spasat'sia

hardship
of the kind only prior
lines could know my

sweetest Magyar countess.

Duress
could not compel
my thinning tongue
to babel

sounds and syllables unstressed.

Rodion Romanovich

There was a blitz,
evening glitter in pulses
of gold and rose

History a dragon,
bleeding scales and Arturian daggers

Petrograd
shuffled awkward Finnish feet

recoiled.

This flimsy power outage
summons patience and candles.

I lie in a still warm
den with poets
and liars.

in-win chagrin

I side-step
villains and vampires

to suggest

that you were never the first, and seldom
convinced the Test. I confess.

Life digests,
resurrects. You were always my

alibi, my one and lonely best.

just shows to go

that I can be
beautiful in the method
of Monroe

but where does that plug grow?

you know;
the one that turns ON or OFF,
like a satori in Alexandria
or an afterthought in Cairo.

more is the same

geometer beware
your focus
cannot triumph

over the conspiracy
of sheep devouring crow.

society does not collapse;
it merely despairs.

woebeggon consumerist

licking vinyl lips,
our pleonexist
shimmers to win

a bird of paradise,
erotically perverse
my hips narrow,
throat opens

to ingest all these heady
Christmas scents.

beautiful automaton

I long
for steel in place
of bone, the perfect anatomy,
no decay—bloodless stone.

pagan icons

Papa

you caught her
perturbed on your river rock

smelling of Sobranie tobacco and salt

I still have a red square
of your flannel fishing vest

your pipe collection
went to firstborn son

his Tudor bride blooms
roses—silver shot with gold

but we both know, you and I,
that green is the eternal pink

icons are born; they blossom
then die.

Life

is a fish, hooked and misbegotten.

Pleonexia In Petrograd

each winter,
Princess hems gleam higher,
the luster of pearl on rose,
sheen of ever-youngening skin

snow-globe dreams
tumble, shaken by faceless
fathers and fast-forwards
to the taiga of babushkas

dolls within dolls,
lacquer smiles
the cracking of the world into two

and the opening of New Year gifts:

techno-clones—the spit of silk.

Croatia, Mon Amour

Ah, to be so
unloved

defies defiled
memory,

albeit collective
or solitary.

My skin
is pale with a tint
of ballerina pink

My weapon of choice:

infidelity.

Random Sunday Musings

(Just Because)

My hair is too long, attention span
quite the reverse

driving skills:
atrocious

grammar and syntax: decent plus

interests:

Vladimir Putin and Yushenko, Anne Boleyn, 11th sin, today and may be tomorrow

Crisp spelling appears lettuce green and bland

no contraband
no reprimand

even as I lie
dying, pale mermaid hair

I long
for your sticky betrayal.

"They" say,

Trust him not; he is a quicksilver fox.

I say,

I trust him
to kill me over and over
and over

again.

land of worms

in the land of wormy worms,
you clench all force
to be unearthed.

Dreamy Dreams Defence

In defence—
I was always and only absent,
my intent spent

upon defunct centuries
and ancestors

who never saw my negligence.

behold your bloated ghost

that bloated ghost
is a floater who boasts
the palest eyes in the kingdom of green

mine are alive and I pause

in the memory of the Boleyn-Tudor legacy

how Ann would have lost her sallow
head again to view her daughter as aged

ill-tempered harridan. I lose sight and sound

of continent: old worlds turn new then await
an alchemy.

that sweet-tart instant before
the sword descends. Friends and foes

scatter, dandelion dust, yet Marie est malade,

and one ought to invest: reams and skeins of Rumplestiltskin
gold. I admit.

There was never a Veronique at that court—no truth
to abort.

intolerable

the stains that blot
your shadow, the X,
a tilted cross that windmills
through most lies and doubts

the smile,
pinned wings—

curtains in a state of severe distress.

no author, not even one
who understands harmony
in death, can heal

the cuts you hardly meant.

each dream brings me

further away than
I could have imagined

all that fear
rolled into a winter ball

hard, precise
bowled between your elsewhere eyes

all those shapes

traced lines,
gaunt reapers of bone and gold,
let us mine

these fallen shapes
crisp under heel

memories with the sheen
of shadow sculptures

near shore, upon lawn
loyalties must be drawn.

meet no evil

your breadcrumbs harden,
stone pellets that dream
of sea glass

voyages tossed
from shelves where evil
is a neighbour who calls
himself uncle in a truce
of pit and bone.

the uninvited

at times such
as this, any old guest
will do: dahlia stalks
with dinner-plate heads

bob odd like Alices
in happenstance land

or the litigants uninvited
to tea who whine and
demand but never
think to simply leave.

the Ugliness of Veronique Rough

Pulled from a Carmelite trance,
my tongue flaps its confession
of irrefutable and bitter
ugliness—the kind
that pales to its own ghost note.

zone bleue

fashion spits on style,
which amuses the French

and Siberian women
understand nothing

yet are the loveliest by dint
of skin and leg and golden glint.

My screen fried
today; it simply colourized
and died, and I recalled

the sparkling toddler shoe
left on display four doors

down I yearned
to scoop it up, claim its milky occupant

but

one must not take what one
does not own,
and my camera said, "no, widowed woman, kindly let
it go."

lost

I lost a post about
loss and shoes, sparkling ones
ditched on the curb side.

I lost a monitor; it colourized
then fried. I lost

four daughters: a toddler

Sophia who was not quite replaced
by Lysandre, Natasha, Sarah.

These black-haired girls
enchant my nordic blonde eyes.

I snowshoe over Siberian taiga.
My "why" is the only endearing
quality, yet I toss
Rapunzel out of her tower,
insisting her biography
is my  rightful flower.

Arachnocampa Luminosa

Third skin shed,
hunger glows. I cast
my sticky thread

and wait. should no prey
mistake bait for star,
I blindly eye a juicy mate.

floorboard lesson

the old and the scarred
respond to kindness.

Glamočko

pebbles and crippled starfish hide
under seaweed and swept glass.
in a tinsel crown and tissue cape
I am dizzy with so much treasure:

curtains and netting,
twigs and stones

my hands, in those days,
were never idle. seamstress
and daughter

stitching shorelines
to ravelled landscapes.

you promised solemn, not once,
but always, the colours in nature
move the brushstrokes of God.

post office exchange

letter clutched, a last resort
fisted against unholy skies

the happiness of dreamy times
picnics before you had to die

dresses in tulle, silk lace
stitched with cunning detail
blossoms tucked inside pockets
as deep as wells.

who could predict; who would dare
to interrupt the sleeping fair?

appendage to mouth and ear

I wanted July
to be black hollyhock,
rosy dahlia and a host
of gunmetal dawns.

Instead
ear and lips embrace
assault on the streets
and sidewalks, uncountable
contrivances that glint
and call for absolute devotion.

When asked to choose
between cave or balcony,
I can only clutch my flapping heart,

relieved she's not a mouth.

chaos and inertia

Lost
inside a vortex
of cleaning products and chaos,
the foreign woman
raises the roof and then collapses

into hysteria  or historia;
we know, false friends,
nothing, not even matter,

matters.

June's Artichoke Heart

a delicacy a shade
rough of tender, June's final
curtain is so soon forgotten

I hide a tattoo of your seaweed tongue
inside my languid grotto.

I yearn to show the audience
a swoon-song that convinces
all the while you snip syllables
into dragon fans and stroke
your softened honour.

sometimes a seated posture

greetings remind me of collisions,
that jolted moment when cheek meets
glass. how to convey the texture
of surgery while standing
above an ampitheatre in a gown of moss?

legs are stems; feet uprooted
from native soil. we just keep
adding syllables to the gauze
we know as life.

there is never a cure
for what we fear most.

Master &

Master,
your lashes exhibit
such lofty restraint,

I am humbled, bunioned
reduced to a fleck
on corporeal chain

Should I kill
you for your kindness
or forgive all those quirks
that transgressed into stains?

religions clot
only to bleed
in their own lonely ways.

undoingness

enough—
backstroke to the empty
vignettes:

snuff the hot coals
slow, the caviar dragons
spotting your delicious loneliness.

artifice and artifact

numbered days. lettered nights
your trajectory waned so complicated

I  dusted off the catacombs
of former lives, my selves
always so much the same,
never at fault yet often to blame.

Exceptional Death Rattle

You may be the exception
to every rule: burning roses
in June, the death rattle
after the cure

your quest for emptiness
trumps nothing, yet you never learned
the intonation of mu

in Old Tokyo
we sojouned.
I was besotted with Osu.
the concept of nothing and kindness.

I take your hand politely
after tending your home site
a grave you share with three greedy wives.

time slips
shoddy and my feet are ruined
but high arched.

No one cares; it matters not—
such a cold and lonely afterthought.

 

flutterby night

tricked by unseemly
light, cave creatures blink
once, then twice.

this is about the book
you have yet to read, pages
flapping—oversized moth wings

the actress invents the curtain
for the stumbling diplomat
who forgets how to lose

between tense chapters,
your future scolds your past
for those sullen little lies you told
when you hoped I would be watching.

I was.

in the corridor of many returns

door after door,
my fingers leave prints,
smudged reminders
of a slipshod quest.

I claim this pause,
an intake of breath
remembering, not remembering
the secrets we spent.

the ballerina and the moth

blindsided by a fate
too pale to protest

ballerina and moth
collide inside
an eaten quest

skin pressed
against wing

modifiers and ribbons
tumble, laundry refuses
to come clean.

the gardener demands
a confession: who has chewed
all of my June-thriving weeds?

Not I!

the chorus complies
with denial; I am weak,
tricked by artificial light,
lunaticking toward
airborne respite.

what says the telltale heart?

no promises, I promise
the telltale heart,
despising it as tattler.

treachery hides in cannisters, in all
charmed containers.

icons pop from mechanical boxes
and endings stalk beginnings
with intent to curl vicious,

dust devils prompted to hitchhike
without any chart.

midnight silver garden

Today I swallow
hailstones to reclaim
an inheritance:
safety box deposited
in a silver midnight garden

I like it when earth
collects under fingernails
and worms roll juicy
in swollen soil

arms will bathe torn
in hundreds of thorns

surreality arrives and departs,
a train halts to admire
a mighty blue heron scanning
its future on a shoreline

 

time (to) change

your women tick in,
click out—not quite adjustable;
you begin to doubt

timeworn intentions
wind in the wrong clock

no moment sweeter
than when outstretch
claims object

on that almost
reachable shelf.

 

the bone arranger

bleached pieces
of jigsaw, bones

to be interlocked.

I arranged her this way and that

wondering why
she had to die


my collection is now perfect;
nothing was precisely
my fault.

breathing debris (femme caméléon)

words fall and fail
flatten under heels of tap

a sidelong swipe notes
hands press against glass

and into the fist
soft lips may crash

skin does not break;
it slips and forgives

at times so humbled,
you could say it lives.

secrets and lies

berries stain and so do lies
flying like foreign kites
coloured enamel bright

all acts we perform
to vivisect and charm

so many broken beaks and twigs
scattered on the floor

these nests
take devotion to build
deceit to destroy

felicitations to the predators who always require

more

I loved you; I love you

nothing changes
when the heart is a pretty creature
encaged in an existential universe.

fuck physics.

I am a sweet, law-abiding serpent
willing to swim in scum or excellence;

it is all the same.
My wildfire eyes, my twitching tail
are drenched in regret.

Home is where the false head
when there is no skin left to shed.

Back on Track with Jack

this is being
as it should: a traintrack, a blackjack,
a dancer and aristocrat

on an island surrounded
by honey and absinthe.

I bloom sticky green
sick, in a long-stemmed cocoon
on the edge of a death and a dream.

derailed

my sweet fixer
stops by, his eyes
washed with Marseillais set and rise,
his smile coaxes
my lips to keep time

a fiddle, a swig, a traintrack
a bin filled
with crisp linens and a tumbleweed
_____ with a twitch.

He can talk until the moon
milks the sun, and I will listen
until kingdom come.

manga assassin

outsourced to spy
upon Theroux, Naipaul and Murakami,
I double-crossed my eyes and tango ankles:

tired of being an exception,
so much sweeter to follow than to rule,

I kowtowed to these esteemed sir-men:
the writers and the ghoul.

cast (into oblivion)

certain rides
prove so cruel, rough and fast
that passengers crouch voiceless—
at a loss for loss.

marriage in kukës

the bride lost
her veil; the seamstress
stitched a gown
of palaver, tulle and silk

in colours wildly mismatched.

groomsmen clapped and stomped,
the feast not so bad
for matrimony in a refugee camp.

I recall it all
as though it really happened.

the ballad of the triple-crossed

a ballad to be altered:

just

because my eyes have gone hard-boiled,
does not mean that I do not see

from my river-rock distance.

He holds the lighthouse keeper's daughter
hostage

her father is obsolete

he never mentioned that brunettes
are not what he requires

and she pleads
from her tumbleweed path

I am seasick, heaving overboard
a lifetime of regret and familiarity
with warlords or their occidental equivalents

Today, tonight,
I swim unshoed, confident in my outcast status.

How many men promised to be kokua?
How many men lasted?

Imagine me
in irreverence.

I raise my arms; I stretch my neck.

Show mercy to these misguided girls.
All they ask for is a cobbler and the
holes between your dreams.

Banished

broken
artifacts and tightropes,
father's legacy:

sweet aromas, pipe racks,
22 carat cufflinks, lists that tilt

to the left. Right is dangerous.

Sit me down under Tiffany lamps,
explaining the delight of the altruist.

his

thick hands, handsome fingers
firm chin, such an imposing position

for a diplomat. Enough!

Training hardens, weakens,
overtakes, underscores

too much input,
sensory overload

not lost, merely triple-crossed:

we know who we are;
I know who who you were

before you vanished

Somewhere In Absurdistan

You may journey to Absurdistan
where all icons are veiled
beyond the curtain

and meet polyglot strangers
who will bind and blindside you

no matter.

the outcome is firmly decided
once you mask your lies in silence.

an orchid for marie line

we docked in Alaska
for a sea urchin lifespan:

glorious, in excelis.

just you, me and us.

In glaciers we trust.

so many ballads have passed,
usurping the best and worst,
the true, tried and fast.

my love—

a silence settles
like a parlour trick
and I am betwixt our negligence.

how clever are the cruel

why do you mistake
cruelty for cleverness?
surely you are
better than that

questionable question mark.

Perhaps you have never been to Port Au Prince
or Sarejevo. Maybe you have never seen.

I thought, I dreamed
otherwise, but I was already
in line, bleating for the slaughterhouse.

end-track

a mother is supposed
to know, visceral privilege

my daughter, my son,
I stick nose to glass
in this exhibitionistic booth:

I love Nippon
and deep-sea lure.

The lore churns to myth
and my sentence fragments.

permanently uninked

like the wanderer at carnival
who walks on fair ground

or wistfully lists toward carousel,

I remain unlinked and pale—

a cave-dweller
deprived of predator and prey.

your lies (cyclic)

your lies multiply;
they are insistent and perfect.

they burst out of the earth,
newborn—not shy

they never apologise,

yet in my insect lifespan,
there is no emptiness, no proof

only allegory
which uplifts your lies to truth.

what happened to your passport? pichku materinu

Preamble: Switzerland has an army; I am reminded of that every time I use my cunning little knife.

Your Tibetan thesaurus
cannot render the texture of emptiness.

Flirting with you, however,
under a Turtle-Foot rain

reminds me of Yugoslavia
and its hearty boatloads
of mismatched fishermen.

Is homeland lost without its name?

believe me not

suddenly in the land
of make me leave
things turned very strange:

the evil queen
became handmaiden, and her athletic
daughters  went lame.

the terrorist and the barbarian

all things must end,
laments the shy barbarian

but the terrorist has no interest
in extraneous cunt or hostage

He is enthralled with fisherman
who catches, keeps or releases

again and again. such perfection.

In the room beyond the room,
the post-chamber to hell,
truth and secrets are tangled
in a tulle and palaver ball

and I am chastely reminded:

the only difference between true
and false lies is the attention to detail.

the laundress and the ballerina (an allegory of sorts)

to escape  jet radiation,
the laundress leapt into a distressed basket,
raised her soapy arms

and did what she did best—flounder.

her sister failed to blunder.
Upon a reddened piroutte,
she burst a throbbing bunion.

And now they fumble
side by side
pressing, folding, en pointe exquise
to bleach charred guillotines.

Lake Slaughter And The Guest House

lakehouse, in this case,
is a misnomer, a bedraggled
canoe dragged from shore

or

a defunct hotel
where ghosts mimic guests,
anaemic, thin as flute

glasses. chandeliers threaten
to loosen; crystal garters
topple  but it is

the swan song
in the slaughterhouse
that apricots your ears and roses your lips

white flushed with a perfect
floral blemish.

I set sail, past tense, on the wing-span
of a continent, and I repeat the same act
day in, night out:

look back, execute, look back, sit tight