Love under the bright lights
Category: Writing and Poetry

I took a film star for my bride,
not for love but for pride.
Our desire a tango
jaded, petrified.

But I had a film star for a bride.


I fell in love with the fame,
the benefits of her name.
Living so very large,
no sense of shame.

And I fell in love with her fame.

The illusion destroyed me in the end,
false rewards, falser friends.
Surfaced too quickly
and got the bends.

So illusion destroyed me in the end.

20:59 - 22 Comments - 46 Kudos - Add Comment

On the terrace as the sun sets (assembled fragments)
Category: Writing and Poetry

Bad haircuts blossom 
            in the summer sun,
Abyssinian slave girl shoes abound
and the restaurants and bars are filled with
a touch, a tap,
            a gesture of affection,
a way of saying hey I like you
            do you want to talk for a while?

The blue label on my beer
tells me it's organic
                or as organic as anything
that comes from a bottle or a jar
can be.

Pudgy middle-aged men cycle past,
with pudgy middle-aged spreads
and breasts just like their mums,
on their extreme terrain bicycles
                       wearing the lycra shorts
             they hoped would contain more
        than their love of flakey pastry
                       (They talk loudly
                        amongst themselves
                        about sex with their wives,
                        masculine charm
                        at its best).
They get so out breath and just sweat
as they peddle faster and faster
pursuing each other, trying to get ahead
                                         relentless –
some kind of virility display.
Fast and faster, so very determined
they jostle for the point position
chasing the youth and beauty
                                    or beauties
that they will never catch.

And I,
I wish I could swim
like the dolphins
     and David Bowie
can swim.

20:59 - 18 Comments - 39 Kudos - Add Comment

Between the lines, the sheets, etc.
Category: Writing and Poetry

The places where the suntan stops,
and assorted other
erotic thoughts.

Surrendered to passion's matching set:
the o of adore,
the r of regret.

The summer evening that is spent
in conversations
of no consequence.

Reckless the bargain to be struck:
the i in inevitable,
the f hidden in luck.

The missing rhymes, the metered verse
and other sins
less obvious:

the n in romance,
the o as well,
and
the t that finishes kismet.

20:59 - 19 Comments - 42 Kudos - Add Comment

Why not use poetry?
Category: Writing and Poetry

The poem was of a birth so rare;
each word a translation of thought
into the sweet speech of seraphim,
directed at the ear and bosom of
a mistress now unresponsive.

Imagery invented, incantations invoked,
situations suggested, liaisons recalled;
as if an ancient alchemist, I attempted
to convert my humdrum locution
into words of expectation, pathways to excitation.

I labored to make the act of reading,
the pleasure of interpretation, one of physical spasm
whose successive throes are guided to crest by
the skilled frottage of a knowing tongue
or the gentle osculation of a telling phrase.

This echoing song said Lady did adore,
the dull substance of my thought she treasured,
showered with rich praise; while to me
was shown an amativeness renascent and willing.

So I failed; execution thwarted my intentions,
for I had only wanted to tell her to fuck off.

But there is nothing poetic in that.

20:59 - 15 Comments - 28 Kudos - Add Comment

The illusion of allusion
Category: Writing and Poetry

A voice like a fine white wine,
dry, with a tart undertone,
just enough sweetness
to tease and enchant the palate.

My ear felt
her breath,
a marked heat,
as she whispered,

"I want to be your blow-job queen"
with precise, crisp intonation.

An Alexandrian tilt to my neck,
I softly sibilated a reply -
"That's a line from a Liz Phair song."

"It is now,"
she countered
in an even, neutral voice.
No longer leaning in,
but instead,
shifting in the direction of

away.

That's the trouble with men -
we never listen
to what's really being said.

________________
For those so inclined a voice recording of this poem has been croaked into the snapvine thingey at the top of this page.

20:59 - 33 Comments - 72 Kudos - Add Comment

Disclaimer
Category: Writing and Poetry

I can't write poetry
because I have no interest
in sapphires, stars or desert flora.

I can't write poetry
because my thoughts refuse
to conform to stress and meter.
It's not in me to use warm, fuzzy words
to express warm, fuzzy things
so that warm, fuzzy people
will feel better about their warm, fuzzy lives.

I can't write poetry
because I do not possess an angel's gaze.
I cannot observe the world
in cold silence, unobtrusive, removed,
noting all, yet never being involved.

I can't write poetry
because I am tired of having my words
thrown back in my face
by some would be gunslinger.
Always my words, not their words
which are the dull daggers of duller minds
wielded without wit or wisdom.

I can't write poetry
because I haven't lived enough.
And I am not so scared of life
that I need to step back,
try to figure it out
and then tell everyone my conclusions.

I can't write poetry
because I know to do so
would be only to write
my words in the sand
where they will be eventually erased
by the inevitable movement of the tide.

I can't write poetry
because words offer no survival, no immortality,
no escape from death's chilled caress.
Parasitical and delusional,
words are not life
and their time is not ours.

20:59 - 36 Comments - 71 Kudos - Add Comment

Triumph of the will
Category: Writing and Poetry

With her hair
wet-combed straight back,
she only needs a moustache
to invade Poland in September.

That's unfair of me,
I know,

but I'm the sorry spastic
who tried to burn
her precious Reichstag
to the ground.

This will to power,
such an aphrodisiac.

20:59 - 18 Comments - 38 Kudos - Add Comment

A poem I wrote when I was 16
Category: Writing and Poetry

[I wrote the following poem when I was around 16 or so. It is, to the best of my knowledge, the only example of my writing (I imagine the correct term is Juvenilia but there is something of the aura of "taking on airs" about that phrase when one applies it to one's own work - much like using the word "one" when referring to oneself: Pretentious, moi?) that survives from that period of time. Anything else that I wrote during my adolescence and thereabouts was consigned, quite wisely I might add, to the fire five years ago. For reasons too boring to recount this one survived unscathed and unsinged.
I find this to be a slightly distressing reminder of how terribly earnest and embarrassingly naive I was as teenager. I don't think that I could stomach being in the company of the author of this "poem" for more the five minutes. If memory serves me correctly, this is a disposition which was shared by many people at the time. Anyroad, here 'tis - a little ditty that was called, for reasons that will become shockingly apparent, "Peacetime Soldier".]

Peacetime Soldier


Peacetime soldier
What can you do?
Have you heard the talk
saying that they don't need you?
Just a push of a button
and it's all over.
For them,
for me
and for you.

Peacetime Soldier
Do you feel scared?
Does it frighten you
that people don't care
Do you feel sometimes
that life isn't fair?
For them,
for me
and for you.

Peacetime Soldier
Where do you stand?
Does your uniform
make you feel like a man?

20:59 - 30 Comments - 54 Kudos - Add Comment

Betrayal takes three
Category: Writing and Poetry

             The boredom of empty promise,
                   the sensation of power
                        at the suggestion of sex.

                      She looked
                           directly
                              in my eyes
                                 when she said
                                
             "No.
                      I'm not seeing someone else."

             Love
             never the victor,
             always the victim.

                      Then she kissed me.

             Sex
             never the servant,
             always the tyrant.

                      (I almost believed her.)

              However,
                    I remembered
                         even Jesus was betrayed
                                 by a kiss.

              Moreover,

                    Judas wasn't in bed
                         with a naked man
                                 when he did that,

                         was he?

20:59 - 17 Comments - 38 Kudos - Add Comment

Let’s give it back
Category: Writing and Poetry

During the summer of 1988,
I went out with a girl
who thought Midnight Oil's "Beds are burning"
was about

hot sex

and repatriation
some kind of tantric maneuver.

Subtle signal of a semaphore smile
opening the parentheses
of her face.
Faint softening in her eyes,
minute hint of a tilt in her neck
and the promise of Mecca,
of reconciliation
in the slight upturn of her mouth.

No joy to be had
in trying to persuade her
otherwise.
Though there was something
to be said
for letting her demonstrate
the general thrust
of her argument.

How do we sleep
when our beds are burning,
when our beds
could be burning -

my very thought
even now.

20:59 - 19 Comments - 44 Kudos - Add Comment

Cryptography
Category: Writing and Poetry

She never liked my typing.

She didn't mind the actual words per se.
As long as they weren't too university,
if you know what I mean.
Too lexiphanic
(like the word lexiphanic itself, for instance).

But it was my typing
more than anything else that upset her the most.

She said I tended to hit
some keys too hard,
without any subtlety or grace.
Whereas other keys were,
in her honest opinion,
more my forte as she felt
there was a real wit,
a definite joie de vivre
in the manner in which I struck them,
subsequently impregnating the page
with the corresponding letters.

Boys and their Toys
Category: Writing and Poetry

An acquaintance told me
his current girlfriend had just got
breast implants.

The look in his eyes,
a contented dissipated leer,
like a child at Christmas
who has done particularly well
in their haul from under the tree.

He told me
she did it for him.

I just thought
to myself -

Wow. 

That's a well-rounded relationship
if I ever saw one.

20:59 - 15 Comments - 32 Kudos - Add Comment

Beneath the cobblestones….
Category: Writing and Poetry

Every revolution fails 

                                          (Listen -).


For in front of intentions,
ideologies,
ideals,
there is always
I -
the inevitable ironbound coast
on which everything
and everyone
flounders

                                           (the bleating of sheep - Me! Me! Me!).


Taken to the top of the mountain,
shown the splendors of the valley,
the promises, the rewards
eagerly snatched up
without waiting,
without reflection,
without care of the cost

                                             (the fleecing of sheep - Me! Me! Me!).


We want the world
and we want it
now 

       
                                               (the flailing of sheep - Me! Me! Me!).


The golden trap of being born,
condemned to life,
punished with existence
without ever knowing why

                                              (the flaying of sheep - Me! Me! Me!).


Take god
at his word,
at her word,
at its word
(just words)

                                             (the bleeding of sheep - Me! Me! Me!).


Time cruel,
life unfair,
meaning absent.

                                        Someone,
                                           please,
                                    pull the trigger.

Let's see
what happens 

                                               (the culling of sheep - Me! Me! Me!).


Sold myself for chump change
but the bastard never came -
no one saw that coming
                 (a double entendre of ironic proportions).

                              Fucking idiot,

                                                                                         Me.

20:59 - 15 Comments - 34 Kudos - Add Comment

This was a song (now - it isn’t)
Category: Writing and Poetry

                      Alright. 

                Fine,

       her kisses are like wine,
                    a nectar ideal
                        more like strawberries
                            than vintage vino de Vichy.
                         And like the stars -
                     I want to devour them
              forever
      yet never feel full 
  (a drunken dream of being drowned).

                 Saw her in her play,
                       she was very convincing,
                            it took all my nerve
                                   just to applaud and whistle.
                            Sublime and so there,
               a pattern of purple printed flowers,
                           a true queen of the hearts
                                                      (I nearly lost my head).

                    Snuck a look in her skull
                                              and tried to see
                                        my future,
                                              the privilege of dreams,
                                   abandoned carousels,
                                              skyscraper syringes,
                             toxins in the thought stream 
                                    (another Friday night without makeup).

                    Still I'll cry,
                           even though 
                                  the moment is expected,
                                       echoes of the ejaculations of others
                                                 in the abattoir of her desire
                   (this didn't change a thing).

20:59 - 10 Comments - 22 Kudos - Add Comment

Through the gates
Category: Writing and Poetry

(At the inception of their perception
children believe that monsters walk about
in the shadows. Scuttling and chuckling
as they greedily eye
their next meal.)

On a street like any other,
now possessed, accessed
only through memory,
a fairly average childhood was endured.
Knee-deep in dreary, affable pleasantness
that seldom sincerely shapes
the basis of biography these days.
It was not a troubled passage;
neither crushing tragedy
nor hardship marked my days –
just bicycles, Action-man and comic books.

The one exception to this grim gruel
was my happenstance residence
adjacent to old ogre of our environs,
Mr. Toewshund.
With an authority awarded by chronology
the local synod of older brothers
alluded to his delusions and
dark perversions in thought and deed.
Following their lead, the rest of us could
readily repeat and precisely parrot
these words and suggestions
while not strictly understanding their meaning
beyond their ascription of
something
not quite right.

One day late in May
my parents informed me
that Mr. Toewshund and wife
would be joining us for dinner.
As I mulled over the prospect
of dining with the devil (and his missus)
I wondered if my parents
actually loved me or if
they were, in point of fact,
minions of the succubus next-door.

Taking no precaution
I placed a clove of garlic in my pocket
and polished my best confirmation crucifix.
I did not advise my younger brother
of doing the same. After all,
he had egregiously torn the cover of my
favorite Spider-man comic book.
And if the monster was busy
satiating and slaking his appetites
with my unsuspecting, unready brother
this would afford me ample opportunity
to beat a prudent withdrawal.

The dinner began and in spite
of my apprehension and tension
I was relieved to note that any
offering and sacrifice to darkness
would most likely take place
sometime after dessert.
As the appointed moment
quickly drew near
my father sadly, yet casually mentioned
an article he read about
the various anniversaries of
various days of wartime liberation.

The monster grew pale, ashen
as he began to quietly recount,
bit by bit,
his years of wartime service
and how he was one of
the first allied troops
through the gates at
Bergen-Belsen.

This was the first time
I had seen an adult
truly break down and cry.
It has remained with me always
and has become the gauge
by which I measure
misery, torment and despair.
A marker never since met
as nothing can really express
the indescribable dread and sorrow
of where the night trains came to rest.

(All too quickly,
children learn that true monsters dwell
in the world and ways of grown-ups, who
with or without polished uniforms or beliefs,
dare to presume and pretend
that they know what they are doing.

Such knowledge, so-called,
a poisoned banquet at which all dine,
brings only the benefit of glimpsing
the magnitude of a resplendent wickedness -
banal in bearing and countenance -
against which the certainty of the light
is illusory and temporary
as it guarantees us nothing.)

20:59 - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment