

the fire trucks blink like fallen damsons on melting streets

it was your enemy knocked on the door, broke it down, carried you out

not laughing at your slack form, the way your hair when wet

thins into dismal life line

the bequeath of surprise leaves us wordless

I with my bandages, you with your newly found soul

the sweetness of sharing this clementine center almost makes us forget our mutual hatred

to burn in respective votive, prayed to by sinners, also cherishing the role of loathing

dying is a slow storm, coming in squall, lost to its own menace

we leave the phone off the hook and become masks affixed to unpainted wall

maybe the next inhabitants will lift them gently from their nail

and remark before painting

that they left no shadow

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Of life itself

We side step desire

like the adroit dancers

we once were

light-footed, thin-ankled

defying gravity

in our keening

and still

that furnace

despite our neglect

consuming itself

continues to blaze

waking us at night

when the house is full of memories

and cold corners are no solace anymore

we roam halls bareheaded

fleet of foot

dancing in our sleep

to the urging wick of desire

for there is no remorse for people like us

we live only because we are struck

by an unsteady hand

igniting emotions like

all unsaid things

thrown on restless bonfire

will cast illumination and spectacle

among bare branches of old trees

if we could put words to

why we’d flung our very lives away

just for one night together

we’d be pulled back from the brink

the edge of everything

where all who are struck, reach

naked in their disregard for sanity

only hoping

in this feeling

lies the very thimble

of life itself

Inveterate flatterer

If you let me, if I’d let myself

I’d mention you in every mouthful

Once, at 15, my father said; Stop talking about that girl, I think you’re obsessed!

I was, without yet acknowledging how deeply these things can go

Forget an arrow, your harnessing of me is a tattoo as inked as the one I already have

If you were a sadist you’d say; Good. Now crawl to me

I suspect I would.

Absence is a devour and every hour a little harder

It’s a tortured song locked inside my chest

Awaiting your key.

You, you, you, the bird who flies without feather

You, you, you, the permanent loan against my sanity.

In restless chamber of night, I wake feverish, imagining

Your cruel hands on me, the cull of my longing to lie

Beside you, above you, beneath you, inside you.

The funny thing is, you don’t try, you never have, it comes naturally

Like walking on hands or juggling, neither of which I ever mastered

As you master me with the flint in your eyes and the quiescence of your tongue

Sharp teeth catching against your damson lip, ragged once in a great while

I have become a collector of moments featuring you

The turn of your full cheek set against certain light, eloping into smile

I want to dose you with a spell that you’ll feel

A tenth, a quarter, a handful.

Even as you are a wild thing and I knew it then, as I know it now

A creature who enjoys the pin cushion of being desired

Each gentle intrusion bringing a little fresh blood

Painless for you

A hammer in my heart.

Underwing, in indigo darkness I envelop

My unspoken entreaty and braid it into my hair

With every twist, pulling tighter, for my darling, wishing is

Often pain.

The crocus of my heart (2)

She is a pearl, a night pearl left on shore

to enrapture moon

her glow infinite, beneath water, o-er ocean

she turns, a velvet ribbon and I follow

possessed by singular vision

her irregular grace and

the dystopia of instinct

loathes the outline of her leave

with ferocity

she surplants my own gaze

by watching her, I find loveliness again

our language intuited

keys in a fruit bowl

picked at will

flash of silver and her hand

shaped in intention, shifting gears

knee down on gas, slivering through night

was it then?

Harpsichord of need gathered like penitents at wake

wishing themselves beneath earth

if it would evoke feeling, would wake sleeping

outliers of faith, to disturb solemn procession

to forgetting, our tempura hearts

beating in fragile unison

was it then? Testing breakable surface

I chose to dive, collecting your solvent depths

in pollinating gown, as I could taste

grace in my mouth, a melange of unspoken

longing, bursting beneath my blind swallow

I would lie here, my hand in yours, the

curve of us indistinquishable, skin hot with

persperation, a thruming channel of

love coursing my veins

you, in the center, a delight cresting and falling

waves of us, feeling for shoreline, that last cry

holding me to your quake, as passenger will clasp

her bird in descent, flat feathers, going deeper

find another place, as yet unopen to

entreat with the crocus of her heart

til you open again

and a river runs

no words

only felt

that latch lifted

and you place the key

deep within

Will

Does the wood pigeon know?

when he calls his coo into the night

the cats who stalk will slink toward

the smell of blood and feathers

as I have gathered myself into quills

and spices sealed in alabaster jar

the sum of me is traveled

through moon and sun

like a cut orange leaves her

stain on wood, sticky and bitter

as your imprint has become

my mandala and the furtherance of us

defies life and death

shaking itself off like a dog released from bath

will hurtle, maddened, toward nearest escape

I grew my vines in your wood

my embers are your fire

this melange of you and I

twined like grapes gathering sunlight

before first frost

and the women take in the clothes, hanging on frozen line

even as they capture the day’s warmth

you stretch in this paper thin life time

sew the jagged edges of my need

with your ivory needle

as if we were part of the same

garment

held up

by

sheer

force of

will

Big Sur

This is about you

about your long-legged stride and the way you shield your eyes

too light for the orange center of Californian sun

This is about you

it is called; Sorry I don’t see you every day because

if I did I think I wouldn’t care that we both burn

or our former rules and preferences

they were just defenses against the unknown anyway

what really counts, like you say in that dogmatic

tone I find so worldly; The soul it’s all about the soul

of course you are right

and not because you have lived 5 life times

and here’s where you correct me and say darling;

it’s eight incantations thus far

and you put on my accent and make me laugh

as the bog gnaws the bone that came by Amazon

along with my book and if I could

climb into that box and send myself

the version you see

not my own diminished copy

who forgot how to laugh until she ached

I surely would and we’d

buy a Streamliner like you said

hitch it to my track and

take Highway 1 past Carmel

you talking of Hunter S. Thompson

and Henry Miller

me remembering how Anais Nin

wrote; “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

How true, you reply

this is why you and I met

so you could learn to appreciate

the love of mountains and that stillness

in the sea when the sun begins to set

spreading her fingers across diminishing light

like a lover

and by an old cantina we drink

vintage cocktails from a hot water bottle like Some Like It Hot

as fireflies lay thoughts in the air

just as you

self-assured and possessed with a quietude

I find magnetic

roll up your shirt sleeves and

penetrate my hesitation

with your certainty

there is a film reel in my head of us

you’re watching me sleep against the car window

chinks of light hitting my cheeks like

bursts of fire

I’m pretending with eyes closed to dream

wanting you to take

that last distance between us

like the 13 Beaches Lana Del Ray sings of

low and throaty on thirsty radio

as if we were in Patsy Cline country

except we both hate anything

reminding us of then

we’ll make our own now

in the placement of moments

your eyes a question

my mouth an answer

and the photograph of Sandy

staring out against sunlight

her impossibly beautiful breasts

the languid tongue of her Lurcher

imagining his sleep with sun warmed fur

what was she thinking?

all nude and lovely and how do

people born of ordinary circumstance

inhabit her shore

and find their own

abandon in the dunes?

You say you know the answer

just as you seem to know

my making and my depths

and I cleave to you

as the rock erodes against sea

carving greater beauty in

wild grass taking up what was once

submerged

perhaps you are silver

in darkness and your touch

fills me with the laughter

I held underwater these

many years

waiting for an explorer

someone unafraid of

great depths

to find the way

to Big Sur