Light and Darkness

Retirement

Dedicated to my daughter, who is just about as silly as they come.

"I heard he left the city just yesterday," Scotty said.

"Yes, sir. I had never seen such happiness in a soul. To get out of this rat race here. Being used and abused. Sometimes he would just fall to the bottom of the heap. Pulled to the top again. His abilities recycled and reused repeatedly. It gets a bit tiring, if you know what I mean."

"Aye. I do, Finneas. But do you think he'll stay gone. Lots of times, we think we know what we want in life. When we get there, we discover that we just took things for granted and make a hasty retreat from where we came."

Finneas stared at his long-time friend for a beat before shaking his head. "No, I think our pal, McD is gone for good."

"Aye?" Scotty replied hesitantly. "Well, if you say so. Tell me again, how did you meet?"

"We met on the shelf when we were first unpacked. How long ago was it now? Two months? Yes. That's about right. Two months ago we arrived at the store. I remember the fear racing through my body. I was shoved against my brother and one of my other brothers..."

"How many d'ja have?" Scotty interrupted.

"How many is in a gross? 144? So, 143?"

"Aww. That's quite a number for your dear ol' mum."

"You know better than that. We were cloned. Look at you and your lot. How many of your spindley kind come in a bag?

"Hey now! No need for that kind of language. I'm just saying."

"I know. I'm sorry. You know I've always been a bit touchy about not having no parents."

"I'm sorry too, Finneas. Truely, I am. So, you were saying about you and your brothers?"

Finneas smiled and nodded at his friend. They had been through a lot together and their old, wise age and shared experiences helped them forget any social faux paus that occurred between

(01.11.08 @1246a)

Fuck the Dancer

Random images on a Saturday morn.
Words encourage the needling thoughts in my head.
I'm a passerby, an interloper, among friends' lives.
Begging for attention in silent prayers of "Look at me" and "You've got to know I'm in pain!"
Wasted pleas that never leave my lips or come across the computer screen.
I lay across the bed, paralyzed with no knowledge of what to do next.
Only razor blades and pill bottles seem to hold answers.
I am trying to ignore their gravitational pull.
Such decadent need for attention, I tell myself. Just ask. Call upon a friend.
I wonder who will answer if I tried.
Will my body have a voice to ask for help?
The struggle is too confusing, too overwhelming, too repetitive.
I will not cry out. I will not ask. I will ignore the desire. And probably close my eyes to sleep.

December Poem

Emmaline and I went to the Dallas Museum of Art. Bought us a membership last year during the King Tut exhibition.

Note: I guess I forgot to explain what this is when I first posted this entry. At the museum, there was an exhibit from Janine Antoni called Lick and Lather. On the barrier surrounding her installation, were magnetic words like those we've all played with. I created a poem....yeah, not much more for me to tell, was there?!

...

And there you go.

In a petri dish

In a recent email to a friend, I mentioned how I analyze and investigate and probably overthink things, particularly words, entirely too much. Lyrics to a song, favored had found their way into my brain; and I mulled over them days after our conversation was over. They sat in a petri dish within me, I referenced when I could no longer keep my interpretation of the song to myself.

Words do. They sit growing and feeding and creating. I can never purge them from my soul once they find their way in. They beget emotions, negative and otherwise. And something is born. Perhaps a poem of my own or movement of change or simply an aha! moment.

This poem.....I can't stop thinking of it. In February's issue of Poetry Magazine, I read Stephen Dunn's poem Connubial.

Because with alarming accuracy
she’d been identifying patterns
I was unaware of—this tic, that
tendency, like the way I’ve mastered
the language of intimacy
in order to conceal how I felt—

I knew I was in danger
of being terribly understood.

...

And now it grows.

Prognostication

With little imagination, my mind focuses on a simple dream.
Your whispered desires, breathy in my ear.
Hot-skinned fingertips stroking my arm.
And your lips, long unslaked, finally upon my own.

No history of a kiss, this intimate hello, currently directs us.
Yet, with certainty my mouth will know you.
Our connection, christened by sighs and tongue,
finally realized in person as it was in a vision.

Designed by years and separate experience,
that future moment sits impatiently in my soul.
I recognize the insignificance to others;
as they may pass us with no regard to the occasion.

But I embrace its importance.
A climax to our shared past.
A door to possibility.
An invitation to explore.

Only understood by other dreamers,
the poets and musicians preceding us.
Like the Oracle at Delphi,
with their lyrical words, they guided us to each other.

A brief interlude, perhaps, will be that kiss.
However, a bond that has claimed us.
And though hesitant to declare this connection,
my mind focuses on this simple dream.

Momentarily Defined

This is who I am -
at this moment,

I crave apples and passionate kisses.
My skin longs for sensual lotions,
applied by kneading masculine hands.
My curly hair sways in the breeze like gentle waves,
lapping at a buoy's edge.
My silhouette is mysteriously lit for the stranger at his opened door,
quickly glancing out.
I am wearing shoes dirtied from weeks of work grime and barefooted use.

This is who I am -
at this moment,

I miss state fairs with Ferris wheels and paper tickets for rides.
I fear my soul's desires and want to reveal them to him.
My bed is unmade and my room is unkempt.
My teeth play with my bottom lip and its adornment.
I wear six rubber-bands on my left wrist.

This is who I am -
at this moment,

I have a journal filled with tired rants and lustful dreams.
My cat sleeps poetically by a chair,
peacefully begging me to bury my nose in her belly.
I have stretch-marks,
reminding me that my child once owned my body.
My mind is preoccupied.
I have a friend living in Memphis, which is too far away.

This is who I am -
at this moment,

I have little money and grandiose dreams.
I want to own a house and paint it a light cheery yellow.
I'm want to have another child.
My legs need to be shaved,
preferably whilst in a steaming shower.
I obsess over pens and pencils.

This is who I am -
at this moment.

Wind and Burrs

Lazy rhythm in a field of brown and green.
No hurried need to abandon this wintered scene.
Contemplative devil challenges my day.
Thoughtful angel wrestles my soul's decay.

Four legged beasts, oblivious to my past,
Frolic and hunt among the withered grass.
Winged creatures sing from the trees and the skies.
Remarking in song the gaze of wishful eyes.

They know not the cut of their haunting chords on me.
Nor how sweetly their lullaby reflects my want to flee.
Back to your side. To your arms. To your embrace.
Back to your lips. To your words. To your hands upon my face.

Lovers once, passionately we were fueled.
Now our desires mournfully have cooled.
Neglected, forgotten in a wasteland of time.
We aborted mutual desires and syncopated rhyme.

I'm left alone now on this patch of brown and green.
Burrs beneath my shoes and miles of blue above, can be seen.
Wind in my hair, grayed from age.
Wistful for you, my heart sings its rage.

The Looking Glass

Taken with my Blackjack II and edited to look like a watercolor.

Bed Head

 

I believe it was my middle school art teacher, Mr. Litts who assigned a metamorphisis project where the picture started off as one thing and then through slight drawing changes, ended as another. My phone has a mosaic option in the camera mode and the final product (altered with Photoshop) reminds me of Litts' assignment.

A Tease and A Tickle

AAG is having a contest for some great Babelad Swag, and I want to win. Boy, do I want to win. I completed my entry and am also positing it here for your delight. If by chance, I get to be one of the people in the running for it, vote for me. It's entirely up to her on what entries get whittled down to the finalists; but I did want to share with you if I don't get chosen. I'm thinking of completing the tale just to have it finished. Within the restraints of the rules, the entry had to be under 500 words and this is what I came up with. Enjoy! Let me know what you think.

Dinner was set to be a mundane gathering with friends where we sat in the same booth, at the same dive as always on Wednesday nights. I begged my love to stay home.

“The same stories every week? Unbearable! Let’s just stay in.” I pleaded.

“We promised, Nae. Besides, I guarantee tonight will be better,” Oliver said, accentuating this with gentle caressing of my ass. I sighed with apprehension and finally agreed after more of his seductive prodding.

After arriving at the restaurant, I moved to get out of the car; but Oliver closed his fingers across my arm and pulled me in for an erotic kiss. Without notice, I felt a box on my lap. Oliver who was only a breath away from my lips, whispered, “I guaranteed a better evening,” and then he gently sucked my lips.

Within I found a pink, S-shaped vibrator buried beneath a layer of the softest, blackest material; and not wasting a beat, Oliver picked it up and turned it on. Instantly, I saw primal longing in his eyes and the restrained power in his forearms as he dragged it across the inside of my elbow. In synch with the toy, Oliver caressed my throat with his tongue. “The Delight,” he grumbled into my sensitive skin, “a small token expressing my desire for you.”

“Then let’s skip dinner,” I murmured into his ear with coaxing sweetness. In automatic response, he moved closer.

“No. We promised.” Oliver moved the Delight down my arms, across my fingers and onto my thighs. I could feel the teasing purr of its skin through my skirt’s fabric, which seemed to only magnify the vibrations. I felt like Oliver, the Delight, and my clothes were trying to penetrate and satiate me. I wanted no boring dinner to impede my ultimate satisfaction.

I moaned with no reservations, and Oliver responded with his own that indicated that he mastered this moment and would be taking me immediately. But with a few more vocal ministrations, I knew I could persuade him to miss dinner in favor for tasting, exploring, and fucking me. Friends and clothes would soon be forgotten.

“Don’t you think we could make better use of our time? Forget dinner. Let’s try this out,” I said stroking Oliver’s thigh enticingly. “I don’t think I can wait a couple of hours.”

Oliver kissed me again. His warm tongue invaded my mouth, eliciting more moans and wetness between my legs. My pussy cried in envy for his tongue between its lips. “Naomi, you won’t. I’m going to fuck you with it during dinner tonight.”

The beginnings of an orgasm rumbled through me; and Oliver pulled me into another kiss that taunted me and stole my breath. I had no time to think as the Delight moved from the tops of my thighs to between them. He stroked my pulsating clit through my soaked panties; and before I could completely surrender to the petting, Oliver stopped.

“Let’s go in. Our friends are waiting.”

Fly Paper

I wrote this on 02.08.07 and read it at Glass Eye this month. I haven't fixed grammar issues such as verb tenses so please forgive.

Fly paper hanging in the doorway of the kitchen as the dim light barely illuminates the hall leading to the bedroom. You can hear her moaning from the obvious pleasure caused by their rutting. The seediness of their impulsive decision to fuck only encourages their primal instincts.

He was ugly. An overweight drunk in his forties with a paunch that came from eating too many delicatessen sandwiches as evidenced by the grease stains on the front of his shirt. And having just met him in line while ordering take out only supported the theory that he had a fondness for deli meats and cheeses from heartland Wisconsin. And his ugliness was only exaggerated by his pocky skin and hacker's cough that expelled a stale breath reeking of ashtrays and ass.

But there she was...fucking him in his apartment. And she was more than enjoying it. He was the best lay she had had.

All 250 pounds of him pushing her against his cheap dresser. From behind nonetheless. She can see him in the mirror. Eyes closes and scrunched. His mouth hung open and spittle creeped from the corners as his face contorted from the pleasure he was feeling. She could see his chubby hands grasp her hips. He clung to her with pinching claws. And fuck! It turned her on more.

Her hands pampered from weekly visits to the Korean woman at the spa held the sides of the bureau tightly. Her knuckles strained against her skin. Any tenser and the bone may have ripped thru the surface.

Her skirt had been pulled up and out of the way so that he could access her. Dark hair plastered to her forehead with sweat; and her eye make-up was bleeding down her cheeks. Despite her charm in the bourgeois social circles, she was fucking a nameless slob she had met twenty minutes before.

He was behind her in the store when she stepped backwards into him. She never apologized nor looked back. She let the push of the lunch time crowd initiate her spontaneous thought. She pressed into him until she aroused him. And she let him press back.

After she picked up her order, she followed him back to his dingy home, and she fucked him.

One can think she wanted revenge against a cheating husband who did pretty blondes who answered his phones. Or perhaps she was punishing herself with anonymous sex because she felt worthless. Maybe she was molested by a middle-aged slacker when she was a teen. Or she could be a whore.

None could be further from her truth. She had a need that this man freely fulfilled. She wanted a lunchtime quickie and he was behind her in line.

Matrix Nae

Mistaken

Seated at my desk, I wait for the words to flow as answers to my worries and questions. I hope for enlightenment and revelation that starves all my fears and doubts about my life. I pray for genius to strike my fingers like bolts of electricity. I want to hear the keyboard clatter beneath my fingertips and see the brahminic message of certainty appear on my computer screen...

I wish it were so simple. To ask for divine intervention in a life, I feel I've mis....lived? Mislived? Yes!

Mislived with acts of impulsive childishness.

Mislived with deeds left undone and promised for tomorrow.

Mislived with rash declarations and angry volitions.

Mislived with too much sadness and not enough joy.

Mislived with too many emotions and not enough logic.

To ask for divine intervention in a life....MY life....one that I've mislived and get the answers so calmly and so easily. My life decades over, I pray to an Unknown to interrupt this life of misliving; and I sit naively at my desk thinking the coherent words of what to do next will surface on my conscious and form beneath my fingertips.

For it to be so?! Mistaken, am I.

Remorse at the Red Altar

On occasions, she found the taste of blood remorseful.

Remorseful? She once asked herself. How can I find such sadness in what gives us all life? Especially me.

Her life as priestess and soothsayer for her tribe was far from the dismal world of remorse. She lived in luxury. She was carried every where and her feet touched nothing but the sacred grounds surrounding the Red Altar, which was stained red from the sacrifice of so many tribesmen and women of a century past. She was always given the most succulent fruit of the trees and the tenderest meats of the hunters' kill. A myriad of men and women of her choosing satisfied her body’s desires. And she was always respected and feared.

So, why did she find these sacrifices of flesh and blood sad? She never questioned the need to protect her people from the spirits' foul tempers and jealous ways. Many children had died from the hot, shaking fevers when the sacrifice was unsatisfactory. Women came home with little or no meat when the Chosen One had not been of the right season; and the warring tribes of the seas claimed the lives of many more men when the Red Altar was void of warm red liquid.

Sacrifice meant life to her tribe. And the wise woman of the tribe understood sacrifice. She had inherited her holy order at an age when most children dream with complete abandon and yet, she watched in horror, as her mother became the sacrifice at the Red Altar that initiated her as priestess and vessel of the spirits. She choked back tears as the elderly women of her tribe raised the wooden bowl filled with her mother's blood to her lips to drink. She knew sacrifice as she watched her acolytes discard her mother's lifeless body over the cliff onto the heavily forested floor below. She was orphaned and ordained in one day. She knew sacrifice.

And she knew the sadness that seemed to stir the blood she tasted on her tongue with each sacrifice. She saw eyes filled with fear and duty suddenly stop moving as the heartbeat pulsed out of the body in rivers of red into that same wooden bowl. The remorse that overpowered the thick heat and saltiness of the Chosen One's blood. How she wished she was removed from her own body then. Let the spirits use her to enjoy this sport. She longed for the blissful ignorance of trances and possession. But no, she was acutely aware at each season's gift.

And there was remorse.

Perfection

Doug had a little fun so I'm borrowing. Thank you, Disco. Make your own and tell your friends. I think the DF1LM website has gone around before but do it's a goodie so do it again.