"You should be kissed. And often. And by someone who knows how."

you could say what she had experienced
was a bout of magic;
a strange ephemeral burst of wicked
confidence that could seemingly give one the ability
to blow dozens of shiny, prismatic bubbles without a wand,
to make billows of smoke dance when the incense
burns too quickly,

but there wasn't anything magical about it.
it was the stroke of a guru,
a transient cluster of divinity's guise:

a lie,
cloaked.

He was a Sailor

Look onward, psychonauts!
Scrape the paint off the gilded cage,
as you murmur your melodramas through
the straws in your mouths
and then softly ask,
"Where is my ego today?"

"Dead!
Dead!
Dead!
Dead!"

Inked

maybe tattooing
old, wrinkled skin
feels like writing
on wet paper-
don't want to
rip you, you:
so fortunate
to have survived
the rain,
the time.

but watch as a grandmother
sits in a parlor

age seventy-two,
abiding in agreement
with her twenty-something
granddaughter.
"nothing you'll want to hide
when you're my age."

see her flinch
from the needle as it
traces lines on her
leathery, brown flesh.
"i passed four children -
there isn't a pain i can't bear,"
she keeps repeating,
not intending to remind
anyone but herself

bandaged, they walk out,
and under each bulk of
thick, white gauze
lie tiny etchings of
Sahara totems:
an itchy hieroglyph

Ducts of Whiskey

you cry tears of Dewar's,
and lick your lips when you speak of the past,

how do you do it?
gesticulate with all four limbs
like that.

you speak of things
you've seen that
i cannot even dream,

infancy is strange,
when it lasts for
twenty years.

maybe these memories
were meant to be
discarded,
into the Great Lake of
regret.

right now,
a poem will sound good
to me only if it was written
in anything but
first person perspective

but today, i am
fine with being
mediocre.

Variation on a Theme/Deviation

I've been ostracized
by younger men than you,
but none who carried
the heavy sandbags of hostility
so far
without shattering the glass
of their own gait.

No.

la luna sabe que
la practica es necesaria.

A Nutty Ode

Your shell was shed
so I could find you,

I'm an addict on a binge
for your love, as I scrape the jar
of your body with a spoon,
scouring
your beautiful remains

I slide you between fluffed
yeast,
welcoming your comfort
when my lover ignores
my needs.

As your aroma plays the banjo
with my senses,
your rich contents ride
the contour of my tongue,
begging for a fuller,
less irregular commitment.

Knees buckling at the sight
of Jiff, I recall that fateful day
in aisle eight,
where a five year old
fell in love.

But I don't kiss on the Sabbath

"Synchronicity," she said
as she poised the single,
lit candle between her pursed
lips,
passed it on to yours,
whispered-
"Look!
No hands."

The Jackal of Carnality

As you tiptoe
through the corridor of her senses,
you listen closely
for the revolt of her Id,

expecting
riotous sensations
to shove themselves
through each of your pores-

any moment now.

Praying to the god you don't believe in,
that just this once,
the jackal of carnality
will roll over on its back,
to expose
its soft underbelly

Catapulting Nostalgia

Machine-washable love,
continually laced with sensory spices,
brewing into nostalgic catapults of
when you stood on Time's shoulders,
and made deals about the infinity of your
protection.
About how far it could go,
and how long it could carry us,
until we eventually fall,
and claw away at the walls
of our own will.