Just the Tip
Progeny
Wrapped in a pied cloak
of metaphors, I’m comfortable,
and quiet is kept—for now.
Maybe later,
seed-thoughts will blossom
into audible fruit,
persimmon, pomegranate,
mango, and melon.
Later maybe,
seeds will fall
and produce reality
after their own kind
**
Forest Furniture
For a moment
I imagined I was in the kidneys
of a sprawling organism; moss-haired
stones with rustic round faces
lay in a congregation, nestled
in the pith of the woods.
These mammoth sentinels stood watch
atop hills while others laid in wait,
monkeys on the backs of earthen mounds.
Interest arrested the hourglass,
and my curiosity staged a coup.
With the crowbar of question
I pried:
Do you cry or even care
when the forest things crawl
up close and die beside you?
The lithic host turned a stone-deaf ear.
Stoically they held their peace
as if they stood on their tongues.
Only the litter of autumn’s trashy
woodland floor, stirred by a capricious
breeze rose it’s head to rustle at me.
Then I understood, not every question
has to be invoked.
So I bit my tongue
until I tasted sweet metallic flavor,
smiled, and took a seat—
on the forest furniture.
**
I’m Listening
I could hear salt
popping from my pores
as the ocean sheen
dried on my beached body.
The sea sang its ditty
along the shore and I felt
each grain of sand slip
out of place, moved
by the aquatic chorus.
Swooshing, sea oats did
a to and fro, wind swept
by earthly rhythms.
**
Wishes
You wish your water
was as wet as mine,
your sunrise as surreal.
Don’t you wish
your spangle maker
sparkled like mine,
your fire as blue and still.
You wish your ice
was as cold as mine,
your sunset as superb.
I wish you had
a peace like mine,
your happiness
as unfettered.
**
What Id Is
—for Sigmund
A velvet hooded hammer with teeth
eyes and a tongue that smells
emotion and decimates carnal sensation.
The flesh, a many headed hydra
stalks the halls of human frailty.
From our cranial cages a coiled boa
strikes, then hisses, Hurt so good:
wraps around and whispers, one more time.
A devil in drag, the flesh covets
the ins, the outs, the musky in-between,
treasures things that pleasure
and wholly swallows the heart of life.
The flesh puts the Id in idiot.
**
Cosmeticus Predatorius
—for Bobbi and Channel
In an ocean of ambient
white florescent light,
swim cut-throat barracudas
with cat’s claws. They wear
glossy smiles and their eyes
dance and sparkle,
couched by lush
lashes beneath heavy
shadow; their business,
pushing the paint, plaster
and polish necessary
to underscore
how glamorous
you
already
are.
**
Conflict Resolution
I know better now
so why can’t I do
better now? The irony
thrashes my conscience
like a buffalo in a crystal closet.
I wallow on a bed of shattered glass
tormented in hellish slumber,
twisted in sweaty sheets
of self-sabotage.
Why can’t I wake up?
From inside a gilded hourglass
the Sandman blasts my heart
with barbs of doubt
that sear and roast
like desert sunlight.
My nightmares are his spawn,
fork-tongued fiends
created to constrict.
Soon these hellions will
slither from my psyche,
unless I smash their eggs
with the steel-souled boots of truth.
**
Blind-Sided
When nothing’s inside
even the shell
has empty meaning.
Not long ago, I stood
at the pinnacle of my own
precious molehill of pomp.
A ludicrous popinjay
gorged on arrogance—
I adored my glow.
Starry-eyed with deceit’s
illusions, I trusted
alcohol promises,
and flashy as pyrite
in noonday sun,
I was all I never had.
A jester thieving the king’s scepter,
I couldn’t see the darkness
swallowing my horizon.
I was a fish in the sewer
of all about me.
My Self, detached,
leered as defeat rose
and squarely smashed
my saccharine scene.
**
Biography
Strangled by straps
of suspension,
inwardly tumbling downward
through dark corridors,
drowned in dissolution—
Look up!
Ahead there’s hope.
Slipping on soap,
choked up on dope smoke,
recall what was said—
There’s hope!
Pick providence now.
Never let it wither,
to rot on the vine.
**
Ember
Her hair is…not a bizarre,
wicked clown orange, not like
an umpa-lumpa’s face, but more
like a penny hot off the presses.
Not sanguine, crazy Chucky red
or bottled magenta number nine,
more like burnished metal,
turned resplendent by the blacksmith’s
fire. With curves soft as her syllables,
her eyes are carved jade, dazzling
in a diamond-dusted patina. When she
talks I hang on her lisp, the provocative
game her lips play with S sounds,
the unmistakable seduction
of her velveteen Yeth’s—
those dulcet sibilations. I watch,
enthralled by the sight
of the sounds her mouth makes.
**
Understood
Mutual excitement brings to light
hidden roadways trifling pleasures
left unmentioned,
while conversation uncovers
the other lonely in-betweens.
We release passion
from the prison our misery
fashioned by speaking
luscious words in faith
with grace. As hope sweetens
the sensation, communion
is quickened
by commitment. Finally
life and love find a night
to laugh and play.
**
For You
I would raise a ruckus
at the door of Death
himself, wring his neck
and bring his head to you,
his mouth chock-full of apple.
You’re a sphinx, a quean
that frustrates and delectates,
elevates and irritates.
You’re a ride
through milk and honey,
a scamper over blazing embers—
the Gala to my Dali.
**
In the Pumpkin Patch
I recline to relish the feeling
and celebrate the sensation.
Daytime’s onyx alter-ego,
dreamy eyed in a tiara of jewels
hovers above, fitting heaven’s
dome like a kippah.
Beneath this accommodation I swoon,
rapt by the power of your passion.
Your caress is like a soft,
warm breeze in late November.
I hold my breath to make it tingle
to the point of a tickle.
Then I become your fingers,
you become my heart,
because we share the same soul.
**
Bury the Bone
On a gently flowing breeze that rolled home
sweetly to me—a bouquet of flowers in her hair.
“Woman…” luscious and soft lips spoke
breathlessly, “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“Daisy?” was the question she answered with.
Capricious as a child, she blew me a smile.
Delighted, I kissed it and said, “Look what I
gave you, a kiss from my lips to place it in your lap.
My blood pump thumped, then—Tap to booming,
booming to boombap. “Open up, I’m here. It’s me
you heard rap, softly against your astral plane.
I’m cold, standing here naked in this ice pick rain.”
Against the window hidden beneath the shadow of me,
I saw her staring, face pressed to the cerebral glass.
“Why won’t you let me in?” Question marked my face.
“Is it because you’re afraid?”
She smiled with her taunt. “Who cares what you say.
What I have, is what you want.”
“Open wide. Let me in, I say.” Our dialog worked
like my desire’s own soliloquy. The fire in my belly
burned as I looked from the outside in. Her eyes beamed
from the inside out. I flashed a scowl, and then….
She opened her inside and purred, “Good dog.
Let’s bury that bone!”
**
Escape from the Beautiful But Too Small Box
In the puddle
of our elation she and I
spoon, rapt by the buoyancy
of being. Electric current comes
in mega-loads and hums
around us, through us.
We bask in heaven’s limelight,
envy of the angels.
Juiced on dopamine cocktail
we two with one eye,
delight in Psyche’s dance
through sunshine’s
moon-lit alter-ego.
With a wink and a nod,
we dismiss her.
Now divorced from her,
swaddled in the Spirit,
we breech the black hole
horizon of orgasm’s little death.
We repose there and await
the resurrection of arousal.
**
Hurricane Jillene
Once upon a time not at all
long ago, in a land so very
near, in the kingdom of the prince
of the power of the air…
sexploitation’s milky fluid
curdled in my eyes.
Profane pharmaceuticals,
soul sewage, gushed
like broken glass
through my mind.
My libido packed an urgent load—
obsession with the pudding
in the box. I saw women as vapors,
figments of flesh and blood,
more like trees with golden
knot-holes, oozing sticky sap.
Women were a source
of sensation, portals into the lowest
human donnybrook.
During that period of time
I met her.
She was a will o’ the wisp,
from out of nowhere she appeared,
a nether mist. Shifting into woefully
more than a sexual point of supply,
she became a pea soup
that would not be burned off.
With the switch of her hip
my ship was capsized
and the surge of her ocean,
the gale force of her enthrall,
swept me away.
**
Sugar Coated and Sticky Sweet
Soft
like filigree feathers
your voice
licks me and I get
all mighty inside
sugar coated and sticky sweet
there’s nowhere to run
no place to hide
smokey soft
it trips me
to places I’ve yet
to dream
when I awake
the dreams
are remembered
as reality seems
sugar coated and sticky sweet
what I’d wish
if wishes came
true is to spend my life
listening to you
sugar coated and sticky sweet.
**
Darker Than Coal
My shine is sucked from me into the holes
of your eyes. Your silence is a list of reasons,
a wet carpet that can’t fly—
but I can. Without deference
I spread the pinions of my opinion
and swat down opposition’s debate.
Swept up on my own hot air thermals, I do pirouettes
with sunbeams and waltz with milky moon stone
through lofty thoughts, in and out in and out of thin air.
You are the devil in a black velvet dress.
Inside you burns a soul darker than coal.
An osprey with thunderbird ambition,
an eagle with an Icarus wingspan,
Never look into the sun—
but how can a peacock bypass his own reflection?
The frost calls to me, the boxer of shadows, a deliberate
dancer who courts immortality knowing that
bricks, boards and heavy-bags don’t punch back.
Hypnotized by double mirror vision, I ride a comet chard
and punch through the astral loopty-loop to dictate
the indecipherable. Chisels of dynamite
strapped to my thighs, I sculpt a frieze infested
with contagious verbiage, set on infecting the field.
You are the devil in a black velvet dress.
Inside you burns a soul darker than coal.
From the mind-field I calibrate my personal time
space continuum. Rooted but reaching, a lexicon
climbs the boughs and branches of my psychic canopy.
Cockatoos and toucans swoop low through a rainforest
of lucid consciousness into the nether domain of the rime
scaled juggernaught. Out from the top of my brain cell ceiling
I’m resurrected with cursive dreams set in concrete,
spouting dialogue from antediluvian lore.
Your sickening silence swings like a scythe,
slicing through me. The way you smile is cyanide.
In your eyes I see phantasms, and truth
darker than coal.
**
To Tell the Truth
there’s a certain smile
that comes when I hear
you speak. My eyes twinkle
when I watch you,
I’m carried away
in your wake
when you pass me by.
I want to eat you—
hold you and lick you,
until you melt
like a Hershey’s kiss.
But how can tell this
to a righteous woman,
one who I love like sunshine,
a woman I lust for
like my next breath?
**
Three Hundred And Sixty Degrees
Carolina’s blue unfurls.
Serenity’s gate is opened wide.
Ruby dances iridescent.
Passion never sleeps.
Summer sun’s vehement glower
is spent and through autumn’s palette
hand in glove we traipse
into the skeletal forest.
Winter throws long shadows
haunted by ashen remains.
Satisfied
a hibernal sun hangs low
and smiles honeyed rays
that play hide and seek
through bare-naked trees.
Love’s oven burns.
We gambol in the flames
untouched by the bitter
bite of winter, until
the dogwoods bloom
and flash their glorious white.
Seasons come and go
but fixed and planted deep,
our union endures
ever-living, evergreen.
**
Acknowledgements
The poet wishes to thank the editors and publishers of the following magazines and blogs in which these poems first appeared, sometimes in earlier versions:
Blind Man’s Rainbow: “Hurricane Jillene”
Charlotte Viewpoint: “Cosmeticus Predatorius”
Iodine Poetry Journal: “Sugar Coated and Sticky Sweet”
Romance the Muse: “Bury the Bone” and “Darker Than Coal”
