Drink Of Life

Drink of life- like my mother did once.
Not alone in the bedroom, she opened and took and the pungent seeds of time spilled into the darkness of space alight with imagination and moans and shrieks and luminous suns.
Let the blackness talk and whisper the secrets of life eternal, but do not mistake the body as its only source.  The sky is full and traveling is not done only in carbon and flesh.
Drink of life like my mother did once.
Then drink again.
Water like my father did once.
Again drink.
Like my father.
Forever is not the end.
End. 
There is only eternal
Return. Again.
Eternal return.
Again.
Eternal return.
Again.

An endless loop of purple and black, we sit in this circle and live out the revolution.
Time shifts as this carpet accepts our weight. As the walls hold us in and the black curtains postpone the sunlight from our eyes. 
We go back into the dream state and journey through darkness and quiet spaces while the walls melt like jelly. We walk through them, licking the paint until our tongues taste like ocean water. 
We circle back and flow in and out of the speckled windows, hearing the squeaks and moans of cars rounding the corner and delivery trucks halting by the door. The walls hold us in, ever intent on their quiet role, their shelter against the demanding brightness of day.  
Grinding and sliding through the maze of our consciousness- like a serpent, the circle comes back once again. It is my turn to speak. 
Cycle.
The ends are woven perfectly together and for once the ends of our fingertips flow out and back in like wisteria branches. Perfectly pungent and delicate- we glow imperceptibly in the darkness behind the curtains. Eventually the walls take in our vibration and the light between you and I starts to move like heat off a desert floor. Though my eyes are closed, I dance and dance, hoping over sand and the scent of old gun smoke and greased leather.
What is this space? I hear my mind ask. Never content to let the eyes talk for us, to let time shift and strain and begin to rewind and then leap forward in a spiraling dance around the circle of our words. And back again, receding into the darkness between the black curtains.
Endless circles as our fingers and toes merge back into roots and trees.

Eternal return.
Again.
Eternal return.
Again.

Dig In

Dig in with my feet. Dig in with those callused hands cracking and smelling of blood and iron.
Those hands of yours with the roses sprouting from below the white nails are leading to my bed where the sockets sizzle and burn, sometimes exploding like certain moments in a hot jungle with a stove nearby and a woman in a blue uniform caressing the colored light between us. Ouch, the fire of electricity snaps me up. Eyes, open. We know where we are.
Eyes open, we look out the window together and regard the little bird at the top of the tree. Ouch.  Another slap and yes, I am listening.  There is nothing that hurts more than a blind ear.  A deaf eye.  A mute look.
We stare out the window.  Stare.  Stare and state the purpose. Bird out on the tree, sitting on the tippy top, bending the last of that cypress flare.
What hurts more?  Out the window, looking in this bed and discovering the world beneath the covers.  Covers are for the modest and asses out- the narrow light coming through the window catches us, immodest and glaring white and covered with hair. 
The savages have come with urine scented hair and teeth, the shamans rarely stand on hilltops with white robes. No- the tribe has arrived, beautifully described with yellow teeth hanging from rope necklaces made of human hair- skulls used easily as drinking cups. All manner of earthly remains used for decorations and I was hoping to get one for the small altar.
Pain is my friend, without it I forget.  Without it I would forget myself in this warm house covered in sugar and red and white candies and the fluff of terrycloth and inertia. Pain is nothing my friend. Pain is everything.
I look into your eyes, share that spark once again.  The sockets will be jealous as will the memory of a story in my mind.
Can they see us now? Our colors pouring out the small shaft not always meant for light- grunting and brutal- the light hits us from behind, illuminating our forms on the white walls, casting a shadow that travels out and up- beating against the wall of the room, radiating out out out and up up up until we no longer recognize it, have forgotten what was done on the bed in the name of pain and practice and exchange. 
But the clouds are there and have been since we began, and they seize it all up and turn it into seed and send it back.

In The Moment

She wiggled in bed. At some points she was purely wiggling, her body moving huge blasts of energy in unpredictable bursts from toes to fingertips and then back again. Other times she convulsed, her torso lunging forward with wild power that rivaled thunderstorms and bursts of natural fury. Her arms, legs and torso moved without her consent, buckling on their own, reacting to energy that had reached a peak. Her mouth opened, letting out sounds that broke the boundary between moan, pain and pleasure.
She had reached the mountaintop, a place that had once burst with rainbow colored hand gliders and parachutes. She used to sail down the rocky cliff-side on gusts of earth-scented wings, content to fall once again to the place she had come from. Now, it was the same mountain and the same breeze with its salty smell. It was the same place, but she was not jumping. She stayed at the top, holding hands with the man that had brought her there, holding onto him as the wind tried to push them over the edge and back towards the waiting ground.
And now she held back, holding onto the strings, breathing in spite of the breeze and the cries of energy that desperately wanted to move up and over, falling back to where she had once been when her clothes were on and the bed was still uncrumpled and her mouth unkissed. But she was here now, pulling tighter on the strings as the roar began and the convulsions started.
‘uuuuahhhh’ she let out a sound into his bearded cheek.
He lay still as her body twitched beside his, breathing gently, showing her how to relax.
She took in big gulps of air, holding them, forcing her body to breathe slowly, to do what she could feel was happening beside her.
Another convulsion.
Time passed, ones turned into fives, fives turned the clock until the birds sang outside his barred window and her breathing returned to normal. The hand gliders and parachutes melted back into her bloodstream, sitting eagerly on the edge awaiting another opportunity.
Soon she was getting dressed. Pulling on her jeans, her socks, stuffing her bra into her sweater pocket. It was probably cold out, as it had been when she arrived. She put on her jacket, her scarf and gave him a kiss goodbye.
She started her car on the street beside his house and began the short drive to her house which was just a few blocks away. The streets were empty and she began to think, going back to just a few moments before, back to the bed, back to the warm skin that was not her own, yet was. A part of her leapt away, once again wishing to be there, to be with him, not just kissing, not just touching, it was the mountain, the fall over the edge, the sinking into the abyss. She craved that, though they did not jump.
She spoke, ‘you cannot be in a constant state of orgasm, not like the kind you are wishing for.’
She guided her car down the small ramp beneath the subway platform. She remembered she could be happy. ‘Be here. You can be happy with him in bed, but when you are here, driving, you can be happy too.’
She looked at the road, at the subtle curve ahead. She sunk into the curve, putting her full attention on the shift of the yellow line. She turned the wheel of the car with her whole body, feeling pleasure as the car moved. Feeling the dark night coming through all the car’s windows. She smiled.
She thought about all the things she did, all the places she went, all the times she could just be happy if she just remembered to enjoy it. It was hoping for other things, longing for the bed, for his skin, ultimately for the mountaintop, it was the longing for something else. It was the torturous road she liked to walk.
She drove along the dark road, through the two lanes of parked cars. She could be there, in the car, driving, not wishing for someone else, something else.
Not needing anything to happen differently.
She felt that truth wash over her, she understood the source of her daily pain. Her body vibrated with the kisses from the mountain top while her body relaxed into the night around her and the slow drive towards home.

First Look

There is me.
I see my hand, my eye, my skin.
I look through these brown eyes.

I look at you.
The other.
You.

You who are not me.
Beyond me skin,
past my eyes,
beyond my hand

You, that I can touch.
You that I can see.
You.

The other.
You, who are not me.
You are the Other.
You, who are not me.
Not my skin, not my hair, my ears.

And because you are not me, I am not you.
Through your eyes, I am the Other.

I am not you.
Not of your hands and skin, not of your body.

No matter how much I may long to merge, no matter the hours I spend staring into your eyes.
I am the Other. Just as you are the Other.

Cherry blossoms drift between us, their pink wings fly, and I know that they too, they are not me. Not my skin and flesh, having nothing to do with my bones and eyes. The are the Other. All that is not me. All that I can see and everything I cannot.
For everything is the Other. Everything past this wall of pale skin and this head of short dark curls. The hills and their stories, the trees and their years. They are all beyond me, by definition and purpose and being. They are all things with other lives and other hurts and laughs.
The wall containing me is my prison and my castle, the way I was birthed, the way I have known. Only now, perhaps now I get a glimmer of the Other. The fear of you, the fear of me.
We look at each other, two sets of eyes wide open and staring, each looking into the Other.
But what if we see?
And what if I only feel one heart beating?
What if I stare into the reality and not the illusion?
Is there me?
Is there really the thing with hair and teeth and skin?
Is there a Me?
Is there a You?
Is there an Other?

Is the great illusion the only way to live?
To survive beyond the white walls of an institution and small capsules three times a day. How long can this be explored before we fall into smelly pits and metal cuffs…I see you as the Other, except those times in which we join, when your eyes look like the golden pools that I remember from a dream, and your skin tastes like mine baked beneath the sun. Then the illusion fades, and I see the Other, wrapped in red threads and dark curls, looking like my image in a mirror, looking like it was never anything Other than me.

The Quest

The quest for rightness. The quest to accumulate. It is the currency of power. The sun, the explosion, the internal censor within that seeks explosion.
We drop bombs out of rightness. Invade out of certainty. All the while, one part of the brain needs to believe. Lie after lie. Everything is absorbed like nutrients for the unconscious. We will believe anything, we are selfish. We are singular machines with the desire only to survive. This is what believes the lies. This is what understands superiority, this is what takes the fallacies of what is given. We invade. The world explodes. Machines die. How certain must one be to take gun and leave for war? How certain must someone be to arrest and shoot another?
We come, with the certainty of the sun. Never dying. Never ending. Any questions are burned up with the heat of the fire and with the burning core of delusion. The illusion is a circle, complete and impenetrable. The flag is our eye, the colors of our blindness. We quest after your blood, your resources, the trees, the air in which you breathe. We are the takers, the accumulators. We need more. Always more. We expand with your contraction, grow as you pale. Your exhale is our inhalation, our sprout, one more explosion, one more kernel of power.
Understanding is perfect, simple, believable. Force comes from the sky, from the point of a gun, from the threat of extinction. Power comes with your death, with your blood, with the repeating lie. Accumulation is our need. To grow and grow and grow. There will never be enough, not for this machine, not for this force, not for this great striving.
This is what we know. This is the west. This is the need to travel forward.
Our sun, beautiful sun, give us more so that we can take!
Power comes with the explosion, with another blast of force. The flag is the symbol of our desire. The beating wind the far-off sound of a war drum. The exploding fire our rapid hearts. Your death is our growth. Your release is our expansion.
Energy. The building. The transfer. The movement to and from.
This is our quest. We know it by other names, but this is what we seek. Like quick rapid fire…the lines move, the words change, the actions turn like dancers. New people, new lines, a new game. But the quest is always the same, we are the accumulators.
We seek your energy.
We seek your blood.

Cloven Foot

She looked at the painting for the first time. It rose from the wall, levitating in its massive form and monumental message, leaving its gold frame far behind on the white background. Small and open-mouthed next to its size, she gazed up at the man that was not a man, at the animal that was not quite an animal. The beast that was not on all fours, but wearing a tailored jacket and a small hat that had holes for his horns. His face was red and long and hairy beside the ears. He stood in the middle of two iron gates, held slightly ajar with the weight of his body. Behind him a city burned red and hot. His lips betrayed a small, sly smile. Half a dozen women with large round bellies were in various states of falling, some lay lifeless on the cobblestone streets. Babies lay in piles by closed wooden doors. Just behind the gate was a copulating couple on fire, streams of smoke rose from their flesh into the dark night. He stood at the gates of this mayhem. His kingdom or his punishment? His legs were long and hairy, with thin ankles and the strong thick thighs of a horse. His penis was long and engorged, sticking up like the black spikes of the metal gates. He leaned on one of the open gates, leaning just slightly on his right elbow in a gesture of satisfaction and contentment. A creature completely comfortable in the chaotic setting of smoke and dim, reddish lights and the smoking couple and fallen babies and women who would never be mothers. His left foot reached out to her, a cloven foot of gray with streaks of black. His other foot hung back in the shadows, five toes of a pale, reddish hue. The ground below him was a mixture of dirt and black ash, beyond was a barren landscape of dead trees and smoking bushes.
“This is us,” she thought. “Our lineage vilified and made shadowy and dark and full of horror. This is the full blooded fear of man. The fear of birth and death. The fear of sex and pussy and earth and the mushrooms which spawn beneath the visible surface. We have watched through centuries, as large skirts have given way to slips and then jeans. Watched as the fires burned flesh and the screams curled with the smoke. We have watched it all. The vilification. The quest turned to the dirty kiss. We watch still, knowing, just as the smile implies, that what we do will always remain in the realm of the mushroom and the roots. The fires will come and play with the land and play with our flesh and we will be of the darkened shadows and the red clouds. We are of one, of the other, of earth and air, stardust and bright light.”

The Release Of Pain

It all comes down to death. The machine wants to die. The machine wants to sleep and die. A warm sleep with no dreams and a soft pillow that might never be felt. In each release there is an explosion and in each explosion there is a death. The tear, the squirt, the shout, the laugh, the cut. The outward explosion is the death, of a moment, a chamber, an energetic movement. And the machine seeks death. To remain breathing, yet dead, that is an ever-present option. To remain asleep while the eyes are open, while the feet move, while the chest rises and falls.
Look for pain. Pain is my hand in the midst of flickering flames. Pain is hearing a baby screaming. Pain is being ignored. Pain comes with a swiftness that demands attention, it demands acknowledgement in one way or another. Pain requires the shifting of attention from one thing to another. Pain requires that I look at it and talk to it and indulge its wishes. My body begs me to look at its shape. My body wants pain to stop. My mind wants pain to continue. My machine desires the explosion. Pain needs to be hidden in the corner or given a bottle or smoked out of existence. Pain needs to be fed, consuming every thought and action and object in its path.
The body itself will only absorb a certain amount of pain, after that threshold consciousness is lost. It is the reason a baby cries itself to sleep, the reason a cold man would grab a bottle of whiskey or put a gun to his head. In one way or another, pain demands remedy. It demands attention, and the body demands an end. A death to the pain. Ends are found many ways. Pain wants an outlet, it seeks an explosion, an orgasm, there needs to be a resolution. Whether for one moment, or for a lifetime of recurring cycles, pain comes and comes and the body seeks over and over again to let it out in gasps, like a volcano releasing steam. Emotional pain can be covered in the mask of physical pain. A cut might relieve a little sadness. Pain can come little by little, mounting slowly until one day the landscape is a concrete path and a long row of trashcans. And as much as pain seeks a release, the body is addicted to the release itself, so over and over again, it finds reason for pain, creating the circumstances so a release can be had. The eternal cycle of death and sleep. Climb and fall, without any hope of ever reaching the top.

Far Away

I heard his voice, the deep, deep laughter that made me think of density, of hard, rich wood and the palpable thick air of a forest floor covered in a shaded canopy. I wanted to describe the sound with my hands, I formed a ball shape with my skinny fingers, holding onto the air as though it contained a thick brilliant rock, something I almost couldn’t get my hands around. He laughed again, shaking the earth with his bodily rumble. The content of the conversation was almost irrelevant. Through layers of fatigue and inattention, I barley heard his concern, some young Tibetans were turning to violence to make their struggle heard. Would they become like the Palestinians, hungry and tired and frustrated? Tired of occupation, tired of the old ways that produced no fruit.
But I barely heard that. I was tired from a long day of selling soap at an outdoors farmer’s market and when the music stations became fuzzy going through the metal doorway of the Bay Bridge, I tuned the radio to Heart and Soul, a BBC Christian-slanted show on religion. On the air was the voice of the Dalai Lama. He talked about his possible successor, he wasn’t sure that there was even a need for one. He addressed the speculation of a female taking his place as a political and spiritual leader. He said “why not a woman?” and laughed with every muscle he had.
I pictured the male and female monks on a bed, laying close to each other and not touching, not talking, just moving and sharing in each other’s energy. I saw the cold stone room, they lay on the bed in their robes; from his depths into her, from her void into his, from his presence into her absence, from her love to his attention, …Is it easy for them up there in the cloistered halls of a monastery? Away from soap and markets and ordinary people walking around with strollers and wedding rings and cell phones? Away from this black truck, these tires which take me over a bridge. Away from the skyscrapers which roll out like empty promises on my right.
I forgot so much today. I walked around quickly, looking to the vendors on each side of me while my body continued forward without an instant of attention. I was not a well-honed beam, but rather a spattering light in need of repair. I talked without need to the vendor on my right, I ate ice cream without attention, I looked at my hair in the reflection of my car to check its state.
It’s so easy to forget it all. It’s so easy to think of myself as a girl who drives every Saturday to the market and sells soap. It’s just so easy to forget it all…to look at the couple holding hands and reach out to them with my machine-desire of sticky happiness. If I lived there, out in the mountains and surrounded by a sea of maroon robes who had accepted their lives as something “other”, as different from the world of TVs and magazines and the semi-annual sale at Victoria’s Secret, a sea of maroon robes who had sacrificed the body’s desires for another way, would it then be easier for me? Is it easier for them? How can I learn if I can’t even remember? How many days can I spend on the tight rope? Not quite them, not quite other.
He laughed again. I pictured his round, tan face. A picture of deep lines and clear glow. The picture from the bumper sticker, “Get Stoked!” it said, right next to that beaming face. That face on the bumper of a new station wagon that was always parked on Hwy 9, just a few hundred feet from my house in the Santa Cruz mountains. That car parked a couple feet from the entrance of a little wooden shack, another picture of the Dalai Lama facing the street through a glass window. I drove by a million times, always turning my head to watch the withered prayer flags blowing in the wind, wondering each time what lay inside and then quickly forgetting as my car continued on.
How many things have I let it slip from my mind? I would drive pass the beaming face, wishing I could be stoked, but I had school and bills and a boyfriend on drugs who needed money, lots of money to help his pain. Could I ever be stoked? So I drove on by, letting the whispers of prayers fade from my skin.
He laughed again. Such a deep sound full of curiosity and delight. A sound that has given up on the reason to laugh and just fell through the air like a rock with wings. Did he need a reason to rumble the rocks of the earth, to rattle the fragile speakers of this car? It was as though he was saying, “let me get inside you, take a vibration of me with you.” Maybe then I would finally be stoked. Or maybe I would quickly forget.

Day And Night

She watched his smile fade, the corners of his mouth dropped slightly and the song he had just sung faded into a melodic memory. His face softened and she watched the wind blow away the last remains of his overt delight. She watched the rainbow of his mouth turn from a Technicolor pageant of beet red and hazard-cone orange into a muted palette mixed with white acrylic. She watched the fading glory, the spiral of rainbow dye that moved into oblivion with each second that passed. How long had she watched his lips? The endless transforming of emotion that played with the muscles of his face.
She sat on the bed, an orbit of delight herself, beaming in white and blue as she sat before him. She was smooth and nearly naked in her white and pink lace panties. She sat crossed legged, slightly embarrassed by her lack of graceful ballerina posture, yet unable to will her muscles and bones into spinal alignment. She watched him and the vain angel on her side tugged at her thoughts, “Sit straight! You look horrible!” And although the same thought entered over and over, it blew through her mind like a fluffy cloud. When his smile at last faded like a fiery sun, she brought her eyes to his, feeling the endless river of power that seeped from him. She sucked him out, pulling him inside by concentrating on the back splash of energy. The soft bed accepted her weight and she fell deeper into it. She sat there.
How long had she been there, watching his smile fade into a soft mouth that bore no particular expression, but was rather a statement in contentment? She had nowhere else to go, rather, she had no where else she wanted to go and this bed, this small room stuffed with books and made smaller and warmer by a heater that whirred throughout the night and continued with the day was the whole of the universe. His eyes and mouth, they were every star, every undiscovered sun.
Outside, she felt that it was light. She felt the bright whiteness of a cloud covered sky infiltrate the room with its sense of urgency. Light being the indicator of action, the time to drive and work and run errands. But she sat and held his stare and practiced moving against the rules of nature. Light was to see his smile. Light was to see the contour of his flesh expand from thigh to chest. Light was needed for holding his gaze.
When the dark would come, perhaps then she would rise and take the memories of his smile with her. She would dress, covering her white panties and sculpting her breasts into more recognizable shapes. She would find her shoes and pull up her mismatched socks and head out into the night. She would drive, up the hills that overlooked a sleeping city and insistent street lamps buzzing for the attention of moths. She would drive in silence, holding the scent of him on her mouth until she found the small house
tucked into the curve of the street. She would wait in her car, listening for the sounds of other approaching cars and then, after determining she was all alone under a cloud-covered black night, she would exit and walk across the street, entering her small room. She was then ready for a new round of work to begin.

Moon Water Heart

I was born of water. In its wet cave I sparkled to life. Within its slippery grasp I grew and formed a beating heart. On the full moon, I felt the pull and began to swim, towards land, towards a realm which distinguishes between day and night. The people of air greeted me with a slap and a gulp full of moist oxygen and I opened myself to their ways.
And here, on earth, the moon calls to me twice a month, calling me with relentless screams when the tides are at their peak. The arms of the cypresses point me to the waves, to the power that keeps coming and coming, stopping at nothing to reach shore. I stand ankle deep in the biting water, it tries to find its way in, searching for an orifice that will bring it to the center of my watery heart. “Try if you must, but know that we are the same, you needn’t yearn so much! I am here, brother, I am standing within you. Feel my beat, my lunar pull!”
The skies open and shower me with the semen of a bearded god. The sea rises in its nightly lust and coats me in its desire. The center of my chest pushes out, moving through every thin vein, reaching fingertips and tiny toes, trying just a little harder to extend beyond the barrier of flesh.
“We are here,” the tide murmurs, “you needn’t cry so hard! You stand amongst the waters of the womb, you rise tall above the hot liquid of earth and below the sweet tears of the sun. You are one among us!”
The night is without a moon and I run in circles around the boulder in the sand. I run til the water in my heart begins to boil and I run until my knees begin to drip. I run on all fours, chasing mountains of white foam and sheets of mist that tousle my unkempt mane. I orbit the rock like a satellite, speeding like a dying star, howling like a rabid dog.
I collapse in the arms of peaking waves. They hold me while the black sky kisses my eyelids and while the absent moon sends down crows with secret signals and while little bubbles tickle the sides of my cheek. The waters rise higher still, entering my mouth in salty rivers that carry news from the deep. Hold me my love, my brother, let me live just a little longer.

Forgotten Circus

The notebook stretches its imposed lines across my field of my vision. The blue lines of formality, rigidity…they are the lines of frigid women in black dresses that reach up to their necks, the impotent men that squirm at the thought of my oozing love, enough love to cover the world if given enough time and enough fingers. But my cupboards are not filled with plain white paper, the lines of chastity are useful, despite their sexless impulse… I use them for their discipline, for their linear spankings. Order from chaos, I cast out the net into the cosmos and pull back orange starfish and leopards. Instead of hoops, I jump through a singular diamond eye and find a magician waiting for me in a metal cage. I take his top hat and shrink it, placing it on my head with a firm nod to the fashion critics who sit in the bleachers, they applaud in short bursts of excited fury, looking to each other with disbelief in one eye and tears in the other. Their moving hands hide the daggers well, their polite smiles mask the ventriloquist who has already spoken to Vogue. I cannot tell if they have drunk from the same glass as the women of the lines. “Lick it up!” I shout, “there’s more in the back!” The crowd stands to applaud. The bleachers are full and there’s a performance for the new king. The trapeze is set and taught, the elephants are glittering in their jeweled crowns and painted saddles, their riders are bejeweled in head-dresses and their faces are masked in lace and their small chests are bound in tight black bodices that describe their curves as only a true poet could. They balance on tiptoes above the great gray beasts, like fairies that ride the magic waves of night. The king is ready and seated, the jesters have finished with their truths and the jury waits to judge. The magician is full of old secrets and as the people turn towards us, we escape together through the diamond eye of the leopard, back to a room with carpets and strange light bulbs with no strings and a dry heat that smells of vitamins and soft black hair and warm welcoming arms. He holds my hand as we step through prismatic light seeped in yellow and gold, the color of tigers and opened treasure chests. He takes my hand and we step through, my blindfold forgotten on the sandy floor of the cage. My eyes remember this magic chamber of music. We have left a king waiting upon his throne, we have left sad clowns who look in desperation to their barking dogs and critics who look to their companions for ideas. We mean them no harm, but the curtain called and the lens of the crystal ball gathers us like prophecy. We are together and we disrobe, revealing our true forms, the shapeless crystals that shine more brightly than the night.

Powder

Before I had a language to describe them, long before the nature of the Pull was described to me, and years before I began to understand the savagery of my eternal habit, I lived in the hole for a couple of days in early spring. In the waning months before my degree would be awarded, in the tautness of a rubber band about to break, I smoked from the crinkled hands of demons.
The house was always bathed in a yellowish hue, but it couldn’t be blamed on the light bulbs. It was the inhabitants of the chamber, the vermin clothed as humans, the sticky sludge that resembled normalcy, the fluttering shadows that projected life. The colors looked like a couple, it acted like a pretty girl with school books and thin tank tops, it seemed like a skinny guy wearing an oversized suit, and they were that, and they were not. I tried to conceal it in the corners of my heart, in the caves where secrets lay and rest, where they spin their wool and catch blood-filled mosquitoes with eyes that have long ago been sewn shut. I tried to hide them away, but blood always found its way below the door. The gray cloud above my head shaded the perspective, the steel ball shackled to my ankle ate away at my voice and jingled with each step on the pavement. The pain was written on my face and the disease dressed itself up in purple spots and lay quietly on his skin and the house smelled of vinegar and burnt tin foil and the books absorbed the smoke like the thick leaves of a jungle.
I did not know the language, then, I could not describe the pull, but I smoked from the hands of red demons. Disguised as the glass vase for plastic roses, hidden in the product of water and fire and metal and coca leaves that combined into a surge of power, it was a brief full body orgasm that colored me green and left me wailing without tears, hungry with no need for food. I smoked from the bumpy skin, I heard the bells of their choir and I sat still while the earth spun and my stomach took a ride on the roller coaster that always ended twenty seconds later. And I stood in line again. I called for the conductor, I looked for the tubes and the white rocks and the dirty spoons. And again I took the ride. And when it was over, when I was on my knees and drooling and looking for the foil, I took it again. The same rusty car, the same plastic seat, the eternal loops that held me by a plastic belt. I called for more in the shower and spun as the water beat my body. I sat on the patio, surrounded by dying plants and a created world that made no sense and under the night sky that felt more ugly and brown than I had ever seen it. I sat and heard the bells.
He finally fell asleep and I felt the pull calling the deepest holes in me, I followed my body into the yellow room and found the spoons and the powder and the carton of baking soda. I wanted to make rocks from powder and hear the choir and shake with the bells, I tried ‘til 4 am until the small bag was empty and every ill-cooked rock traveled in wisps of smoke to my lungs. It was almost dawn when I looked in the mirror and I saw a strange woman from a bleak distant land. A woman in the clutches of a force she had no language for. A stranger from a parallel world, a whore, a student, a woman…all could be possible, all were before her for the choosing, there were some of each in her eyes. The bumpy hands were tight around my ankles, the choir sang without rest and I decided then, this would not be the path. I closed the door. I felt them call for many days, the demons kissed my ears and played in the corners of my mind, but I buried myself in books, in the one clear goal that was only a couple of months away. Working this way, I washed myself clean of the powder.

The Contradiction

The small little bug landed on my shoulder. It was red and black and looked like something from a nightmare that has yet to get to the darkest pit, yet to leave me tumbling through the air, tasting death as it comes, yet to shock me into wakefulness. It was the news, the stories of rape in the Congo and the dark-as-night-skinned women who adorn their bodies in the colors of rainbows, yet know, with full body awareness, of the brutalizers. It was the pack of seven men that took her down, that ripped into her after taking the breath from her husband, and as bad as it sounds, a part of it, even after several hours and countless other thoughts, it still filled me with the flush of sexual excitement. I had moved to turn down the radio, my brain had recognized her story as something bad, something I would never wish upon myself or another, yet the thought of it, the fantasy, the show of power and domination and the forced submission and the tears and the sexual release the men must have felt by pushing themselves into a woman who had no more tears left, it was that which started the ticking pulse and the search for other images just as brutal and those two realities, the inability to even hear her full story and the vibrational fantasy it invariably created, those two truths despised each other. They were magnets of the same charge. They were shame. They were contradiction.
Modern American women don’t think like that, they don’t like that, they don’t want that, they condemn that…and I do, yet I don’t, yet I do, but I don’t.
And the two colored moths flew around my shoulders, teasing the bare white of my skin with their buzzing and fanatical wing beating. And I wouldn’t want it to happen, but I like it. I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone, but I want to see it. To be held down, forced open, no matter how much it hurts, no matter how much I want to run away. And when it does happen, the small, more harmless variety, I feel like I could follow him to the ends of the earth. I can see myself, wearing torn white rags, stepping across the red horizon as the even redder planets loom like hot air balloons just a short arms reach away. I can feel each step over rough edged gravel and those shiny swords that wait in the distance. I have not reached them yet, but I have seen their cousins in the smaller ponds and they have cut me deep, very deep, and somehow, with bloody feet and salty cheeks, I made it past them and over the barren hillsides. And at the ends of the earth, perhaps only an arms reach away, but necessitating a lifetime of travel, he waits in the crystal castle with a goblet full of foul tasting life and eyes that could warm the night sky if given a chance. The wings flap like a soft lullaby and their colors have become my coat of arms.

Black

I spin the paper color wheel. In the color spectrum, black is the culmination of all, black it at the center, black is all around. Red, white, yellow, green, violet, aqua, every shade in between the primaries, every subtle hue and variation, blended and pure, black contains them all. It is the ultimate mixture, the pure blend. The night sky, shining in darkness, it contains all our naked desires, all the brutal thoughts covered in polite conversation and gracious smiles, all the loving smiles that flow like a river without end, without a source, without an ocean a thousand miles south. The starless black covers me, seeping through my open bedroom window unabated, invading me like the man I love, coming in and conspiring with all the sparks I cannot name. Darkness is the universe I perceive, finite in my understanding, infinite in truth. The name given for hours without sun, it covers the blue of day, the light of nothing with the culmination of all. It is the immense dinner plate with everything heaped upon it, gravy mixing with peas and touching the virginal apple pie. Everything that ever was, every thought that burst shining with splendor from an idealistic youth, every hearty chuckle of laughter from a newborn just discovering their hands and feet, every groan from lovemaking at its peak, all this is mashed and mixed and spread across black. Next to the lumpy sauce and sparking water. Next to the shiny fork that wishes it could poke the voluptuous girl in fishnet stockings, while she hopes you peak into her uncrossed legs. The little candle burns softy upon the table, lapping gently as the waves of wind and hot air caress its flame. Beyond the lit kitchen, the night outside is dark, the wind is roaring and trash cans slide down the street in gusts of released tension. Misfit cans make their escape, rolling without a thought of destination. I hope to stay and avoid the wind. I hope to stay and hold the softness of your skin in the dark. I hope to kiss you in the all consuming darkness of your room and bury my face in the finality of your hair. Blackness is me and you, in the man who died a couple minutes ago in a burst of warm white cream and a final grunt. It is the girl walking hurriedly down the sidewalk with a cell phone in her hand. It is the gray tombstone in Germany and the Dodo bird. It is the amoebas that spawned life, it is the asteroids that tear through the atmosphere and dissolve into dust before they meet my upturned face. Black is the stew of eternity. The witch’s cauldron of peas and carrots, stones and hearts, swords and fingernails and dinosaur bones. Every sound that has been made, every emotion felt, every orgasm that escaped. Within it, within this color, is everything. Each shape, each equation and unsolved problem. The sweat of your passion, the tears of my pain. The screams of the dying as they struggle for their last gulp of air, the shouts of rebellion as fire lights the night. Each century with its layers of texture, each murmured prayer and taste of salt. Each myth recited and kernel of knowledge discovered. Blackness holds it all. We are in its arms and it rests like a lover in mine. We are here, the collectors, the deconstructionsts. The observers and creators. The destroyers. The writers, the ghosts that pick up lost pieces and make puzzles from mosaics. Foraging with blindfolds and baskets, we gather small sounds and memories to form our songs. My voice cracks as I wander half blind in the night, singing a soft melody while burning trees remind me of your flesh.

Wishing For Death

It all wants to spill forward. The tears have rushed to my eyes in a moment of panic. The tidal wave began in softness between my legs, and now, it has swelled, pushed forward by the long, strong movements of your rhythmic force. Up my spine it has traveled, passing cords and vertebrae, tabs and disks. Up and up, reaching my head, wrapping around the front of my hair. On its descent, it rushes to fill the space of my eyes, it sits, like a suicidal woman on the edge of a building, waiting, flirting, tasting the air, tempting the fall.
The journey, when done right, is a circle…I have much to learn. It traps itself in my head, a prisoner of my stillness, captive in the cave of non-movement. The cause of headaches, the seed of anger and frustration. But remember, the gentle movements in and out, the softness of love caresses me from the inside, the magic carpet of a ride taken together. Can I stay? when thousands of tiny hands scream for me to join them in the lower depths? In the pools and dark red rivers of discontent and frustration…the unused energy left to run its natural descending course. Fields of strawberries left unwatered, cactus beds and posies…all withering, perhaps never existing at all.
In those moments, I choose the ultimate defeat, I make the most selfish of choices. I wallow and dance with the black suitors I carry. Drinking wine and champagne while the rest of us wonder where Lydia has gone? When is she returning? A deep breath in and we send the energy up again, I watch it wrap around my head, drip down my tongue and return once again to the wet hole where it began. Up, and around. Then again, up and around. Like a thousand beams of a thousand currents, alive with electric colors and sparkling past minute matter. Push, push it down, along my tongue, above the torso and it descends, down, down again. Squeeze… back up.
Move it…or it will move you.
Push…or I will be carried away to the farthest reaches, where only sadness sings a warbly song. Where whales dance but find no mates. Inhale and up, exhale and down. It’s energy that wants an end.
We want a death.
We want a resting place.
And this small part, this almost silent life, hidden and quiet, yet all seeing…this is the force that caresses me into staying. It wants something more. Much more than what we are used to. Much more than we think we can handle. Much more than we ever imagined. Greater than any television, religion, society…bigger and more magnificent than I can remember.
Hold still. Feel. Move. Push. Use. Flow.
MOVE.
Up and down, back around. Relax and move.
There is no time for censuring, no time for second guessing and perfection. Do it, and do it well. With love and devotion. With care and attention. Caress each movement like a lover’s cheek, slow and attentive…carefully.
I watch these hands move, the vehicle for something that attempts to flow. The unnamable that wants to speak. Sticks in the river, blockages of thought and kernels of identification. Stones bulge from the icy water currents that trickle over packs of tiny sticks. We push to move.
The mermaids wait in the lagoon, far from the waterfalls and side passages where I often linger. The caves here are usually dark, illuminated only by the glowing whites of your eyes. Gold moves from you…towards me. The chamber you create is awaiting my return. Aglow with candles and soft light, warm as your embrace, I run towards your home, panting and screaming along the deserted streets that radiate beneath the yellow fire of street lamps and squawking crows.

S & M

It is not all just sweetness and kisses. It is a constant reminder that pain and pleasure are inextricably mixed, the small white dot in the black yin, the tiny black dot in the white yang. Each kiss, tempered by a brutal slap is a sharp awakening to the dualities that constantly exert themselves in each moment. Nothing comes alone, emotion, fear, smell…it all comes with its companions. We come from two, a male and female linked in chemical union. The forces of creation and death dance a careful ballad, each step balances upon the shining silver blade that gleams as it descends into folds of earthy musk. Dark matter and multiple layers of flesh obstruct it gently at first, but even they quietly give way.
Constantly gagged with fingers and warm flesh, the screams still find a way to escape, releasing with it the invisible movements of shock and love. These noises take on muted forms, bouncing off of each surface with a whirlwind of enthusiasm. Escaping from a red mouth, they descend upon the stereo, ricochet to the ceiling, crash into the southern wall, on and on…on a moving bounce that does not end, but merely decreases in perceptibility. Wrists are bound with metal and no matter what comes, whether the soft whisper of an open mouth or the careening velocity of a ruler, the body is bound, left to absorb the energy that forces itself inside.
There is nowhere to hide and because of this, only because of this, small pieces of light enter the deeper realms. Once covered in ivy and Polynesian masks, disguised as a goddess and multifaceted chameleons, the wooden gates have swung open, leading to oft forgotten pools of turquoise water.
And just as it feels as sweet as it ever could, at the moment of rainbow cliffs and tidal waves; a mouth grabs a piece of tender flesh, the skin right below the belly button, and latches on, teeth dig in harder and harder, puncturing the creamy smoothness of a torso with multiple bite marks and indentations. And the lesson is given again.
Schooled without linguistic instruction, bodily actions alone deliver the powerful message that nothing is constant, and more than that, we exist in a kaleidoscope of movement. We are not in control. Not of our bodies, our minds, our emotions. We adapt to the weather, are thrown by a misinterpreted comment, crying over a particularly good bite. There is no end, no sweet reward at the end of the tunnel…just a constant shift within and without. Each slap, each gag, each kiss is a reminder of the constant ebb and flow, the steady waves and constant change that moves about constantly.
That there is not one without the other- for true understanding must be grasped from all angles.

Delicate Space

Wrapped around his solid trunk are creamy legs, soft and smooth, they cross at his back. Like shimmering roots from a magical tree, her limbs nestle themselves to his waist. At each moment, with one movement succeeding the other, she pulls herself closer to him. Atoms attempt to flee, running ferociously to the warmness of his skin.
His hands grip her waist, with the force of pure love, he slips in. Building the energy with each passing moment, with each thrust and pull, her wakefulness blooms. Feeling every bodily detail, each kiss is a world unto itself- a universe entered and quickly explored. Again and again, lips are shared, planets become defined in all their spherical wonder. It is not only his arms, not only his cock and body, stronger than all are his attention. Capturing each of her cells, each little vein and drop of blood. Like a thin net meant for stealing fairies, he finds her; the little lost pieces, the bits of physic power flailing into the ethers, he recovers everything, bringing it all before his eyes, holding everything before him.
Is this real? Perhaps not, probably not. But he holds her despite this, because of this. With this. She feels a wave, unlike anything she has ever known. Oh, they are on top, an eternity of water below them. Hold me, she thinks. A sound escapes her mouth, a bit of fear that exposes the newness. The crest rises, entwined, they bounce together, the rhythm of the water propelling them higher. She has never known waves like this, with the power of everything she has yet to understand. She feels his arms, enveloping him with a love she could never describe…but they seem like her arms. Is she holding herself? Is it her arms that are his? Is it him that holds her? Is it everything that keeps her close? Everything and nothing. One and nothing. She cries, remembering his massive strength, she sinks into him, trusting he’s there.
Later they rest, warm and soft together. She moves her hand across his chest, each stroke against him is lovelier than anything known. Together, they hold a space- more delicate than any known matter. It breaks with the slightest foul wind. And she, most inexperienced, does not have the knowledge to care for this tender space. Within a couple sentences, she has become human once again, speaking as humans do, worrying as humans do- with all this, the wave moves past. They are left in the water. In the distance, they watch as the peak crashes ashore.

The Impulse to Finish

The human machine, at its most basic level, has as an impulse to finish- to end something; whether it’s a project, a sexual union with an orgasm, or our lives- with death.
Deep inside, beyond rationality, we want to be DONE. It is submerged, hidden among the many folds and crevasses in our subconscious.
It is the uncomfortable present that we wish to push beyond and get rid of.
The machine fears intensity, in sexual encounters, when all the senses are heightened, the machine- alive with energy and emotion, seeks an end.
More than anything else, it needs to release the mounting energy and pressure inside, and so, as a culture not used to sustaining heightened states, we orgasm.
The human machine has evolved to die- to finish this experience. It is the orgasm of the breathing machine. With the last breath, the machine impulse to be DONE has conquered.

Beyond Words

Talking, words move in and out…free as breath. Syllables to the ear, melody rises and crescendos, sweeping across the landscape of my thoughts. My mind, wild with images and context, dredges up associations from my 27 years. Piece by piece, my word is sewn together, silver and gold strands suspend the symbols, they dangle in flight as synapses spark and converge.
All the while I stare, my mouth is free of rhythm or beat, my lips twitch in anticipation. The music of your body enters, your eyes voyage through the trappings of flesh, orbit my innards and depart with a brief kiss. Plunging within the dark, we leave the human form, changing within the space to something other.
Taking me in, you feel my attention enter like the sword of fidelity. While it taps the deepness of your organs, caressing the deep red of smooth muscle, the being emerges, entwined in blue. As the moments pile, and time takes our gestures and sounds into the eternal, we forget that it is ever another way. In this immortal moment, we are each other.