Misleading light

You’re not leaving yet are you?

Girl with mango skin, every direction she turns

a kalidoscope of hopefulness in her smile

I notice how she wears her rings on her fingers like mine

that is because she is me

lost to time, a pull in a favorite knit top

the burgundy losing its focus as

it gathers holes

this is because she is me

bound to gravity and her weighty entreaty

toward inexorable end

a time away, yes, yes,

and nearer now than ever before

the steal of youth cloying on her dry hands

people slip her sweets and say: You are a doll

and she knows if she were a doll she’d be

able to affix the grimace all day and probably say

mama if you tipped her upside down

which is what she cannot say now

anymore than: I hurt, I cry, I feel

for she is passed that invisible line in the sand

where confession is pretty

she’s on the side of adulting

among the oaks and bulbs promising

fertility in Spring

but maybe they will be too tired

to show much of their lustrous potential

isn’t potential for under 25’s? She

read that somewhere in one of those

damaging women’s magazines before

they were transplanted to a screen

where weary eyed, prematurely hunched

poor postured youth eat their life’s golden ticket

like it is a salty snack at bedtime.

For sleep, for retreat, into the veiling woods

the silence unfolding like a veil, mist disgusing

her disappointment, even love doesn’t always

fill in where that ends, fickle in ways

you only learn when it’s exhausting

to find alternate routes, still she finds herself

thinking of the mango girl, the weight of the future

bowing her head like a shy dancer in the wings

of some hot lit theater

how then it was overwhelming in an entirely different way

the touch of a stranger, electricity firing her magic

quills into ether and those nights of no sleep

spent creating, describing, entire worlds

the future, a glittering prize, a lover, a friend

perhaps

perhaps

perhaps

it is time for her to leave

her skin shed in parts like impatient lizard of the desert

indigo handprints leading into arroyo

the scars of her like points of light

shining through

perpetual dark

as we mistake a falling star

when it is ignis fatuus

mere oxidation of phosphine

causing us to believe

remarkably and with some relief

in fairies again

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It can kill

Almost sun up

the tinder box within my chest

is scratched free of ignition

I have nothing left to light

against encroaching darkness

for so long, it was only you

who kept me burning, fed the diminished

flame within

now, cold weather comes hunchbacked

like a visiting relation who has

no regard,

streets are emptied, as ducklings for feasting are

short-lived in their joy, for we live in a climate

spoilt with her bounty

the people proclaim Winter their enemy

hiding inside, till blessed sun returns

to bake streets into their usual direct lines.

I have always loved the cold

for it is somber, serious, it does not apologize

for not laughing or smiling toothily for a photo

the cold is an adult, a survivor

and my warmth is now swept out

into the street to nourish next years

growth.

You have left me ransacked, weighed with grief

or rather, I permitted it

with my need to divest you with

my self keeping

it was you see, a way to continue

waking up in the morning

brushing hair, scrubbing feet

clean of their midnight chase into darkness

where if I stayed long enough

I might find no way out.

I used instead, the succor of your regard

for me, a diminished thing in a shiny coat

of false expectation, as hibiscus bloom

just before frost, as if daring it to

kill

knowing, one day, the flint

would no longer strike alight

the flame no more catch

and we’d be without fire, without warmth

without familiarity or loyalty.

As those who feel and then feel nothing

ransacked void with wilted affection

the chill of their galloping regard

worse than any Winter storm

for knowing your hater is surely

a greater pain than strangers who harm

just for the merriment of it.

I know you. I see the emptiness in your eyes

these years have rinsed out slowly like a series

of rogued pinches and double-exposures

I understand, too well, just as

I see my own senseless defeat

lain on unflinching wet ground, not moving

for the cold has washed over and she is

frozen in her private grimace.

Some of us can carry on

without the light of another

I have long existed without harmony

safety, even sanity, but I cannot lose, no

I cannot bear to, the surround of you.

If it comes then, you will find me

a memory in a long story, a footnote to something

larger than us all, lost in yellowed paper and indistinct

photos of past, growing longer with each yawn

and outside of us, that tree will still stand

in 200 years, we will have children born and

die here on this land, where the dead are

forgotten to we who roamed once, through the ravages of

time and her pitiless relinquishment of mercy.

It is the way, of mortality, even love may be mortal

in how she closes up sacrosanct and inviolable like a flower

denied light

refusing to bloom again. You say

nothing because your mouth is

filled with ashen excuses, and moving on and

what you’ll do next; it is a tempest, a fever

beneath your skin, lending you the fugue-state to

live again, for you are from your mercurial ancestors

a kind of people who always find ways to

endure, as if doing so, will make you more

memorable.

I then, I am not like you, nor ever have

possessed, the penchant for survival you tout, it doesn’t

matter much, we are all going to be

soot and lost words before long

the race, the belief we matter, is just

grime on our sleeves as we pass

through. I have seen a world

without me, as I have witnessed a life without

you, they are all echoes of each other

betraying the faith I had never quite built

knowing you would leave

observing in your eyes before you were aware

the emptiness of regard, how softly we skim

life’s abundant surface, like we hardly land

at all. At times it does not feel like it can

be real, this ache, this movement toward

self-destruction, surely this is not how it ends

and yet, years become decades and still

we find ourselves, curled into a ball, waiting

out the cold, a frigid breeze coming in

beneath the door, reminding us, no matter

how much we may like the Winter

it can surely kill.

The magic fairground

I scratch my head, the mixture of henna and indigo dyeing my

finger nails black

thinking of the red pill and the blue

Alice and her little vial

Drink Me

Pandora’s Box

Athena’s head exploding, a rebuttal to Zeus

yellowing wallpaper closing women’s mouths

Radcliffe shouts in her lesbian manifest

those following her down the well of loneliness

high waisted and limber of spine.

I want to nibble upon you morning, noon and night

but I do what is right and keep my fantasies in check

behind the lines of notepads and in the ink of pens

I suck till my tongue turns blue-black

your lips remind me of a pomegranate even without rouge

they look edible, lush, full like an excuse never to apologize

we are girls of violet, our pin in the concentration camps was

a pink V

last night I watched When Hitler Stole White Rabbit

at the Jewish Film Festival, chewed the inside of my mouth

in frustration at the abhorrence of others

when I was a child I did not have a pink rabbit

you left your hair brush and your rose water and your

tattered lace-edged simple night gown

I don’t think you ever wore one again, in the 1970s

nude was in vogue

women coming and going

from my father’s room

with dimpled bottoms and breasts like Claire Bretécher 

I learned my likings on photography books, under the section

‘erotica’ and other arts, believing archly

pornography an expression, when now, thinking back

they had such sorrowful eyes

like deer who stare into

the lights of an oncoming truck

is it bravery or hypnosis? Perhaps

it is fatalism, the French, myself

moving to countries who do not condone

indolence, expecting different results

when escape has no good set of keys

just jangles from your pocket like a taunt.

It’s not cute when you’re over thirty, to

long for the purple balloon in the supermarket

or lie, cat-like on the carpet and me-ow when your lover

is mad

it is not seemly, to be childish when you have

your first crows-feet, or need a push-up bra

unless you leave your glasses to the side

dive in, deep and thick

the molasses of not giving a fuck

where 80 year olds, excel and laugh

like they did at eight without front teeth

much the same, much the same.

The magic fairground, everyone remembers names,

I recall songs and colors of girls eyes

how they look sleeping, with their hands flung

like emotions above their heads, bent at the wrist

bangles on the floor, hidden beneath cascading sheets

elegance in angles, the way eyebrows furrow

in thought, how that line shapes over time into

a question mark, the parchment of skin, in

darkness, tracing braille, for the day none of us

will see, more than the outline of certainty.

You said: “Maybe you won’t love me when my

breasts sag, when I stop working out and the

lines of years begin to encroach. Don’t you like my

firm arms, they do not hang like bats, my mother’s did

I am mortally afraid of skin that hisses when you look

at it.”

Perhaps men had done this to you, torn down

your childhood gauze, made you feel the need to

apologize for things to come. I have read

Dreams Of Young Girls, I know how the photographer

can project a fantasy upon a real girl, even

when she is young, begin to pick her apart

as she unfurls like a Christmas amaryllis, not

caring the pickpockets of their distain

leave her in rags. Or maybe it was another

woman and her cruelty or her hatred? Tight

in an ill-fitting jar, straining to propagate.

“After all, you are so perfect,” you said,

smiling at my narrow hips (like a boy)

my unmarked skin (sun-screen)

the thickness of my hair (good shampoo)

how taut my calves look in leggings (optical illusion)

girls with girls tend to compare

it is not always favorable

though we find in our mixing bowl of humility

a little easement

the tasty wick of joy

burning low into auburn night

going over

those fears

with soft fingertips

and gentle reproaching …

Oh softening

Motioning

Nightfall

In whisper find blessed felicity

A body untouched, lain emptied of worth

brought to life, my Lazarus, spinning moon beneath our chins

rounding music fluting her velvet want to stay beautiful physically

for you to hold your breath as you touch, yes I understand

and still, beauty retains a deeper chord

dancing on raw feet to Erik Sate, trying to impress.

No, love, no, age is wine

spreading in the roof of your oval mouth

each place it has visited will transport you back, among the

grapes, tanned beneath reliable sun till just ripe, rolling in barrels

aged over centuries, buried with

secrets, the taste of fruit and toil, lustily on its wood

roots reaching deeply into history, for every year lived

another branch uncoils, the leaves, a brilliant green, bearing fruit

then flowers, finally sheltering, those beneath

such is a woman, such as you are

lying in my arms, the sweat of sleep, hot on your neck

cheeks pushed against my shoulder blades

causing you to look like you are pursing your lips

in effort to dream

finding ways always

to hold you closer,

closer

closer

closer.

Pirate radio

Totems she left behind

what lost?

What gained?

cinereal clouds pierce cimmerian dusk

your fingers fastening in my hair

we interlaced in one another

le plus vieux pont, la plus jeune émotion

lineament of women,

crossing from mortal to sempiternal

drawing you to me, redolent with love-making

I empty myself inside you, like flowers plucked will dry

and retain their incense

your neck a budding posy of marble obsidian, onyx, malachite, rose quartz

pillowed thighs, yielding beneath entreaty

a woman is nectar, ambrosia, a mist on the breath of dusk

her center a temple to invoke

donne-moi ta soif laissez-moi vous rassasier

entreat the reciting of capture til we ripen into rapture

wordless in renewal you lend me promise,

I bestow the eternal endeavor turning metal dial,

through tempest comes outlying supplication of wireless reverie

Dormir sous les vagues

it’s 1999 again and we’re drying our wet socks on hot radiators,

the tips torn by exertion our fingers

chill-blain, curling mouths open to each other

fais moi pleurer de plaisir like blind seals

dipping beneath ocean coming up for air

as fire crackles across pirate radio wave

Stand in radiance

I think of you as I might

the collected soil outline of a beloved plant, died in Wintered frost

slow the creep toward perish, I hold back, I do not want to enter that room

with its antiseptic smell, lolling tongues of linoleum stretching like vast desert

here nothing thrives

not you, in your beige iron bed with metallic purr of machines overhead

nor the sucking out of sight sound of life being apportioned and gentle knock and brush of clutter off stage

I have learned to manage my desires, like labeled things put away and forgotten

they seem inconsequential in the gravity of this moment, elongated into a maw, disabusing itself in perpetuate howl

the green eyed girl who sat astride you devouring your skin with the hunger of the famished, is just a filament of memory, drowsy with being taken out and examined many times

what is real feels false, we fall apart with rules, we are well behaved in chaos

as rain falls, drowning response, we are free briefly, to call for Gods who are sleeping against their fatigue of us

I look down at my fingers entwined in memory, carving the halls of you with journeys taken to your very core

wish I could write like a girl who didn’t need to rinse her eyes of salt and her mouth of violence

there are no mirages in this sterile land, only the abundant hygiene of fear, roasting itself on impotence

here even you, are forgotten to yourself. I wonder if you recall how we were or if

this eclipsed reality, so suffocating and tightly arranged, is your only memory

occasionally I want to do something vulgar and wrong, to break the dreadful count-down

call an old lover, meet them in the broom closet for some rearranging of clothes, we don’t know how to handle things, so we explode quietly inside ourselves

just to feel I am not plummeting alongside you

faithless for sure, my brand of lusting for life and wellness, anything but encroaching perishment, we fear dying even as we seek it

apparently I am not alone in this

strangers will swap bodily fluids in desperate snatching, on top of folded doctors overalls. That strange, nameless brand of green we all loathe

I was a false girl before we met, learning to reign in her impulses against a backdrop of damage
thriving under the rental of youth with no care for those far-off dates waiting in distant wings

life was already its own brand of unbearable, it felt yet, too searing to imagine decrepitude or bad luck

instead, thrive on the daydream, liquor up the inside of your nightmares and send them galloping and sweaty into the abyss

rest in the drowsy arms of indifference, for everyone wants something and nothing is as it seems

stop caring

until blinded or crippled, you crawl to your date with the inevitable

hearing your ancestors crow their dissatisfaction at your cliched rejection of fate

compassion doesn’t cost, but as I stare at the vacancy in your eyes I know

i’d say yes to the proffered ease of escape

yes to anonymous lovers and things to someday regret

but not now whilst we stand under the radiance

when life still reigns and I know how to squeeze from it, that ounce of pleasure

not hedonist but survivor. Some survive in the calm shallows

I want to wade waist deep in warm water, feel your touch bringing me back to life

not forget what it was to circle the varied heavens and their demands

nor the feeling of my heart in my throat, birthing color and chaos in equal order

I imagine you as you were, impossibly alive, bright in ways that hurt my eyes

our dance around the mandala of us, ever decreasing, unawares of our own diminishment

your last words lingering in pre-storm humid air, like fruit left a little long in sun

sticky and soft we meld together and break apart with the astringent sting of broken clay

turning again to earth, as if it had never, not once, not even in dream

held water.

Not quite natural enough

I would like to be

a bit more toward normal, ordinary, unnoticed

because when we hold hands

people stare

bubbles appear above their heads

they say without moving their mouths

she’s a lesbian?

what a shame.

a terrible loss

I bet her father sexually abused her

surely some man really mistreated her

don’t you remember how strange she was as a kid?

Do you think she watched me closely when we went swimming as teenagers? Gross!

I always thought she looked at me in a weird way. didn’t you?

I feel uncomfortable around her, (she’s not like us).

And so I do not

book double rooms in some hotels

for the stares of receptionists cleave my good intention into bitter twine

I do not cup your hand in mine on every street

sometimes I let go, when I see a certain type of glance

I see their flickering of disgust

read like braille, the unsaid words

Unnatural!

Filthy minded!

Disgusting waste of a female!

Around their pursed ashen mouths

as they talk about their dishonest children

as they talk about their cheating boyfriend’s and husband’s

the new grandchild, the latest form of contraception you

don’t even have to take it every day.

Even Plath and Sexton might have

raised an eyebrow and shuddered it was

so deeply entrenched to be judging even among

fine minds. When I read about you Radcliffe

I clutched the paper so tightly I thought I tore

your very sentiments out of print into my

aching lonesome chest.

I wear my hair long as a justifying act

I don’t use communal changing rooms

in case you think I’m looking at you, or worse, why

aren’t you looking? Why didn’t you desire me? IS

a woman who loves another woman supposed to

be the poster child? I don’t want my photo published

next to your intolerance and dissatisfaction in

your moldy marital beds just leave me well alone

I’m doing my thing, it’s not part of yours

don’t flatter yourself, just don’t flatter yourself

you’re not my type.

I know what you think, when I say I’m a feminist

you think; well those types usually are

I want to buy you flowers and bring them to your office

I want to propose a wedding no-one would attend

because people don’t think we’re the same as they are

we’re just girls who haven’t met the right guy

wounded, unnatural birds with confused identity

our parents lament us like Thalidomide babies born

without limbs, bespoken to no-one

if they could, they wouldn’t talk about us at all.

I couldn’t go to some countries, with you on my arms

they’d stone us for who we are

and I’d carry the stones in my mouth and walk into a lake

before I expressed my shame

my shame at being natural

for me

and not quite

natural enough for

everyone else.

Suddenly it is midnight on the water

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I leave a stain on my letter to you, with the tinny ring of my mug

tea left cold when you called and I ran out

following your voice like a siren, heedless of consequence

you are the devour of my hesitation, I hesitate never when you call

side-stepping consequence like a brothel, seeking your presence as a sinner

looks for absolution and a saint kneels until it hurts, my ache is so

deeply laid it could not be recovered, even if they brought chains

here, streets bleed violet in shuttered neon blink

nights deepest scold rests

we take the ferry out into pelagic wake

afloat on silence, illumination veiled

your forearms, muscular against thin wrists

beneath sturgeon moon we shift like light

particulate drawn by shivering lodestone

less tender than impassioned

time, her death-and-gloried face

far flung from our observance, no more

liturgy of unspoken entreaties

there are no other words for your mouth

it is placed on your face like a torment, a

famine to touch, never stop craving, its perfect

shape

suddenly it is midnight on the water, my body

sore from your touch, we watch in hush

dark silhouettes take on life

their grave countenance

caught briefly by moon peel

as glossy as the pearl of your face

incandescent as we pass by

our hands entwined

we may be invisible compared to

the rest, but here, here we

exist.

 

The song of her

Photo by Nikhlesh Tyagi on Pexels.com

My fantasy was placed in a velvet box,  buried at garden end where the ivy grew heavy

those were the days gone now, or perhaps forgotten, where fantasy was all you had

walking into bars, confronting realities better spared

shadows in corners, leaning, lurching, enveloping, retreating

you did not exist, we did not exist

our images were not part of the collective, the minority, the clique or the open space

wide and tumbling with questions, a loneliness at the core, the petals red

filaments of each others minds like fire flies without dark to make of it light

had you existed then, I would have traveled continents, just to know

feel your long black hair trace my need to be, closer than possible

only books, only songs, only walks on moors with other people’s dogs in tow

I imagined meeting you, what you would say, how we would get to know each other

and somehow shape the magic to follow

but it was only ever like the rain, predictive in falling but without control

impotent magicians we, beseeching the moon her unearthy feminine

pieces of me, pieces of you, strewn in directions not able to connect

I stayed young in getting old and before you know it, you’re no longer there

hunched over youth, abundant in dream, filled with need

chewing the heads off time, gnawing the bones of ancestors who disapprovingly gaze

instead you have learned to bottle your desire that the world create girls who love

from marigolds and pieces of ourselves cast to the wind

put it somewhere you won’t be ridiculed, join the line of other pursuits, a job, a direction, all taking me away from fantasy becoming true

the lines on my face, the fall of my skin, these things that shock and horrify

only remind me of what I once was, bright teeth, shy smile, large heart, empty pockets

how I longed for you to take my mittened hand in yours and

drag me out of myself, let me know you don’t have to fit in with the crowd

to feel love

in petrograph, in Kodak camera moments, in the unmade bed in the corner of my desire

I wanted you before you could put words to desire

I was born alone in my 1 or 2 percent of the world

a girl who loves other girls

yet it wasn’t plural, it feels when I touch it

circular

as everything I did and everything I lost

returns to this moment and winds around my wrist

showing my scars, developing an image in chemicals

of two girls even if they had to wait

after the storm and before the calm

did I mention I would stay here forever if I had to?

It is my wish we could rewind time and begin again when both of us

were new and shining

but such things are not always possible, and fantasy is rarely permitted her turn

in you I find proof of life

miracles, however tired exist in your eyes

they have fine lines like you are ever squinting against the sun

I find myself tracing the shape of you

over and over

until my fingers are numb with joy

maybe born too late, but oh we were born

in this aching world of few and far between

I listened closely and you gave up your song

SMITTEN is LIVE!!!

SMITTEN is now available via Kindle @ https://www.amazon.com/SMITTEN-This-What-Love-Looks-ebook/dp/B07ZMG4HW1

And SMITTEN in print is available @ https://www.amazon.com/SMITTEN-This-What-Love-Looks/dp/1951724003

Please support this worthy cause by purchasing one or more copies.

As many of you know, LGBTQ literature and poetry is a small section of the marketplace. SMITTEN is meant to be read by anyone. Lovers of poetry. People who appreciate love. Avid readers. Indie book fans. Those who like anthologies and collections and appreciate diversity and a wonderful group of talented authors.

In order to continue projects like this, we must generate sales to justify and pay for their existence. I took a chance on SMITTEN and so have the publishers of Indie Blu(e). We hope you’ll support us by one or more purchases and by this you’ll support the visibility of over 120 poets and artists.

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If all my friends and acquaintances bought one copy we’d have a success. I give back a great deal to our little poet, writers community with reviews and purchases and I’m hoping I can ask you to do the same for SMITTEN.

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Thank you to everyone who helped make SMITTEN a reality. We’re all very proud of the superb poetry and authors who joined SMITTEN to make it the premier anthology of love.

(PS: If you like to keep both a print and a Kindle version of some books, Amazon is offering a matchbook price on the Kindle version of Smitten for anyone who buys the print version.

The kindle matchbook program is going away as of November 1, so if anyone wants to take advantage of this offer, do this in the next couple of days.)

Glass

Champion me

Though I may not deserve it

Lazy as I am

In ways of discipline

But I’ll give you my rotten core

And every discarded pip

The very dear and marrow of me

Just to believe

I’m a satellite in your sky

Or even stardust

Something rather than nothing

Nothing comes from nothing so

Speak again

We are all fools when in love

Lest our allotted time runeth dry

And dying we plunge to dusky grave

Unfulfilled, not finding

That God of morsel and mercy

What if when it grows final

And trees no longer spring their buds

For one more year

What if you are gone from my side and I

Empty without your solace and the shape of your mouth

See only endings without playback

I rewind all the years

Each bitter marinated cherry

Tart beneath tongue

A losenge, a comfort, a poison

You wormed into me and I

Never whole

Welcomed the intrusion

Your familiar vibrate a reminder

Not all that lives is alive

Without some movement

My heart beating faster for its attempt at love

Causes arrythmia and constriction

You wound around me a silken thread

One end tied to skin, the other dangling

Over the edge where all who dream

Must plummet

Let me then

Take your small hand in mine

And jump

For there are no safety wheels stable enough

For how I feel …

Champion me

Though I may not deserve it

I cannot eat without you, there is only

Nourishment when you look upon me

And my arms behold your surround in half light

Making prisms of dull walls and music in movement

We are figurines in our own clock, counting the seconds down to eventual loss

Let me loose then with you reflecting back

Our echoes in the center of the flame

When I close my eyes beloved

I see with your gaze the sum

And with your ears hear my cries

As I crest and fall beneath you in rivers and fire

We exchanged the key

With open mouths

Red from touch

And I never withdrew

Stsying instead

In the blossom of your kiss

Take it, turn it to gold, bury our hearts beneath the miracle

So long as I follow in your step

No time is long enough and no regret

For we are but whispers on the crest of day

It will dawn without us and I hope when that happens

Our branches and roots have thickly woven

Deep beneath our flight we become

Not two, not divided, but one

Reaching through time as I strive to call you now

With my longing and the pearl within my very bones

Champion me

Though I may not deserve it

We are nothing if not the wild in the wind

Dashing against our inevitable ending

Come beloved, follow the trail

Where it leads I know not, yet am I sure

If we fuse like glass nothing remains behind

But some memory before this

The match was struck

A scent of sulfur

You entered the room

And I felt the dagger of joy

We as thunder

We as electric

Striking down obstacle

Falling into mutual devour

The sweetness of eternity

Near in summer storm.

(Nothing comes from nothing/ speak again. Quoted from King Lear. Shakespeare).