AUTUMN FALLING

I.

She said, “You could talk the pants off of me,”
I said, “But you aren’t wearing any.”
She said, “See.”

II.

“I met you when I was 14.”
I tried not to remind her how old I was now.
“I knew then we’d always be close.”
Years later, this conversation took place
She is jailbait no more.
She has kids
And an asshole ex
The type of which I encounter more often than not
These days
As a man about town
Where women have exs, children, bills
A smidgeon of spare time
Men have issues
And nights are long
In my arms confessing all.
In a town where my conquests, my flirtations
My formers and coulda-beens
Exist as much through the ether
As in real time face-to-face
Hip-to-hip horizontal bop.
Long distance lovers and dreamers and thieves
Who steal into my dreams and disappear
In the light of day
Or don’t.

She takes pictures for a living
Something I encouraged
A talented eye to try.
Now I look at shots of her
Through the years
And yearn for stories
And more.

We share sexy confessions late at night
She quietly listens
As my voices lowers near whisper
I hear her breath quicken
And she’ll coo in that warm musty voice of hers
Which strikes sparks
From my paused pontificating
As she murmurs
“I’m soaked. Tell me more…”

III.

Three dark sirens
And me strapped to the mast
Willing
Ready
Leaning into their songs.

The first doesn’t sing as much as scream
Panting at the slapping tide
Crashing against her hips
Stinging spots soft from neglect
Her eyes glazed in trance
Having waited for this storm
To rear up and spit its pent-up fury
In her anxious direction.

The second doesn’t sing
As much as dance the silent sound
Around
Serpentine ballet of illusion
Mystery
And pulls songs from around her
Where reflected
Become her own.
She is echo maker.
Creating bounceback
Riptide
Magnetic lunar tug
and light.

The sound that reaches
Here last
Shines as light vibrates
With sound
As creation is energized light
Fliting so quickly
Our eyes see nothing
But radiant
Blinding beauty
Youth of sound and movement
Danced and reflected
Spun like silk thru the tumultuous air
Shaking all still
In attentive embrace of the song.
But too fresh
To grasp the full effect.

Beauty reflects beauty
Reflects beauty
Dashed
To the ancient
Craggy sea.

IV.

Still autumn falls
In spite of our best efforts
In spite of hurried dreams
Storms brew and hit landfall
Floods, quakes
Minor heartbreaks
Blow up your inflatables
Man those paddles
We’re heading to the sea
On a river of you and me.

V.

There are healers
Squealers
Blatant revealers
Circling round my grizzled mop
Wallflowers
Awful towers
Of mismatched powers
Struggling over linguistics
Logistics
And wasted hours.

Tantalizing
Rope tricks
Some Willing Rogers lusty
Ribald
Knotty tales
Spinning captured
Words of rapturous
Love
Snakeskin boots
Apple corps.
Hanging
On this lion’s
Roar.

There are mysterians
Leaving c-c-cryptic massages
Red flesh handprint language
Moist code
To be deciphered
Mulled over
Questioned.

Just come clean.
Where were you on the night of…
Torturous inquisitions
Surveyed
Sexy
What ifs and what ares
Who dids and who didn’ts
Hands behind your back
Gimme some truth, baby
Confess
Melt down
Blab
What you need
Right now
All I ask
Amidst the charade
Is the ghost of reality
A taste on your lips.

~ September 8-10, BBC for Minx, Tiny, Ms. C, Ringer, SubB

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

A COLLECTION OF EARLY SHORT POEMS ON LUST & LONGING

for Charlene...



MEMORY

Instead, I’ll feel your breath on my chest
And like a blindman
Memorize every line.

-- Ocean Beach, 1979



ACCOMPLICE

Love your neck, nipples, mouth on rising.
Roaming inclines suspended.

-- La Mesa, 1980



FLEETING GLIMPSE

Wounded wheels
Cut the night long.

Dilapidated taxi’s mirrored eyes –
I fantasize you there
My fingers warm
Exciting you.

$19 this side of poor
I touch myself
Dreaming of your skin in my mouth
And I pull my hair
The way that you do.

--San Diego, 1980



OPEN WINDOW

I dampen her
sleeping body, watching it dry
and the blood flows on beneath her skin.

-- Ocean Beach, late 70s

AFTERGLOW

Not the whirrrr of leaves and branches
But the kind of sound kids make with their lips
To overdramatize wind.
Sounds like people rolling over and over
On clean sheets.

-- San Diego 1979

ONCE IN A BLUE MOON SPECIALS AT EVERYDAY LOW PRICES

Glistening leaves fall from her
Snowflakes my beard. Some not-so-mirage
Trembles under her skin. The taste of her pleasure
Brings us together. I dress hurridly to stand in line
Behind 3 pre-law students trying to beat the bar.
(in the aisles I felt her stickiness, her breath, her quivering
on my face. Standing in front of the bread I wanted to rip open
a loaf of “Regular Wonder”, sponge my face
gulp it down, sending her deep into me...)
a woman glides in for yogurt
dressed to kill, long legs and fine form
slipped into a dress that turns the eyes of shoppers,
boxboys, needles, potatoes and hurricanes
trapped in Drano bottles. I smile at the hour-old sweat
drying on my legs and the lacy sounds of movements echoing on my tongue.
(a block away sits a warmth that beats this walking pulse to death,
a touch that withers this flowered breast, a smile that screams, “More”)

-- Ocean Beach, 1979

THE RACK

Her pink nipples an inquisition to bear
harsh light of her porcelain flesh blinding
Soft underbelly midriff terror
Rosebud Pavlovian lie detector
Nightmare vision of never again, there against my beating heart
Waking, sweat drenched fear of not seeing her eyes smile into mine…
Sheer torture.

~ for Charlene, s. rockfield, sometime 2000

SMELL THE COFFEE

night's cloudy veil falls away in slow motion
the silent, gentle rocking wakes me from a dash of fitful sleep
my starchy eyes find myself alone
with the sound of filtered air
the checkered past of yesterday
miles behind us
the glorious hopes of today
not yet jaded by the reality of tomorrow.

it's now when the world decides
to catch its breath.
(man lights cigarette on dim empty platform
awaiting the 5:40 to Penn Station;
boy bicycles in BIG circles
in the middle of the wide street
testing the fragile balance in this morning's bag of newspapers)
and I wake up dizzy with dream :
your nakedness astride me on this train
my hands on the ellipsis of your familiar
ass, pumping the electricity, the fear,
the kinetic, frenetic jazz energy
of New York City into your anxious body
and the world's eyes are slits
aching with the Jesus beams of dawn's mumbled joke.
I can almost see alarm clocks shaking off their night stands
as lights go on in the upstairs windows
up and down these racing blocks
of empty streets...
...smell the coffee.

II.

people dressed for the day
smelling of shampoo and make-up;
the zip/pout snore emanating from 2 rows behind
another reveler fearlessly trying to make up for last night's excesses.
my eyes snap shut and open and shut
my neck does the Zapruder dance
my instant dreaming of your eyes
perpetuates my last waking thought:
that I should pull out my warm self
tracing a smile upon your imaginary lips with my essence
as the sun splashes the air with morning
pulling itself kicking and scratching
through the blanket of New Jersey fog
a high beam in a white-out blizzard
somewhere between Trenton and home.

- written at dawn for Charlene, new jersey on the train
July 2, 1996

WILD AT HEART, INDEED

It’s extremely odd
That in the fastest passing of a month
That one can remember
When all that is really recalled
Is your name
And the ever changing
Glorious look of you across the room
In her arms
Or her arms
In my arms
In your chair
In your element
Surrounded by your things
Your glow
Tarnished light all soft and asking
You being loved
Soft
Hard
Fast
Slowly
All eyes on you, baby
All hands on deck
It being “let’s Please Mary Week”
It being 6 a.m. in the morning
Half-way through
A marathon of six hands playing tootsie
Three hearts playing tag
Across one furry white carpet
An old wobbly cat perched on her back
As she strokes warm, hard meat with one hand
Fingers, again, your wet shivering gash with the other
Open and beckoning her in
The three of us piled neatly
Enveloping the objects of our desires
The shadows of our smiles
The sources of our panting breath
Our slavishly pounding hearts.
Surrounded
Smothered by the love
You can’t utter
But can’t but help to see
Can’t help to feel
Coming at you from all sides
Arms entwined
Palms on breasts
Foreheads
Thighs
Cunts and cock
Asses and bellies and lips and tongues
Dimples all smiles we all are
Sly, ravenous, rapturous smiles akimbo
What next?
What next?
No one dare ask allowed for to break the spell
The flow
The certainty that all rises at its own pace
Its own level of comfort
And comfort
Ease of deliberation
Simplicity of emotive
Synchronous
Drive
The elemental coming together of three
Count ‘em
Three adventurous souls
Passionate care
For each others sweet spots
Soft spots
Smoldering hot spots
Just part of the glimmering dew,
Embrace of the goodness
The sharing
The skin-on-skin
Jealousy breakdown
Jettisoned
Along with the angst and the time
That passes clandestinely behind the curtains
Separating all of this heat
From the dawning of the outside world.

MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY

Mistress Mary quite contrary / How does my hard-on grow?
Quite, handily thank you / as your smile does show.

~

And she is indeed, quite contrary. But then again, aren’t we all?