Dear I barely know you

Dear you who will be leaving

Dear you who I have little time to know, to

Find out

Dear brief blast of reverberating shock firework display

Dear morning sticky pale pink silk kept company by suffocating arms

Dear morning sticky skin in bed kept warm by memory

Dear body I traversed in the time it takes to grow drunk

Dear body I have licked kissed bit smelled nudged

Dear taste sight Dear your eyes looking into my eyes Dear

Your beautiful eyes looking into mine Dear that crushing sweetness

Dear thin thighs Dear tail bone I touch with my thumb Dear

Come over and release to me while your collarbone my tongue

Reveals Dear I’m glad you spent the night

Dear kissing my hands Dear waiting until the last moment

To let my hand go Dear leaving soon Dear all we have is now

And a few days more Dear I need as much of you as I can get

Dear fill me up and push me ‘round and leave me flushed and

Viscous wet Dear dry rash on my chin which I don’t mind and

Won’t forget Dear spontaneous new friend it was perhaps not

The easy road I chose Dear but I chose to ride and I chose to

Straddle every bone and under white blankets Dear we hide

and Dear I’ll miss your hair and Dear you will miss mine

Dear who knows where you will go Dear who knows where I

Dear sternum which I inhale and lick, a pillar of salt

Dear and it’s brief fire you and Dear that is the truth And

Dear if I could be at peace with that I’d be the lady with

The Proof Be calm my heart be calm my bones my nerves

soothed by you Dear wand’ring one I don't and won't condemn you

Dear thank you for opening my box and striking up my match

And then for pulling out four more for once just makes one long

To catch to

Strike each one Dear don’t stop until my Dear we must

Friendship is warm and youth is warm and so in fact is lust

And so in fact is change and Dear I think you have a grasp

On my hair my hips on my hot hands and on that very fact.

The Moment

So I am a hydrangea now

Hanging heavy with my own petals

My voice is the eye-widening rush

Of rain beneath the streets

Streaming under the drains

Petals falling on the concrete gradually

Relinquish their lilacs for yellows and browns

To be stepped on in the downpour.

So I am watching that squirrel now

Crossing the line

As it does from time to time

I have taken it to bear good tidings

Because its presence has never

Brought me sorrow.

And, do I wonder if I know myself?

I chiefly wonder if I

Know myself

I find in truth that I can

Only know

In the gasping climax of

The Moment

A Garden View For Ernestine

At rest on a bench I note

Pearl clouds skimming the sky’s placid surface at a

Mesmerizing pace; it is the high winds.

Japanese maples, calla lilies, ferns suffuse

This place. Redwoods relinquish their damp

Umber bark when they choose.

Many cypresses today beseeched the rain

And in turn received an early morning stream

Phosphorescent like the fluid gushing from

Between the legs of one of Klimt’s ladies.

All cradle their own arms and swath themselves in shawls.

Why is no one paying mind to the gardenias?

There they sway in repose,

Grandmother’s front porch overflowed with their

Delicate bounty, which so quickly browns

We did not mind, for we are brown people

And browner ‘neath the sun.

Today the wind rises and rushes in dialogue

With anonymous and intermittent birdsong.

All green things ruffle like presumptuous peacocks,

While gardenias patiently listen to secrets and would

Never divulge, like rosary beads.

I think of you.

After Monterey

So much so that I suddenly ache

I find that I cannot shake the cypress trees from my mind.

Their roots plumb my chest and

Their fronds brush my face

And I long in a daze, a long lethargic daze with a stomach uneasy.

My eyes are drowned and stuck with salt,

My hands are violet from the cold of the waves and

I long in a daze, a long lethargic daze.

I feel ill and frenetically strange, unmoving,

Ever rearranging the position of my frame

To quell the nauseous greedy ache.

Drank herbs in a tea with milk;

Immediately scorned myself.

A gull does not make bad decisions with full consciousness.

A gull simply thinks the plastic to be the fish.

My stomach writhes as if I stand at the edge of a precipice,

The bridge which ends so far, such old and crumbling cliffs;

And a beach so rocky and ragged it calls for pathology,

Tides rough and white and slamming, quite unneighborly.

I crave air clean and cool and fresh and grey.

I wish to break open my sternum like a mussel to absorb

The dwindling day.

Scoop out with a little spoon my innards and then say,

“Enjoy them slowly for they are the entire entree.”

An April Pairing of Two Poems

I. Cypress Tree

So it started with a record as evenings often do and a couple whiskeys

which were never gotten around to

and not a soul complained being too

preoccupied with the night and the eyes and the Virgin

Mary candle light.

And they found themselves disarmed the way a person tends to get

when they bump into a stranger and spend

days wishing they’d met and said hello,

and they resent and bully themselves embittered

only this time they said hello and so were at deep dark spring night peace.

They were bathing at Aigniers in a white bed

tossing and thrashing like a hammerhead

fins skimming the sand mutually predator

bilaterally prey

and mutually supplicants in the others’ inextinguishable hands.

How grand

to be young and free in an acquiescent way

like a cypress tree

bending with the will of the wind and letting it arch them as far as it pleases.

II. In Monterey

In Monterey a host of splashes

make up my day

In Monterey I have seen innumerable colors

of flow and ebb, sloshing and sucking

toward themselves

In Monterey I wear a blue dress, expose

My legs to each passerby; I don’t give a damn

I ache and yearn as cypress trees root and climb

forth deep in my sternum

I watch an otter roll and dive and am jealous,

awed and kelp-drunk

In Monterey I revel in the warmth of my mother and father

I revel in the blessing of my grandmother’s coral-pink rosary

I have worries and fears deepening my irises by fathoms

I have no salvation but time

I do what I can to evanesce into the various splashes

of Monterey

just some thoughts (brenda lee & otis redding)

This whisky tastes like an old acquaintance; this Otis Redding song sounds just like an old friend. And this dim old apartment feels like home, and all my needs feel like they don’t exist. I’m waiting for you. Just waiting for you.

This white pillowcase begs for my head. This skin begs for a skin. And I’m waiting for you. Just waiting for you.

This rock and roll is really old and you can tell its rock and roll if it is really old. That’s what I always said. I never cared what anyone thought in retaliation.

So what’s it gonna be tall stranger? We just don’t have very much time. You won’t know what your missing if you miss this because this is something sublime.

I do the twist. I do the bare foot. And normally I grind my ground alone but tonight I wouldn’t be opposed to a little bit of you.

A little bit of you could go a long way. You’re a long sort of man. A little bit of you seems so unlikely to go the wrong way. How could I screw up something that sweet?

I wouldn’t. I’m only a girl. I’ve got a lust for what’s tender and a lust for what’s sentimental and a lust for what happens when skins touch in the night.

Just some thoughts.

the poet cant help it, she's just her sassy self.

I Need Strong Love

I need strong love

Strong, strong love for I may not have long.

I need strong love

Kiss my heels love. Feed me bees love,

A thousand photographs love

Lick my blood love,

Put your nose to my shoulder love

Put my chin to your neck love

Put my forehead to your forehead love

For I may not have long.

"please don't take me lightly, i mean every word. which ever way you'd like to place them." sve

some people eat alone sitting on curbs looking down in parking lots wondering where their fortunes went. some people eat lemon bars in bed on white sheets maybe naked. some people eat cheese and apples before they cut their throats. supposedly. some people eat mexican wedding cookies almost every day and when they don’t they feel a bit melancholy and grey. some people eat mustard on crackers. some people eat lavender blooms.

does one have to swallow to be considered to have eaten something? because if not, some people eat mouthfuls of lover’s hair, mouthfuls of yellow hair dry and choking and delicious. some people eat their lovers insides and swallow them too. some people eat their lover’s tongues and their words simultaneously. some people eat candle wax. some people eat cannabis leaves. some people eat grapes. some people eat three bananas a day to ward off potassium head aches. some people eat meat. some people don’t eat meat any more.

some people eat the scenery. some people eat their infatuations. some people eat the cake and some people eat the ice cream. some people eat the opium poppies. some people eat the various pharms. some people eat the wafer before sipping the wine.

some people lick hipbones. some people kiss freckles. some people gnaw chins. some people bite thighs. some people lap blood. some people suck on ice. some people savor shoulders. some people taste collarbones, desirous of nothing but more.

I am a muse, not a secretary.

Lust II.

I kissed someone and it felt

Long and new.

I remembered how

It's not something you forget.

The last time I kissed someone, I was kissing

Him goodbye. He reached his

Body through my passenger car window

And gave me a look (here take this last

'Impassioned' glance take it

Because you can no longer have my legs between your legs

My arms mouth bony hips and)

Kissed me one final time

Because my pout begged him, and then I never saw him again.

That was so many alone nights ago

Hundreds

I am a very lustful girl.

I seethe and ache for my muse.

So fantastically attuned to being his own creature.

(I can tell.)

I lust for the one who I once

Dreamt held the arch of my foot and

Made me feel our hearts were anchored and safe.

I lust for him and there is a jealous liquor to it which

If I am not careful, makes me drunk.

And when it makes me drunk enough I gore him with my eyes

Our pupils meet excruciatingly steadfast

As if I fancy myself to be Titania even though

Inside I flop and groan as if I’ve caught The Sweat.

Perhaps I’ve caught The Sweat.

I lust faintly but consistently, damn

Long and incredibly slender

His hips as wide as my waist

I would like to touch my pout to those bones,

Gnaw them a little.

A feminine handsomeness

Hands in the pockets of his long pants,

Or quite often holding a cigarette for he smokes.

His pretty face makes me awkward and stupid

Fantasizing about resting my forehead

Against the dip in his chest bone

The dip in his chest bone and simply inhaling,

For hours inhaling.

Bare white feet in the grass.

What I lust for is his shoulders.

Not just any time. In the sun.

Bright sun light

They are covered in freckles.

He is very thin and his bones are small

and his shoulders are covered in freckles

Exposed to the sun, lay-about

Doesn't give a fuck about

And my hands are not sensitive enough.

They would have to be kissed by my pout.

Just one.

Shoulder that is.

the joys of being a woman

Rejoicing in being a woman, and it feels so good.

The dark hair is courtesy of the beauty in these photographs,

Ernestine (Batastini) Hummel and her husband Francis (Frank).

They both had unforgettable smiles.

These were my Grandmother's rosaries and they hang above my bed.

She adored beauty, feminine delicateness, and butterflies.

Young Girl and Young Boy In Bed

I was reminded of my first love

And one of our songs which we

Would dance to curled beneath

The sheets of my bed, all young

Naked, drunk with newly found

And made love. It was not that

It was before things went wrong,

For things could never be fully

Right with such a lover, a thick

Wooden post of a lover, always

There, loyal, to hold, to know

That you have but somewhere

At some point

You can feel that

You need

More

Warmth

Than wood can provide

Still I can let a moment pass

Of a slow nostalgic glancing back

Remembering how

Leonard Cohen used to sing:

"On a bed where the moon has been sweating,

In a cry filled with footsteps and sand,

Ay, ay, ay, ay, take this waltz, take this waltz,

Take its broken waist in your hand."

And the desirous violin following,

And then once more 'round the bed-posts.

take this love

“What once broke my heart has set me free,”

She said,

Brushing aside the cliches like so many moths,

Smiling, eyes closed, only to herself.

She said, “I was a passing train in the night

That one black-haired scamp chose not to catch.

We used to meet at the depot, and it all ended so fast.

And for months I left flowers and blood on the tracks.

Now I lean at last, and the bench supports my back.”

“I was a passing train in the night,

Now others have found their lovers

And I have found myself alone.

I have found a neighborhood

Which I can call my own.

My neighbors love me; some resent me,

And few know from whence I’ve come.

Few know the sound that used to come

From hitting this torn drum.

Even I cannot remember now the timbre or the pitch.

I can remember the records

And that certain narcotic itch.

Always scratching my nose,

Painting my toes,

Sucking smokes as I sped to the train depot.

All young and alive like a car wreck in the night,

Fearing the law to the bone.

“Yes, and I found my way home.

I’ve cried so long and hard,

They have named a black storm Hurricane Allison.

A hero saved me

Charming and wise,

Neither grasping nor

Needing any disguise,

And his name was Brian and he pulled me up from the ground.

And her name was Hillary

And she watched me while I slept.

Her name was Hannah

And she blessed me

With her company.

And none tried me for they knew me to be worthy.”