RENTAL

I saw another woman wearing your ass today.
Walking around town as if she owned the sweet thing
As if we wouldn’t know that it wasn’t just a rental;
Something she procured for a night on the town
Maybe wearing to an awards show
A graduation
A hot first date
Perhaps adding extra oomph
To an important job interview.
But I know better
Magnificent behinds like that don’t grow on knees.
I know by how my body reacts
How the precarious laptop shimmies
Like my hymn book rose and fell
back in Sunday School
where at age 12, I first caught a glimpse
of AP’s cottoned crotch
and wouldn’t dare stand for half an hour
no matter how badly I felt I had to piss.

~ for Randi, Feb 15, 2007

For those who have already read this on my poetry blog, apologies for the repetition. Just thought it fit nicely in this forum.

TRANSFORMER

Lou Reed looks down, youthful freckled complexion
Beneath blond curls
From between the twin queen beds
No sign of heroin chic
Just youth
Rock n roll unguarded between arrogance and grace
And while she freshened up after an evening out
Dining deliciously on erotically exotic drinks
Sexy fish and saucy sides
I pulled a floor to ceiling mirror
Away from the wall
Dragging it across the room
To snuggle it into the crack between the bed and the wall
Checking the angle for optimum exposure
Our sensual doppelgangers
To rise from the crisp white sheets
As if another couple
We seeing us just in reach
Our excitement daring them to reach out and grab a handful
Something illicitly taboo.

-- Hollywood, 3/31/08 – Roosevelt Hotel, Room 612 – for Randi

For those who have already read this on my poetry blog, apologies for the repetition. Just thought it fit nicely in this forum.

WITHOUT PROVISIONS

Obsessed with love
From opposite poles
You with your redemption of revenge
Running from tri-pronged words
Lovers in your wake,
Leaping into the arms of Brave New Girl,
My own lust for love’s Medusian forms
Disparate, but quite desperate
For any slight permutation
To the point of self-hypnosis
Confusion of what is
And what will never be.
Two delusionists procrastinating their way
Through long, lonely patches
Of sloth-like self-immolation and deception
Missing boats, points, shivering seminal connections
Hanging from the rafters around us
Hungry for a little heartbeat
And slipping past us on the wings
Of my indecision
And your books of rules.

So you seek
Without judging
Those beneath you
Those you can save
Those you can ache to understand
Hoping
In the race to walk away
That the very thing which attracts you
Will make them easier to leave.
The big boned, the old daddies,
The misfit, artistic, needy and dysfunctional
Who contribute
To your own self-worth
Add texture and drama and inspiration and obstacle
To your daily grind
Some sense of being needed
Some sense of being flawed enough
To allow you to shine.

I seek the illusive beauty
The perfect smile
Round, young ass of a teen
On a full-grown, genius guruette
Someone I can worship
Bend over.
Walking dictionary goddesses
Wanting nothing more than to live their lives to fill my head
My bed
My waking moments with discovery
Sinful fire-breathing naughtiness
Accepting my genuflection
With my dominant stare,
Physical largess matching
Serve for serve
My passionate heart
My servitude
And enveloping embrace
With my self-flagellating doubt.
Iron filaments gather around me
Pulled with me toward the magnetic sphere
Of those not ready
To trust their own ability to love,
Pulled t’ward those damaged by
Fathers, boyfriends
Con men and hypocrites
All unable to hold tightly to their responsibilities
Express their love for anything but their own myopic screeds
Or those who take the first train out of Daddyville
By choice or fate
Leaving their sad, little girls to wonder why
Sitting on steps each night
Waiting for his big hands to sweep them up;
Impaled on the bitterness of cheating lovers
Harsh and ignorant men
Their own spiritless souls seeking
More than is willing to be given
Brothers gone on with life
Boyfriends greedy with lust
Girlfriends neck deep in temptation
Misunderstanding
Insecurity and
All of those mismatched,
Mistakes
Discarded moments
Miscalculated
Maligned
Possibilities
Tossed into the flames
Fear
Laziness
The drive for the perfect
Beast
Love’s precarious reputation
Holding the match.

And there we sit
Needing and wanting
What we cannot accept
What we will not fully give--
Everything.
There are those of us
Who cannot handle the torturous
Self-exposure
Seeking the restitution of revenge
Conscious and unconscious gaming
Positioning
Manipulations
The outward blaming
Replacing the outpouring of love’s unbridled
Flow
And all of us ego-driven
To the brink of self-delusion.

So the thoughtful of us
Hunker down in our solitude
Rolling an emotional fatty
A phalanx of equations, probabilities, deceptions and epiphanies
Around in our heads
Before we touch a match to it
Inhaling its smokescreen with hope
A candy drop you cannot resist biting into too soon.
We fail to be godlike
Use timing as our alibi
Being misunderstood as our cloak
Our cover.
We stand alone
Surrounded by God’s love
The universal bliss of our very existence as proof
Ignored in the cannonball leap
Looking for that big splash
Courting the deep end.
Just not damn sure.
Just wanting more.
Just needing
Our arms
Around the elusive
One
Forever
Loved.

~ for Miss Mary, 1/4/09 Big Bear City