cardinal wishes

you dim,



ephemeral flower

oh continue!

 and be

nighttime swimming

soft water at twilight
then black ink pooled.
pitch brushes wave brushes submerge.
soft water talking alone to the shore.            

soft water talking alone to the shore.  split
bonds feel bodied in cool.  be weightless.
howl razors and slash open the night:
cause the turbid sky to clear.  too
the moon      falling stars.  too those
grieving trees cant, their tips bleeding
sticky       weeping thickly.  sorrowing a
rapturous flow

soft water talking alone to the shore.  alone
to small pebbles dry dirt.  beam bright
midnight    evolving dawn     calling birds
and the blazing sun fervor hot day.
melt leavings.  melt spurn and dive
into sluice under surge
rushing swells
  
soft water talking alone to the shore.
freeze fresh and blue lips and blue hands.  feet.
fire dwindled   red died    rusted relics inside
ember and finally.  ash.  leftways abandon
and leftways just, bare and crackling.
and quiet

in this universe there are some things so dazzling. they can frighten me.

golden and blush

it is knowing golden and blush.  those.

earthy touch and tender        
storms and drifts and
petaled weather and
in the attic feel the quiver of
lush
blossoms unfolding inside.

turn yourself toward me

turn yourself toward me
with palms open
and exposed  

we will weave our fingers
together
make intricate tapestries   
we will hold

                    forever
in deep shade         we
remember

sultry tymbals calling

in her darkest dress
of pressed ache and fever,
she clung she embraced the willow
with naked aspect and
faded inflorescence.

blind but
emerged. from the dirt. exited with nothing,
leaving a yellowed space behind, and
the sap she had nursed from cracked cups.
the tunneling to next had been with small tired
claws and tarnished spoons.

pale and dedicated
she ground toward the singing
and the click, and ground toward the chorus,
the madly swirling chorus,
the deafening orchestral play delivered of 
the male, the male
made musical, enchantment
resonating from the airy space of his guts. 
                                    
                    identify the song, wingflick and follow. 
                    he sang.  she moved her wings.  sing wing sing wing.
                    closer and closer. sing sing wing. wing

                    the surge the waves of uncomplex. 
                    match mate up and down
                    a sauntering
                    a jauntering
                    a mechanized
                    mystery,
                    clocklike connection
                    ununderstood.

after the seduction
there are larvaed nests and
completion.  under the white willow
there is the braided shadow and beam
and she fastens to something bigger.

this is the brutalest cadence.

...and the greatest of these is love.

on a recent flight to germany i was seated next to someone whom i overheard saying, into a cell phone as we were waiting to take off, that no, cocktails had not yet been proffered, followed by a sigh of disgust.  i knew at that moment we would be friends.

we wound up partaking of many cocktails, and staying up all night talking.  finally the flight attendants were just handing the drinks to us as we approached the galley, so they could sleep on and not have to deal with the credit card machine.  which was handy, because these teeny tiny little drinks ran 7 bucks each.  anyway, often laughing hysterically, and between repeated tipsy attempts to name all seven dwarfs ("lumpy?") we hit upon many subjects of great import, including defining "the great love" of a lifetime.  naturally, in discussing this paramount topic deeply and profoundly, if not wetly, we elaborated with our personal histories, from our thoughts on our tender or disastrous first loves, to our older, wiser understanding of love today:  and of what constitutes the love of one's life.  (naming the kids as the great love didn't count--that's a cheater's way out.)

wonderful they are, confessions.  it was like being in the 5th grade again, lying in a circle in leah carter's back yard, playing truth and dare in our sleeping bags under the stars.  i have always loved the thrilling charm of that, but this time it was dare-to-tell-the-truth-every-time,  which is probably the adult version of the game.  not a lot of room to dance like a chicken in a plane, and everyone flying had probably already seen a naked body dashing about; bolder it is to truly reveal innermost selves.  sometimes revealing the truth is the riskiest tact.  (of course:  not so much when the witness is also fairly anonymous and is someone one will most likely--if one does not correspond and eventually go together to that jazz club downtown--never see or hear from again.)  so now, weeks later, i have not written to continue the conversation, but have been relaughing the night, and rethinking the subject.

should the love of our lives be our first love?  the person with whom we experienced our first kiss?  (no way on the kiss thing).  the first person with whom we felt that the "we" could last forever, except it didn't?  the person one marries?  first marries?  marries last?  the person who sets one free?

i have my ideas on this but since i am not sitting in a darkened plane next to a heretofore complete stranger, confessing, i hesitate to elaborate.  ply me with gin and tonics and call me the queen of arlington, in the realm of virginia, and i may change my mind, of course.  (it's been done before.) but, the question remains, and is a pretty one, for me.  if you have some insight as to the nature of what constitutes the greatest love of a lifetime, you can help inform the ruminations by sharing, completely anonymously, right here.  i like the memories that come to mind as i consider past/present lovers, and the ways they have influenced my life for the better.  or not (which person/people would not be in the running for greatest love of life or whatever we will call it--though, even if bitterer, there is value to be had from those cads, too.)

just that thought.  for now.  

prufrock's--or my--confession

a friend wrote this in closing:

sii sempre grande

and the trouble with my rusty italian or maybe my love of words or maybe just with me but here i go
is that in this case grande could mean "great", or it could mean "big".  now, these things are similar
but they are also different and each meaning could have appropriate and useful bearing, could be a secret message, synchronous and prophetic, a symbolic subtitle to help me make sense of the story of life right now, that i could recognize.  and treasure.

but, which grande.  should i write back and ask?  "did you mean big or did you mean great?"  and that is ridiculous and not just because either definition would be wholly satisfying.  so i should just choose.  but because each is equally satisfying as the other, and so there is no clear cut choice which should be made, i am left debating not only which meaning to embrace, but now whether or not i should write and ask, and in the end i realize through the insane focus on word meaning and forced fortunes that what i am really asking is:

do i dare to eat a peach?

and this is the crux of it.  as usual.  

instar

                                       he said:  i
                                       pushed back. 
                                       jostled, i thought:  well.
                                       that was a wise choice.
                                     

    
                                                       fall then stand and it's
                                                       all cyclical.  round around and round.
                                                       so push again.  see clear
                                                       through red eyes. 
                                                      
                                                       with slender authority
                                                       i coax and uncover me.
                                                       evolve improbably:
                                                       shoulders broad.  arms of every war.
                                                     
                                                       push out to the fixed rhythm
                                                       of a universe and
                                                       leave the feint subterrane--that
                                                       entire generation of it          so                                               
                                                 
                                                       past that lurid, climb.  crawl
                                                       to the white willows
                                                       moored and weeping by some water and
                                                       ablution      and ablution      and ablution.      then

                                                       listen:   there is a sky
                                                       and it is filled with
                                                       clean noise.  clean clicking clean clicking
                                                       at the end and at the start.
              
                                                      of the seventeenth year.

dream it

we were in austria
on the crest of something so high
and we looked out over mountain tops.
we saw:  our skirts were cascades

they were alps, and olympics.
there was a ma rainey sky
and those virgins' veils below.
snow and edelweiss and bitter cherry

and old streets i know.
brick, and black.  dream it.


time and maps blend, overlap.
we see the same things.
we feel the same way.

the act of removal

that letter post has been deleted by me. 



but on my mind is still the same:  what are the artifacts of love?  what do we abandon, when we fall in love, and what do we retain, when it all falls apart?  what is left.  when.  what evidence is there of any of it. 

and:  in that indescribable, in either fall, what do we gain. 

this was not an autobiography, or at least not one autobiography.  this was the expression of that humanhuman  twist--ever around the finest of dynamic rods running between the additive and subtractive; between the acts of robbing and giving.  between the acts of holding on, and simple unfastening.

and this post has been deleted.  by me.   it's still a story, if you can read it.

the rule of 15s

tiny teeth, pink tongue
tasting dirty snow. 
trying out dirty snow
and the savoring of inside out rain.

the soft and cooling spikes,
the torrential seared mist:
feed on it. try it out.

tiny teeth, pink tongue
grind and swallow
from the far edge of belief
the jumbled jumble of matter
embedded. 

try it out.  fifteen times,
try it out. 

an open letter to readers in the distant, distant future

this post has been deleted by me. 



but on my mind is still the same:  what are the artifacts of love?  what do we abandon, when we fall in love, and what do we retain, when it all falls apart?  what is left.  when.  what evidence is there of any of it. 

and:  in that indescribable, in either fall, what do we gain. 

this was not an autobiography, or at least not one autobiography.  this was the expression of that humanhuman  twist--ever around the finest of dynamic rods running between the additive and subtractive; between the acts of robbing and giving.  between the acts of holding on, and simple unfastening.

and this post has been deleted.  by me.   it's still a story, if you can read it.

and then came abberation

stale bread scowls. 
the taste of brackish water.  push push
repeat.  breathe in breathe out.  brack gasp
repeat.
salt drops somersaults.
freckles magnified.  drink.

breathe in breathe out.  push brack. blink.
stale bread scowls. 
cut the crust.  feel brackish water. 
push push
repeat.
sip dry liquid.  sip wet air.  sip summer without grass.

jaw hurtling body making
not stopping tears. 
damp gaze turn away.  turn away
repeat.  cut the crust off.  the stale.
jumpeye trace a separate tide.
map a separate
dilution

she gave golden lilies

there were
two years of forgetting.
between forgetting and forgetting again.

think:  once, were they tickled?   kiss kiss bitten?

mama soaks and strokes
those baby feet.  coo baby. coo.
and tender touch. sigh, tender sigh.

mama lines up a row
of ten soldiers. 

four will fall.  the smallest.
they will fall.  this day

snap.  and cry.

who cries.  slim determined hands
twist. wrench.  break.
beyond the wicker frame
break.

tiny arches. tiny toes.

think: these are pliable bones.  

folded. 

think:  fold back to the dice and under and wrap. 

tightly.

ten feet of warm water or animal blood soaked
bandages.  to stunt growth.  decompose recompose.
blot the stink.

focus: tight. 

focus think:  old agonies are just

our stories.

a decade of unwrap.  wrap again.  wrap again.

do the toenails curl, and cut?  hope those toes fall off.

are you septic.  

focus. 

think: focus:

there are 48 documented sexual pleasures

these doll feet will experience.  or satisfy.

these will be rare.  erotic hooves.  ecstasy.   

focus:  in embroidered silk slippers, golden lilies.

delicate things:  power, beauty.

focus:  four inches of broken made from nerve and

sweat.  and determined sacrifice.

totter.  perch. 

think:  she will dance

upon a lotus shaped platform.

turns out: the other woman is not other and the wife is not an idiot

i met her handsome man
and then i shook his large warm hand
and when she left we had to smile
and then we chatted for a while.
and then i drove onto her, squatted on her land.

and then she finished up her drink
and put her glass into the sink
and she searched the tiny house
for her husband, her own louse:
he'd fuck any person anyone who'd blink.

and much later in the hall
our swollen lips told it all.
and then she said with shaking head
that which every woman dreads:
"there's not a live thing in this world that he won't ball."

-------------------

i'm kind of enjoying the limerick thing right now since one can be quite direct in that format, and also this adultery theme is stuck in my head in combination with a craving: for the examination of/the notion of power placement in relationships.  so there you go. 

please don't mistake my observations for a sense of rage on my part, because that is not my reaction when i think of adultery or sexuality or power.  please don't mistake the "I" in this narrative for me:  this is not autobiography:  this is just another way of asking questions.