Dream #1

I dreamt last night of babies.

Heavy, honey-smelling babies that were complete to their little white socks & weak necks.
There's something so distinctive about the weight of a baby
So much so, that one wonders why the British have yet to adopt the term 'babyweight' into their litany of imperial weights & measures.
(I think that it would subdivide the ton quite nicely - about 220 babyweights, give or take an oz. Although you wouldn't want the local grocer to adopt it - buying a half babyweight of fine sirloin is far too Swiftian for my liking)

I couldn't decide if these babies represented my dearest boycousins grown young again
Or if they represented my future babes
My frustrated desires made manifest, that is.

If you believe in freewill, then they belong to no one put themselves
But if you believe in destiny, then they might as well be mine
For I sometimes serve as destiny's stand in
Or wish I did.

I am no longer young enough to mistake my own desires for the mysterious mechanations of fate
Does this mean that I'm not old enough for babies?
Or far too young?

- April 19, 1998.

Bathsheba

Absence of conscience, interpretive nonsense
Tending to fending off proffered plateau.
Blinded to obvious, reaching for previous
I'm betting offsetting will work for this beau.

Remainder of pretense succeeds and makes me tense
In purring alluring words strung end-to-end.
The absence is needless, but my want is heedless
His talking and mocking drives me to this end.

- written on March 2, revised on April 19, 1998.

Unrequited

Things become crystal clear when I use that moment like a flashlight
& shine it over all of my excavated emotions
There's always a moment a second a picture a phrase a movement a punch a struggle a yank into love
That makes everything around it reflect back like a cavern at the bottom of a mineshaft
Light bounces off affection crystals and turns lust into a smiling diamond a leering demon a screaming damsel a swift surrender into unknown depths of longing
Unrequited
Left with a body imprint in my bed
A tiny scar in a public location
A memory of lips on the back of my palm
Lips that oppressed me on the opposite side from twisting lifelines across a foreordained skinmap
Lips that caressed me without meaning to caress
I feel the weight of all the promises we never had a chance to make
I feel the weight of all the afternoons we didn't spend in childish affirmation
And of songs we never sang off-key in twisting drunken harmony
But all the weight is quite off-set
By the echo of your laugh
Which is all that remains from the transformation I never made to the enviable role of palliative
I'm not yet a desirable butterfly, but a hopeful larva all the same
One day I'm sure that I'll hatch into something prettyfuckingamazing
And I am prepared to wait until then for you to come up to meet me in the air
For I am yet hypnotized by the pattern your body made the moment I fell in love with you
Again.

- March 9, 1998.

You'll never catch me in the Chelsea Hotel

"but you're not dead!"
"quoth the cohen: 'neither are you'." - g.m.m.

to be read aloud at night (in a pub or over the sleeping form of a lover if possible.)

You'll never catch me in the Chelsea Hotel
You may think that I need you, but I'll never tell
So go peddle it elsewhere
Your Muse isn't her(e)
I'm not giving head, either
not this jaded little whore
I've sold enough of my feathers to buy my next score
My arm's gone quite golden
my lips are dry
my head's burning
like the look in your eye when I told you 'no more.'
I'm not hosting your little poker parties
your ego can find another slot
thank you very much, but it's over
that smell is the love that's beginning to rot
Just toss it, goodbye
another train, another sigh
love you, Leonard, but you're just too sad for me now, sweetheart.
But all the same, a Very Nice Try...

- August 20, 1997.

First Reconcilliation

three souls alike in misery joined by spit mistrust lies lust enfolding longing and drinking deep of sorrowful remembrances their love was accepted like communion a hungry affirmation doled out by angry gods wishing to smite (and what you expect love to be it almost always is)

he holds beside his throne two jars fit for holding & withholding all the shattered phonecalls and 4ams and one sweet smooth madness like a symphony of touching & painful withdrawing (he fucked me & fucked me up without even taking off my clothes except for the ones in my mind).

- July 29th, 1997.

revolutionary

spinning
circles
planets
speeding
round
the
sun
king
lust
and
loneliness
travel
fast
but
always
arrive
fucked-up
and
interlocking
spirals
of
frustrated
desire
whirl
and
dance
a
bitter-sweet
planet
is
temporarily
eclipsed
wearing
borrowed
radiance
like
a
mating
call
cogs
and
wheels
of
the
deist
clock
ticking
my
hope
away
into
the
vastness
space
encloses
covers
shelters
but
rarely
heals
circles
are
the
perfect
shape
and
can't
hold
passion
worth
a
damn.

- July 9th, 1997.

Frosting

When you smile that way
and I am across the room
I wish I didn't have to remember you

Or that we once solved a puzzle of bone & blood perfectly
and all the curves matched.

Or the mornings we saw the sky lighten
through sleepy slitty silty eyes.

I wish I didn't have to remember
The time when you smiled that way for me.

- June 18th, 1997.

pretty daisies

Dark honey'd eyes, the slyest grin
The silences that took me in
The songs, the quotes, the poetry
It made a ruined maid of me.

The stories tell of rape and plunder
Love was oft the classic blunder
Never lust and never hate
Tongues in tales were subjugate

Yet he was not the promised knight
Could not resist my Vampire's bite
He was not the Danish Prince
And he is not my Lord.

Dark troubled eyes, a stubbled chin
The loneliness that drew me in
Blues riffs topped with Leonard's sigh
As beer-soaked phrases swirl and die

The Lady of Shallot knew well
That passion often leads to hell
That passion often leaves you dead
Thank g-d we drowned in port instead!

And now I cannot choose but weep
This madman haunts me in my sleep
But Dionysus comforts me
For all that I am not.

- April 7th, 1997