I used to write shit

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I don't write poetry anymore.
---
How does he know her?
I see her flighted tremble-
her ardor draws the bow
of her smile tight across
pale marble stepping-stones,
guardians of all the passions
of her mouth and I wonder;
does he find her poised
or as I find her, wild
overrun with appetite
raw voracious craving
pure distilled longing
bright unshaded burning?
Does he find her feral
born gentle, gone dangerous
full of the power of her beauty
full of the opus of her vulva?
Does he strike her ardor
does he keep her temper
does he find her yielding
does he test her mettle?
I find her giving, giving
tender, guarded, mad,
forgiving: and trying
as I do to not be caught
staring, I wonder
how does he know her?

---

I waited for you. Now I leave you.

The gates of your teeth enthrall me
rising up on the waves of your laughter,
opening the coral castle of your marine
wonderland to the tender parts of you.

Your hair is white against mine, making
me bless my darkness on your alabaster.
We touch often but seldom, and between
us leave a permanent paint on our wrists.

Your eyes are grey as beaches, and your skin
shades of the bones of sand dollars. Parts of
you swell with the blood that lies close to
the surface, red as carnelian, red as birth.

Against you I am the northwest mud
that your ocean pulls black hairy sand
dollars from to murder for your skin.
I am brown and black and brown again.

I give them to you willingly.
---

She is not golden.
No, she is not snow.
She is red and grey
and coral promontory,
soft as kittens,
feeling as children.
For her everything
is real, the world
and more that is
not world, but veils
beyond consciousness,
beyond wanted thought.
She has always wanted
and need is her need.
She is red and grey
and for her I am need,
for her I will be children.
---

He is water, he is agate,
he is sorrow, he is bone.
He is the smell of rain
falling on dry earth, he
is the sound of the ocean
when the water is still.
Between his shoulder and
his thigh is everything
the tides respond to, and
the curve of his lower lip
is all the song sirens need
to lure sailors to disaster.
He is the sigh that rises
from the shaded canyon,
he is the sweet heavy light
of dusk in early summer.
It is his melancholy which
cools the air of caverns,
and when he turns in his
sleep the seabottom stirs.
In his eyes is the gravity
of Jupiter; when Io dreams,
it is his body she orbits.
Like Charon to Pluto, he is
impossible, and like the
dangerous wilderness he
is beautiful, beautiful.

---
In his presence
I shake and stutter
these trembling hands
this cardiac flutter
his turning down
my turning up
he eats from my bowl
I drink from his cup.
---

I don't want to eat,
I don't want a cigarette
or to drink myself drunk.
I want to scrutinize,
to touch with my eyes
his handsome face, the
shield which from behind
he refuses to pray.

He called me at three am
last night. I slept. The
pain in the message he left
woke me and kept me awake
from five to six. I digress.

I don't want to sleep. I
don't want to find comfort
in friends or tears.
I want to put my ear
to his tired chest and
hear the thud of life
unkilled, of continuing.
He steeps me in sorrow,
my eyes are dried for
his punishing nights.

If I can put my left
eye to his left eye,
I can be reassured
that he is still alive.

---

I will not eat. Why should I
obey my body's demands
when love is a far more
compelling command? No,
I am ascetic. I will starve.
I will grow lean, until
the bones are like carved
bas-relief against my skin.
I made the invitation
but you will not venture in
and my hospitality has
decayed, gone to waste. I
set a table like Martha
Stewart but do not taste
the feast I have spread.
It seems months since
my last breaking of bread,
but while my mouth is
arid, drier than gin and
parched from drought
of you, I will go without
and dwindle stone-thin.

---
Forester
I never saw you coming,
red curved cutters in hand
nothing much to say.
I think I liked it that way.
You silenced out my wondering
making me also quiet as the hush
under maple leaves in the calm.
You pruned me back to livewood
only the green remains.
Forester,
I am eager over you
growing reaching sapling suckering
pulling in bits of you
through pale new roots.
I was a wizened hawthorne,
a galled densewood oak.
I am now a new-planted ash,
red berry adorned,
overwintered,
sap rising.
---
Oh, have you lived life, liver of illusions?
Have you held the ball hard and warm in your hand?
Have you pressed your face to the glass
and seen the morning rising firm in your eyes?
Have you felt the surge in your palm
as you sat upon the roof and drank the wine
have you heard the verse in your head?
Have you lived, liver of life, have you crept
upon the heat of your mystery?
Have you shunned it and had the chill
run curious into your arms at night?
Have you fallen cold and wet, blue
to the welcoming ground?
You in your sunlight, in your falling air,
in your digging have you struck flesh,
have you hit metal against bone?
---
I used to be a liver
of life; now I'm only
a grasper, clutching at
the hair on your neck
and trying to get inside
your shuttered transom eyes.
It's hard now to not want
to put my body next to yours,
where somewhere between
your shirt and your skin
you hide a hint of the
smell which reminds me
that to live is to cry.
---

[Panpangoat]

that kicks ass

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Dude!

Thanks.